Science and Research Committee on Dec. 5th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I call this meeting to order. We have a wonderful meeting ahead of us.

Welcome to meeting 25 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research.

As you know, tonight's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. We have members attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I'd like to make a few comments.

As you all know, this meeting is regarding moon shot programs. For those who are new tonight, please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating via video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your microphone, and please mute it when you are not speaking.

For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of English, French or floor. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair, and please use the “raise hand” function.

I want you to know that all of our witnesses tonight completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

I'd like to welcome Mr. Ruff, who is joining us tonight.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses.

From the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, we have Dr. Chad Gaffield, who is the chief executive officer. We welcome you. We are delighted you can join us.

From the Ocean Frontier Institute, we have Dr. Anya Waite, chief executive officer and scientific director. Thank you for joining us. We welcome you.

Friends, we are trying to reach Sir Jeremy Farrar from the Wellcome Trust, who is travelling in Japan right now.

We will have five-minute statements. At the four-and-a-half-minute mark, I will hold up a yellow card. It lets you know there are 30 seconds left. I would ask that you wrap up then.

We'll begin with Dr. Gaffield.

The floor is yours.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield, Chief Executive Officer, U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities]

Good evening.

Thank you very much for inviting me to testify before the committee.

I want to start by emphasizing how energizing it has been to see the leadership of the standing committee addressing Canada's challenges and opportunities for building a better future through science and research. Your recommendations this year propose promising and urgently needed steps forward for Canada in what I think we all agree are turbulent times.

In contributing to your work on international moon shot programs, I would like to focus on Canada’s potential to play a leadership role in global research networks. My main conclusion, however, is that we cannot realize this potential without immediate action to respond to the rapidly increasing international competition in science and research.

This international competition is particularly focused on the development of highly qualified talent through participation in world-class research projects in our leading research universities. While all research projects aim for significant breakthroughs, discoveries and insights, the development of talent in these research projects is the guaranteed result that is crucial in the short and long term both domestically and internationally. Developing top talent in research projects not only gives Canada access to the global pool of knowledge but also ensures a supply of highly qualified individuals who can drive innovation across all sectors.

As you know, the Canadian research community is among the most highly internationalized in the world. Not surprisingly, our granting agencies have pioneered promising models of international research funding in recent years.

For example, through the transatlantic platform funding opportunity, Canada showed other national governments and funding agencies a way around the established position that money doesn't cross borders for academic research. The recent joint call for research on recovery, renewal and resilience in a postpandemic world brings together 16 humanities and social science research funding agencies from 12 countries in South America, North America and Europe. Clearly, though, such sporadic initiatives must be elevated into a systematic national framework with structures and dedicated funding envelopes.

The good news is that the advisory panel on the federal research support system will soon be recommending governance and structural steps forward to support Canadian researchers in the global research enterprise and propose mechanisms to incorporate multidisciplinary perspectives and practices to address global challenges in moon shot programs and related initiatives. The bad news is that Canada is falling behind in having the funds to develop the required highly qualified talent through participation in research projects.

Increasingly, those outside Canada are puzzled by the current level of federal support for science and research in Canada. This past Friday, for example, the magazine Science, one of the world’s top academic journals, had a headline lamenting that “In Canada, scientists are struggling with stagnant funding”. The problem for Canada with stagnant funding is that the rest of the world is significantly increasing their investments based on the conviction that science and research must inform all efforts to confront global challenges.

Most immediately, we must respond to what is happening south of the border. Over the next five years, the CHIPS and Science Act in the United States will essentially double the base budget of the National Science Foundation. This massive funding will put enormous additional pressure on Canadian universities as they struggle to compete for and retain top research talent and the best graduate students. This and similar initiatives in other countries demand our immediate attention.

Canada now ranks at the bottom of G7 countries in the number of those with graduate degrees. Moreover, Canada ranks only 28th among OECD countries in the proportion of our population with graduate degrees. In other words, our talent-based innovation ecosystem has great potential domestically and internationally, but it is operating at a scale that is too small for the challenging 21st century.

In the case of international moon shot programs, Canada risks being overlooked as a partner when we have, in fact, the potential to play a global leadership role.

Thank you very much. I look forward to your questions and comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Dr. Gaffield. We're very pleased to have you.

Now we go to Dr. Waite for five minutes.

We look forward to your testimony. The floor is yours.

[Dr. Anya Waite, Chief Executive Officer and Scientific Director, Ocean Frontier Institute]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's my great pleasure to appear before the committee today. Thank you for this opportunity.

The ultimate moon shot of this century is climate survival. Without climate mitigation, our future will be confined under the weight of many concurrent catastrophes: mass numbers of refugees, new human health crises, food security challenges and, ultimately, a weakened economy and a weakened quality of life.

