Science and Research Committee on May 19th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I call this meeting to order. We are meeting, as you know, in a webcast session.

Welcome to meeting number 13 of the Standing Committee on Science and Research.

The Board of Internal Economy requires that committees adhere to the following health protocols, which are in effect until June 23, 2022.

I would like to welcome all our witnesses, and we'd like to welcome new members tonight. It's wonderful.

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Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021.

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Welcome to our witnesses. This is our last meeting on top talent, research and innovation.

Tonight, appearing as an individual, we have Dr. Joel Blit, associate professor, University of Waterloo; and Dr. Jalene LaMontagne, associate professor, DePaul University. From Université de Sherbrooke, we have Dr. Jean-Pierre Perreault, vice-president, research and graduate studies; and from Wilfrid Laurier University, we have Deborah MacLatchy, president and vice-chancellor.

We welcome you all. We are thrilled that you are joining us.

Each person will have five minutes for their opening remarks. At four and a half minutes, I will hold up this card and you'll know you have 30 seconds left. We aim to be fair.

With that, we will begin with Dr. Blit.

The floor is yours for five minutes. Welcome.

[Joel Blit, Associate Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair and committee, for the invitation to speak to you today.

I'm a professor of economics. I've been studying talent and innovation for almost two decades, and I speak to you as an individual and as a Canadian who deeply cares about our country.

If you'll allow me, I want to mostly focus on the big picture. I hope my remarks can help provide some context to discussions around science, talent and publicly funded research.

Let me start with the bad news. It's no secret that Canada has a large and growing innovation and productivity gap, though the extent of it might be surprising. Fifty years ago, we had the second-highest labour productivity among the G7. Today, we have the second-lowest, ahead only of Japan.

OECD data also shows that we are now last among G7 countries, tied with Italy, for the fewest triadic patents as a share of GDP. Other measures of innovation tell a similar story, whether it's high-tech exports, advanced manufacturing or tech start-ups.

I'm concerned, because it's only a matter of time before these deficits are reflected in the wages and standard of living of Canadians. The question is, why is our performance so poor?

Well, it's particularly puzzling if we consider that Canada has many of the building blocks necessary to be a successful innovator. The most crucial of these building blocks are precisely the things that this committee is tasked with studying: basic science, an educated workforce and public R and D.

Much of the testimony that this committee has been hearing is that Canada needs to invest more in these things. I don't disagree. These are Canada's strengths, and we need to continue to foster them, but it's important to understand that simply doubling down on our strengths is not going to address our innovation gap. This gap exists because we're failing to translate basic research and invention into valuable innovations.

An illustrative example of this is artificial intelligence. Canadian researchers—people like Geoff Hinton—developed many of the key breakthroughs in machine learning, but the commercial benefits were largely captured by foreign entities.

I teach my students to think of the innovative process as a pipeline. To get good outputs—things like new products, patents, high-tech exports, advanced manufacturing and tech start-ups—we need quality inputs, excellence in basic science, public R and D and an educated workforce, hence the importance of this committee.

However, to get good outputs, we must also fix the pipeline itself, because, frankly, it's broken. Canada's private sector is simply not capitalizing on our strengths in basic science, invention and talent. One indication of this is Canada's low levels of business R and D as a percentage of GDP, where we're last among the G7. We're also the only G7 country that has seen a decline in business R and D intensity since the start of the millennium. It seems that we invent and others commercialize our discoveries.

I want to emphasize that there's no single magic bullet to address this challenge. Our colleges and universities must put an increased focus on entrepreneurship and commercialization, and our government must emphasize firm growth, but fundamentally, tackling this challenge is going to require a holistic rethink of our innovation policy.

We must continue to invest in and improve the things we are doing well: science, public R and D and education. I'm heartened by the work of this committee, but we must also invest in and reform things like intellectual property, R and D tax credits, skilled immigration, venture capital, competition policy and others. If the goal is to build a more prosperous Canadian economy, then investments in basic science and education must be coupled with broader innovation policy reforms.

That's the main context of what I wanted to share today, but since talent is one of the key topics of interest, allow me to also share three very quick points on that front, which are based on some of my own research.

Number one, strong STEM education is key. Some of our research suggests that, not surprisingly, STEM-educated graduates tend to disproportionately contribute to technological innovation, so the more STEM graduates we have, the better.

