Industry Committee on May 28th, 2008

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This visit out west is quite an education for the Quebecker-living-in-a-city that I am. To hear people describe the wonderful possibilities that science is going to give Canada is kind of exciting; it is very exciting.

One aspect of all this stands out in my mind. I was a communicator in a former life--I worked in radio for 35 years--and I think in terms of the ability of the scientific community to join with the politicians to sell what you're doing to Joe Canadian, you fail miserably.

The Government of Canada spends or invests or loses, whatever word you might use, billions of dollars every year in science, innovation, research, be it grants, investment in infrastructure, all kinds of things. This is money that leaves the pocket of somebody who has earned it--Joe Canadian--goes to the federal treasury, and ends up in the scientific community. Please give me something for my money.

I have not heard one single person since the beginning of this study not asking for more money. Everybody thinks they would be better and they would find even more marvellous things if they had better tools, better toys. And as far as toys go, we saw the synchrotron this morning. The difference between a young guy and a man is the price of the toys; there we met a real man.

I would like to hear, from those of you who would like to reflect publicly on that, about the performance of the scientific community in selling its importance, its results, its pride, to the Joe Canadian who pays for it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Go ahead, Ms. Reynolds.

[Carol Reynolds, Director, Communications and Government Relations, Genome Prairie]

[Technical difficulty--Editor]...I think we need to put more time and effort into educating the general public. We need to put more time and effort into educating politicians. I'm hearing today very candid comments from MPs saying that they don't have a science background, that they don't understand, that the experts are up here, and that you're looking to us to tell you what we do and why it's important--to spell out what it means to climate change, what genomics has to do with world hunger, and how we can help solve some of these issues.

I think we need to concentrate on doing what we're good at, but communicating that as well. That's something the entire science community across Canada needs to really focus on.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

What do you plan on doing? How will you change? How will you make it necessary for the government to subsidize your work? If Joe Canadian does not ask his government to do it, the government is not going to do it--not for a long time.

[Perry Lidster]

I may be a little different from some of the panel members who are here, but we didn't ask for money. We asked for enhanced investment, and we can document the return on your investment as very much a business case. It's capturing the value of much of the science that is already out there. From our perspective, we're not asking for anything, other than to capture the value of the restriction technology from it.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

You have been one hell of an exception, sir.

[Perry Lidster]

Yes, well, we aim to be.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have one minute.

[André Arthur, Independent, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

That's it. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Go ahead, Mr. Hodgson.

[Dr. Paul Hodgson]

Unfortunately, I agree 100%. The majority of scientists have failed drastically in their ability to communicate their research to the general public. I was a scientist in my past life.

VIDO has been somewhat of an exception in that, and we take several fronts to try to translate what I'll call our knowledge to Joe Canada.

One of the first things we do is bring multiple high school students into VIDO for hand-on-hand training with the scientists at a very early age, starting in grade 9. They work with the scientists in an effort to teach them basic science and bring it back and relay that knowledge to their parents.

From a more direct applied agricultural perspective, VIDO has two technical groups, called the VIDO beef technical group and the VIDO swine technical group. Members of those groups average between 14 and 20 and are literally producers across Canada. The VIDO beef technical group is made up beef feeders, finishers, and raisers across Canada who come to VIDO. We have meetings four times a year in which we relay the science going on at VIDO to them. It's not only that; we take papers published in the scientific journals, translate them into more user-friendly knowledge, and communicate that to them. We actually have two websites specifically for that.

We've started to tackle the problem, but there still remains a lot to be done.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We are over time, so please be brief.

[Jerome Konecsni]

I would like to give you some hope that there is an awareness, and that there is an interest in and a need for communication. Genome Canada and genome centres dedicate a certain percentage of their budgets to communications and public awareness. I think they have recognized the importance of having communications skills in your organization.

I'd like to use myself as a personal example of organizations recognizing the need. I am not a scientist. My background is as a communications instructor and a public relations consultant. I got into managing science because of my ability to communicate the benefits of science to non-technical audiences like yours. There is awareness that is needed.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Okay, thank you.