The question that remains, then, is, how do we achieve this moon shot? How do we improve the lives of Canadians and support Canada to deliver an outsized impact for the world?

Canada recognizes the critical importance of decarbonization to our planet and our nation's future. We're actively working towards net-zero emissions by 2050, but that's simply not enough, not by a long shot. To reach our goal of climate survival, we need to get to net-negative, in fact, and today you'll hear about a new partnership between universities in Atlantic Canada and Quebec that will transform Canada's climate action.

One important consideration in reaching net-negative is that our climate solutions are currently focused on the uptake of carbon on land and the blue carbon sometimes stored within our coastal waters. However, our research shows that these carbon sinks are simply a drop in the bucket. They are just not enough.

More than 90% of carbon is actually stored in the ocean, the majority of which is located in the high seas beyond national jurisdiction. It is known as deep blue carbon. If we really want to make an impact on the global carbon budget, which is the only way to save the world from itself, we must turn our attention to deep blue carbon and the emerging science of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal, or CDR. This includes innovation and a suite of technologies, many Canadian-born, that could take carbon from the atmosphere and safely sequester it in the deep sea.

Canada actually has the opportunity to bring meaningful climate leadership in this area. Deep blue carbon and ocean-based CDR—carbon dioxide removal—represent a potential global climate solution. Committing to this solution will encourage research investment right here at home while providing both environmental and economic benefits to Canada. It will also give us information about the time scales of climate change and how the ocean is responding, which helps us frame the social adaptation that our communities need to address the current global climate crisis. For example, sea-level rise, drought and catastrophic hurricanes are all directly related to the ocean and the ocean's impact on our climate.

The reason this is a moon shot is that it will require a huge lift of support. Research generally progresses slowly, and this needs to move quickly. In fact, it needs to move very fast. There are ocean CDR practitioners with huge amounts of capital to put towards this effort, but they're looking to us for guidance on how to use it effectively.

Strategic and sustained ocean observation and ocean and climate science synthesis is a major gap that must urgently be addressed. We need a system that can monitor what is happening in the ocean in real time, which would enable improved climate forecasts, better climate mitigation methods and facilitate what has the promise to be a trillion-dollar deep blue carbon credit market.

One solution proposed by us at the Ocean Frontier Institute is an ocean carbon observatory that would bring nations together to frame this problem properly and to help implement a collective solution: a regional exemplar or example in the North Atlantic.

We are already revving this engine with the recent submission of Dalhousie University's transforming climate action proposal. This is a joint initiative with the Université du Québec à Rimouski, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Université Laval to the Canada first research excellence fund. This proposal represents a groundbreaking alliance between French- and English-speaking ocean-focused institutions.

Let's recap. The moon shot of our time is climate survival. It requires increased ocean observation of deep blue carbon beyond national jurisdiction and the safe implementation of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal technologies at scale, which only the ocean can offer. There is an urgent need for a moon shot-type program that can enable transformative global initiatives that transcend the priorities of individual regions and individual department mandates in government. We have less than eight years to avoid a future shaped by climate catastrophe, and every day the global climate crisis clock is ticking. This is where we need to put our energy. If not now, when?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Waite, thank you for your testimony. You have a very interested committee. I know they will want to ask questions.

I will let our committee know there have been connection difficulties with Japan, so we will have two witnesses for this panel. However, we thank Sir Jeremy Farrar for trying so hard.

We'll go to a round of questions. We begin tonight with Mr. Soroka for six minutes.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for coming this evening. I will start my questions with Dr. Gaffield.

You brought up a lot of things that we've dealt with in the past about retaining top talent here, and you were talking about the loss of it to other countries, especially now potentially the United States. I have to admit that my family is among them as well.

How can we actually avoid this? You talked about funding. What kind of funding do we need, and what kind of research facilities do we need to build?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

My sense is that one thing that's been overlooked in recent years is what I like to think of as the guaranteed ROI, return on investment, of research, which is the development of talent. In other words, while we hope in our projects to have breakthroughs, the real benefit and ongoing enduring value of those projects is the people we produce out of them who end up leading across society. In recent years, there's been a bit of an emphasis on projects making new discoveries, which is great when they do. However, what's happened is that Canada has really let itself fall behind regarding the individuals who can really help us drive innovation across all sectors.

One thing that is really important in this is the fact that while Canada is often criticized for having, for example, a low level of business innovation and business expenditures on R and D for innovation, it's only in recent years, the last few, that the competitive pressure is now across all sectors. In my sense, all sectors are now attempting to adjust to this new world, a world in which we're driving towards net zero and a world in which we're driving toward handling far more appropriately in a very complex way the digital technologies. We've learned now that the digital transformation is a really complex phenomenon that underpins all aspects and is not simply a good thing. We have to learn about all sorts of aspects of handling that and optimizing it well.

