Science and Research Committee on April 27th, 2023

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

Our committee is the science and research committee. The focus is on scientists, researchers and early scientists. What can we do better to help researchers on the ground with this field here? What can businesses do, or what can you folks do?

[Todd Bailey]

I think the biggest thing we can do is give researchers and Canadian institutions Canadian customers to work for.

We know that funding in education and research is always in short supply, and sometimes you have to find a corporate partner and you don't have the luxury of deciding where that corporate partner comes from. For innovation to really have relevance, it needs customer demand. If you're innovating in a vacuum, in a dark room, there are some areas.... If you're in medical innovation, you know that if you can kill one kind of cell you're going to have something. However, for most areas of technology, and especially if you're talking about AI or anything digital, there's ultimately a customer.

By helping industry find the universities, the colleges or the start-ups, you're giving industry an ability to innovate on something that people want to buy.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Bailey.

Do I have any time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have about 10 seconds.

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

Okay, well, thank you very much to our witnesses.

Mr. Buy, hopefully the next questioner will get to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Great, thank you very much.

Mr. Lemire, you have six minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Let me remind you that at the February 2, 2023 meeting of the Standing Committee on Science and Research, my colleague MP Maxime Blanchette-Joncas made two requests of the Department of Innovation, Science and Industry.

The first is to provide the Committee with the number of applications for funding and scholarships, in French and English, at Canada’s French-language and bilingual universities, by university and by granting agency, for the past 20 years.

The second request is for the funding provided by each granting agency to every Quebec university over the past 20 years.

After an initial response was sent to the Committee on March 21, 2023, the Committee had to follow up with the Department to request the missing information. Mr. Blanchette-Joncas also followed up personally with the Minister. A second response was sent to the Committee on Monday, April 24. Unfortunately, that response remains incomplete. The following data is still missing: for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the number of scholarships awarded in English and French, by institution, for the last 20 years; and for the three granting agencies, the value of scholarships awarded in English and French, by institution, for the last 20 years.

The Committee suspended the drafting and adoption of the report on research and scientific publication in French while awaiting this data, hence the urgency of obtaining it quickly.

So you received a notice of motion from my colleague Maxime Blanchette-Joncas on April 25. It is moved:

That the committee ask the Department of Industry to provide the missing information relative to the question asked by Maxime Blanchette-Joncas to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry during the meeting of February 2, 2023, that it do so before Thursday, May 4, 2023, at 11:00 a.m., and that the missing information provided be as follows: i) the number of scholarships granted in English and in French by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), by university, for the last 20 years; ii) the amount of scholarships granted by the three research granting agencies, by university, for the last 20 years.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you, Mr Lemire, for presenting the motion we had a notice of in the last meeting.

Would we like to adopt this motion, or is there debate on it?

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

We are ready to adopt the motion, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Okay. If we have unanimous consent, we can accept the motion. It looks like we have unanimous consent.

(Motion agreed to)

Congratulations. We will work on that and discuss it at our subcommittee next week.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you. This is extremely important. We know how much research in French is imperiled on the international scene.

I’ll get back to the subject.

Let me begin with you, Mr. Bailey. You touched on the issue of artificial intelligence. I would be curious to hear from you on Bill C‑27, which I imagine you’ve been following with some interest, and which is now before the committee.

What are your thoughts on Bill C-27? In the context of this study, you could respond by talking about support for commercializing intellectual property, which may be a blind spot in this bill.

[Todd Bailey]

It's a great question.

As you may know—and I'm sure you do—a lot of the interesting stuff on Bill C-27 is still to come. It will be in the regulations. The act itself sets out the regulation of so-called high-impact AI. AI is already regulated. We're hearing a lot about AI now because of ChatGPT. It's really cool but it's not new technology; it's old technology. It's just on a massive scale. We've had AI in our hands for 10 years already.

I think the approach being taken is a good one because AI changes quickly. Six months ago we didn't know what ChatGPT was. Now it's here and it's changing a lot of things. If you were to put in your law, it would take a long time to keep current, and you would always be chasing the technology. At least by having the regulations to address the rules and some of those things, the law will be allowed to keep pace. That is quite important.

It's also important to understand that most AI is not high-impact AI. If you look at what Scale AI is doing related to the supply chain, AI is essentially a productivity tool.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have one minute left.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you for your answer.

If I may, I will submit your name as a witness in our study to the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology. I think your views are worth hearing.