We'll go to Mr. McTeague and then Mr. Simard.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, is that Mr. Van Kesteren...?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

No, Mr. Van Kesteren is next.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you; then I will ask the question I wanted to ask a little earlier.

There is a current crisis in credit in the United States and perhaps in a bit of Canada, to the extent that there has been some concern raised about the prospect of not providing funding. We've talked about venture capital. We've talked about the concern about how you take a product.... Mr. Hodgson, you talked about how successful you've been, but we've also heard from many who have not.

In your estimation, how difficult is it right now in the current credit environment to gain credit or to gain funding to get from the point of discovery to the point where you can commercialize? We see it very much on this side as an investment, Mr. Lidster, so don't worry; our concern here is to have you specifically identify areas in which the federally regulated industries can do a much better job of ensuring that we maximize new ideas and get them to market.

Do you want to have a go, Mr. Hodgson?

[Dr. Paul Hodgson]

The Vaccine Infectious Disease Organization is part of the University of Saskatchewan, so we tend not to deal with that early-stage investment, where most of our discoveries or inventions are pre-licensed to some of the large pharma and biotechnology companies. So I'd have difficulty commenting on some of the challenges faced by the young start-up companies.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Kehrig.

[Ron Kehrig]

The investment community, as it relates to emerging areas and emerging technologies, like everyone else wants to invest in areas that are familiar to it, whether it's angel investment or venture capital. The problem or the challenge faced by the small to medium-sized enterprises in new areas, in new technology developments, is there aren't those seasoned investors with a good knowledge of that sector or application, so the familiarity is sometimes an issue with the investment community in terms of the opportunities and where to go. There isn't that receptive capacity within the venture capital community, so it can be extremely challenging.

I think there is money in Canada for good ideas. There are certainly a lot of other opportunities in real estate and investment opportunities that are out there presented to investors, so the technology sector has to hold itself up against the other opportunities for capital markets.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

How does it do that in the context where you have all the money in this country heading to either oil or to potash--no offence, because many of you here are making an example of where that doesn't happen--to health sciences, the production of things like canola, which ultimately either deals with biodiesels, or food? We see rising food prices, we see rising energy prices, and we see a handful who are very successful and a whole lot of other potentials that are not.

I realize this is beyond the scope of some of you who are here, but it's a real crisis that we believe this committee is going to have to address beyond the success stories. We have to talk about the failures, not so much the success stories. We can model ourselves after the success stories, but we also have to recognize there's a dearth of examples of people who have actually been able to commercialize and get beyond the success stories you've had, recognizing that many of you are, in one way or another, institutions that have been supported one way or another by government or by the state.

[Perry Lidster]

You're quite right to point that out. The competition for investment capital is extreme. Right now you have huge returns on mining investments, oil investments, and that's what's drawing off the big money, the really big money.

We've taken the opportunity to look at Asia for funding. We're not dealing with the same kind of megaproject that they're doing with oil and mining, but we can find pots of money so that we can get by.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

Mr. Szumski.

[Roman Szumski]

When you have areas with a focus that are not too broadly set, such as biosciences and life sciences, but rather get a specific focus like agricultural biotechnology here in Saskatoon, that raises investor confidence. If you have the mechanisms in place to achieve a certain level of technology maturation so that it's investment-ready, you can have successes in these places.

We mentioned one company earlier, Saponin, that is raising capital and is successful at getting investment made in it. Part of the reason it has achieved that state is that the technology has gone from the early-stage research done in a government lab, at the right time turned into a company, and that company is given a location to incubate. All of this comes together to the point that they can now go out to private investors and attract investment. They have the confidence to invest because they're within this community that they know is surrounded by the university, the PBI, the kinds of investments that are available from Genome Prairie. The HQP are going to be here.

Canada has the capacity to win in these areas as long as it does the focus thing. The part we get into trouble with is if we try to do a general spreading of the activity around all the different possibilities. You have to narrow it down. I think we know that Saskatoon is a very successful cluster because it's focused.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Van Kesteren.