My sense is that every business and every institution is now trying to move towards sustainability and trying to embrace a digitally enabled world, and I think, therefore, that innovation has gone to the top of the agenda. However, there's a huge talent gap now given the complexity of actually making that happen.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Dr. Gaffield, do you think that by addressing this with more money and maybe even more facilities to bring in...? We had the Stem Cell Network last week, and they said they were forefront leaders in the world in this area. We have a couple of areas where we might be leaders, yet it doesn't seem like we're very good at leading.

You're talking about how far we've fallen behind, so what more can we do? The commercialization is great, but at the same time, regarding money we're not coming close to what other countries are doing. That's my concern.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

Emphasizing the facilities part is really important because we found that leaders in many fields emerge out of serious research facilities that are connected to global networks.

There was a story that often got told during the pandemic. When Canada was realizing that we didn't have a domestic capacity in vaccine production, what happened? It was quickly worked through our researchers in an international context to find others elsewhere who could link with us to help us get the support we needed in choosing the vaccines we were going to buy, which eventually attracted Moderna to Canada. However, that's just one example.

It seems to me that, yes, it's great that some sectors are real leaders, but we need that across the board, because there's no aspect.... When we think about farming and agriculture, for example, that industry is transforming itself now and is just as in need of top talent as any other sector.

This really is a transformational change for Canada, and when Canada decides to move on what I think is a talent-based innovation system, we need to realize that we need far greater investments for it to realize its potential.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

You mentioned vaccines, and I know that the University of Alberta, through the virology department, was developing a vaccine at the time. They had to put in a bid in case they were successful, and they were very close to developing a new vaccine, yet the government did not choose them.

Do you think one of the problems is that there isn't support from the government when there are these breakthroughs?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

One of the difficulties, I think, is that the funds are not allowing us to make a sufficient number of investments given the possibilities. One really important thing is the idea that you can't put all your eggs in one basket. We need many centres across this country to help us in all the places where we need it.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Dr. Gaffield, that's where I think—because you represent so many universities—there's a great opportunity for you to bring more unique sciences to the table. There are so many areas that need to be discovered. As Dr. Waite talked about with regard to the climate crisis, there's so much with carbon sequestration and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Soroka—

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

The chair is telling me to be quiet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

—I hate to do this to you. You're just getting going, and I can see how interested you are.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

If they could follow up with any information, I'd be appreciative.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Okay. Mr. Soroka has requested a written response to what he was saying.

Thank you, Mr. Soroka.

With that, we will go to Ms. Bradford for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to both of our witnesses. Thank you so much for joining us and talking about this very exciting topic tonight.

Mr. Gaffield, the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities is an organization representing Canada's most research-intensive universities. Its 15 member institutions undertake 80% of all competitive university research in Canada, rank among the world's premier institutions and conduct about 8.5 billion dollars' worth of research annually. It's very impressive.

What role do universities play in moon shot programs?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

One of the opportunities we have now as a result of what you mentioned is for Canada to play a leadership role in the world. The challenges we're facing have what we might think about as domestic articulations, but they're global. Canada has the possibility, given its history and a few things I can mention, to offer, on some level, to convene a global research effort. I think the example of oceans that my colleague suggested is one example of that. In fact, Canada does play a leadership role there.

On the world stage, what I've noticed is that Canadian leadership is often welcomed. We're seen as good chairs of international research teams. We're seen as very effective leaders in mobilizing diverse interests and finding often what you might think of as the “sweet spot” in collaborations to advance things quickly. It seems to me that the opportunity for us now is to use some of our strengths, which I don't think are at the scale we need but have some potential. If we offer that internationally, we can leverage from around the globe.

That's why this is exciting, and we're hopeful to see, for example, Canada's negotiations finish with Horizon Europe, which would be a great thing. There's a big world now, and there are opportunities for us around the world.

Canada could, as part of its moon shot thinking, say, “You know what? Let's try to make an outsized contribution to the world's problems.” We have some contributions to make. Frankly, given the importance of climate change and this digital transformation, I think we have some strengths that position us well to play those global leadership convening roles.

My sense, at least, is that there is enormous potential, and our challenge is to say what we can do systematically to move us there.

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

That leads into my next question, so thank you for that.

What structures and supports help encourage co-operation among universities, the federal government, provincial governments and the private sector in the development and deployment of ambitious research programs?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

One thing we've seen recently is interesting, and it's not even remarked internationally. Twenty-five years ago, Canada was thinking about what it was going to do in higher education, and at the time, in the 1990s, Canada had an okay domestic higher-education system. However, it had kind of moved from where it had been in the 1960s, when Canada was very much importing almost everything. By the 1990s, we had a pretty good domestic side.

