Science and Research Committee on May 12th, 2022

[David Robinson]

With regard to bursaries and grants, providing adequate funding is absolutely important, particularly for people in that critical post-doctoral position who are looking for post-doctoral appointments. One of the impacts is that bursaries and grants have not kept pace with the rate of inflation. In some cases the subsistence that is provided for our researchers is below the poverty line, and people graduate with enormous amounts of debt. That's also a factor: Do I throw my hat into the academic employment ring, where I may not get a full-time job and I may have to work for several years and have to pay off all this debt as well? Looking at the impact of debt on career choices is certainly important.

Ultimately, if we want to make the career attractive, we have to provide the conditions necessary for people to do their work. That's where people will go. I think Dr. Myers was kind of hinting at that. It's not just a money issue; it's also having the whole range of working conditions that are essential. Fundamental to that, if you're going to engage in a long-term research project, you need stability of employment. That's where many contract academic staff get stuck. They get stuck in the routine of just taking on teaching contracts, and the research falls by the wayside. When full-time positions do eventually come up, they're kind of left out of the mix, because they haven't been active in research for a number of years.

Particularly in that early career stage, finding some ability to help people to avoid that rut would be enormously useful.

[Julie Vignola]

Which of all those recommendations do you think is the most important?

[David Robinson]

That's a good question, because it's hard to choose. Which child do I love more?

One of the things we need to look at is the way in which the federal government can provide assistance to universities, colleges, and polytechnics across the country, not just on research but also in the core operational funding. The government does provide assistance through the Canada social transfer, but that hasn't increased in some time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

Thank you, Mrs. Vignola.

We'll go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, and thanks to the witnesses for being here.

I'm going to stay with Mr. Robinson to let him finish up on that theme, because, as he said, it was a complicated thing. From some of the reports that CAUT has done, the actual percentage of university budgets that relates to salaries has dropped steadily over the years. I'm imagining that's because they're spending more on other things, whether it's research or infrastructure.

Could you comment on that? You were just beginning to touch on that, getting back to concentrating on the education aspects that are so important.

[David Robinson]

What has been falling in terms of expenditures by universities is spending on academic-rank salaries. One of the drivers outside of that has been expenditures on contract or non-tenure-track positions. We've seen increases in administrative costs and increases in capital spending, but in terms of the core intellectual infrastructure of the university, you're right that the share of spending on those academic-rank salaries has declined quite dramatically over the past two decades or so.

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

Thank you.

I want to move to Dr. Myers. I'll stay on the same theme.

Dr. Myers, you were talking about it not being an entirely salary-driven process for attracting talent. Part of it is that brilliance attracts brilliance. I think that is something close to what you said.

I also want to make sure of something, because we were having trouble seeing the slides at this end of the room. When you were talking about Dr. Kendrick Smith, I thought I saw a picture of CHIME there.

[Dr. Robert Myers]

That's right.

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

That is a facility in my riding, so I was happy to see that. I'm happy to see researchers in other parts of the country using that facility. Hopefully, we'll maybe see it as part of this committee work.

Just to get back to that, you said you had 25 faculty and 22 who are part time. Are those 25 faculty all at Waterloo? Do you have full-time faculty associated with a number of institutions?

[Dr. Robert Myers]

The full-time faculty are here in Waterloo. Ninety per cent of them are affiliated or adjunct. For instance, I'm an adjunct faculty at University of Waterloo as well, which allows me to work with students and teach courses.

The associates or the part-time faculty are roughly half the time here in our institute and half the time at a nearby university. That's really spread across southern Ontario. Our most far-flung associate is actually based in Halifax at Dalhousie University.

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

I'm trying to get a handle on how that all.... You said it was an independent non-profit organization. Where does your core funding for the Perimeter Institute come from if it doesn't come from the regular government research funding sources?

[Dr. Robert Myers]

We've had very generous support from both the federal government and the Ontario government. Slightly more than a third of our funding comes from private philanthropy—from donors and foundations, etc.

Currently, at the federal level, we're participating in a new program that is designed to accommodate not-for-profits like ourselves. You must know the strategic science fund. We're one of the organizations flowing into that program.

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

Okay. Thanks very much. I just wanted to get that straight in my mind.

I'm going to move back to Mr. Robinson, if I have a minute or so.

