Thank you very much.
My name is Pari Johnston, the president and CEO of Colleges and Institutes Canada. On behalf of our 134 member colleges, institutes, polytechnics and CEGEPs, I want to thank the committee for making the time for this study.
When I was here for my appearance on the capstone organization, we talked about the fact that we must ensure that federal research investments lead to real and tangible impacts in the daily lives of Canadians—to results that support economic prosperity and social well-being for all, that drive community and business innovation, and that respond to the biggest challenges we face as a country. To do this, we must reimagine how we currently invest in research and re-evaluate what we value. We must redefine how we assess and award research to move beyond concepts of excellence defined primarily within a university-centred approach.
We also need to focus on the impact, relevance and scope of the research.
Impact‑driven research means first determining the nature of an issue and then designing a research program that brings together all the right partners and end‑users to resolve it, that uses all the research tools available and that implements inclusive assessment criteria with a focus on the application and impact.
Impact‑driven research is helping to build better houses more quickly; to increase drought‑resistant varieties of agricultural crops and find out how to encourage farmers to plant them; and to develop new methods for leveraging genomic tools in local clinics.
This exact type of research is carried out in colleges and institutes.
Colleges lead partnered, problem-driven and real-time research that generates applied knowledge and de-risks technology development and adaptation. This results in on-the-ground benefits through improved knowledge translation and mobilization, IP staying with the local business partner and greater technology uptake by local partners in priority economic and social sectors.
In 2021-22, our members led more than 8,000 applied research projects, resulting in 6,500 new processes, products, services and prototypes in areas like housing construction, advanced manufacturing, climate-smart agriculture, food production and social innovation. Ninety-nine per cent of our partners are Canadian companies and non-profits, keeping the fruits of our research at home in Canada.
If we want to optimize the impact of federal research investments, the following three recommendations must be actioned.
First, the federal granting agencies and research funders must redefine and rebalance the weighting of criteria that is currently used to award federal funding to ensure they adequately assess and reward research impact. This includes looking beyond traditional metrics of excellence, such as publication records, citations and other metrics aimed at establishing expertise in academic research. Criteria such as partner uptake of research outputs, capacity of a project to develop new IP or develop a novel application of an existing technology, or policy reports that lead to improved implementation pathways are indicators that speak to research impact.
Second, federal research funders must ensure that merit review committees include representation from a diversity of institution types, end-users, and industry and community partners that are able to provide a more holistic ecosystem perspective on research programs and how to ensure that benefits on the ground have broad reach. Currently, most merit review committees are almost exclusively composed of representatives from universities. To support impact, review committees must include voices from across the research ecosystem, including colleges, end-users and policy-makers familiar with effective implementation and delivery of research results.
Third, it is time for ISED and the federal granting agencies to expand eligibility for colleges and institutes in all existing tri-council programming. Right now, colleges are not eligible as lead applicants for NSERC's alliance program, which is its flagship partnership initiative. In addition, we must address informal barriers, such as not allowing research grants to cover college faculty course release time or to hire replacement faculty to carry out research projects.
Canadians and their communities expect their federal research programs to deliver for them. Enacting these three recommendations will help achieve this.
Thank you.