Number two, the brain drain is real. According to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization, Canada is the third-biggest net loser of inventors due to migration, behind only China and India, and there's a scale thing there too.

Number three, skilled immigration is no panacea. Our research suggests that our STEM-educated immigrants are not having the same impact on innovation as similar immigrants in the U.S., in part because they're not finding employment in STEM. We did, however, find some evidence that our international student immigrants are doing better, and we're launching a study to examine this further.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I'd be happy to take any questions and expand on any of these points.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Blit, thank you for your testimony. We're grateful.

We will now go to Dr. LaMontagne for five minutes, please.

[Dr. Jalene LaMontagne, Associate Professor, DePaul University, As an Individual]

Good evening. Thank you for the invitation to appear as a witness in front of this committee on an important topic. I'm joining you from Liverpool in the U.K., as I'm here working for the week, but I've lived in Chicago in the United States since 2011.

Today, I want to tell you about my background, the trajectory of my career that led me to be working outside of Canada, and some challenges that I see Canada facing in retaining and recruiting talent.

While I have lived outside of Canada for over a decade, I am a proud Canadian. I attended the University of Calgary, where I completed my Bachelor of Science in ecology and my Master of Science in conservation ecology. I was the first in my family to earn any university degree.

Having a passion for science and research, I continued my education and completed my Ph.D. in environmental biology and ecology at the University of Alberta, finishing in 2007. As a Ph.D. student, I held an NSERC graduate scholarship and a Killam graduate scholarship. I completed a post-doctoral fellowship that was funded by the Alberta ingenuity fund. I point out these awards not to boast, but as an indication of the investments made to support my education and training, for which I am grateful.

As an aside, I want to point out that the post-doctoral fellowship I held from 2007-09 had an annual salary of $48,000, which is more than what an NSERC post-doctoral fellowship is currently worth, 15 years later.

In the second year of my post-doctoral position, I looked to enter the job market with the intention of applying for positions as a professor. There were very few jobs available in Canada in my field, and that year I applied for only two or three jobs. I was not successful in obtaining one of those positions, and I took an international job for one year. I then returned to Canada and again entered the job market. The second time, in 2010, there were no job postings at Canadian universities for positions that were aligned with my field of research.

In terms of my field of research, I am a population ecologist, and I study a wide variety of plant and animal species. I am interested in the patterns and drivers of fluctuations in biological populations over time and space. A large component of my research program is on the reproductive patterns of conifer tree species in the boreal forest. Their seeds are critical for forest regeneration, and patterns of seed production drive the dynamics of a suite of seed-consuming species and their predators. My research occurs across scales, from local to continental and global scales, and has implications for understanding the consequences of global change.

Coming back to my situation in the job market, since the late 1990s I had heard talk that there would be academic positions opening up soon at Canadian universities due to retirements; however, I found that those positions were not materializing. Every job I applied for in 2010-11 was in the United States, and I got a tenure-track job in the United States. I did not set out to leave Canada, but I did not have options in Canada to move forward with my career.

Leaving Canada to go work in a different country brought along challenges but also opportunities. Moving to a new system in a new country where I knew little about the National Science Foundation funding structure was a challenge. Funding rates were low, and the application procedure was very different from that at NSERC.

However, I have become quite successful in obtaining federal funding in the United States. Over the past five years, research grants that I have had a leadership role on have been funded to the total amount of approximately $1.6 million Canadian. The investments that the National Science Foundation makes in research grants, training grants and support for long-term data collection, as well as synthesis work, provide a meaningful and broad variety of support for science and research, from which I and my research have benefited.

I maintain connections with Canada, both personally and professionally. I hold a lifetime membership in the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution. I care about science and research in Canada. I want my colleagues, particularly those who are early in their careers, to be able to stay, be successful and not have to leave.

The number of Ph.D.s graduating from Canadian universities has increased over time, while the availability of tenure-track faculty positions has gone down despite retirements. There is also a trend that contract teaching faculty, who do not do scientific research, are replacing many tenure-track positions.

Short-term contract faculty are cheaper to employ than tenure-track faculty, and this could be a strategy for dealing with reductions in government funding for universities. Increasing government support for universities to ensure they have the ability to replace and increase tenure-track faculty positions is critical to retaining scientists in Canada.

