Science and Research Committee on Nov. 7th, 2024

[Dr. Jennie Young]

Even though everybody is operating on a different level, whether it's industry or basic research, there are shared needs that, if we met them, would really benefit the entire research process from basic fundamental, to clinical, to entrepreneurship and innovation.

Some of the shared needs are the fact that in Canada we have this incredibly unique culture of collaboration. We want to share our resources and we want to share the data. What we've heard from our consultations with stakeholders in all of these different fields is that we need to bring this data together. When you have data on research and data on clinical research, all different fields and sectors can access it. They can benefit and use that data. It also makes them work together because they're all working on the same data.

That cannot be supported by grant funding alone. It is something that complements and amplifies the impact of the grants that we're funding. There is currently no mechanism in Canada to support things like that.

My understanding of the capstone is that it's really supposed to do something extra on top to fill those gaps and to provide that stability that we do not have because we don't have the number of people and the base that the United States has. However, we do have that really unique superpower of being able to collaborate. It requires infrastructure and resources to support it.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Dr. Morin, I wonder if you want to add to that.

[Karine Morin]

I would add that the current funding councils do have strong mechanisms of accountability. There are funding opportunities that currently exist within the councils to facilitate exchange between science and industry, or even science and the not-for-profits.

Sadly, something fraudulent or inappropriate could happen in any sector, so it is important to have the accountability and transparency of those grants that are flowing through, typically, academic institutions. Those mechanisms exist and we would hope that those mechanisms would indeed be adopted and enhanced by the capstone, so that there would be the best assurances that the investments are flowing in the ways that they're expected to.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

We'll turn to MP Tochor for five minutes, please.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you very much.

The need for a capstone-like structure is bearing out, with some of the testimony, on some of the problems we have in Canada with funding of research.

Earlier we talked about some questionable studies from humanities and social studies that have been getting federal tax dollars, but we know there are issues with STEM studies as well. I'm talking about the replication crisis in which the results of many scientific studies, particularly in health and psychology, have been discovered to be impossible to reproduce, which is kind of concerning with the dollars going to studies that we can't reproduce afterwards. It's getting a fair bit of attention.

Could you tell the committee more about this replication crisis for scientific literature and how the capstone might be able to assist in resolving that?

That's for either witness, please.

[Dr. Jennie Young]

You're right. It is a concern and it's a concern for scientists, too.

What we can build on is the fact that scientists want to share. They want to share their data. They want to share their methodologies. A lot of times it's because the structure isn't there to enable them to do that.

Sometimes experiments can be difficult to replicate because you can't find all of the details of how the person did it. It's not that they don't want to share. It's not that it wasn't done properly, but there's a nuance and that needs to be there.

By making the data available.... Again we have an amazing culture in Canada versus the U.S., where I worked for 14 years, where we actually want to share everything and be very transparent. There's just no infrastructure and support for that kind of collaboration. That's what we're hoping the capstone would have the potential to do. It's to bring together all these efforts.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Just to clarify, you said that Canadian researchers want to share, but now you're saying that we can't reproduce some of those results because researchers aren't sharing additional information.

[Dr. Jennie Young]

Thank you for letting me clarify that.

They're not able to because there's no full structure for it. It takes people and skills. These are technically skilled positions to upload data, to do the analysis and that kind of thing. Our grants in Canada are too small to support those kinds of technical positions. There's no repository for you to share all of your work.

Again, these kinds of things take resources and infrastructure and we just don't have that level of funding with grants alone in Canada.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

You're right that this could be on some of the studies, but it's wider spread than that. There are studies on studies. The one that I was able to find that is kind of relevant is “Why Most Published Research Findings are False” by John P. A. Ioannidis.

I'm not sure if you've seen or know of this study. It looks at the topic thoroughly—even with the data, there's a lot of research that gets done that we can't replicate.

There are issues there and I'm not sure how the capstone would correct it.

I'll let the other witness comment on this issue.

[Karine Morin]

Another matter that attracts attention is that pressure of “publish or perish” and that sentiment that every time you undertake a study you better put out something because your next grant depends on demonstrating that whatever prior investment you had resulted in findings that got published. That pressure does seem to now lead to some scientists not quite doing the rigorous work of data analysis and the publications that result are not as sound as they should be. That gets uncovered with time.

That said, in the context of a mission-driven agency, I do hope that there would be some expectations of transparency in the research that would sort of prevent those happenings of cutting corners, of not doing the full analysis or of not making the data ultimately available through infrastructure for data repositories, so that we would not find ourselves with such problems of research findings that are not replicable.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I only have 30 seconds left, so this is going to have to be a written response.

Just switching gears a little bit, in the Canadian Brain Research Strategy's recommendation, Ms. Young, they recommend that “The President of the capstone...possess a strong scientific background to ensure alignment of capstone programming with the scientific capabilities across the ecosystem.”

Would that mean that no one from the SSHRC side of things could hold that job or would it just exclude the humanities side of the equation?

[Dr. Jennie Young]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify.

We see that all as science, so it absolutely includes it. Especially for a field like the brain, it is so complex.

If I could go back a bit to your other question, another issue of the reproducibility is just that the brain is so complex. Some of the earlier clinical trials failed because we realized that there were these other factors that needed to be taken into account that we didn't realize. As we collect more data, as we get to understand it, we say, “Oh, this is why it didn't work before”, and we can refine it with further study.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

MP Jaczek, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for their testimony.

