Science and Research Committee on Nov. 28th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Collins and Dr. McDonald. We're so grateful for both of our witnesses.

Now we're going with Mr. Garon tonight. The floor is yours.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good evening everyone. Thank you to our two witnesses for being here.

I'm going to start with Professor McDonald.

Society places a lot of value on applied research, which results in direct applications that can quickly be turned into consumer products that generate profits. I feel, though, that basic research tends to be the prerequisite for the development of major industries. Genome sequencing comes to mind, as does all the basic research that the University of California, Berkeley does, research that led to the creation of Silicon Valley.

I believe that basic research is a public asset first and should be largely funded by the government. What do you think? On the whole, does Canada recognize that basic research is a public asset that must be publicly funded?

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

I certainly agree that it's very important that there be a balance.

What Canada needs is strong support for basic research. I think the funding councils require strong support. Another topic on the table is adequate research funding for individuals at the faculty, post-doctoral and student levels, right now. I was on the committee chaired by David Naylor. We certainly, at that time, found that levels of funding were lower than required. They have increased, but they are still in difficulty within the basic sciences.

I think that needs to be balanced with a recognition that there is also a need for Canada to be technologically and commercially related to that and actively involved in the latest technology. In a number of instances, this comes from basic science. In fact, the type of people I was describing, who go into industry even though their degree may have been in basic science, are of value to industry because they are able to look across the horizon, beyond Canada, at that new idea that came up in Germany or wherever. They know what it means. It is basic science that creates the understanding of when the technological breakthrough is going to be.

Canadian industry needs people trained in applied science and basic science, in order for them to be able to access the latest in what's happening internationally when it comes to innovation. Balance, from my point of view, is what's important.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Russell.

It's important to attract talent and researchers to Canada, and for that to happen, a certain number of conditions have to be in place.

During the Trump administration, immigration was a major issue. A number of countries went to great lengths to set themselves apart from the U.S. and to attract researchers. Australia and New Zealand seem to have done a pretty good job of that, but Canada had trouble turning the situation to its advantage even then.

As far as student scholarships and research funding go, does Canada have what it takes to attract young researchers and talent, when the conditions are ripe?

[Brandon Russell]

I think that's very tricky. I don't work in Canada right now, so I don't know what kind of funding exists for professors, for example, but the faculty positions that exist in my field are few and far between in Canada. Actually bringing researchers to Canada is very difficult in my field.

If you were to build an institute on top of that, you would need to bring people in, so you would already need experience. I think the funding does not exist, which is partially why I've come to the U.S. instead of staying in Canada. The funding does exist here for me to pursue a Ph.D. and post-doctoral studies and then have a career in the field, whereas that does not really exist in Canada, or at least only for a minority of people.

[Jean-Denis Garon, Bloc, Mirabel, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for Mr. McDonald, who has seen a whole lot of students in his career.

We've talked about the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, NSERC, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. For the most part, their federal scholarship and grant amounts are still exactly what they were 10, 15 or 20 years ago.

Clearly, we want to be involved in moonshot projects; we want to fund them and carry them out. We also need to have a pool of researchers trained here, in Canada.

In addition to making sure we can carry out moonshot projects, do we need to do more when it comes to graduate student funding, so those students stay in Canada?

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

Certainly I have been emphasizing major experiments. It's what I am involved in. It's what SNOLAB is good at. It's how SNOLAB can make a place for Canada and train extremely good people with, but I think it's very important to have perspective on the entire funding system.

I think that the question of what is or is not happening with the granting councils in terms of adequate support to attract and retain graduate students across the disciplines is very important. I think we certainly addressed that in the previous fundamental science review and I think it's being addressed by the Bouchard committee. Right now I'm very hopeful that this will be helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Sorry, Mr. Garon, but you're out of time.

I'm really pleased that you could join us tonight. I hope you are enjoying being part of the committee.

With that, we will now go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

Thank you to the two witnesses here before us today. This is a very interesting study, and I'm learning a lot, as usual.

Dr. McDonald, I'd like to start with you. SNOLAB has obviously been a big part of your career, and I'm just wondering if you could tell us, when you started this whole SNOLAB project, did you have in mind these things that you're talking about now—the spinoffs that it might accrue with the kinds of experiments that it would attract and that Canada can build on with these big science projects?

