Science and Research Committee on Oct. 29th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you for making that point.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That's a good answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

I will now turn to MP Jaczek. You have the floor for six minutes.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Dr. Bouchard, for answering Mr. Tochor's question so effectively.

Now perhaps we could get back to capstone. Clearly, the concept—I think we all understand—is an overarching body supported by pillars to coordinate research activities, specifically with international collaboration, and also on a mission-driven basis.

However, having said that, I would really like your opinion on how this should be structured. We've talked a little bit about the board of capstone— obviously, its being interdisciplinary, etc. There is a request for funding specifically, as I understand it, for the projects that capstone would be announcing after full consideration, but what happens to the tri-councils? I don't quite understand. Will they continue to receive applications for research, or is there some mechanism to ensure that applicants, researchers, are so aware of the capstone's priorities that in future, researchers will attempt to fit into one of those priorities? On the other hand, will there be two sets of research activities that will, therefore, require a board for each of the tri-councils and a CEO to remain? On the face of it, it looks like a bit of duplication.

Could you just flesh that out a bit?

[Frédéric Bouchard]

First, I want to point out that the previous question was fully legitimate and I didn't feel slighted by the way it was asked. These are important questions about how to think about funding.

I just wanted to put that down.

First of all, in terms of the structure, the best model to look at is the UKRI model. The United Kingdom did some sort of capstone reorganization. They have their capstoning—I don't know if that's a verb—and then they have the equivalent of the councils below it. The councils still handle most of the investigator-driven research calls. I don't like to say that it's just “basic” science, because it's not. Let's say “basic” and “applied” research. That is closer to a disciplinary structure. Those are the verticals. That's how UKRI handles it.

As soon as it gets to mission-driven or international research, it has to go beyond the councils. One of the reasons.... Look at the innovation pipeline. I'm going to use technology-readiness levels, because that's a scale used at NASA, in the aeronautics industry and in most commercialization efforts now. Low TRLs—1 to 3—are close to discovery. They're close to basic science. That's probably going to be within the councils. As soon as something matures and gets closer to commercialization, when applicable, it gets interdisciplinary. That's because, when you're trying to deploy a product, technology or vaccine, you have to look at social, technological and health aspects. It's going to get interdisciplinary, so it has to go beyond the councils.

That doesn't mean all projects will migrate from the councils to the capstone. A lot of fundamental discovery.... We talked about Jeff Hinton. I'm going to speak for Yoshua Bengio, who is one of my professors at Université de Montréal. It was basic science for a long time. It would have stayed in the equivalent of a council. When a proof of concept becomes a product and can be deployed, it becomes mission-driven research because it has all sorts of impacts—economic, policy, security and health.

Basically, the structure is this: We still have the councils to support a lot of the investigator-driven research. It's more than an incubator, if you will. You can see it as an incubator. Then, when some projects become bigger than their disciplinary silos, they may need some interdisciplinarity. At any given time, you would have a portfolio of funding calls. Some would be investigator-driven and some would be mission-driven. They're not in competition, because they have different objectives, structures and partners.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you.

Is there any reason why Genome Canada has not been included with the tri-councils? I looked at their website. I see there are funding opportunities. They seem to be engaged in very collaborative efforts around, obviously, the fundamentals of genomics.

Is there any reason why they are not part of it?

[Frédéric Bouchard]

I don't know the specific legislation for the proposed capstone. I can only speak about the report.

In our report, we point to CFI, Mitacs and Genome Canada, but there are other organizations and non-profits that are currently essential partners in the research innovation portfolio. These aren't coordinated enough with other agencies. CFI is very close to the councils, but the other agencies have a different legislative structure. Basically, one of the capstone's main objectives will be to coordinate with outside actors, such as CFI, Mitacs and Genome Canada, and with different departments within the government.

Earlier in the discussion.... I'm happy if somebody wants to ask questions, because I think time is running out on this one. If you want to ask about the budgeting of this, we don't have numbers, but we've thought about it a little, in terms of human resources and the efficiencies we could get through a capstone organization.

Maybe we can get to that later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

That's excellent material for another question.

Now we're going to turn to MP Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to welcome the witnesses who are with us for the second hour of our study.

Dr. Bouchard, it is an honour to have you here at the Standing Committee on Science and Research. I would like to thank you personally for all the work you did on the report. It is an exhaustive, long-term accomplishment, and you entirely deserve this recognition. Thank you for being with us today, and, of course, for telling us about everything you have discovered and learned. Thank you for making suggestions, as well.

Rumour has it that there was good news in the 2024 budget, this being an increase in research funding. We have to admit that funding had stagnated in the last two years. However, we are worried that the funding will not be available if the government does not put this new capstone research organization in place.

I would like to hear what you have to say on this subject, the importance that funding be available, even if the process of putting a new organization in place is not yet under way.

[Frédéric Bouchard]

Thank you for your kind words and for the work you are doing.

It is not just a problem of money. If all you do is put more money into research, that will not solve the problems we have in Canada in research and innovation, nor will it solve anything if all you do is put a capstone organization in place. There has to be speedy progress on the capstone organization and there must be follow-through on the financial commitments. In fact, we have already fallen well behind in recent years, as compared to the other countries we are competing with.

