Science and Research Committee on Nov. 21st, 2022

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all three fascinating witnesses and the interesting perspectives you bring to this discussion tonight. I greatly appreciate it.

Mr. Johnston, from your opening comments, I would argue that you're still a university president at heart. You've done many things since, but I think that's still your DNA. It's wonderful to have your perspective here.

We still really miss you in the Waterloo region. We were sad to see you leave the presidency of U of W, but we were taking one for team Canada. You were an amazing Governor General, so thank you for your service. We are reminded of you and your lovely wife Sharon every time we drive by the university and see the David Johnston research and innovation park, which I know you weren't happy about, but it's still a nice daily reminder when we go by there.

We are here to study ambitious research goals that we hope will solve some of Canada's and the world's biggest social and environmental challenges. I know in your opening address you mentioned curiosity and the importance of curiosity. What role does curiosity-driven research play in achieving these ambitious goals?

[The Right Hon. David Johnston]

I think it's the beginning, the middle ground and the end. Curiosity fuels everything, and goes along with the courage to think independently.

I should say this about teaching. In my installation address as GG, it was entitled “A smart and caring nation”. I said if you remember only three words of what I say today, they are “Cherish our Teachers”, because apart from our family they have the most important influences on us. I said if we had three hours together in the Senate chamber I'd tell you 100 stories of teachers, coaches, mentors who have made an influence in my life for the better. That's why I stress so much the business of education as the heart of everything, including in this world when data is available at our fingertips. Curiosity and being able to ask the penetrating kinds of questions, that, actually, is the role of the teacher today. It's not to be the fountain of all knowledge but to provide the methods of inquiry, etc.

This is where Canada, I think, has very considerable advantages. We have a good public education system. It can be better, but we want to make it better. Instilling curiosity and learning how to learn is pretty fundamental. Our number five daughter did her doctorate in educational psychology. She has a learning disability. She works now as a senior research scientist for a company spun off by her Harvard professor, who supervised her thesis on how the mind learns, combining that with the digital revolution. It's wonderful to see how we can develop customized curricula that deal with the specific needs of a specific child, one with a disability and another one who's vitally enriched. For me, that's a wonderful new opportunity opening.

The simple profit from that kind of curiosity, which is at our fingertips and which I've been speaking about tonight, is putting this on an international scale. We gain so much by developing those collaborative networks around the world.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

I think everyone who's in the room can remember one special teacher who influenced them. It could be at the grade school level, or whatever. I think that, for each of us, if we think back, there's that one special teacher who made a real difference.

Canada doesn't have a specific moon shot title program. However, much of the funding and policy initiatives align with the characteristics of a moon shot program. What, in your opinion, are the areas where Canada is doing work related to moon shot-type research?

[The Right Hon. David Johnston]

I'd begin with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which Alan has served with such distinction for 10 years. I had the enormous privilege of being chair of that in earlier days. That was a remarkable vision of Fraser Mustard, mainly—with help from people like John Evans—to identify some of those areas that were areas of great need, dependent upon interdisciplinary approaches. They were unusual approaches, not conventional approaches. It reached out beyond Canada's borders to bring the best in the world to be on the advisory committees and so on, do some of the work and be part of the collaboration.

If I were to list the things where Canada has the greatest opportunity, then I'd begin by asking Alan. How did you develop your priorities for the programs that you struck over the 10 years that you were there, Alan? Where are you today and what do you see in the future?

Artificial intelligence is a very good example. When Geoff Hinton was working in this area 25 years ago, it was not funded by the granting agencies because it was considered too wild. Mimicking the human brain, how on earth can you do that? Thanks to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which funded him early on because it saw promise in this very unconventional research, it's become extremely important worldwide. Guess what. As we've just indicated, Canada's one of the two or three great leaders in that sphere.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

Kirsty's raising the yellow card at us. It's bad in soccer and it's bad for us too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Ms. Bradford, your time is over.

I just wanted to know if you wanted to ask Dr. Bernstein to table what....

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Yes, that would be excellent.