There was a debate in Canada about facing this new century. We had talked already about climate change. We were talking about digital and how we were going to face it, and there was a debate. Do we import it, do we buy it or do we make it? Do we have to do it ourselves or can we import it? The decision was that, if we were not in the global effort regarding research and science, we wouldn't even know what to import. We had to be part of that global effort.

Canada decided that it was going to do it through investing in talent. That's why it built the Canada research chairs program. It built a whole series in our facilities, as another member was saying earlier.

My sense at least is that in a number of areas we're on the world stage. We have some access to the global pool of knowledge, but what are we going to do to take that to the next level? How are we going to move it now, especially now that the private sector is moving towards innovation very rapidly in all sectors? There's competitive pressure everywhere. Innovation is in the public and private sectors and the non-profit sector, and they're collaborating everywhere.

Our universities, given the strategy that was developed years ago and has continued, have deep links with their communities and with businesses. This is unique in many ways internationally. I was talking to colleagues in Europe, and recently someone who was visiting Israel was being asked why universities in Canada were so connected with the private sector and with their communities. That's very unusual. In other countries, they build separate institutions that are not connected to the main universities.

This turns out to be, I think, the real strength for Canada, because as your committee has been studying this year, this is really about the circulation of people. It's about talented people moving across campuses, into the communities, into companies and back and so on, and we're comfortable with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Gaffield and Ms. Bradford, I'm sorry to interrupt. Thank you to you both.

Now we're going to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to welcome the witnesses joining us for the study tonight.

Dr. Gaffield, we're pleased to meet you in person tonight for the first time. We met your predecessor, Mr. Patry, when he appeared before our committee.

I believe you made it clear in your opening remarks that funding is flatlining and we can't develop our own capacity due to lack of resources.

You were also quite clear as a representative of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities. Your group does about 80% of its research in Canada. So it's very important that we take into account what you're telling us tonight.

My first questions are going to be about funding, since that topic has caught my eye.

The leading funding organization in the United States will double its investments in the next five years. On the other hand, we know the Canada is the only G7 country to have lost researchers in the past six years. I'm trying to figure out with you how it will ever be possible to come up with ambitious projects if we're unable to retain talent or even develop it to its full potential due to a lack of funding.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

Thank you very much for your question.

Right now, there's no doubt that Canada is in jeopardy, in a way, and we're in danger of dropping in the world rankings rather quickly. That's what the future holds.

It's not just in relation to the United States, even though it's closer to us. It's in relation to Europe too, undoubtedly. Of course, China is also increasingly focused on science as it looks to the future.

There's been a lot of emphasis in Canada recently on the fact that the United States has embarked on a really aggressive Inflation Reduction Act. It actually did, last summer, two things. Right before it did the Inflation Reduction Act, it did the CHIPS and Science Act. Those two go together. It clearly has a two-pronged attack, and there's going to be significant development in a whole variety of infrastructure and a whole variety of aspects of the United States and their transformation. It's all going to be driven by a serious thrust in research and science.

This is sending a clear signal that in building a better future for the world, geopolitical borders are going to be really important. This is interesting because it wasn't that long ago that we were being told all the time about globalization and that the role all countries would have is to be part of global networks and chains, supply chains and so on. There was even a debate about the end of geopolitical borders, as if we wouldn't have to worry about them and there would be all these great transcontinental and globalized forces. However, it turns out that geopolitical borders make a big difference.

We're even seeing that in Quebec. For example, the Fonds de recherche du Québec is working well and it complements federal initiatives. In my opinion, that's an asset.

From a federal perspective, it would be very good if the other provinces had research funds as well to increase the effort across Canada. However, federal leadership in Canada is key.

There's no doubt in my mind, as we're now having this conversation, that we can say Canada has some strengths, and we have the possibility to play a leadership role globally. That's thanks to federal leadership starting in the 1990s and being pretty consistent ever since. The difficulty is that the international competition has been getting greater and greater.

I think we've maybe taken for granted a bit—and we read it a lot—that Canada has a great post-secondary system. Some say, “Isn't it wonderful?” However, in Canada, it's not like that. We don't like to pat ourselves on the back, and we shouldn't. We should say, “Look, we have work to do. The international competition is intense. We have to double down.” That's why your committee is so important to have at the parliamentary level, the federal level. It's a concerted effort to say that we have to get much more serious about this.

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

Thank you, Dr. Gaffield.

You talk about leadership and the fact that Canada must be internationally competitive. Right now, Canada ranks 18th out of 34 OECD countries for research and development expenditure as a percentage of GDP. Canada is also the only G7 nation to have reduced its research and development expenditure from 2000 to 2020.

If the government were to move in a direction, would it be better to invest in ambitious projects or make up for the shortfall of recent years in research and development expenditure?