Mr. Buy, first of all, thank you for your work on innovation in the agricultural community. We know that vaccines can create high-risk situations in Quebec and Canada.

How do you assess your industry’s ability to respond to health crises or requirements? Do we have the capacity in Quebec and Canada to produce vaccines that will meet the needs of the agricultural community?

[Serge Buy]

I’m going to go out on a limb here. I don’t believe we have the capacity to produce all the vaccines that are needed in Canada. There are companies that can produce certain things, but right now in Canada there is absolutely no capacity to meet our needs.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

So we’re taking a huge risk.

[Serge Buy]

We’re taking a risk. It’s a calculated risk, but we are taking a risk, I agree.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you. We’ll come back to this during the next round of questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Cannings, go ahead for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

I'll continue with agri-food. My father worked at an Agriculture Canada federal research station throughout his career. He was always bringing home new innovative apple chips and things like that, along with stories of friends of ours who were developing new cherry varieties—Dr. Lapins and people like that.

I'm just wondering how the federal government, through those research stations across the country—and I know they've declined in number over the years—handles IP.

[Serge Buy]

It is a challenge. Ultimately the federal government shouldn't be in charge of the commercialization of IP. It should help research and researchers, but ultimately at some point it should hand that to the private sector to move ahead.

The federal government has done great work and continues to do great work in its research stations. We've advocated for the maintenance of funding for the research stations throughout the country. They've done great work. The handling of the IP is a bit more difficult because of the nature of the industry, and they definitely have had challenges.

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

You mentioned new asparagus varieties, and I mentioned cherry varieties because most of the cherries grown in the world today were developed in the Summerland research station in British Columbia. I know some of the most popular ones went out into the world without any patent protection because that was kind of a new thing back in the 1980s and 1990s when they were developed. Now that has changed, and it seems that the newer varieties have some protection. There are companies set up adjacent to those stations to handle that. Is that a continuing trend now?

[Serge Buy]

It absolutely is.

I think there's much more of a continuum now where the private sector is able to move in and support the protection of IP. My colleague at the table talked about it not being a bad thing if IP gets bought—and I fully agree—as long as the benefits go back to Canadians.

We see producers whose IP gets bought by international companies, and the product of the research is no longer available to them because suddenly it moves south of the border. I think there are concerns on that front. That probably should be a bit better protected to make sure that when Canadian taxpayer dollars are used, there are some benefits to Canada in general.

I'm not opposed to a small company selling its IP to a larger company. I'm in favour of better protection for IP that is developed thanks to Canadian taxpayer dollars.

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

If I have some time left, I think you had some recommendations. I don't know whether you've gotten to them all, but you can take the time to do that.

[Serge Buy]

Thank you for that.

I'll send a list to the committee later on, but there are a couple of things.

We've talked about funding. There have been discussions about funding and a new corporation that's being developed. That's great.

In the agri-food research and innovation sector, there are 22 government departments and agencies that deal with funding for research and innovation. That's just in the agri-food sector. There's little to no coordination among all of them. We've asked whether or not the government knows how much money it is spending to support agri-food research and innovation. The answer is that they don't know. They used to know a number of years ago, but they don't know anymore.

The measure of success shouldn't be the number of government funding programs, but rather what the measurable outputs are. One of our recommendations is to undertake a review of Canada's funding program ecosystem and find strong efficiencies, potentially merging some of the programs and bringing them under some coordination.

I'm not saying anything new. Dominic Barton, in his report a number of years ago—which was asked for by the federal government—did say exactly that. There should be better coordination in that sector.

We should also invest in evaluation services. It's not sufficient for a company to say that it received x amount of money from the federal government, created so many jobs and contributed so much to GDP. Let's verify that information to make sure we look at the funding programs in a good way and make sure we are making good decisions.

Those are some of my recommendations. There are a few more, including, if I have one more second, supporting Canadian innovation by standing by Canadian innovation. The agri-food sector is a bit different. It's a bit like pharma. Our products end up in consumers' mouths at one point, directly or indirectly. There's a lot of regulation and a lot of hoops to go through. Once we've gone through all the hoops that are mandated by the government, it is, on occasion, frustrating when the government does not support the science that's been developed on that front.

We have a Canadian chief science adviser. Let's get a better and broader mandate to support the science developed in Canada.

I'll stop there. I see Mr. Chair moving.