Evidence of meeting #46 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was astronomy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Independent
André Arthur Independent Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC
How much of your budget do you intend to spend on public awareness of the necessity of your NEPTUNE project?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ocean Networks Canada, University of Victoria
That will partly depend on the terms and conditions that are associated with that funding. But if I had the ability to make that choice, it would be in the order of about 15%.
Director, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) Institute, SNOLAB
The answer to the question is the same, which is that with the ability to have a secure source of ongoing operating, that is the sort of level that we would wish to spend on such things.
We have a history, starting with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which was a single experiment, the construction of which started back in 1990. We started immediately during that construction period with having Science North from Sudbury come over and film every step of the process. We developed what's called an object theatre in Sudbury, at which the general public is able to come into the middle of a mockup of this facility and get a narrative as to what we're doing. We bring school children through there.
I mentioned earlier the objectives of getting things into textbooks, of providing information to teachers, who can provide it to the children in our—
Independent
André Arthur Independent Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC
You realize, I hope, that the government will likely be convinced by the taxpayer more easily than they will be convinced by you people. You have expensive toys. You want them to be considered necessary for Canadian society, but the last word will be the taxpayers' word. I think there's a poetic beauty in learning that a better observatory will bring a better ride at La Ronde. This convinced me—okay, no problem with that—but the taxpayer has to be satisfaction with his government spending his money on your projects.
Mr. Sinervo.
Co-Chair, Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA) and Past-Dean of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Coalition for Canadian Astronomy
Very briefly, I would just comment that if you look at media exposure, either SNOLAB, or NEPTUNE, or the astronomical projects that Canada is involved in, that's actually very significant.
We have one of our strongest advocates here in this room, Peter Calamai, science writer at the Toronto Star. Peter is not the only one, of course, but he himself has been very active in the work of actually conveying what's exciting and what's important about supporting the science to Canadians.
I think the question, though, is that there isn't a venue in which the Canadian public can actually respond to the government with a coherent voice when it's appropriate that this is important. They don't know if a decision's coming forward. If you go and do surveys, you actually get very strong support.
There are 10,000 Canadians involved in amateur astronomy. That just reflects how a very large group of very excited people, who actually do a lot of backyard astronomy, who actually spend a significant amount of their own private time—
Independent
André Arthur Independent Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC
To find pleasure in astronomy is one thing. To want my government to spend money on your astronomy is another thing.
Co-Chair, Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA) and Past-Dean of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Coalition for Canadian Astronomy
Absolutely. My point, however—
Independent
André Arthur Independent Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC
It's your responsibility to convince the public to go and say.... How many members of Parliament receive messages from the public wanting the government to spend money on your project? Not many.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Rajotte
That will have to be a rhetorical question, unfortunately, because of the time.
We'll go to Mr. Simard, please.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here this afternoon, and thanks for your patience, by the way, with all the disruption.
It's often very difficult to measure the public policy benefits of your organizations. You sometimes can't measure that benefit, or whether or not the public got their money's worth by whether or not you're financially self-sufficient. I think that's a very important point to make.
From what I saw in our last visit out west, I believe our public is getting their money's worth. Monsieur Vincent hit the nail right on the head when he said you can't build half a car. Once we have committed to the capital expenditures, we have to commit to the long-term operating costs. It doesn't make any sense for us not to do that.
Now, I'd like to know, since CFI and NSERC and these funding organizations provide only 3% of your funding--sorry, it's only 3% of what they provide--whether you feel that there should be a separate structure for big science. In other words, should there be a budget within the industry department to fund big science projects--because they are quite different--or are you convinced that the peer review that comes with these funding organizations is important?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ocean Networks Canada, University of Victoria
I'll just take the last point first. I think the peer review is absolutely critical. I don't think any of us sitting at this table would expect to be putting a cap out to have federal dollars poured into it without a performance review.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Could you have that peer review outside of these funding bodies?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ocean Networks Canada, University of Victoria
Yes, absolutely, and there are plenty of precedents for that. The TRIUMF example that I talked about has a blue-ribbon panel that's specially brought in every five years to review the next annual plan and determine, based on past performance, whether further funding should be brought in. So there are models there, absolutely.
