Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 8th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. David Christopherson will be next on the list.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Doctor, for taking the time to be here and to answer our questions. I appreciate it.

There are no surprises for me. If you have talked to colleagues or looked at Hansard, you know exactly where I'm going, so it's all up front, and nobody's shocked here as to what's going to happen.

I do want to state very sincerely that I have no qualms or questions at all with your qualifications. They are outstanding. There's just no other way to describe them. You are an outstanding Canadian, and in terms of qualifications to do just about any task that might be asked of a citizen, I can't think of anyone who's more qualified than you are. I have no problems or questions at all about that, and I am in great awe of what you have achieved.

However, on the side of competency, you know it's my view that the five of you have replaced the 35 million people who otherwise would make this decision in an election. Since that's not going to happen, it seems to me competency speaks to you actually performing the job, and the job actually happens as you are doing interviews and making evaluations about citizens as to whether or not you believe they should go on the list as potential appointees whom the PM has the right to appoint.

When you have candidates in front of you, given the importance of accountability in our system, democracy is not one-way. It's two-way. There's accountability on the part of those who hold and exercise power.

With that in mind, what qualities are you looking for in candidates, or what characteristics would you be seeking from those candidates to give yourself the assurance that they understand the importance of accountability in carrying out their functions as lawmakers? We're not just appointing committee people. These are lawmakers.

What qualities would you be looking for in order to feel satisfied that candidates were true democrats, and that they actually believed in the tenets of democracy including accountability?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

First of all, let me thank you for your very kind words about my achievements. I'm truly humbled and grateful for your comments.

Let me make two points on this, first on accountability. I'd like to say that I've spent much of my career, particularly the last 10 or 15 years, honing my skills on accountability, such as how I held people accountable within the University of Alberta. I was the person who was ultimately answerable to the board of governors and, in fact, to the Government of Alberta on the issue of accountability as an institution, as an individual on behalf of my executive, on behalf of management, and on behalf of the academics and our staff. I'd like to think that I understand accountability reasonably well enough to be able to assess that.

When we are looking at candidates, our terms of reference were, I think, constructed to some degree with that in mind. One of the things that I think is evidence of an individual's being able to be accountable is really what they set out to do in their lives professionally and in their communities. Were they in positions that involved making laws or supporting individuals who were making laws? We use the evidence collectively that came from their CV, from references, and from the nomination by organizations in order to ask if these individuals are capable of being accountable for the task before them. I think that was the criteria they used, and we use our own experience about what it means to be accountable at those kinds of levels to come to that conclusion.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

I really appreciate your responding. It hasn't always been the case. All I asked for was a very simple opinion, and you gave it to me. I appreciate it.

Just to drill down a little deeper on this same road, one of the things that voters do on the doorstep when candidates come and knock.... Again, you're a replacement for that. You're there instead of the voter, so someone is knocking on your door. One of the things that people are looking for is to ensure that someone has the right priorities for them. The difficulty is that what may be a priority will be health care for one person and will be democratic reform, let's say, when they go to the next door. Those two different values would perhaps be reflected in the ballot box where one candidate says that they didn't hear enough about health, so they are not voting for them. The other one then says that they didn't hear enough about democratic reform, so they are not voting for them. Again, you replace that door-to-door evaluation by the voters.

What mechanism will you use when you're looking to find candidates who are balanced in their view and that there's the right emphasis on things that matter and should be a priority, given the difficulty with that and given that Canadians themselves have subjective opinions about what this is, and it's reflected in the vote? That all kind of happens with just the five of you.

How do you see yourself evaluating candidates in terms of trying to determine whether they have a well-rounded interest in the values that matter? Or, is it your own values that will be the priority, for example, if you believe it's health care? What mechanisms will you use to find candidates that will reflect that Canadian will?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Doctor, you have 30 seconds left in this time slot.

