Science and Research Committee on Dec. 5th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

Now we're going to turn to MP Blanchette-Joncas for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Joomun, you said that you support the recommendation of the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System, commonly called the Bouchard report, respecting support for francophone research and the equal treatment of funding applications submitted in French.

In the circumstances, what is CASA's position on the current funding criteria?

[Wasiimah Joomun]

With your permission, I'll answer the question in English.

When we are looking at the Bouchard report, we are looking at recommendation 21 and also at the committee's research around recommendation 17. Supporting the bilingualism part of research.... If someone is looking to conduct research in bilingualism, I think they should be incentivized to do that. That's a piece that we very much endorse and support.

Generally, I know that our partner, Union étudiante du Québec, is currently running its own campaign provincially around research for Quebec as well. One piece they keep on pushing is for research to happen in French.

We do support the recommendations brought forward by the committee on supporting students who are looking to do francophone research. The bilingual piece is definitely something we very much support at CASA. I was pretty pleased to see it in the committee's report.

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

All right.

Would you propose any changes to the present criteria to make them more consistent with the specific needs of francophone researchers?

Do you have any suggestions regarding these matters?

[Wasiimah Joomun]

I don't really have any suggestions, but I think we should encourage international students who are on a francophone track to come and conduct research in French in Canada.

Most of the researchers who come to study here normally study in English. I think we need to assess the situation a little more to urge researchers and students to conduct research in French in Canada.

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

The data show that French-language content in science is in decline in Canada, regardless of discipline, and the situation is increasingly difficult in certain disciplines.

Would the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations be in favour of including, in the funding criteria mechanisms, incentives that promote knowledge development in French?

[Wasiimah Joomun]

We're going to support French-language research in co-operation with our partner. We want to support students who want to pursue their studies and research in French.

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

Thank you.

Your alliance promotes equality of opportunity in accessing higher education. We know that the present funding criteria result in a concentration of funding; 80% of total research funding in Canada goes to only 20% of researchers. If only 20% of researchers are granted funding, that means that many researchers don't have an opportunity to develop and achieve their potential.

I'd like to hear your opinion on that subject.

What would you suggest doing to enable a larger pool of students to have access to funding?

Should we amend the criteria to ensure that everyone enjoys genuine equality of opportunity?

[Wasiimah Joomun]

If you don't mind, I'm going to answer that in English.

When we look at funding that a graduate student is looking for, there are two ways they can get that: through direct funding and indirect funding. One of them is through the Canada graduate scholarships, but we do see it through stipends or bursaries from institutions as well. We are not asking for more funding, but more so asking that we put conditions in there that institutions also put the money they are receiving back into the pockets of students.

How do we best utilize the funding that the government has put in budget 2024, which is already out there, and put it to better use? Currently, we see the direct funding going directly into the pockets of students, but I think it is also time to put conditions in place for institutions and universities to have some part of the funding they are getting from the federal government go directly to students in the form of apprenticeships or assistantships, as well as in the form of stipends to support the students to do that.

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

Thank you very much.

Do you have any further suggestions, particularly concerning how to expand the range of students who could have access to higher learning?

I know that's part of your mission. It's also the theme of your Advocacy Week, and I congratulate you on that event. It was an opportunity for me to meet people from the Union étudiante du Québec, which is a member of CASA.

How could the funding criteria help develop more talent in Quebec and Canada?

[Wasiimah Joomun]

Thank you for the question, and thank you for the congratulations. It was a great week.

One thing we've been pushing for, as you know, is the indexation of these awards. We don't want to have another 20 years of not having extra funding for our students.

As I highlighted in my opening remarks, it's also important that we start training the highly qualified people to train other people. That's why we are asking the institutions to start training the students not only to do their research but also to train other people in the future. If we want to have a holistic approach to the investment being made in research, it's not just about the projects but also about the people, again, in terms of utilizing the professors and the laboratories to train the future workforce as well.

This is the part of the criteria piece that we are hoping to see—not just funding directly the student with dollars in pockets, which is great and we love to see it, but also incentivizing professors and laboratories to train the students working in them so that they are able to train future people as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

We'll now turn it over to MP Cannings for six minutes.

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

Thank you both for being here today.

I'd also like to congratulate you on your award, Dr. Andrade, but more than that, I want to thank you for your really powerful testimony in one of your previous appearances before this committee, about grad students and why we need to increase the funding for their scholarships and fellowships to get them out of poverty and keep Canada going forward in research excellence. I think we all appreciated that very much.

