Science and Research Committee on Nov. 28th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 111 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research.

Before we begin, I would ask all in-person participants to read the guidelines written on the updated cards on the table. These measures are in place to help prevent audio and feedback incidents, and to protect the health and safety of all participants, particularly our interpreters.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. I'd like to remind all members of the following points. Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. All comments should be addressed through the chair. Members, please raise your hand if you wish to speak, whether participating in person or via Zoom. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice, at the bottom of your screen, of floor, English or French. Thank you, all, for your co-operation.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, October 31, 2024, the committee commences its study of the impact of the criteria for awarding federal funding on research excellence in Canada.

It's now my pleasure to welcome, as an individual, Dr. Eric Kaufmann, professor at the University of Buckingham, by video conference; Dr. Jeremy Kerr, professor of biology at the University of Ottawa and chair of NSERC's committee on discovery research; and Dr. Yuan Yi Zhu, assistant professor of international relations and international law, Leiden University, also by video conference.

Up to five minutes will be given for opening remarks, after which we will proceed with rounds of questions.

Dr. Kaufmann, the floor is yours for an opening statement of up to five minutes.

[Eric Kaufmann, Professor, University of Buckingham, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair.

I wish to raise concern over several aspects of research funding in Canada that fall under the rubric of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, sometimes known as EDI.

The main point I wish to make is that DEI, as practised by the tri-council research councils, reflects a particular world view. It's a left-wing world view that I term “cultural socialism”. That's a valid world view, but it's a particular world view.

Cultural socialism, as I define it, consists of two tenets. The first is DE, or diversity and equity. This means that rather than, say, equalizing outcomes by class—as in traditional Marxist socialism—outcomes should, instead, be equalized by race and sex, through a form of discrimination. The second component of cultural socialism is inclusion, or I. It is that minority groups must be protected from emotional harm, or what's known as “emotional safety” or “protection from emotional trauma”. It means that this requires a censoring of free speech and the pursuit of truth because this might offend. This aspect of DEI is what underpins what is commonly known as “cancel culture”.

My point here is that DEI is political; it's not neutral. Just to prove that, when I asked a representative sample, in a Maru survey of 1,500 Canadians in September 2023, whether they approve of flying the pride flag on government buildings, those who identified as “left of centre” approved 63-24, while those who identified as “right of centre” disapproved 74-15. Moderates also disapproved by a more modest 42-35. The point here is that [Technical difficulty-Editor].

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

He is frozen on my screen. I don't know if anybody can hear him.

[Eric Kaufmann]

[Technical difficulty—Editor] evident in both diversity statements on application forms and race and sex discrimination in hiring and funding calls.

I'll make three points about DEI. First, most Canadians do not support it. I found that 59% of Canadians favoured a colour-blind approach of “combating racism by treating people as individuals and trying not to see race”, as against just 29% in favour of the colour-conscious approach of “combating racism by being aware of race, in order to better notice inequality”. It's also worth saying that in the U.S., a majority of people, including a majority of Black and Hispanic respondents, support the Supreme Court decision banning racial preferences in university admissions.

The second point is that DEI is in tension with research excellence. Richard Sander, in 2004, famously showed that admitting Black students to law school with lower entrance scores correlated with them achieving lower grades in law school. That's not surprising if you're admitting at a lower score. More recently, I looked at data on academics from an article in Nature in 2024. It showed that female academics had significantly lower numbers of citations in their work than men, even when controlling for field of study and years in the profession. Likewise, Black and Hispanic scholars had substantially fewer citations than whites or Asians, although the gap was not as large as for gender. Whatever the cause of this is—arguably, there may be inequalities in society, and that's absolutely right, or inequalities earlier in the pipeline—artificially narrowing the talent pipeline by rigging the result at the end of the pipeline does not rectify the problem. All it does is prioritize equity or cultural socialism over excellence.

The third point is that DEI creates the conditions for delegitimizing research funding. Confidence in higher education in the United States has fallen from nearly 60% in 2015 to 36% in 2024, nearly half. The sharpest decline is amongst Republican voters, from 56% to 20%, dropping to nearly a third of its former value.