I also suggest that increasing federal investments in research, including in broad-scale, long-term research infrastructure that parallels that in other countries around the world, would be a wise initiative to support research and discovery.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. LaMontagne. We thank you for being with us, despite being in the U.K. tonight. It's a late hour for you, so thank you so very much.

We will now go to the Université de Sherbrooke and Mr. Perreault for five minutes, please.

[Jean-Pierre Perreault, Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies, Université de Sherbrooke]

Good evening, Madam Chair.

Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee today.

I could have worn several hats this evening. You've discussed the field of ribonucleic acid, or RNA. I'm a researcher specializing in RNA and a co‑founder of the RiboClub, a group that, among other things, helped bring Moderna to Canada. I also could have addressed you as the president of Acfas, an organization that promotes science, research, innovation and scientific culture in the francophonie.

As vice-president for research and graduate studies at the Université de Sherbrooke, I mainly want to focus my remarks on graduate scholarships in Canada.

Canada is a modern country. Young people want to live in a knowledge-based society. To do that, we must invest in all the sciences, and I mean “all the sciences”, because all of them generate innovations that provide economic and social benefits. Investment in research is the key to our present and future, but I won't dwell on that topic because I realize I'm preaching to the choir.

That being said, it's critical that we invest in the next generation of researchers. That's the key to success. Students are the first links in the research and innovation chain. They do the research work in various laboratories and join research teams across the country. They are essential to our efforts in meeting our society's major challenges.

Once they graduate, approximately 20% of them will become academic researchers, while the remaining 80% will devote their talents and ideas to developing our organizations, businesses, communities and government departments. It's important to note that all of them will find jobs and that, in practice, there will be very little unemployment in their careers. As a result, they will work and contribute to society.

We also have to ask ourselves how we attracted them to graduate studies in the past. In 2003, we offered graduate scholarships of $17,500 a year for master's degrees and $21,000 a year for doctorates.

Scholarships help students pay for tuition, housing and food and mainly give them the means to focus entirely on their studies. It's also important to note that the scholarships offered by Canada's three granting councils set the standard for the country. All other organizations tend toward that norm.

Incidentally, in 2003, the poverty line in Canada was $16,000 a year. Scholarship amounts were thus slightly above the poverty line. I'm sure you can see me coming here. The cost of food and accommodation, among other things, has definitely increased, particularly as a result of the rapid inflation we've experienced in the past few months. I would remind you that scholarships are offered to our champions, the best of our education system.

The poverty line today is over $20,000 a year. Most scholarships haven't been increased since 2003. What we are offering students now is an invitation to live below the poverty line. Does that motivate anyone to pursue an education? I doubt it. Is this really what we want for our students? I doubt that as well.

While I'm sure the salaries of our elected representatives have risen and been indexed to the cost of living over the years, the scholarships offered to our best students, the scholarship holders of our three councils, have not been indexed since 2003. And yet, when I used the Bank of Canada calculator last night to determine the increase in inflation from 2003 to 2022, the result was 44.4%. In other words, the $17,500 scholarship in 2003 should be worth more than $25,000 a year today.

The Bureau de coopération interuniversitaire, or BCI, which focuses on research and innovation, is a Quebec organization. BCI has suggested that, under Quebec's research and innovation investment strategy, those scholarships be increased to $25,000 a year for master's degrees and $35,000 a year for doctorates.

We are betraying the talent pool that will produce future innovation in this country.

Students today are increasingly forced to find jobs in order to make ends meet. In so doing, they focus less on graduate studies, thus extending the time it takes to complete their education and jeopardizing future development, research and innovation.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Dr. Perreault. We're really grateful you've joined us tonight.

Now we will go to the president and vice-chancellor of Wilfrid Laurier University, Dr. Deborah MacLatchy.

Welcome. The floor is yours.

[Dr. Deborah MacLatchy, President and Vice-Chancellor, Wilfrid Laurier University]

Thank you.

Good evening, Madam Chair, vice-chairs and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for inviting me today.

I'm speaking from the Haldimand Tract, traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. This land is part of the Dish with One Spoon treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Anishinabe peoples. Today, this gathering place is home to indigenous people from across Turtle Island. There are many contributions to knowledge and innovation that indigenous people have made and continue to make to this nation we call Canada.

