Science and Research Committee on Dec. 5th, 2024

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

Okay.

Mr. Horsman, you are recommending abolishing EDI from the tri-council agencies. What would you suggest? Do we need to replace those with something else, or can we just get rid of that entirely, and would the process then be equitable and fair, in your opinion?

[Dr. Geoff Horsman]

I think you should just abolish them.

I don't know what you would replace them with. If you just have the simple merit, whatever that is—publications, the merit of the research—I think that is all you need. I don't know why you have to complicate it.

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

What is your perception of the public's concern about, or perception of, these kinds of DEI criteria?

[Dr. Geoff Horsman]

You had Professor Kaufmann here last week, I believe. I think he pointed out, for example, that the public is 70:30 against it. They prefer colour-blind approaches to issues like this. Taking into account—

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

I'm sorry. That's half a minute over our time.

Thank you.

Now we will turn to MP Diab for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

First, I have a question for Mr. Gagnon, the dean of research at the École de technologie supérieure.

Mr. Gagnon, you are a professor of electrical engineering, and you've designed a more publicly accessible electrocardiogram system in co-operation with Concordia University.

Would you please tell us about the value of the research projects that cover various fields and about what they contribute to broader fields of research?

What should our role as MPs be?

Right now, we're studying the impact of the criteria for awarding federal funding on research excellence in Canada.

Do you think it should be completely independent of political decisions?

[Ghyslain Gagnon, Dean of Research, École de technologie supérieure]

Thank you for that question.

I'm here as the dean of research to discuss all research at ETS. I didn't expect to have to answer a question about my own research work, but I'll be happy to give you an answer.

The purpose of my research project was to design non-contact electrocardiograms, ECGs, that would make it possible to conduct tests in hospital waiting rooms and to detect heart signal anomalies. We currently don't have enough equipment to conduct ECGs on all patients in hospitals. People undergo ECGs only when they present with disturbing signs. ECG signals help detect, in advance, diseases that can then be better treated in advance. So by using furniture that has integrated ECG sensors, we can prevent disease.

This kind of project involves scientists from several fields. We need the expertise of people from many different fields in order to solve society's real problems, which are complex. In this instance, we had engineers and a cardiologist. We also have to involve people trained in ethics and social acceptability, for example. If we want research projects that have an impact on and are accepted by society, we have to cover all these angles and involve experts from many fields.

In a context in which researchers devote a lot of time and energy to multidisciplinary research projects such as this, it's harder to demonstrate the impact of funding criteria on research excellence because that involves working with people from many different disciplines. It's already more complicated to introduce a research protocol.

Furthermore, since contributions are made by many researchers, when you look each researcher's assessment file, there's always a minor difference between researchers who are very much involved in multidisciplinary research activities and others. That's why we recommend that budgets be set aside for interdisciplinary research projects so we can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

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

Thank you very much.

I'd like to ask Ms. Morin a question.

We talked a lot about peer and merit review, and about the importance of it, or the non-importance, as some people might think. I think, generally speaking, most of us believe it's important.

Can you speak to the credibility and how that places Canada on an international setting, please, if it does or not?

[Karine Morin]

Certainly. There have been evaluations of the peer review—or merit review, as SSHRC tends to refer to it. Its process has been internationally recognized as being up to those standards. There is careful consideration of the entire makeup of a committee and of the diversity of views that will be present at a committee meeting and that will have an opportunity to be exchanged.

It will be on linguistic considerations. It will be the disciplinary relevance of these experts. It will be their geographic representation and their institutions. It's also in terms of the preparation of those individuals. I've referred to guidance on matters of conflicts of interest and confidentiality. I've mentioned guidance on unconscious bias. There are also staff involved in assisting in an adjudication process that is objective and that is based on the relevance of the information in front of committee members.

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

I don't know if I have any time, but in my opinion, if there's federal funding, then considerations such as including more diverse populations—for example, women, indigenous people or whomever—are important.

Can I hear you on that? You represent over 91,000 researchers and grad students.

[Karine Morin]

That's absolutely correct. That diversity is also very significant, and it is brought into those committees for that very reason.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you very much.

We'll now turn to MP Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Casanova.