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

I started back in 1984 with the SNO experiment, and we had a single thing in mind. There was a big question in science to be answered, and fortunately, with the support we got in Canada, we were able to do so.

SNOLAB itself, as I said, was created in 2003 with a program that was led by David Sinclair and Carleton University. I was still involved in the SNO project, although I was actively involved in the ideas that went into SNOLAB. All of us who were working on it recognized that there really had been a change as a result of the measurements that had been made with respect to neutrinos in terms of understanding where those neutrinos fit into the overall model of elementary particles and how that influences how the universe evolves.

The fact that the dark matter was not neutrinos means that we now have other particles to look for that are different from anything that has been seen. That was a program we could see; it was in the proposal to CFI, and it could be a substantial program going forward.

As I've said, there have been smaller-scale experiments that have been taking place in this area. The demonstration that SNOLAB itself functions extremely well and is the best place in the world to do these types of experiments has triggered international interest.

Yes, it was in our mind as we started out, and we were fortunate at the time. The existence of CFI is an indication of how Canada has progressed in its funding. It did not exist when we were trying to get SNO funded, and we had to go through a variety of different hoops, let's say, in order to get it funded. The existence of a single funding agency that can deal with infrastructure in Canada was a real addition to the scene.

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

Thank you.

You're involved in particle physics and those kinds of questions like astronomy. They tend to be a part of science that, at least I think, involve big science because of the questions you're asking. You have to get particles moving very fast and you have to look far distances.

There's always this balance when I think of policies around funding big science versus smaller science, I guess you could say—basic science versus applied science.

Do you have any advice on how you would weigh that? Maybe you're biased. I'm biased, but we're faced with this. As a committee, as a government, as decision-makers, we want to make science flourish here in Canada and take advantage of the things we have.

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

Again, I think it's a question of balance. There needs to be balance between applied science and basic science in the funding decisions. There also needs to be some fraction of the budget that goes into—sorry—moonshots. You want Canada to be capable of hitting on the world's scene in a way that it has credibility when its industries go out there and say that this is a technologically literate country. Also, you want to educate students.

I think it is a controlled fraction of the total budget. That's where the balance comes in. There, I think you want to pick situations in which Canada has some natural advantage in terms of your choice of moonshots. In our case, we had the deep mine and the capability of running it totally cleanly. In other cases, you want to look for similar advantages.

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

I want to bring up CHIME, the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, which is part of the radio observatory near my home town of Penticton. It's a National Research Council facility. Considerable expense went into that, and it's discovering things already that are far beyond what we initially thought.

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

CHIME is a wonderful example of Canadian ideas that basically revolutionized radio astronomy in certain areas. Instead of focusing a telescope on a small fraction of the sky, you look at the whole sky, and you use very sophisticated data analysis techniques to be able to extract extremely good information from it. It has made a tremendous difference in understanding a number of very extreme astronomical objects. It's a great Canadian success story.

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

I think I'm out of time. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

You are out of time, Mr. Cannings. I'm sorry.

This is a really good discussion. We're very grateful to our witnesses this evening.

We will now go to the second round. This will be a five-minute round. We'll start with Mr. Lobb tonight.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and good evening.

Last week we had Governor General David Johnston, and today we have two distinguished persons, including Mr. McDonald in person. I think it's quite an honour for our committee and a testament to our clerk and analysts for getting such top-quality people to come out to this study.

First, there's been a great discussion here tonight, but could you give me an indication of how SNOLAB works financially? I know that there are financial contributions from the federal government and also the provincial government. If there are projects or studies that want to be conducted, do they pay a fee to the SNOLAB to be able to have the right to practice there, or does the SNOLAB welcome people to do the research there? How does that work?

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

It has been the norm in particle physics for a particular country that hosts a major facility, such as Fermilab in the United States, for it to pay for the activities at the facility, and for it and other countries who come in to build big experiments to share the costs of such experiments.

