Evidence of meeting #111 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was political.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
It's a Big Mac of questions, indeed, and I can always come back to them.
Professor, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, and Chair, Committee on Discovery Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, As an Individual
Indeed. Thank you very much. If I miss something in my response, please do come after me and I will try to follow up.
First of all, in terms of politics being present in the execution of policies at the granting councils, I have never seen this. The agencies respond to community imperatives, and they respond to research that goes into how we represent excellence. Maybe we can measure it differently sometimes, but let's just be very clear: My personal expertise is in NSERC, so I'm coming from the natural sciences and engineering, and the holy book for us when we are applying for research grants is the merit indicators—the things that the panel uses to evaluate whether we are good, bad or indifferent in terms of our level of excellence. Nowhere in that set of merit indicators will you find anything that looks political from where I'm sitting in my perhaps privileged position in the science community.
Moreover, were someone to bring a political litmus test into a discussion at those granting councils in evaluating a grant, the program officer, who is universally present in the room during those deliberations, would terminate that discussion instantly if they were doing their job. Having done that job from the evaluator side of the equation for many years, never once have I witnessed a single occasion where somebody tried to apply a political filter in evaluating research.
Maybe there are implicit considerations. For example, I study conservation biology, and if you don't think it's important to protect biodiversity, well, that's your right. I think, as scientists, we have a counter-argument for that, but it's all about the evidence. It's not about the ideology. I approach my beliefs after evaluating them for supporting evidence, by and large. That defines what I do, so this idea that there's some sort of political conformity test is an utterly alien concept to me that I have simply never, ever seen in any evaluation mechanism at the tri-council level.
I'm sorry. I know there was more to your queries.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
I did give you a Big Mac of questions. Let me unpack them burger by burger within the Big Mac.
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.
Liberal
Mike Kelloway Liberal Cape Breton—Canso, NS
How important are diversity and inclusion in research when producing reliable and accurate data?
Professor, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, and Chair, Committee on Discovery Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, As an Individual
Why would we want to try to...? I want to be really clear here. As I said, our objective is not to implement an affirmative action program; our objective is to achieve excellence, on behalf of Canadians, in terms of our research pursuits. I think the purely rhetorical question that comes up, in terms of this line of inquiry, is a very simple one: How do you compete internationally if you leave half of your team on the sidelines? That is, effectively, what has historically happened in terms of things like the CRC program.
I think there has been an example or two in the past of what looks like an affirmative action hiring program. This is something I think is difficult to support, and I do not personally support it. However, there was a Federal Court case that was applied and resolved to the way that program was being administered, because it was so systematically biased against everybody except people who look like me.
As I said in my remarks—and I mean this to the absolute depths of sincerity—when I am looking for people to include in my research group, the last thing I'm trying to do is make everybody be like me. I want them to disagree with me. I want to have arguments with them about our science and the nature of evidence. Those robust conversations make discovery more powerful and make us evaluate those ideas from more than one perspective. If they're all like me, our views on that issue become more limited, and our capacity to compete internationally downstream, a few steps from that point, is then degraded, and that's antithetical to the objectives of all of what we do.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
That's very good. Thank you.
We now turn to MP Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes, please.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Welcome to the witnesses joining us for the start of this study.
Mr. Kaufmann, is there any scientific evidence or empirical research showing that DEI criteria benefit academic research?
Professor, University of Buckingham, As an Individual
DEI in universities...? I'm commenting on the Canadian research council's.... The Canada research chairs program, for example, has restricted hiring to particular racial and sexual groups. I'm commenting on the diversity statements in which, if you affirm your commitment to DEI, your application is rated more favourably. That's what I'm talking about in terms of applying ideology to the allocation of research.
I don't know whether I've answered your question or understood it correctly—maybe I should have kept it in French rather than going to the translation—but what I would say is that, just because people say, “Don't vote for so-and-so”.... The definition of what is political.... What I'm saying is that, when you talk about how you will promote diversity and equity in your research, that is political, even if you don't say, “How will you promote voting for the Liberal Party?” The definition of “political” is not narrowly focused upon party politics.
On political ideologies, I mentioned that survey data shows very clearly that attitudes to DEI divide, very heavily, based on who you vote for and how you identify on a left/right axis. That means they are political, so I think this is a bit of semantics in what we heard, really, the idea that this isn't political. It very much is.
I hope I answered your question.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you. That answers the question, Mr. Kaufmann.
Can you tell us whether there is a link between DEI and scientific merit?
Professor, University of Buckingham, As an Individual
I use the example of this study where we looked at the number of publications times the number of times they're cited. That is the standard h-index metric that is used for research assessment—and I'm willing to defend that, by the way.
We saw very clearly, in the Nature paper of 2024, that female and Hispanic or Black academics—controlling for the number of years in the profession and for discipline—had substantially lower output than white and Asian or male academics. I think it is reasonable to surmise and—although I am open to other data; I want to see data on this and scientific proof—I believe that, by pursuing EDI, you are reducing research output. I would bet on that.
Is it the biggest factor? No, but it's a factor. It's going to reduce it by a certain amount, and maybe that's a trade people are willing to make. Maybe they think, “Okay, equity and diversity are a more important factor” or “Let's just say we're going to have 20% or 30% equity and diversity, and we're willing to sacrifice a certain amount of research output.” However, I'm not sure that the Canadian taxpayer is willing to fund that and support those values. Those values are, of course, backed because, if 75% of academia is on the left, they're setting these policies. To them, this is natural and not political. I get it, but they are in a bubble.
How many academics vote for the Conservative Party? It's very small. As I mentioned, it's 10%, so—
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Thank you, Mr. Kaufmann.