Should it be outside or within the existing councils? I could make an argument either way. I don't think that's the issue for us. I think what we want is a fund that is specially targeted towards these very special and selected high-level operational issues. If it's administered through NSERC because that's seen to be the most appropriate channel, so be it; if it's administered outside of it, as is true for TRIUMF at the moment, so be it. That, I think, is a secondary issue. It's having the mechanism in place that recognizes that it's important.
Director, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) Institute, SNOLAB
If I could add to that, I agree with everything Martin said.
I think it's important to recognize that these larger-scale projects, which will only be a small fraction of the total, can have significant impact and therefore should be a part of our overall set of things that we're doing in the country, but there are questions that set them aside from the more normal scale of projects that you're dealing with.
When you're trying to make the decisions in the first place--because very often there are large amounts of money, which are often intergovernmental in terms of support that's required, but are also, in many cases, interdisciplinary in their support--you then have a question, when you start to build such a large facility, of whether you are able to build this facility that is at the very cutting edge and of its nature, therefore, has uncertainties as to whether you can achieve what you are attempting to achieve within the original estimates of what it is going to cost. You need to have overview during the construction phase and commissioning; then, when you go into operation, you need to have a mechanism that's been identified in the first place as to how you will be covering these costs. A separate thing could be very valuable.
Finally, you have to know when these projects have finished their worth and are going to be shut down, because they have become an institution at that point. Therefore, setting them aside by having a mechanism that could be working within existing agencies or could be completely separate is the thing that's essential for this small subset of things that are going to be of a large scale but at the cutting edge.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
One of the things I think we all recognize is that they draw world-class people to Canada. I had the pleasure of spending a day on the Amundsen, the icebreaker, and phenomenal people were working there from pretty well every country in the world. We were in western Canada, and the NEPTUNE project is one that interests me as well.
I didn't hear you say, Dr. Taylor, anything about tidal power or alternative energies. It seems to me that some of your organizations are very well positioned to do some of this stuff, and you're not doing it. I'm wondering why.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Ocean Networks Canada, University of Victoria
We're just in the process of developing a major application that would be linked to NEPTUNE on exactly that. CFI has established a new competition that is entertaining proposals this fall, and there will be a proposal led by the University of Victoria on wave and tidal energy.
Conservative
Conservative
Director, Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) Institute, SNOLAB
If I could make a comment, we would love to have you come two kilometres underground into a laboratory that is as clean as, or cleaner than, a hospital operating theatre, in an active mine where Vale Inco is taking thousands of tonnes of ore per day, and we're coexisting with them and doing great science in the process. Come and visit.
Liberal
Raymond Simard Liberal Saint Boniface, MB
Unfortunately, we haven't had the opportunity. It would be interesting.
One of the questions that were posed on our visit was whether Canada should be competing with, for instance, a synchrotron. Why should we have a synchrotron when there are seven or eight in the States, and they're all over the place? Why is it important for us to have one when people can go elsewhere?
Co-Chair, Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy (ACURA) and Past-Dean of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, Coalition for Canadian Astronomy
The issue around what Canada should be involved in and what it should not is actually a key question around where Canada's priorities are. If you actually look at the basis on which each of these projects was chosen and selected, however, they actually come back to the question around critical mass and excellence and potential for making contributions at an international level.
We have a synchrotron light source because we have a very strong group of scientists within Canada who are actually doing some of the best science in the world, and they need those synchrotron facilities. They were in fact forced to go offshore, and we were having a very difficult time in being able to support that group and to have it grow. It was a very strategic decision that we had to have our own facility, a facility that we could direct, so that we could actually plan for going forward. It served--