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

One of the criteria that we have been tasked with is to ensure that we have a balance of candidates. We have the issue of gender, ethnic, linguistic, minority, and indigenous peoples, but also breadth of expertise in order to have a well-functioning Senate. As long as we can ensure that there is a cross-section of people with significant differences amongst them in terms of their professional and personal qualities, I think we would hopefully be able to address that issue.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

To be fair, some people are looking for someone who has walked a mile in their shoes. That may or may not be reflected in folks who have umpteen letters after their name, myself included.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

We'll move to David Graham for our last round.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Dr. Samarasekera, I'm looking through your national boards and committees in Canada. You have so many, I don't know where to begin. I haven't heard of half of them.

By the way, I want to share my time with Ms. Sahota.

Could you talk a bit more about some of these roles, in particular the prime minister's advisory council on science and technology? What did you do there, and how does that tie back to what you do now?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

I served on the Science, Technology and Innovation Council for a few years. Our role there was essentially responding to advice from the Minister of Industry Canada as well as creating a report called “State of the Nation” in which we attempted to comprehensively provide the minister and the Government of Canada with a picture of where Canada stood relative to other countries on a variety of measures. The advice to the minister was, again, on a large number of issues. The advice was confidential to the minister, and therefore, obviously not in the public domain. But I can tell you that we covered topics that would be of interest to enhancing Canada's competitiveness, not only in science and technology, but also in innovation and competitiveness as a country in terms of our economic growth.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Did the last prime minister follow your advice?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

I would say that much of our advice was indeed taken very seriously, and there were many occasions on which the advice was implemented.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

What is MaRS?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

MaRS is a technology transfer incubator organization in Ontario. It's located in Toronto. It was started off by John Evans, who is a very distinguished Canadian and who passed away recently, sadly. MaRS stood for medical and related sciences district. Their role is to take discoveries that come out of universities and help transfer them into small companies; to take small companies that are in Ontario and help them grow; and to have access to talent in management and capital, and ideas that would help companies grow.

So really it's a technology incubation, innovation, and commercialization entity. I was very fortunate to serve on that board for a few years.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I understand. I have another quick question for you.

You taught at the University of Ceylon in Peradeniya. I had to look that up. It's in Sri Lanka. You went to UC Davis after that.

Could you speak a bit more about your experience outside of Canada?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

Yes. I was very fortunate, because first of all, I grew up in Sri Lanka. I spent a couple of years in England as a child, and when my father was studying I was in California for two years, and of course, in Canada. I consulted for about a hundred companies around the world when I was a professor in engineering. When I was vice-president, research, and more particularly, president, I spent a lot of time promoting Canadian universities, the University of Alberta in particular, in many countries, particularly Asia, China, India, and South America.

I'm also a member of the board of the Bank of Nova Scotia and the board of Magna. These are two leading Canadian companies that have significant international operations.

I've been very fortunate in my life to really have had a chance to live and work and interact with people from many countries and cultures.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Now we'll go to Ms. Ruby Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Hello, Dr. Samarasekera. Thank you so much for being here with us today.

My question follows up on what my colleague was just referring to, the places that you've lived in the world. From your resumé it seems you may have grown up in Sri Lanka, spent quite a lot of time in California, in various provinces in Canada, and as you were just stating, places around the world as well.

How do you think this experience of living in different places or having grown up in a different place may shape your qualifications when it comes to this appointment?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

I think if you look at the criteria that I set out, one of the things that I think is important is the fact that we want to ensure, at least through this process, that there is representation of minorities: of linguistic minorities, ethnic minorities, first nations, indigenous people. I think that by having travelled and lived in many parts of the world, I have perhaps cultural sensitivity, the ability to understand people from different cultures, and also to assess and perhaps look for the contributions that people of diverse backgrounds make to Canada in particular. Perhaps that would inform my ability to look at the CVs, the resumés, the references that are provided in support of those individuals. I think I could bring that perspective to my task.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Through your work at the University of Alberta or UBC, what kinds of mechanisms did you try to put in place so that you could meet that type of objective there?