Wilfred Laurier University is a comprehensive, mid-sized university in southwestern Ontario, with campuses in Waterloo Region and Brantford. We are opening a campus in Milton in 2024, on the west side of the greater Toronto area, which will have a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics focus, and which will further grow our research capacity in environmental health.

In addition to being Laurier's president, I'm also a scientist with an active research lab, where I supervise undergraduate and graduate student work in the field of ecotoxicology. I am sharing my observations and recommendations from the perspectives of both an administrator and researcher/mentor.

Recently, Laurier alumnus and CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, Dr. Darrell Bricker, spoke to our senior leadership team about demographic trends in Canada. Canada is in for a demographic shock in the next 20 years. Our population is aging, and the proportion of working-age Canadians is declining. By the mid-2030s only 58% of our population will be of working age.

At the same time, there is a global competition for research talent. We cannot hope to be competitive in research and innovation if we do not have people from Canada and from around the world who share a passion for discovery coming to our universities to pursue advanced-level degrees and research.

I'm going to focus on student pathways in my remarks, while recognizing that programs such as the Canadian research chairs and the Canada excellence research chairs are critical to the country for retention of top talent.

Canada is recognized around the world for its quality of life. Geopolitical conflicts and the global rise of governments unfriendly to academia have made Canada an increasingly attractive place for those pursuing opportunities in research and innovation. We must leverage this desire to come to Canada by making it more accessible to international students. We can do this by streamlining study and work permits, supporting immigration and citizenship processes, and increasing funding for developing research talent.

We also have an opportunity to be best in class in expanding our research talent pathways for Canadian youth. Canada has fallen behind our competition across the global market when it comes to graduate and post-doctoral supports. Federal scholarships have not kept pace with inflation. The investments in targeted scholarships and fellowships for Black student researchers were welcome news in the federal budget, and we need further investment in Canada's scholarship programs, including those that will widen the pathway in areas of science and technology to persons with disabilities and women-identified, indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+ and racialized persons.

We need to give Canada's youth the mentorship, resources and supports they need to pursue big, bold ideas that drive innovation and discovery. If we are serious about equity, diversity and inclusion, we need to shed the assumption that graduate students and post-doctoral fellows should be self-funding or augmenting their studies through work, family support and student loans.

It is disheartening to see promising students leave the university and research environments because of a lack of financial support, including first-generation students and those without access to generational wealth. Building subject matter knowledge and research acumen takes a significant amount of effort; when we lose these people, it wastes the human and financial resources invested.

At Laurier, we are taking steps to address these barriers. We are one of the 17 institutions in Canada that are part of the federal dimensions pilot project to collect data and analyze our systems and practices. We are taking steps to increase opportunities for careers in research, including developing mentoring programs specific to indigenous youth. However, to attract and retain the students who will drive the next period of discovery, there's a need for financial support that keeps them in the system.

In short, when there is a growing global shortage of scientific talent tied to demographic shifts in Canada and a changing global context, Canada needs to be an inclusive, welcoming and financially supportive environment to ensure research is an attractive and viable career option for trainees.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, President MacLatchy.

I'd like to thank all of you. We're grateful for your time, your experience and your expertise. We have really committed and dedicated committee members who are eager to ask you questions.

We will begin our first round of questioning. It's for six minutes, and we will begin with Mr. Soroka.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for participating tonight.

My first question is for you, Dr. Blit. In your research paper, “Can Skilled Immigration Raise Innovation? Evidence from Canadian Cities”, you highlighted in an abstract that science, engineering, technology or mathematics (STEM)-educated immigrants are employed in STEM jobs, but that this impact is limited because only a third of this population is employed in STEM jobs.

Can you please expand on this finding and why this seems to be the case, in accordance with your research?

[Joel Blit]

We found that, unlike in the U.S., our STEM-educated immigrants were not having as large an impact on innovation in the places they were moving to. We tried to dig a little deeper to find out why. The biggest piece of evidence we found was that, as you point out, only about a third of our STEM-educated immigrants are actually working in STEM. I think that's about half the rate in the U.S.

You asked why, and I don't have a good answer, because that was the extent of our study. I think there needs to be a follow-up study of that, but it's consistent with the story, or the cliché, that immigrant engineers are driving taxis in Toronto. Unfortunately, I can't tell you why, or not yet.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Well, if you do find that out while we're still doing our study, we'd appreciate any more information on that as well.