For example, SNO, which did not have a facility—it was a single experiment and a hole in the ground, basically, before SNOLAB existed—was shared between the various countries. It's an experiment. These experiments I'm talking about that would be situated at SNOLAB are ones that would be shared in terms of the costs of such experiments in coming to SNOLAB. The facility itself would predominantly be run by Canada. Although there would be charges for obvious things associated with the electricity associated with running the facility and so on, running the hoist to get people there and things of that nature would be a responsibility of the funding that comes through major science initiatives from CFI at the present time and, in the case of SNOLAB, shared by the Province of Ontario.

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

In these endeavours that are very complex, and the breakdown of the way it would work, specifically on human resources, it seems to me.....

Can you tell the committee whether more people are now getting into these sciences? Is there a need for more to get in? Where is the state of the day with these highly educated individuals?

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

There's certainly a significant continuing interest in these fields.

We were very fortunate, for example, in the field of particle astrophysics, which is related to SNOLAB very strongly, in being successful with a Canada first research excellence fund. In the process of that fund, which has been in existence for about five years, there have been 15 faculty members across the country recruited, and the equivalent number of faculty members in addition have been attracted to the universities that have built up programs in this area. This area of particle physics has become very interesting. Canada is one of the leaders in it. In addition, hundreds of students and post-doctoral students—I don't know the numbers—have been educated over the last five or so years just in connection with that program alone.

That's an example of the fact that not only are individual scientists interested, but scientific departments across the country have also been very pleased to move forward with new positions. These positions are picked up by the universities now that the Canada first research excellence fund will finish in two years' time.

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

Let's say you were at a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Sudbury, just talking to a guy or a gal, and they asked you, “What the heck do you do there? What's the significance to the Canadian public for what you do?”

I mean, I understand it, but there are a lot of tax dollars going into it. I understand that there are some great results. How would you describe it to Joe Public at Tim Hortons who's curious about what goes on there and the benefit of it?

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

I would say, “Do you know how this universe we live in came about? Do you have a feeling for how it all started and how it developed to the point that we have the things we have around us? That's what we're studying.”

We have this tremendous description of a big bang 13 billion years ago and the way in which things evolved to the present time. It's an understanding of our history at a very profound level. It's how everything started and how it got to be the way it is today for the whole world.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. McDonald. It's not easy to say that in 30 seconds.

Thank you, Mr. Lobb.

We will now go to Ms. Diab for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much to both of our witnesses. We're truly honoured in this committee to have the calibre of witnesses we're getting, particularly on a topic that is, as Mr. Lobb indicated, a new one for many Canadians. It certainly is for us. I think we're learning quite a bit, which is part of what we're doing in this committee. That's why it was struck. I think part of it is to increase our knowledge as parliamentarians so that we can better understand it ourselves and be able to make policies accordingly.

Dr. McDonald, I read with interest that you hold a degree in physics from Dalhousie University. I'm a Nova Scotian and I went to Dalhousie, and so did all my kids. They're all still there.

You talked quite a bit about SNOLAB, and it is fascinating. I think some of us on the committee might be looking forward to attending that facility. Maybe we'll see you there. You also talked about how Canada should be looking at where it has a natural advantage, and that we need recognition in the world. I cannot agree more with that.

Where else can you point us to? From your perspective and with all the experience you have, what else should Canada be looking at, and where?

[Dr. Arthur McDonald]

I'll answer you, but of interest, one of my first summer jobs was working at the steam plant in Glace Bay that produced the steam for the reserves of Canadian heavy water that we used in the experiment. I'm from Sydney originally.

I think Canada has a significant advantage in artificial intelligence in quantum devices and quantum computing. It may be in that sequence of quantum devices first, followed by quantum computing. Geoff Hinton and his colleagues in artificial intelligence have made a major shift in the capability of artificial intelligence. I think that's an area that's very important to be supporting.

In the health care area, I have been waiting for some time to see the effects of learning about the human genome starting, essentially, in the year 2000. We now have an understanding of genetics. We also have the ability to use genetics to make quick diagnoses. I think we're going to have a revolution in medicine as we go forward. I talked to my colleagues, such as the head of the department at Queen's, and he tells me what he's looking for is personalized medicine. That is a way you can attempt to tailor your treatment based on the genetic information you obtain, and obtain quickly, going forward.

Those are a couple of areas that I would target.