Industry Committee on March 10th, 2016

[Dominique Bérubé]

For the emerging technology, the grants have been adjudicated. It's a question of giving the money to the researchers so they can do the synthesis.

There's going to be a symposium, and there's going to be a report. We might invite you to the symposium if you're interested to come. It will be in 2016-17, or in 2017-18 maybe for the researchers to do their jobs and then the symposium. I think the symposium would be in early 2017. After that we will make a compendium, a global report, that we could also send to the committee if that interests you. In fact we could probably provide you a copy from the six challenges.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

That would be great.

Do you have any early indicators based on the intake process and the requests that you have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You're running out of time. You have 15 seconds.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay. We'll talk after.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

We will share.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Thank you very much.

Now we will go to Mr. Dreeshen for five minutes.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, folks, for coming here today to talk to us about what is an extremely important role that you have.

I want to hear a little about SSHRC's responsibilities, but that's more a play on words than anything. Most of us around this table have science and engineering backgrounds, and so on. When we look at some of the different things that are expected, and aspects of the studies that you have, and what is going on, I think that in a lot of ways we look at it from the perspective of true scientific discovery rather than political science, or maybe social science. As I've always said about scientists, they'll never say there's a zero result of something happening, and that's when the political sciences jump in it to tell you that means it's terrible. I guess that's part of it.

One of the terms that always gets thrown into the mix is the term “social licence“. I think it's important that everyone recognizes the metrics that are used, because that's where the political science side of it comes in. It must be extremely difficult for you to be able to look at different projects or their different components and the people who might want to be part of that, and separate what should be out of it and what should be in it. That's more or less a comment that I wanted to make.

The other part is that you say that your grants are small, but certainly to the people we have talked to they have been well received. You can be proud of that part.

I did go through your imagining Canada's future initiative that you launched in June 2011. One of the things I did want to emphasize is that one of the six future challenge areas asked, “What effect will the quest for energy and natural resources have on our society and our position on the world stage?” I think that's what I was getting at when I was talking about the concept of social licence and the types of things that are going on there.

I'm wondering how you're able to make sure that all of the discussions taking place are fair. I have a background in agriculture as well, and so I noticed that one of your projects was with someone who was studying at the Max Planck Institutes in Germany and trying to research agricultural land use. I know a lot of people from Europe, and their farming practices are very different from ours. Expectations, uses of genetically modified organisms, and all of those other sorts of things also tie into the same point I was making earlier.

I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of an overview of how you have maintained the credibility that one would anticipate from true scientists doing true scientific work.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

This is an extremely important question, and I want to be absolutely clear. I can't tell you that everybody likes everything we fund. That's a fact. I can say that—and I think the other presidents can probably say the same thing.... One thing I have to say and be absolutely clear about is that in our calls, with the funding we receive from the Parliament of Canada, we are completely open, in terms of who can apply, with what partners, and to research what question.

Sometimes we put some boundaries around that. We've had targeted money, in the past, for management, business, and finance, or for the environment, or for the north, but generally calls are pretty wide-open. You can see a lot of different things coming in from a lot of different places.

The one thing we assure the researchers, this committee, and the Parliament of Canada is that the filter we apply is subject to best standard and best practice globally, in terms of the evaluation by peers and experts, to ensure that at the end of the day, regardless of whether folks like or don't like a project, that project was deemed to be the best project in its class and was funded for that reason alone. We will stand by that until the day they close the doors, because if we lose that, we lose everything. I want to assure you of our absolutely best efforts to make sure that always happens.

On the side of social licence, this is one area where I love to talk, to demonstrate how important we are in the innovation process and in the economy of Canada.

We now work with FPAC, which is the Forest Products Association of Canada; we work with the mining community; we work with the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, mostly around social licence issues. Why?

In the old days, people would say, “What do you need social science and humanities for?” “Oh, well, they are ethical issues.” True. “They are legal issues.” Yes. “They are policy issues.” Yes. Until one day, somebody woke up and said, “We want to build a pipeline through there, but the community is not really keen on this”. Even though the law says you can, good luck in digging the hole. You need to get that social licence in place in order to be able to pursue your interest, whatever that is.

The research that we do is often around what the issues are, what the community is looking for, and what approach companies should take, in terms of negotiating with communities, to find solutions where everybody benefits.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I hate to cut you off. I am sorry. You went over time.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

We are going to talk about that again, though.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We can see where the passion is coming from. Thank you very much.

We are now going to move to Mr. Arya. You have five minutes.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You deal with advanced research. You mentioned your new strategy plan for the next five years, but your website still has your old strategy plan of 2013-16.

Have you evaluated your old strategy plan and compared what you planned to achieve with what you have achieved, before the end of this, before you launched the new strategy plan?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Yes. Thank you for your question. The good thing about working in a shop where there a lot of policy people is that this becomes a routine exercise.

That came up, specifically. Our council chair is Jack Mintz. Some of you may know he is a very well-regarded Canadian economist. That was the first thing he said: “Do you know where you've gone, before we get going?” We undertook a cross-organization exercise to review what we had proposed in this first plan, with what success, what doors were still open, and what doors we could now move on through.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Can we get a copy of that?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Do you mean the actual evaluation?

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Yes.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

I would have to see what form that took, at that point. There would be some internal documents, so I will go back and see what we did, in terms of the box-ticking exercise.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

In your closing remarks, you mentioned working with your siblings, CIHR and NSERC, but nowhere do you mention working with the Canada Foundation for Innovation. Is there any reason?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Absolutely. Very closely. No. They operate on a slightly different basis. They report through industry, through Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, ISED, that's true. But in fact, as agencies we were established by the Parliament of Canada. We are formally agencies reporting through the minister to Parliament.

But we work very closely with them otherwise. They have more independence, for example, with respect to their funding and how they use their funding than we would have, but we work very closely.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

You mentioned about 12,000 to 13,000 applications; the website said 13,500. At first glance it appears that the funding and support is spread thinly all across Canada across so many universities.

Would it not be better to focus on some specific topics with selected universities and focused funding there?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

Yes. We're limited in our funding. We have funds that are about one-third of the other agencies for research and for training, so the more we focus, the less we have for open research. It's pretty much that simple.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Now, we're talking of infrastructure. Infrastructure has become a sexy word because billions of dollars are being talked around it.

You mentioned that research in social sciences and humanities also contributes to the pressing issues of the day like infrastructure. Can you give us some specific examples of that?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

On pressing issues like infrastructure with respect to policy and infrastructure placement, for example, with respect to placement of pipelines and pipeline construction or other projects that would affect communities....

If you're asking me for specific examples, I'd be more than happy to provide them. I don't come today with them in hand, but we're absolutely prepared to provide those examples based on funded projects.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Your new fire strategy plan document will be uploaded shortly—

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

It has not been approved by council. It will be on March 14th, which is next Monday. Thank you, sir.