I'm going to start by asking you about training. The tri-council funding for research in Canada goes to labs that use students in universities, and training is an important part of that. Could you expand on that idea of the criteria used in those research grant applications that cover the training aspects and how important it is to have various criteria in that part of the grant?

[Prof. Maydianne Andrade]

Thanks for that question.

It's a pleasure to be here again. These are very important questions you're struggling with.

To connect what you just asked me to an earlier question about people sometimes perceiving they need to use buzzwords, that's because they haven't spent a lot of time thinking about substantive ways to address the criteria yet. It's because this is very new, I think, for people. If they use one of these phrases that trip off the tongue, they can build it into a nice sentence. However, it might be more useful to say.... I know that, in my field, women are severely under-represented. A woman coming into my lab may be the only one. If she's a post-doc, she's likely to be in her child-bearing years. I have an upfront policy that says that if you have children, I recognize that you need to go home earlier than might have been typical 20 years ago, when you worked until the lights went off. That's the kind of thing I mean.

I've had colleagues ask me to look at their EDI HQP statements. They call them “EDI statements”, but they're really training statements. Some of them, from white men who haven't had to think about this before—to speak about the elephant in the room—are very substantive. They have written down what they think are inclusive rules. They're very specific about them and why they're needed. It's not about buzzwords, though. It's actually about thinking about the kinds of people who might come to your lab and how you might help them do their best and be the best researcher possible when they leave your lab.

There is another element a lot of people touch on, which isn't related to what I think people are thinking of with respect to EDI buzzwords. When I started in the field—20, 30, 40 or however many years ago—you had to have, as a goal, being a professor. I'm speaking to my colleague here from the association of students. If you didn't say you wanted to be a professor, no one would spend any time on you. That is one of the elements that have changed substantively. Your highly qualified personnel training plan had better not assume that everyone is going to become a professor. It had better have all sorts of ways that you're going to connect people to industry and places where they can use their skills that are transferable.

I don't know if that gives you a feel for it. It's much more organic than people think. We're looking for meat. However, often, when we read these things, they're not meat because people haven't really dug into thinking about it yet.

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

Thank you.

Going back to some previous testimony at both this meeting and the last, we heard from witnesses who talked about a viewpoint bias in academia and universities. Basically, their concern is that there are too many progressive voters in university versus what we see outside academia.

I'm wondering if you could comment on why that might be and whether it's a good or a bad thing. Are self-selected people going into academia, or is it something academia forces on them?

[Prof. Maydianne Andrade]

I can't really speak to that directly because I don't talk politics at work. I'm a science nerd. Most of my colleagues are, too. We dig into the science we're doing, and I don't see how my politics really affect that.

I have to say that, as a Black woman, I want everyone to feel free to come to work. However, I don't want to be subject to violations of my human rights at work. There's a line, and Canadians are pretty good at walking that line, I think. We have hate language regulations, but we also allow a lot of flexibility. At my institution, they're now having whole sessions on how to have civil conversations about challenging issues. Outside of politics, there are a lot of differences of opinion on just about everything. People will fight tooth and nail about some small element of a scientific theory.

I don't see the same thing my colleagues are talking about. I don't know if that's because people don't speak about these things when I'm in the room, but I would welcome the conversation. The other side of my life is talking to people about inclusive practices in academia. We very much go to people where they are and want them to engage with us in a very earnest way.

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

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

That's the time.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Valerie Bradford]

Thank you.

Now we will start our five-minute round with MP Ben Lobb.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Thank you.

Professor Andrade and Ms. Joomun, welcome.

You were here when Professor Horsman was presenting his information. Do you have any thoughts on what he was presenting today at the committee?

[Prof. Maydianne Andrade]

I'm sorry. I missed the very beginning of that.

[Wasiimah Joomun]

Okay. I'll take that one and then pass it to you.

I think that, just in general, when we've been talking to students and also to future graduates in the country, they wanted to highlight that even the Canada research coordinating committee highlights that research consistently shows that a diverse research workforce is critical for driving the excellence and innovation of the country.

For instance, if we are looking at the biomedical fields, if we are looking at finding a vaccine for an infectious disease, the way it impacts people of colour is very different from its impacts on different people of colour.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Are you indifferent to what he was saying? Do you think he's out to lunch or that he might be right, or do you not want to say?

[Wasiimah Joomun]

Just in general, I think supporting EDI within the tri-council agency and the criteria is very significant if we want to advance the diverse perspectives of people.