Professor, University of Buckingham, As an Individual
I don't think this is—
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
I want to stay on that line of questioning.
Do DEI criteria conflict with the pursuit of scientific truth? Is there an opposition there?
Professor, University of Buckingham, As an Individual
Are you saying opposition to DEI?
I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Do DEI criteria conflict with the pursuit of scientific truth?
Professor, University of Buckingham, As an Individual
Yes, I believe they are in opposition. I think that if they weren't in opposition, a purely colour-blind, merit-based hiring.... You're going to get some diversity through a colour-blind, merit-based program. The fact that you have to rig it means you are going to compromise on excellence and scientific truth in order to achieve cultural socialism or EDI.
I think they are in tension fundamentally. It doesn't mean you're going to get no.... It's probably just going to result in attacks on your scientific research and pursuit of truth. It's not going to kill it.
I think that the values of the general public that supports research are what should prevail, not the values of academics, I'm afraid—or at least the vocal academics who wind up participating in these committees.
Bloc
Maxime Blanchette-Joncas Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Do you have any recommendations to ensure that minorities get more access to funding, while keeping the bar for scientific quality high?
Professor, University of Buckingham, As an Individual
First, I would recommend going with a colour-blind approach that does not advertise grants or positions by race or sex. Then, I would recommend removing any statements that require you to affirm cultural socialism or DEI in order to get higher points.
Those are two simple recommendations. I think that would improve research excellence. They would also help to restore public faith. Particularly the half of the country that isn't on the same side as most academics, if they go against the research enterprise, it's going to damage research, the way it's damaged belief in the CBC and mainstream media.
I think that's a bad way for academia to go, if we care about the research base and research funding.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Valerie Bradford
Thank you. That's our time.
Before we go to Mr. Cannings, I want to announce that the clerk has been in touch with Dr. Zhu. Unfortunately, the volume levels are too low for the interpreters, so we've invited Dr. Zhu to submit any further testimony by brief. Again, he's able to listen to whatever's going on, so if he has some opinion that he wants to express through a brief, he can do so.
Mr. Cannings, I'll now turn it over to you for your six minutes.
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you.
I'm going to start with Dr. Kerr.
Here we are. We're talking about excellence in Canadian research, and it seems that there are two aspects of it in this discussion today. One is how we assess excellence in research when the federal government is giving out funding for that research. Then there's a side question of how we are selecting researchers for federal government positions, like the Canada research chairs, for instance. These seem to be quite different aspects of this question.
From your position in NSERC, I assume you deal more with the former, in terms of how you assess people who are applying for research funding through NSERC, through discovery grants or whatever. You mentioned some of the broad criteria there. You also mentioned DORA.
We've heard before in this committee about concerns over using impact assessments of papers by looking at the number of citations, how many papers a person has written and how many citations those papers get. People have been pushing back on that. Could you expand on what the data behind that is or what the impact is, and why that change seems to be under way?
Professor, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, and Chair, Committee on Discovery Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, As an Individual
One of the challenges is in terms of which scientific fields get favoured and the nature of publication in the literature that occurs among those scientific fields. Observations that people make in some branches of science may be seen by a small number of specialists. You can be immensely productive, but the citation rates for those papers may be very limited.
I would give the example of systematics, which enables us to describe the biological diversity of planet Earth. If you don't have capacity in this area, you are basically just looking at everything and you don't have names for them or how they evolved or what the future of that evolutionary pathway might look like. Systematists do not tend to be particularly highly cited. In a field that is more familiar to me personally, citation rates can be quite a lot higher.
The simplicity and reductive quality of those kinds of metrics prejudice our directions based on momentary popularity. I'll give you some examples from the 19th century. Charles Darwin was really into barnacles, but he was hardly ever cited for it for a long time afterwards. The discoveries that he made in those areas have changed the world in the most fundamental ways, but at the time, nobody recognized this. They are ultimately the way you get to the jewels in the crown.
The idea that we should follow a simple counting process to estimate and measure, as though it were reliable, the value of science.... It's just a popularity contest. I say this as somebody who has some experience with these kinds of metrics. If I was being perfectly selfish about it, I would be thrilled to see all of us just rely on the h-index, but the fact is that it is a reflection of a whole bunch of things, only some of which actually have to do with the importance of discoveries that I may have made. It may have to do with whether or not I'm social-networking effectively or something. It's reductive.
DORA exists so that we will be thoughtful about this, rather than simplistic.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
The other thing that was mentioned, I think by Dr. Kaufmann, struck a chord with me, and that is the idea that buzzwords can affect someone who is assessing a paper. For instance, we're all part of this milieu of what we're getting from various forms of media and things like that. How do we guard against that? To me, it would be an easy thing to be seduced by the use of these buzzwords, whether it's something like climate change or biodiversity or some of the ones over time in our careers. How do you guard against that when you're assessing somebody's excellence in science?
Professor, Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, and Chair, Committee on Discovery Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, As an Individual
I just don't look for buzzwords. Let's be clear. What is a buzzword? Sometimes, I think the way we are hearing it interpreted here is that it's sort of a political secret door into something. In my domain academically, and in terms of where I exist policy-wise, it is meant to be a recognition of what is currently being discussed, debated and attacked in the scientific literature. Basically, if you are not able to use the language of your field in an appropriate way to place yourself within that field, it does not demonstrate that you know what you're talking about. Now, it might be possible to illustrate that you do know what you're talking about while still not using the language that everybody else uses, and that happens, but that's just....
None of this strikes me as challenging or sort of a cult political litmus test.