Science and Research Committee on Feb. 10th, 2022

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you very much, Doctor.

Dr. Bedard-Haughn, a big part of being successful in innovation is developing our own products in our own fields and not just copying or parallelling advances of the Americans. We need to take advantage of the resources we have here in clean energy, natural gas, critical minerals and agriculture rather than going and copying what they've done. We have more farmland that we can harness into world-leading innovation than any other country in the world.

How can we turn Canada into an agricultural leader in innovation in food processing?

[Dr. Angela Bedard-Haughn]

I think one key place for us to invest to make that possible is in supporting those innovations and that risk space. We're certainly seeing more and more investment now in the start-ups and the opportunities here in Saskatchewan and in the Prairies in general than we have in the past. There's been tremendous growth in terms of the bioprocessing space.

We're trying to move away from that notion that we're just a net exporter of commodities to look at more and more opportunities for bioprocessing here. We look at the strengths and the strides that we've made in terms of plant-based protein and the processing there.

As I alluded to in my remarks, I think one of the really important pieces there is to recognize that along with those bioprocessing opportunities, there are other spin-off opportunities, because we're rarely taking one commodity and turning it wholesale into something else. There are usually fractions that are being used. When we're talking about the new energy plants that are going up in parts of the Prairies that are looking at producing energy from canola that cannot be used for human consumption—sometimes it's just off-grade—that doesn't mean it can't be produced and used for biodiesel. There are by-products. I alluded to canola meal, but that's only part of it. We need to continue to invest in that foundational science that says, okay, what is in these by-products? What are the useful pieces of these by-products? What would it take for us to turn this into something useful, whether that's from a soil amendment through to some other types of products that can maybe be used in manufacturing other types of materials?

I think the foundational research is looking at the composition, our tools for examining what those different compounds are made up of, how that tool kit has continued to grow, but then there's providing the space and the investment for those ideas to incubate. It's really exciting to see more of that investment happening here, and I think that having those ecosystems supported at all levels will be key going forward.

[Ryan Williams, Conservative, Bay of Quinte, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

That concludes MP Williams' time.

Now we will have, for five minutes, MP McKinnon.

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

Thank you, Chair. I'm sharing my time with Jenna Sudds.

Go ahead.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

Terrific. Thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be with you here tonight.

I have so many questions, but I'd like to focus on one issue we haven't talked about too much yet. I'm going to direct this to Dr. Charbonneau.

You talked about talent being so key, and we're here today to talk about the successes, the challenges and the opportunities for science in Canada. Thinking of the challenges and opportunities and recognizing that tomorrow actually, February 11, is declared the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. I'd like to get your perspective on how we are doing with respect to attracting and retaining more women and diverse individuals.

Could you comment on the progress or the challenges, either way, with respect to attracting more women and diverse individuals to STEM-related careers?

[Dr. Sylvain Charbonneau]

Because you mentioned “STEM-related”, I was going to go on a tangent to say that I think in certain disciplines, Canada is doing extremely well on the diversity of attracting stellars in various fields. In the STEM disciplines, I do agree that there is added complexity. At the University of Ottawa the need for bilingualism is in the mix. Visible minorities, women, STEM disciplines and bilingualism—the pool of talent becomes increasingly smaller. That's the ecosystem in which I live on a daily basis.

Having said that, I think for most universities, if not all universities—this was led by your chair, in fact—when we introduced the EDI categories for the Canada research chair, certainly it stimulated the ability of universities to attract women and visible minorities and people with disabilities and indigenous scholars in all fields. Now that we are progressing in our ways, it will be divided into the three councils—the social sciences; the STEM disciplines, if you wish, or NSERC; and the CIHR, the health sciences. We are going to be asked to try to meet these equity targets up until 2029.

That's at the talent level on the Canada research chair side of things, but so much more needs to be done in all of our respective institutions, to be honest with you. How do we do this? It's a challenge that every university is dealing with, but we're making significant progress. I mean, we have data on this.

[Jenna Sudds, Liberal, Kanata—Carleton, ON]

That's great to hear.

I'm going to pass the rest of my time over to MP Bradford, as I know she has a question.

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

Thank you so much, MP Sudds. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Myers, first of all, it's so fascinating to have you with us. I am from Kitchener-Waterloo, so I'm really familiar with Perimeter. I'm so glad you could join us.

From your position in Waterloo, how do we develop stronger private-public partnerships so that more graduates have jobs and opportunities in Canada and we can compete on a per capita basis with other G7 countries?

[Dr. Robert Myers]

That's a great question. It's a real challenge. My alma mater is the University of Waterloo. I'm a graduate of the co-op program. One possibility that we're working on is extending that program to the graduate level to try to connect the students here with internships with local start-ups or start-ups in the Toronto area.

I think that's a major step forward, but it's also having institutions like PIQuIL. We literally have scientists from local quantum start-ups sitting at desks side by side with the graduate students, post-docs and researchers we have here at Perimeter. They are sharing opportunities and co-supervising students. I think it really opens the eyes of the graduate students to what the possibilities are.

That's been an effort that we've started here more broadly at Perimeter with a program called “career trajectories”. It's really just to open the eyes of the highly qualified young talent that we have here to the possibilities that are beyond the academic career path and out into the private sector. We have been seeing a number of successes there, where students have started their careers in start-ups or with major firms in the Toronto area, or they've launched their own start-ups.

It's something we are working toward. It's a really important question that you asked there.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Corey Tochor]

Thank you, Dr. Myers.

It's been a very eye-opening committee tonight. I want to thank our witnesses on behalf of all of the committee members for their presentations and for their fulsome answers.

We will suspend the meeting so that we can move to the in camera portion of the evening.

[Proceedings continue in camera]