Mr. Casanova, you discussed the possibility of having mechanisms or incentives for promoting equity in French-language research.

Would you please clarify your recommendations?

[Christian Casanova]

With your permission, I'll let Mr. Gagnon answer that question.

[Ghyslain Gagnon]

Thank you, Mr. Casanova.

I'll begin with a few figures on French-language research.

In the past five years, the success rates in the NSERC competition under the discovery grants program have been 49% for applications submitted in French and 63% for applications in English. NSERC measures success rates in a number of groups. This is the only group that showed a significant difference. Four hundred applications were submitted in French and 13,000 in English. Francophone researchers submit their applications in English. Those who submit in French have a much lower chance of success.

We mentioned in our opening remarks that we need to begin by setting application targets, by which I mean the percentage of applications submitted in French and success rates.

We strongly believe that solutions will come from the people who have expertise in the sectors, the funding agencies in particular. If targets are set, the people who belong to those agencies will find solutions and ways to meet those targets.

We need to begin with potential solutions that are likely to promote greater equity.

For example, researchers could be given a chance to describe research programs in French. We know that content drafted in French will run to a few more pages than in English. We could also be careful in selecting the individuals who constitute the review committees.

Considerable communication and awareness efforts will also have to be made to encourage French-language researchers to submit more grant applications in French.

In starting by determining targets that must be met, we really believe that people will come up with other potential solutions.

[Christian Casanova]

With your permission, I'd like to add a comment.

The really adverse effect is that we have colleagues who would like to complete their applications in French but hesitate to do so. They ultimately decide to do it in English because that gives them a better chance of securing funding. This is unacceptable.

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

Thank you.

I'm going to continue with Ms. Morin.

Ms. Moran, you discussed the importance of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, the purpose of which is to promote research assessment practices that are equitable, diversified and based on the actual quality of work.

Has the Federation for the Humanities signed that declaration?

[Karine Morin]

Since we don't do those kinds of assessments, we haven't signed the mission.

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

Does your organization support the declaration's recommendations?

[Karine Morin]

We support them.

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

I see.

What do you think is missing for the the federal government to follow suit?

More particularly, what would it take for university institutions that haven't signed to do so?

I see the declaration dates back to 2013.

[Karine Morin]

The declaration has attracted a lot of attention over time. Perhaps the idea is to make up for lost time. However, the granting agencies are making changes that are more consistent with the declaration. Since universities and researchers will necessarily have to follow suit, I expect there will be an increase in the number of universities that endorse it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you. That's the time.

Now we'll turn to Mr. Cannings for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'll go back to Ms. Morin in order to finish a thought I had just as I was cut off. We were talking about peer review.

It strikes me how, in the last meeting we had on this, there was talk of how many papers are being.... I'm talking now about the peer review of publications, but I guess it comes into peer review for project applications, as well. The trouble with peer review is that there are only so many peers out there. I think we heard there are two million to eight million papers published every year. There are a lot of journals that are kind of spurious in terms of what they're publishing. Maybe some of those are the ones Mr. Horsman was talking about. I hear a lot from former colleagues of mine who are overwhelmed by peer review requests.

Is that a problem? You were talking about going from peer review to peer review committees. It seems you're now looking for more people. It all sounds like a good idea, but I'm wondering about the capacity of researchers to take part in this.

[Karine Morin]

Thank you. It is an important question and consideration.

When assessment of productivity is so much about quantity, we get to the challenge of peer review fatigue. There is such a high volume of publications that have to be distributed among the relevant experts in order to get work published in an increasing number of journals. That has been spiralling in a way that is somewhat unsustainable.

The San Francisco declaration is trying to move us away from productivity in terms of volume and more toward productivity in terms of quality. We hope that, indeed, we might see a bit of a recalibrating of the effort required of peers to evaluate each other's work so that it isn't always a race to publish more, but to publish in a smarter way.

A narrative CV is no longer an invitation to have pages and pages that list hundreds and hundreds of publications—in the case of very prolific scientists at the end of their career. If we ask those very scientists to select half a dozen of their most important works, suddenly we may see not as great a race toward more publications, and a less burdensome load on peers to evaluate each other's work for the sake of getting it published.