Again, when I worked at the University of British Columbia, I saw the beginning of that erosion of full-time research faculty. They were teaching undergraduate courses like Biology 101, Chemistry 100 and that sort of thing. Now pretty much all of those first-year courses—or a lot of them—are taught by contract teachers who are fully qualified academically to do research but, as you said, are not.

I'm wondering, Mr. Robinson, if you could comment on the effect that has on the inspiration for young scientists who are going into first- or second-year university who I think would really benefit by being taught by researchers who are doing exciting stuff.

[David Robinson]

Yes, I think contract academic staff are certainly highly qualified and highly capable of teaching. The challenge they often have is that they're juggling a very high course load, because in order to make a living, they have to take on an enormous amount of work. At UBC, you may have someone teaching a few courses at UBC and at Simon Fraser and one of the colleges. They're trying to pull it altogether.

I think the issue there is ensuring people have enough time to do the work they need to do—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Robinson, I'm sorry.

Mr. Cannings, thank you so much. I hope the witnesses can see that you really have an interested committee. They really want to hear from you.

We're now going to go to our five-minute round. We'll go over to Mr. Tochor for five minutes.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Robinson, what percentage of your membership is tenured versus non-tenured?

[David Robinson]

About one-third of our membership would be off the tenure track. That's just based on the membership counts that we get. Again, we don't have a really good picture, because the one survey we do of academic staff doesn't include contract academic staff.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Is there tension between the two?

[David Robinson]

Not really. I think there are three different kinds of contract academic staff that we want to talk about. There are people who are hired to replace someone who's on a sabbatical. It's a temporary thing, and they know it's a temporary business. There are also professionals, such as architects or lawyers or doctors, who teach a course once in a while as part of their professional commitments. The big bulk of contract academic staff are hired to essentially do the heavy lifting of teaching within a university. In most cases, in most of our member associations, both the full-time and the contract staff are members of the same bargaining unit and negotiate the same terms and conditions of employment.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Switching gears a little bit to funding, sometimes grants and funding are tied to how many Ph.D. students we have in different institutes. I've heard from Ph.D students that after they graduate, there are very few openings. They feel that sometimes the institution, because of funding requirements, has so many seats, and unfortunately for them, when they're out, there are not that many opportunities, but the different institutes need to have those seats in order to get funding.

Can you elaborate on whether that's a true snapshot of what's going on out there?

[David Robinson]

I think it's hard to really generalize, but sure, I think people graduating with a Ph.D. today are facing a rather uncertain labour market, if they're looking towards universities, because of the increasing casualization of the workforce and the difficulty in getting grants. Getting that first grant is absolutely critical. Getting your post-doctorate grant is absolutely critical if you are interested in a longer-term career within a scientific field, for instance.

I think looking at those issues, not only stability of employment but also opportunities in terms of funding, is absolutely critical.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

I know we're missing data on the makeup of the membership, but perhaps you could take a stab at this. How many in your membership would be trained in Canada versus internationally?

[David Robinson]

Unfortunately, I couldn't answer that. I couldn't even hazard a guess. We obviously have a very international market, but I don't know the numbers for that. I'm sorry.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you very much.

I'll switch gears and go to Dr. Myers about the Perimeter Institute.

I'm very intrigued about how that got started. A lot of times you talk about big tech companies, but they start as small tech companies. A lot of times it's the innovative start-ups that take on, at least in technology, some of the tech giants. They're people who are doing things a little bit differently.

It sounds very similar to your story, but I'd like to hear about how that got started.

[Dr. Robert Myers]

The Perimeter Institute was really the brainchild of Mike Lazaridis. You may know him as the inventor of the BlackBerry. He built the first modern cellphone, this device that we're all dependent on now. He realized that what he had there, in a BlackBerry, was really dependent on blue-sky research from 100 years ago. He really saw the importance of investing in that.

That's really part of our DNA now. It's that long game that I talked about. We're looking for those transformative breakthroughs that are going to change the lives of our grandchildren's grandchildren, but as I was trying to illustrate, along the way there are all of these....

If you take brilliant people and apply them to tough problems, you get all these unexpected spinoffs. It may take the form of pictures of black holes. It may take the form of a new start-up using machine learning to optimize finance portfolios. There's a real investment that Mike made there, and a real vision he had, to carry us forward.