If we do nothing but increase funding, that will make some researchers happy but it will not be sufficient to fill some of the gaps that the research ecosystem is experiencing in Canada at present. What is needed is work on both the governance framework and funding at the same time. If all you do is put the capstone organization in place rather than increasing funding, you are redistributing the existing funds over a greater number of missions and we will find ourselves in a situation that will turn out to be worse than before.

Our colleagues at UK Research and Innovation in the United Kingdom have told us that during the initial years after UKRI was set up, they were promised a lot of money and a new organization. Once the new organization was put in place, they did not receive the money promised. For years, they have had to deal with an administrative labyrinth, to no avail.

I urge you to see this as two parts of a whole. It's as if I said to you: Do you want a car or some gas? Without one or the other, you are not going to get very far. You need both. The capstone organization is the new car, and the gas is the additional budget.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Your comments are clearly illustrated and easy to understand.

Since we are talking about gas, you consulted hundreds if not thousands of people when you chaired the advisory panel that produced the report. You have given a pretty exhaustive picture of the situation. You said we had lost ground on the commercial side in relation to our main ally, the United States, and we were losing ground now on the science side. The figures speak for themselves.

I don't want to be a prophet of doom, but in the last 20 years, Canada has in fact fallen considerably behind at the international level. It is actually the only G7 country that has reduced its investments in research as a proportion of GDP, its gross domestic product, in the last 20 years. We did get some good news recently, but you don't just need gas once every three years. That is what I would like to hear your thoughts on today.

We have also witnessed a brain drain. We are the only G7 country where the number of researchers per 100,000 population has gone backwards. It hurts to hear that.

I would like to hear what you have to say about a more comprehensive and exhaustive picture. It's fine to have more gas, by which we mean more funding, and the best car, that being the best capstone, but it also takes a short, medium and long-term vision to be able to stand against our competitors. The whole world is in competition in the field of scientific research.

[Frédéric Bouchard]

I agree with you entirely.

I am going to offer an analogy. I am a philosophy professor, and this analogy is going to surprise some of my colleagues. To me, it's like the support associated with military spending. We can't say we are going to deal with that spending or pay attention to this some other time. At some point, we have to maintain an ongoing, robust capacity in order to support the national interest.

This is also not a partisan issue. The fact that major investments in research have been made under both Liberal and Conservative governments shows us that. We have to see research and innovation as part of the national interest, and therefore we have to make consistent investments over time. If we adopt an approach that involves spending money when things are going well and withdrawing it when things are going badly, our best talents are going to leave the country every time we see budgets shrink. We have to avoid that. This is also not just a matter of our best talents. It affects the next generation too, the people who could become that next generation.

We must therefore make sure there is predictable, ongoing funding so that research is able to develop its full potential.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Bouchard, I want to talk to you about just that, the fact that our best talents are leaving the country. At present, Canada invests 1.6% or 1.7% of its GDP in research. Our neighbours, the United States, devote 3.4% or 3.5% of its GDP to this. How can we compete with them and succeed in retaining our best talents? At present, I actually get the impression that we are a branch plant for the United States.

I would like to hear your thoughts on that.

[Frédéric Bouchard]

That is a very important point. First, I must point out that the Canadian government has made a big effort. The proportion of research funding that is provided by the government is substantial. A large part of why Canada is lagging behind is the fact that Canadian companies invest less in R and D than American companies do.

The Canadian government is inevitably going to have to play a bigger role, because the Canadian economy is heavily structured around small or medium-sized businesses that do not have the capacity to support research and innovation in the same way as big corporations do. The government must therefore play a bigger role to make up for this lag.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Maybe someone else can pursue that further, or you can submit something in writing as well.

We now will turn to MP Cannings for six minutes, please.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

I'd like to echo Mr. Blanchette-Joncas' comments about Dr. Bouchard and your report, and what that has really meant to us here at this committee in pushing to provide support for research and science in Canada. We're happy that some of those things have come to pass, and we're hoping that we will see more and more.

You mentioned what the United States is doing, and you finished by talking about the difference in Canada with more SMEs and fewer big companies here—fewer Googles, Microsofts and so on. However, the U.S. is investing vast amounts of money in science and research, and from all reports, it seems to be paying off handsomely already.

You mentioned that Canada has dropped to number three in being a partner with United States. Who are the top two?

[Frédéric Bouchard]

I was hoping somebody would ask that. Actually, there was a rise in Chinese science in the nineties, so you do see collaboration across the world with scientists from China. That has been dropping recently, right? In 1995, however, Canada stagnated and other countries picked up.

Number two is the U.K., which did a major reinvestment in research and innovation, and it paid off because now they're the number two international partner to the United States.

In third place, we're tied. I claimed the bronze just for ourselves, but we're sharing it with Germany. Part of it is a result of the reunification between East and West Germany, where all of a sudden Germany became a bigger country with more scientists, and it had a big impact on its potential to collaborate, but Germany has been investing in both basic science and applied science.