Also, Dr. Blit, based on your research, you talk about the advantages and the disadvantages of the Canadian points system. With foreign credentials obtained from education systems that are different from the Canadian education system, how can we ensure balancing the integration of foreign talent into Canada while still upholding Canadian integrity and standards for research and innovation?

[Joel Blit]

You raise a good point. It's a challenge. On the one hand, we want to integrate and incorporate our immigrants as quickly as possible. On the other hand, in certain cases I'm sure there are questions around the quality of their education, depending on where they come from.

One thing that we mention a bit in the paper is that the immigrants who are being educated in Canada, the international student immigrants, seem to be doing quite well and seem to be having a bigger positive impact on the economy. One thing that comes out of our paper is that we might want to increase that channel of immigration. We are launching into a new study on that right now.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

That sounds interesting.

Also, Dr. Blit, you published another one on automation and reallocation, where you the stated the following:

...automation will make Canadians richer and jobs more meaningful by removing the menial tasks. It is a change that will come, and our choices are twofold: how quickly to adopt it, and what governance to put in place so that all Canadians benefit.

We have had witnesses highlight the shortage of jobs for researchers and post-doctoral graduates. How do you propose that we integrate automation through artificial intelligence and robotics while still providing opportunities for these researchers?

[Joel Blit]

AI robotics will not be replacing these researchers. They'll be replacing.... Actually, I should mention that this is still an open question, but they'll probably be replacing people in the middle and lower end of the skills distribution, not the researchers. As a matter of fact, it may well be that we will require even more researchers to advance the AI in robotics, especially as they become more and more prevalent and more useful in our economy.

These things are important to do, because this is how Canada is going to continue to improve productivity and improve wages for Canadians' standard of living, but it is going to have distributive impacts. Some Canadians are going to benefit. Others are going to lose out. It's also important to make sure we have a generous social safety net and we consider the distributional impacts.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

As well, Dr. Blit, how do you think the pandemic has negatively affected the attraction of international top talent to Canada for research and innovation? Has this since been improved following the slow recession from pandemic mandates?

[Joel Blit]

I don't know if I'm best placed to answer that question. The obvious answer is that when the movement of people around the world was restricted due to COVID, it became more difficult to bring in foreign talent.

Right now, I suspect that some of the other panellists would be in a better position to answer that question.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I have one more question, then, Dr. Blit.

When you start looking at all the research you've done since 2020, how much do you think the situation has changed, or has it changed, really, in the last two years?

[Joel Blit]

The COVID-19 crisis presents Canada with a tremendous opportunity. As I pointed out at the beginning of my testimony, we are lagging in innovation and productivity. My research has shown that during crises is the time when there's rapid change. If you embrace change—if you embrace automation and reallocation—you can really improve your economy really quickly.

This is potentially a historic opportunity for us to do so. We just need to grab it. I'm not sure to what extent we are grabbing it right now.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I think I'm out of time, aren't I?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I'm afraid so.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you.

As I said, witnesses, we're so grateful for your time. You really do have an interested committee here.

We're now going to go to Mr. McKinnon for six minutes, please.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm not entirely sure who to direct this question to.

All my life I've heard of the brain drain. We're losing talent and skills, particularly to the United States, but obviously elsewhere in the world as well. We're hearing it again, of course, tonight and throughout our study.

I'm wondering if it has ever been better. Is this a new problem or is it a problem that has worsened in recent years? If you have any information, was there a time in our last 50 years or so when we were doing it better? If so, what can we do to reproduce that or improve on that?

I will start with Dr. MacLatchy please.

[Dr. Deborah MacLatchy]

I don't have the number with me. Maybe Dr. Blit has a better lens on that. I think there have been periods of time when the federal government, for example, has put extensive resources into the system.

For example, through the early years of the Canada research chairs and other funding mechanisms, that was an opportunity for the universities to expand and recruit talent—not just to retain within Canada, but also to repatriate excellent researchers like Dr. LaMontagne and others into the system. They're still exceptionally amazing programs, but the percentage of researchers they're supporting has lessened over time. Therefore, it doesn't have the same impact as it would have had 20 years ago when those programs were first initiated.