Science and Research Committee on May 5th, 2022

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for coming tonight. We very much appreciate that.

Through you, Madam Chair, to Mr. Hepburn of Mitacs, when I saw that your company was on the list, I knew I had worked with Mitacs at one point. I looked at it, and in the fall of 2020, when I was a provincial minister in Nova Scotia, we partnered—I guess you could call it—with Mitacs and invested $1 million to provide up to 250 internships for university and college students to work with local business. I remember at the time hearing stories regarding the talent development and entrepreneurship of former Mitacs interns. I know Dalhousie, for example, partners quite a bit with Mitacs.

Can you explain to us the value of these partnerships and how they support the development of student talent?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

Thank you very much. I was just in Halifax last week talking to your former colleagues.

We in fact delivered 600 internships in Nova Scotia, so we not only spent the million dollars the Nova Scotia government gave us but we supplemented that with the money provided generously by the federal government.

The internships in Nova Scotia are critical for keeping the talent that places like Dalhousie and Acadia and other universities in Nova Scotia attract to the province. We were at a celebration of start-up companies, young entrepreneurs who'd been aided by both our programs and the Lab2Market program out of Dalhousie University, which trains young entrepreneurs. They've established companies in Nova Scotia and they're going on to success.

I have many, many success stories of companies we have supported. Graphite Innovation and Technologies, for example, develops coating for ship's hulls that prevents biofouling and thus reduces fuel costs by a large percentage. It's good for the environment and good for shipping costs.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

How would you say talent retention for urban institutions like those in Halifax differ from those in smaller schools and rural settings that you've worked with?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

Obviously, the urban schools have more students and more research, but we work with other, smaller institutions in Nova Scotia, for example, and we have worked with the fishing industry in Nova Scotia. We work across the country, from St. John's to Victoria. We have business development people in places like Chicoutimi, Trois-Rivières and Thunder Bay.

We work very hard with smaller institutions, but obviously the larger institutions, the urban centres, are where most of the jobs are. We're very proud of our record on smaller institutions.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

How would you say Canada compares to our G7 and OECD peers, in your opinion, in the retaining of those talents?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

Compared to the giant vacuum cleaner south of the border, not so well. Clearly, talent is attracted to the large American centres. We're not bad, but our innovation economy is weak. We need a stronger innovation economy if we're going to have productivity that doesn't constantly lag American productivity growth.

We could do better. Let's put it that way.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

What other recommendations do you have for us? What kinds of incentives or other government programs do you think we don't have, or that we do have and can do better?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

Getting back to what Mr. Basiri said, I think, take advantage of government procurement to support growing Canadian companies, and of investment funds, which I know the government has established, and the new innovation organization that has yet to be finalized and things like that—more direct support for growing companies. The Americans do it through procurement and direct support for growing enterprises.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

How can our businesses further help leverage the talent from the educational institutions? We've heard a lot and we know that we have wonderful universities and colleges—I would say in Nova Scotia, but across the country. How can we partner more and seek help from businesses and non-academia?

We've heard a lot that to have talent you need good-paying jobs, and in order to do that, you need the partnerships and people to do networking and so on. What else can we do?

[Dr. John Hepburn]

I think industry should work harder on partnering with academic institutions and on taking advantage of the talent that's there. Most students who graduate with master's degrees and Ph.D.s in fact go on to work in industry. They don't go on to academia. They become like Mr. Basiri and establish companies.

I think industry needs to invest more in innovation and needs to take more risks, whatever supports and incentives government can give to do that, but support the companies that are established through procurement and through direct support. Industry needs to work harder in partnering with universities and vice versa.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. Diab.

Again, thank you to all our witnesses. We are really grateful.

I am now going to give Mr. Blanchette-Joncas the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to welcome the witnesses who are joining us this evening for the third hour devoted to our study.

My questions are for Ms. Laframboise.

Ms. Laframboise, this morning I met with representatives of the University of Toronto who are counterparts of yourself at the Institute for Science, Society and Policy. As was the case last week, we discussed, in connection with our study, the funding for granting agencies and councils, and, more specifically, increasing the value of graduate and postdoctoral scholarships.

I would like to hear your comments about that. The figures we have tell a lot. They show that for some students, the scholarships are inadequate to meet their needs, so they have to find other resources to survive, while continuing their studies.

[Sarah Laframboise]

I'm sorry. I don't think I heard a question with that one, but I couldn't agree more. I think it was just part of the translation, but—

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

I'll repeat it, Ms. Laframboise.

Do you think that funding for graduate and postdoctoral studies is adequate and sufficient at present?

[Sarah Laframboise]

Thank you for repeating that and thank you for the question.

No, I don't think they're sufficient, and I think most students across Canada would agree with me on that. In fact, research that Science & Policy Exchange and other groups have done has shown that students want it to be increased and that it isn't covering the expenses they have.

I have a lot of data from our survey and others that show it isn't enough.

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

Could you provide us with some data about what you believe is urgent?

What changes could the federal government make to ensure that institutions attract and retain the best talent?