Sometimes we hear about the Fraunhofers, which do industry-university partnerships, and Germans also have the Max Planck institutes. Germany is actually a good example of a country that has huge ambitions for its research and innovation sector, and this makes it incredibly interesting to the U.S. as a scientific partner.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thanks.

I'd just like to follow up on that. You said that the funding isn't enough by itself, that more money isn't enough. We need the structure, we need the organization. I'm just wondering how the Americans have dealt with that and what we can learn from them. Maybe they're too different, but what have the Americans done? What has the U.K. done? You mentioned Germany. What are the real takeaways from other countries? There's so much to learn from not being the first off the mark.

[Frédéric Bouchard]

The U.S. and Germany just put in, to use the technical term, “crazy” amounts of money, so it's very different, but if you look at Germany and the U.S., their growth strategy is fully committed to research and innovation. They fund it through all kinds of different agencies.

I'll focus on the U.S. for a second. In the U.S. what's very different is that a lot of the mission-driven is handled via DARPA. DARPA gets part of its funding through the U.S. military. It's not just military research, but it's technological research. They have access to the largest procurement in the U.S. government. It's a huge pool of money. Now they're trying to replicate the DARPA model in other non-defence sectors. You're seeing DARPA-like instruments elsewhere.

We did not propose a DARPA-like model, because that type of procurement is not available to the Canadian tax base. The capstone model is more realistic with regard to our capacity, but it has the same philosophy of agile, quick-acting, mission-driven calls that could be university-industry, or just university, or...to answer a mission.

France and the U.K. are more alike. I mean, they have very different organizations, but they've invested significantly historically. In the U.K. the private sector plays a larger role than in France. They basically have agencies that they've been nurturing through time. It's the same thing with the U.S. I think the NSF is 70 years old. They'd much rather put more money into an organization to reinvent it.

We don't have access to as many resources. This is why we went through a slightly different model with capstone. I'd say that capstone looks a bit like UKRI. It looks like the U.K. model, but with differences. That's the structure it kind of resembles.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

You have 34 seconds.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Okay.

How do you envision, when we have mission-driven calls for funding, who applies? Is it individual researchers who say they want be part of this, or is it groups of researchers who get together from all across the spectrum?

[Frédéric Bouchard]

Actually, this is the part where I can say what I think it should be, but I have no idea what's in the actual legislative framework.

This is the way we were thinking about it in our report: You should have differently scaled missions. Let's say there's a new accord with Europe on food security. Well, you could have both governments committing to putting x million euros or dollars for mission-driven calls. Capstone would get that envelope, and they could tier it, depending on how its scientific directorate would see what has more bang for the bucks. They could say that they'll be funding $50,000 exploratory projects and funding five million projects. They could be very small teams, medium teams or large teams.

I guess the biggest change with the existing councils is to have the legal framework that allows it to be agile in terms of programming. For example, for the next five years they want to develop quantum security, quantum cryptography, and they would do the calls. Five years later, they could do something else.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you. That's way over. Maybe someone else will pursue that, or you can send something in writing, because that was quite fascinating.

We'll start off our five-minute round with MP Viersen.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We heard here, just today, that small and medium-sized enterprises in Canada are not investing in R and D. Part of that, I think, is due to the carbon tax, which the Parliamentary Budget Officer notes as taking somewhere between $20 billion and $30 billion out of our economy. One of the first things that small and medium businesses end up cutting is R and D, so I would totally translate that the costs of the carbon tax are impacting the research that small and medium enterprises are doing.

We also see two million people lining up at the food bank every month. One thing that I often hear back home is that the government seems to be focused on nothing in particular and everything at once, and also pursuing.... Folks are very frustrated when they see Canadian dollars going abroad.

I have a list here of studies that have been funded, to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the United States. We just heard about, I think the technical term was “crazy amounts of money”—I like that term—that the Americans are spending on research. Why in the world would we be funding American universities? The University of Maine, Clarkson University, Michigan Technological University and the University of Vermont are all getting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Boston University...$90,000. The one that galls me the most—I cannot figure this out—is $600,000 for the study of conservation of a central habitat for polar bears. As far as I know, Canada has the market cornered on polar bears. Why are we sending money to the University of Washington to do the study on the essential habitat for polar bears?

I get the impression that you've been proponents of this capstone research program. All this money that I've mentioned comes through the ministry of the environment, which...I'm not quite sure whether that money is then funnelled through the tri-council or what, so how do we...? There are two things to this. One is that this money is being funnelled to the United States, and we're competing with “crazy” money down there. Two, why is this money not being run through the tri-council? Do you imagine that this capstone would capture...so that we're not seeing this “madly off in all directions” research funding?

Go ahead, Mr. Bouchard.

[Frédéric Bouchard]

Well, I should also point out that, when I said “crazy amounts of money”, I said it with a loving appreciation. I wish we had that kind of that money.

More seriously, I don't know the types of grants that are...it's not through the tri-council, that I know of, so it's probably the department. One intention behind capstone—and again, this is a legislative and a government issue, so it goes beyond the purview of our report—is that it should try to concentrate the research capacity, let's say. Right now, you have departments that have grants here and there—