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

I think there were two things at the University of Alberta, certainly as president, that I focused on. At UBC, I was vice-president, research, so I had a very different portfolio. As president, there were a couple of things that we were working very hard on.

First of all, we worked to significantly increase the access for aboriginal students. As you know, they are very under-represented in many Canadian universities. I would say the University of Alberta was one of the most successful universities in enhancing the access of aboriginal students to not only undergraduate programs, but professional programs: law, medicine, and so on.

Secondly, we were very concerned with the business of access in general for low-income students and particularly students who came from families where their parents perhaps had not gone to university. We did a lot towards raising money for scholarships, bursaries, and also providing students with support so that they were successful in university. As you can imagine, the University of Alberta is a very large institution, so that's a challenge.

The other one was for students who come from small rural communities, where there were maybe no more than 3,000 or 4,000 students. These students were not accustomed to big-city life, and so again that was an example where we helped students coming from these minority backgrounds to succeed.

Finally, one of my roles at the University of Alberta was to increase the proportion of international students to the University of Alberta, because I believed that they brought with them the opportunity for Canadians to understand cultural diversity and also to enrich the lives of our Canadian students. It was also to provide international students from a range of backgrounds the opportunity to study at one of Canada's leading universities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Our last questioner will be Mr. Blake Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I appreciate your being here with us, virtually, and certainly, as many others have said, I am very impressed with your impressive set of academic credentials and experience, much as I was with the other two candidates we had before us.

I am sure you are very dedicated to the task you have before you—somewhat before you and already somewhat behind you.

I am very firmly of the belief that the only people who should be making assessments and selecting senators should be the Canadian electorate, in elections. Of course, recognizing the constitutional situation that we have now, Alberta does have a senatorial selection process that has been used. We've held a few election processes under the Senatorial Selection Act in Alberta.

Two different Prime Ministers have chosen to appoint senators chosen through that process. Of course, the Chrétien and Martin Liberals chose to ignore the choices made by Albertans in those processes, but we have seen them appointed.

I know you can't speak as to your opinion on whether that is the appropriate way, or on choices that have been made by the government. You are speaking to the process that you are a part of. I am obviously disappointed when, on more than one occasion, we've heard the Minister of Democratic Institutions and her parliamentary secretary, when I asked this question in the House of Commons, indicate that they didn't really see merit to an election process. They felt that it should be a merit-based process and therefore somehow an election wasn't merit-based, which I find really troubling, to say the least.

This question was asked at the Senate committee. The minister was asked about Mr. Mike Shaikh, who would be the next person to be appointed should the election process that has taken place in Alberta be followed. The minister said that he was more than welcome to apply, just like anyone else, and that there was really no merit to the fact that 300,000-plus Albertans had chosen to select him to be their senator.

I wonder what your sense is, should you have to make recommendations in a future appointment where there has been a senatorial selection process, whether it be the one in Alberta or whether there is another province that chooses to set up such a process, and therefore people are in place who have been selected and chosen by the electorate in their provinces. I know you are bound by the process you are a part of and you can't comment, but you certainly can give an indication as to what you would do in terms of looking at the merit of those individuals, based on their having been chosen by the provinces they would represent in the Senate. How would you assess that as part of the merit when considering a candidate, if that were to be the case in future appointments?

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Go ahead with that short question, Doctor.

[Dr. Indira Samarasekera]

Let me say that the criteria that have been laid out are very clear. We cannot deviate from that. That's our mandate.

We would look at every single individual based on his or her merits and contributions.

Clearly, if they have been considered worthy candidates by their communities, that would perhaps be reflected in their letters of reference, in their achievements, but we certainly would have to treat equally all individuals who apply in the second phase, purely on the basis of the criteria that are before us, which are very clearly set out in the terms of reference.