[Sarah Laframboise]

It's hard to not say that funding is a big part of this. Students are overall very stressed and anxious about their finances. When we're talking about retention of students in general, a big part is student debt once they graduate. We're seeing about 40% to 45% of Ph.D.s graduating with student debt, and that's valued at about $20,000. When we're thinking of them going on to post-docs, as you were mentioning, this is not enough to even pay their student loan payments—along with their expenses. This becomes very troubling for students when we're thinking of retaining talent.

I have to comment, as well, on marginalized groups and under-represented groups. This disproportionately affects these groups, who maybe don't have the choice to take on these lower-income roles. They maybe have dependents or families who also would be funded through these sources.

These are big topics of concern for students.

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

Thank you. I'm going to continue with Mr. Dufour.

Mr. Dufour, we see that the number of doctorates granted in Canada is falling, as compared to the other member countries of the OECD, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Do you think there are factors or reasons that explain that?

[Paul Dufour]

I heard one of the witnesses in the previous group say that the problem isn't that there is a shortage of doctoral or postdoctoral students; there is actually an oversupply, and they can't find jobs in their specialities. A lot of them get discouraged and leave the system, if I can put it that way, and do something else. They stop using all the knowledge they have acquired and stop putting it to work for the private sector, in various sectors of the economy, or for the environment, for example.

So yes, there is a loss of this knowledge. We need incentives for these people, for them to see we support them.

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

Thank you, Mr. Dufour.

In more concrete terms, can you give us some examples of incentives that would allow doctoral students to find a job more efficiently and simply that would enable them to continue their studies to the doctorate level?

[Paul Dufour]

We have been talking about this recommendation for a long time. We have so many research incentive programs, but we don't have a platform where people can find the information they need in order to take advantage of them and fund their work. We have to create some kind of platform or portal for finding this information everywhere in Canada.

The federal government offers numerous incentive programs of this type, but you have to be able to find them. As well, the provinces also have their own scholarships and funding programs.

So I think the solution consists of putting it all together. Our colleague talked about using artificial intelligence to do that. It would be worthwhile to use that type of platform to enable these researchers to find funding.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I'm sorry, Mr. Dufour, but your time is up.

I'm afraid I have to stop you there.

Thank you, Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas.

Now we will go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

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

Thanks again to the witnesses.

I'd like to ask Mr. Basiri some questions.

You more or less opened your comments by saying, in terms of attracting top talent to Canada and attracting international students especially, that the four programs Canada has to do that, the visas and permits, are among the best in the world. As MPs we are all, I would say, beset daily by examples where that hasn't worked for people and people have found great delays in getting various types of visas, not just student visas.

I want to give you an opportunity to expand on that and talk about how the execution of those programs can be improved for Canada, in terms of making the process more efficient, getting students into positions they are fit for, etc. I'll give you that time to expand on that.

[Martin Basiri]

Thank you so much for the question.

The policies behind the programs are very good, but other countries will soon catch up. Right now delays in the process are not good. Things take a long time. For example, for the majority of places on planet Earth it takes six months to get a permit to study in Canada. For you to come for the fall semester, which starts in September, you should already have applied by April 1. However, many times universities issue acceptance offers in May or June.

The system doesn't work. You can't get your acceptance in May and then have your visa take seven months. Even for a country like India with SDS, which is supposed be a fast-tracking system, it takes about four months. It kind of leaves a bad taste in people's mouths if this is the first interaction and it is so hard. They wonder what the next ones will be like and how they can trust that in two years the system will work. Of course during COVID it was a hard time, so we have to be fair to the system as well.

The system can be very good. Purely with technology we can fix it. We have some recommendations we talked about. This is not the hardest problem. Right now humans send rockets to the moon and to Mars. Getting a good piece of software is not a hard problem to solve. It's just a question of will. If the government has the will to solve it, it's very fixable. I don't think it would take more than a year to fix the whole thing and for it to be the best in class.

Also it has to be aligned with the labour market. Right now there is a need for 100,000 health care workers, but the study permit is doing nothing about that. It's kind of disconnected. These are acting independently. If these two worked together, it would be a good system and an AI engine could easily solve this and Canada could just flourish.

We have a lot of land. There's a good health care system. People are nice. Canadians are welcoming to almost everyone, no matter what race or whatever nationality they are. We have a huge shot for the future. I bet the future belongs to Canada if it can really invest in its immigration service.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to turn to Ms. Laframboise or Mr. Dufour and talk about science and policy.

You mentioned Monica Gattinger. I have interacted with her and, I think it was, her Positive Energy program. I attended a lot of those events. I've been involved peripherally with a group called Liber Ero. I don't know if you've heard of Liber Ero. It's a program funded through a private foundation to connect early career environmental scientists with policy-makers, with decision-makers and with the media to really give them a good grounding in how to get their results out into society.

I'm wondering if you can comment on that in Canada and on what the government could be doing to help us once we have all of these excellent scientists working and on how we can make sure we take advantage of their findings and their research.