In Canada, the trust in higher education is greater, but it's also at risk. For instance, in my survey, I found that just 49% of Conservative-voting Canadians trust social science and humanities professors, as compared with 69% of those supporting left or Liberal parties. Now, that 49% is higher than the 34% amongst Republicans for the same question in the U.S., but it shows that when a sector starts to be seen as partisan, it will lose the confidence of those on the other side of the political divide. Consider that a quarter of conservatives now trust the media. That's approaching U.S. levels. Support for such established institutions as the CBC is in decline—

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

That's our time. You'll have a chance to elaborate through the questions.

[Eric Kaufmann]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

We'll now turn to Dr. Kerr.

You have the floor for up to five minutes.

[Dr. Jeremy Kerr, Professor, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, and Chair, Committee on Discovery Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for the opportunity to offer my views and experiences on these topics.

I'm a member of NSERC's executive council, advising the last three presidents on policy directions and implementation, and I'm chair of its committee on discovery research. Basically, I am part of the bridge between Canada's research community and NSERC, but I am a professor first.

Research-granting programs are superb at supporting excellence. Canada does not lack for talent worthy of that support, even while we must also recognize the need for continuous and rapid evolution to maintain our international reputation as a nation of discovery.

Let me quickly get into some details about an exemplar program that I know well, that of discovery grants or DGs. They drive Canada's scientific research productivity. Sixty-two per cent of all Canadian publications in natural sciences and engineering involved researchers who received a discovery grant. More importantly, the portfolio effect of such programs creates two additional and critical outcomes. DGs maximize the economic efficiency of discovery in terms of discoveries per dollar expended, and they expand Canada's ability to compete internationally in science. At a Canada-wide scale, programs like the discovery grants lay the foundations for both specialized advances and transformative change. We need both kinds of discovery.

Transformation is built on the shoulders of generations of specialized and even incremental work. The ways we evaluate grant applications, whether they are in SSHRC, CIHR, NSERC or other granting councils or agencies, continue to evolve rapidly, partly because of the enhanced research coordination through the Canada research coordinating committee, CRCC. There is an emerging role for the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA, a modern approach to research evaluation that assesses thoughtfully what researchers have achieved, rather than looking at journal impact factors or other reductive, and potentially lazy, metrics. The community has embraced this approach, and agencies in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere have also.

What are some of the key awarding criteria, and how do they relate to excellence? Every grant program I know of includes fierce academic skepticism. Has the applicant accomplished impressive things that made a difference in their field or more broadly in society? Are there flaws in the proposal? Can applicants do the work they are suggesting? Importantly, are they training the next generation effectively?

I'll dwell on the training aspects of research grants. More than 60% of core research grants go directly to launching the careers of the next generation of Canadian talent. A great training program imparts skills that enable those people to find relevant positions in any sectors that use those skills, or to create their own positions through innovation. When researchers help create wonderful training experiences, it “echoes in eternity”, to borrow a phrase from Marcus Aurelius. That student's career launch becomes memorable in the best way and might affect the people they help train in the future.

Let's be clear: Training students is really difficult. They are as diverse as Canada itself. Their abilities to hit the ground running in their programs of work are all over the place, and their lived experiences can define how they fit into some kinds of research groups. Evaluations of grant proposals now require applicants to consider best practices for how to deal with that diversity. The training program, in other words, is about achieving excellence, not cloning the supervisor.

Canada faces outward in a competitive global environment. We engage with and learn from agencies and researchers everywhere. Our granting agencies have evolved in response, and Canada can boast of a superb portfolio of researchers at all levels and in all fields. The ways in which we evaluate grants here are a reflection both of the evolutionary changes the agencies have recognized and embraced, and of philosophical and political decisions about the best ways to ensure that research generates answers that matter for Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you very much. It was right on time.

Dr. Zhu, thank you for joining us. You have the floor for up to five minutes.

[Dr. Yuan Yi Zhu, Assistant Professor of International Relations and International Law, Leiden University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to members of the committee. It's a pleasure to appear before you today.