I would like to follow up a bit on Mr. Tochor's questions.

Dr. Young, in your recommendations, you're suggesting an independent board of directors for the capstone structure itself.

We heard some really persuasive testimony in the first panel today in terms of applied research and the role of polytechnics. Dr. Young, could you elaborate on who you would like to see on that independent board of directors, and do you agree that there's a strong role for applied research?

[Dr. Jennie Young]

I think, to go back to that independent board of directors, that this was a recommendation from the Bouchard report and the Naylor report, so I take zero credit for that, but I really appreciate your question, because I think that too often we look at it as basic versus applied, and that is simply not the case now. It's kind of outdated in today's era of rapid discovery.

Instead, it's really a dynamic non-linear cycle where you're continuously informing and driving each other, and that means we need the people with the applied knowledge. These are data specialists. These are the people who know how to run an MRI machine. These are technical positions that are trained for at colleges, at NAIT, for example, in Edmonton, where I was.

We need these jobs, and we need them to be working together. That's why funding science and research, especially with these kinds of infrastructure personnel jobs, is not just about discovery versus applied or about basic versus applied.

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

Thank you.

Now, it may astonish my Conservative colleagues, but I think that I personally would be very averse to seeing some large bureaucracy required for this capstone agency.

I am assuming that this board of directors will be very familiar with what the tri-council members are doing. They would have full access to the research funding allocations that each of the tri-council members is making and could therefore ask those tri-council members to allow some of their research to be used in coordination across the tri-council. This might in fact save some funding, potentially, because presumably a lot of the research currently being done in the tri-council would be very useful for these mission-driven projects.

Am I correct in surmising that?

[Dr. Jennie Young]

Yes, absolutely.

Again, I think that people think it just would happen naturally, but there needs to be that support, the overarching structure, to bring it together. In an analogous way, with our national strategy for brain research, we fully support a national dementia strategy, an autism strategy and, now, the proposed strategy on brain injuries, because they know the specifics of those fields and what is unique to the needs of those fields.

Then we can provide the overarching support that would enable all of this research to come together in a way that's bigger than the sum of its parts.

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

Ms. Morin, I notice in your bio that you in fact worked at Genome Canada. I'm intrigued. Obviously Genome Canada provides funding for research. Would you see it as an advantage to in fact incorporate not only the tri-council but potentially Genome Canada?

We heard earlier, from the first panel, about TACs. Are there other agencies that could in fact contribute to these mission-driven projects?

[Karine Morin]

I think what we see across the ecosystem is that different organizations have been able to pilot different modalities of research or different modalities of funding the research.

With my familiarity with Genome Canada, I can absolutely attest to a lot of wonderful things that organization has been able to do. My favourite example is that the genomics alliance research was advancing with an integrated component that looked at the social sciences and humanities components, through the GE³LS program, the genomics and its environmental, economic, ethical, legal and social aspects program.

That integration of social sciences and humanities into genomic science is an idea that I'm carrying forward here to say that mission-driven research should have that sort of integration and/or interdisciplinarity and/or at times the lead from social sciences and humanities.

If Genome Canada didn't exist and we relied only on what the three granting councils have done in their regular funding opportunities, we would not have seen the benefits of that modality, so there is, I believe, a risk in bringing everything into the fold, but there's nothing right now that prevents the three funding agencies and/or a capstone to also look at some genomics-related questions.

I think it is a difficult choice to be made, but there are ways of piloting funding modalities that are really essential in learning. I hope those great ideas get pulled into the capstone.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

Now we will turn to MP Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes, please.

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

My question is for Mr. Maltais of Acfas.

As part of the reorganization of research funding, what measures does Acfas propose to ensure the active participation of francophone organizations in the management and distribution of funding, so that funding decisions accurately reflect the priorities of the francophonie's vision while avoiding the predominance of anglophone perspectives?

[Martin Maltais]

I don't know whether I can answer your question directly.

First, it's important to understand that Acfas takes a multidisciplinary approach and represents researchers in all fields. We promote all the sciences and we're the only organization in Canada to do so. We are the world's largest organization promoting science in French. When we speak, our members—individuals—speak, because we consult them to make our decisions.

One of the questions asked during the latest consultations concerned the key principles that should guide further decision‑making on the development and implementation of the new organization. Our members responded that language equity, institutional equity for research funding, data‑driven management and consultation were the top priorities.

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

Thank you.

In terms of representation, what role could Acfas play? As you just said, Acfas plays a key role in promoting and disseminating research in French. What role would you like to play in the newly created external advisory panel on the creation and dissemination of scientific information in French?

[Sophie Montreuil]

Good question.

I think that we're a proven, authoritative and serious voice. As the president, Mr. Maltais, just said, when we make recommendations, we represent a community that stretches across Canada. There are roughly 65,000 French‑speaking researchers in Canada. There are 35,000 in Quebec and 30,000 in all the other provinces, from east to west. When Acfas speaks, provides an analysis or makes a recommendation to the government or any other entity, it does so on their behalf.

To answer your question, I think that the least we could ask would be to consider our recommendations in the five briefs submitted. Today's brief will be the sixth. As I said, they cover related issues that directly affect the creation of the capstone organization.

It would also be to continue to involve us and see us as—let me put it this way—an ally. We represent a community worth its weight in gold for Canada. Canada has the distinction of boasting two official languages, which places it squarely within two international scientific networks. Few countries are fortunate enough to be able to promote researchers—