Dr. Bernstein, if you could answer the question Mr. Johnston referred to in writing, that would be most helpful for our committee. Thank you.

[Dr. Alan Bernstein]

I'd be happy to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you to all three of you for that.

With that, we're going to go to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas, for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Klein, I listened carefully to your opening remarks. I found it interesting to hear you say that very little progress is currently being made on the climate emergency, since the government is adopting voluntary and non‑binding policies. I also read your book, of course, and it is very interesting. In it, you compare this situation to our grandparents' and great‑grandparents' war effort during the Second World War.

What war effort do you think we should be making today to fight climate change, and how can we draw inspiration from moonshot projects to do so?

[Seth Klein]

Thank you.

I would walk you through those six markers that I gave you.

Spend what it takes to win. I was starting to get at that with the other question. We're not there yet. Sir Nicholas Stern says we should be spending about 2% of GDP to tackle the climate emergency. In the Canadian context that would be about $56 billion a year. If you were to tally up our spending now on climate infrastructure and climate action, generously it clocks in at about $12 billion a year. We're not a little off. We're off by a fourfold to fivefold order of magnitude.

Create new institutions to get the job done. I mentioned how C.D. Howe created these 28 Crown corporations. By the way, C.D. Howe was no lefty. He was on the right wing of Mackenzie King's cabinet. Part of what I try to do is apply the same logic by which this fellow said when we actually needed a Crown enterprise to intervene in order to drive change, and then map that same logic onto the present. I can give you a three-page list of what I think those Crown enterprises might be.

The point about mandatory measures is really important. The fact is that we're still stuck trying to incentivize our way to victory. I mentioned carbon pricing. In recent budgets, so much of what we're trying to drive now in the way of clean technology is a 50% corporate income tax cut. The most recent fall financial statement has now offered up a further tax credit for capital. All of these will have some impact. I'm not saying they're not valuable—

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

Could you tell us which countries we can draw inspiration from that have implemented mandatory policies to fight climate change?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas, I'm afraid that's time. Could you ask for it to be tabled?

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

I would like an answer in writing, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

That's excellent. Thank you.

With that, we will go for two and a half minutes to Mr. Cannings.

Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you.

I was actually planning to ask Mr. Klein that very question in so many words. This is an international crisis we're facing with the climate. Are there other countries out there that are doing inspirational things? If Canada did move ahead, we can only hope, with a real moon shot program, would that be inspirational to other countries? How do we get the whole world to do this? This is just such a big problem that the whole globe is facing.

Are there advantages Canada can gain from taking these steps right now in the global context, in our international trade and so on and in our economy?

[Seth Klein]

Thank you for sparing me the homework.

I don't see another country hitting all six of these markers, but there are certainly other countries that are doing better than we are. If you look at Canada within the G7 context, our success in lowering emissions is the worst among G7 countries, and interestingly, in the countries that do best—the U.K. in particular, and Germany—this has happened under all political stripes. There has been more of this cross-spectrum commitment.

There are some municipal governments that are hitting the markers. For my city, let me give you an example of what I mean by mandatory measures. I'm in Vancouver. As of this year in Vancouver, no new buildings are allowed to use fossil fuels for space and water heating. This is 10 years sooner than the provincial target or other targets that we've seen across the country. That's driving change. That's driving investments in a way that we are not seeing elsewhere, and I think there's a model there.

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

I'm sorry, but I was just caught off guard there. Just to go back to that last point about Vancouver and no more natural gas in new buildings, those are the kinds of things we need to do. Those are the mandatory regulations you're talking about, or some of them anyway.

[Seth Klein]

That would be an example of marker three, moving to mandatory measures, yes.

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

Okay. I'll leave things there, then. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Cannings.

I'd like to thank all of our witnesses. When you have such terrific testimony, it's hard when the discussion comes to an end. I think everyone was very interested to hear from you. It was wide-ranging. We thank you for your time and your expertise. We hope it's been a good experience and that you will want to come back and join us again.

With that, dear colleagues, we're going to suspend to go in camera.

[Proceedings continue in camera]