Every year, the federal Government of Canada spends billions of dollars on research funding. Canadians expect, and rightly so, that this money will be allocated to the most deserving researchers based on excellence—and excellence alone—in order for them to pursue high-quality research that will benefit Canadians.

Sadly, this is no longer the case. Today, federal research funding is often allocated on the basis of race, sex, ideological conformity and other criteria that have nothing to do with the pursuit of truth and excellence.

For example, we have federally funded Canada research chairs that are available only to people of a certain race or of a certain sex or a combination of both, even though none of these characteristics have anything to do with the quality of someone's research. Indeed, under plans announced by the Government of Canada, universities will lose their funding under the Canada research chairs program unless they meet diversity requirements in recruitment, which means that people are no longer being hired solely because of their research.

We also have federally funded research programs that expect applicants to “clearly demonstrate their strong commitment to EDI in their applications”—EDI being, of course, equity, diversity and inclusion—as well as to integrate EDI into their “research practice and design”. With respect, the purpose of research design is to enable good research to be done. It is not to promote specific ideological objectives such as EDI.

In addition, there are many informal obstacles to the pursuit of excellence within the federal funding system for research. For example, in the humanities and social sciences, where I come from, it is well known that research proposals that contain buzzwords and fashionable progressive political language have a much better chance of being successful than do proposals on more traditional subjects, which use more traditional approaches and which do not contain buzzwords. This means that, from the beginning of their careers, young scholars and researchers are being taught that the way to get ahead in academia is to be a conformist and to chase grant money using buzzwords, regardless of what they actually think is intellectually valuable.

Now, I speak to this committee as a former recipient of federal research funding through SSHRC. Without this funding, I would not have been able to pursue my academic career, which has taken me to different countries, and for this I am very grateful.

Naturally, I am a strong believer in the value of investing public money into research. However, in these difficult economic times, many Canadians already question the value of funding academic research, which can seem sometimes irrelevant to their daily lives, and the heavy-handed imposition of EDI and other ideological requirements in research funding undermines public support for public research funding. That is something that needs to be urgently addressed.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you very much for that.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for their opening remarks.

I'll now open the floor to members for questions. Be sure to indicate to whom your questions are directed.

We'll start the first six-minute round with MP Viersen.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Zhu, if I can, I'll start by questioning you.

We've just finished up a study on our new capstone organization that's being proposed, and we've had a chance to hear from professionals across the research field. The study we're starting today will help define Canada's criteria for the pursuit of excellence.

I'm curious. Is there anything else you wanted to share that you may not have had time for in your opening remarks?

[Dr. Yuan Yi Zhu]

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Viersen.

First, as I mentioned, EDI, I think, is a major problem. Also a big problem is the lack of ideological diversity within Canadian academia, which is not a problem that is unique to Canada, of course. Academics all across the world tend to be more progressive, and there are many reasons for this, some of them perhaps perfectly understandable. However, I think it is fair to say that within Canadian academia, there is a monoculture where, if you deviate even very slightly from what is fashionable and what is commonly accepted by your peers, not only will you be ostracized, but often you will not be able to have an academic career in the first place.

Unfortunately, when I advise my students, I have to tell them, “You know, if you are in any way not progressive, you have to hide your views until you actually have at least a dissertation accepted, because otherwise you will never get ahead.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Dr. Zhu, we're going to have to ask you to hold for a minute, because the interpreters are having trouble. They can't hear you.

Since there's trouble with Dr. Zhu, would you be able to ask a question of another witness?

I'll just stop your time here.

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

Yes, please do.

Can we sort out his mic situation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

We had trouble with him coming in. We were hoping it was fixed.

I'm sorry. It seems they've lost it. It was a bit shaky coming in.

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

All right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

I'm sorry about that.

I've stopped your time. If you want to collect your thoughts and think about a question for someone else for a minute—

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

Okay. I'll move to Mr. Kaufmann.

When your time ran out, you were just starting to address a topic that's interesting to me: the CBC. If you want to continue your remarks from there, I may collect my thoughts and it may provide me with a question.

[Eric Kaufmann]

I was drawing the analogy between what's happened to trust in the media in.... Now, in the U.S., trust in media is very low on the right. Republicans have very low trust in media. They have very low trust in academia now. In Canada, the trust in media, on the right, is very low. I think the trust in academia, which is coming down, has a potential to go where it is in the United States.

I want to pick up on some of what Yuan Yi Zhu was just talking about. When we think about the way the councils work, the allocation of funds comes from academic experts. Because they're drawn from academia, they're going to reflect the perspectives of academia, which is a good thing in terms of quality. However, in terms of ideology....

I will echo a couple of studies we have. There was a study on Canada by Chris Dummitt and Zach Patterson, I believe, which came out last year. It showed that 88% of Canadian academics identify on the left. Work and surveys that I've done show this number to be 75% or thereabouts, with only about 5% conservative. That slant....

Now, the other thing is that people who take an active role in setting policy tend to be even further left if they're in the humanities and social sciences. If they're active in anything to do with policy, I think they are going to be even further left. What we're getting is the furthest left point, roughly, of public opinion, which is having an outsized role in setting the agenda here.

I'm saying that, if you believe that mirroring the Canadian population by race and sex is the most important thing—more important than excellence—that's fine. That's a perfectly valid world view. However, what I'm trying to stress is that this is not the world view of most Canadians who pay tax to support the research enterprise. The more the tri-councils move in this direction.... They're already in this direction. Also, having things like diversity statements on your application, where you can signal your adherence to cultural socialism or DEI, is going to lead to political discrimination. Political discrimination is a real thing.

Here's another survey fact: In surveys I did, about 45% of Canadian academics would not hire a known Trump supporter for an academic job. In the U.S., it's 40%. In Britain, a third won't hire a known Brexit supporter. Now, there could be noise in that data, but, roughly speaking, there is significant political bias. There have been a lot of studies, mainly American, showing bias against right-leaning grant applications. People openly admit they would mark them down, so we have systemic political bias, I think, in the adjudication and selection processes of these policies. I'm wondering what people think. Are they just going to put their heads in the sand, go forth with business as usual and hope that what's happening in the U.S. will never happen in Canada?

I would like to see the councils get ahead of this problem and move to a colour-blind merit approach. Remove political criteria such as mandatory diversity statements. These are not universal consensus values. They are partisan values, and every survey will show a big partisan gap on these questions.

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

Do you have any specific suggestions on some kind of mechanism for that, if you were helping to create this new capstone organization?

[Eric Kaufmann]

First of all, I don't think you should have Canada research chairs restricted by race and sex. I think that's the first thing.

Second, there should be no diversity statements, where people who essentially affirm cultural socialist ideology get higher points. We've seen Harvard and MIT remove mandatory diversity statements. We've seen The Washington Post editorialize against this. These things should be removed from the application form. That's at a minimum.

I have—

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

That's our time.

We're going to move now to MP Kelloway for six minutes, please.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses who are here today. This is an interesting topic, and these are interesting viewpoints, and I think it's important that we hear all of them.

I'll start my questions with Dr. Kerr.

One thing that is common in this room right now, and online, is that, whether you're an MP or a witness, everyone has their politics and their viewpoints. Some people believe climate change is real, and some people are studying climate change from a biodiversity, or declining biodiversity, perspective.

I want to drill down with you. How do inherent political views affect the work of academics, and, most importantly, what process can we put in place to ensure that research in the country remains free from political bias?

As a side note, I certainly did not work as a researcher in academia, but I did work at Cape Breton University, and I did work at the Nova Scotia Community College, which did more applied research than the traditional research at Cape Breton University. The one thing I did notice is that there were a plethora of viewpoints from researchers. Some were far right, some were far left, and there were people who were more centred in their approach.

I wonder if you can address those things and, also, if you can explain the importance of diversity and inclusion in research when it comes to producing reliable and accurate data.

[Dr. Jeremy Kerr]

This is a double burger of questions. Thank you very much. I'll do my best.