Science and Research Committee on Feb. 15th, 2022

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Through you I'm going to go to our first scientist, Dr. Strong.

Thank you very much for your opening statement. In your opening statement, you talked about funding research to reduce health care costs. Canada right now has the fifth-highest per capita spending on health care in the OECD, yet we're not getting anywhere near a good bang for our buck. We have the longest wait times in the OECD and we're dead last in doctors and ICU beds per capita in the G7. Could you expand a bit on the results from the research that actually reduced our health care costs?

[Dr. Michael Strong]

Yes, in fact, CIHR does conduct research, and one of its pillars specifically supports health outcomes and investments, to look at how the health care system has improved, not just during the period of the pandemic but also prior to that. It's a matter of looking at the best ways to ensure that the procedures that are put in place need to be done, can be done efficiently and are done well within the facilities that are available for them.

An example of that would be research that's been recently released looking at the types of processes that need to move forward for surgical intervention—which ones require in-hospital work, and which ones can be done in a lower-acuity setting—and that's helping to drive reduced costs. We do conduct research in that area and are helping to influence those costs.

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

Thank you very much.

Through you, Madam Chair, to Dr. Strong again, with publicly funded research institutions accounting for 80%—I think it may be closer to 90%—of the intellectual property created in Canada, how can we drive innovation and downstream commercialization if the players are so heavily dependent on federal funding?

[Dr. Michael Strong]

Madam Chair, I thank the member for that question. It's a crucial one at this moment in time.

It actually speaks to the biomanufacturing and life sciences initiative that's being built coming out of the pandemic to strengthen our ability to create that pipeline and then sustain it in the long term so that ideas and research that find their initial formulation within the laboratory are well supported, are moved through the clinical trials networks and are scaled up appropriately. Then the IP would be maintained within Canada so that the trials are done here and the answers are used to benefit Canadians.

It is a fundamental investment that has been done to address exactly that question of ensuring that we maintain IP in Canada for innovation's purpose.

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

Thank you, Doctor.

My next question is again to Dr. Strong.

In your 10-year strategic plan, what were your solutions to bridging the commercialization valley of death, as you called it?

[Dr. Michael Strong]

The valley of death is actually populated by a number of different issues that need to be addressed. The first is to ensure that the funding is in place to ensure that the development of the research ideas are there to begin with.

Also, there is a need to ensure that there is a deeper association with industry so that, as we're training our next set of graduates, as we're conducting the research experiments to look at this, we have a vision or an eye on getting across that valley. What is needed by industry to ensure that the ideas that are brought forward can be operationalized and moved forward? To do that, you need to have industry involved at the very early stages as well.

Again, returning to the biomanufacturing initiative as an example of that, this is something that is being tightly interwoven at the very beginning of research to try and understand how we support this better. It's incremental change, but it's at multiple different steps.

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

Thank you, sir.

I'm sorry for ganging up on you, but I have one more question for you, Dr. Strong.

You mentioned funding to strengthen Canada's bioinitiative pipeline. I assume that is funding for both university and private sector research; maybe you can confirm that for me. What is expected from a public and private sector split between applicants?

[Dr. Michael Strong]

Again, I will return to the biomanufacturing strategy and life sciences strategy that's embedded with that because it's a good example of knitting together across multiple different departments and agencies the capacity to actually see something carried all the way through, and the engagement of corporate entities.

As the CIHR, we are part of that, but so are my colleagues here at the table, as well as ISED, in terms of helping with commercialization, and NRC. For us, the role of CIHR is to ensure that the investment is there in several different layers. The first is the early discovery component. We want to encourage working with my colleagues here through the tri-agency fund so that industry is brought in as a partner very early on, as well as the private sector. Then, moving into the clinical trials component to support that and to do the evaluative component, that needs to be done with industry as well.

The final piece is a rigorous training program to ensure that the next generation of researchers that we develop understand this pipeline in the context of working with public partners to make it successful.

Again, it's a very broad strategy, and each of us owns a piece of it.

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

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

We will go to Ms. Diab for six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Welcome to all of our witnesses to this historic committee. I'm glad to have you here.

I'm going to direct my first question to Dr. Adem.

You are the current chair of the Canada Research Coordinating Committee. I think you mentioned in your remarks that you'd like to expand a bit on that. Can you let us know the importance of increased coordination for improving research ecosystems in Canada and whether you think there's progress made on that front? What else would you like to see happen and what else we can do to have more of that going on?

We've heard from past witnesses before how crucial it is to have coordination and partnerships among the government and the different sectors.

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, let me say that I started in this job in 2019, and the first day I started, three of us had dinner with the president of CFI. It's been a remarkable journey, especially given the pandemic. The councils and CFI work very closely; we have meetings every week and we work on issues of substance through the Canada Research Coordinating Committee.

It's extremely important that the different councils and funding agencies work together. In fact, I think there are significant areas where we collaborate almost freely and practically as one unit. For example, with SSHRC, we share the administrative backbone—it's the same one for both agencies—and the tri-agency programs deliver a whole slew of programs for the three agencies at the same time.

The Canada Research Coordinating Committee has had the really wonderful effect of bringing us even closer together and harmonizing our activities. We have the three agencies plus CFI, NRC, the chief science adviser, the deputy minister of ISED and the deputy minister of health there.

Among our accomplishments, we developed an innovative new interdisciplinary program called the new frontiers in research fund, and you will have seen the rollout of some of the recent transformation grants. There is fantastic work, work on spinal cords, creative new materials, environmentrics and all sorts of different things and amazing programs.

We have action plans that provide a foundation for ongoing inter-agency collaborations supporting early career researchers. Greater equity, diversity and inclusion in the research community are key interests of the science and innovation communities. We implemented Canada's first strategic plan co-developed with first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to guide new models for supporting indigenous research and research streams.

If I may say so, we also developed the Canada research continuity emergency fund, which helped sustain 32,000 people ineligible for CERB, ensuring the continuity of 22,000 vital research projects. We also have a number of international initiatives, particularly one on climate change, which are going to be truly interdisciplinary.

It's not perfect, but there is huge progress being made and harmonious collaboration between the agencies.

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

Thank you.

I don't know how much time we have left, but I'll hone in on the question, which you mentioned. On support for early careers and graduate students, would you say they're getting their proportion of the overall research funding in Canada? What can we do to better support them? Do you think it's different depending on the discipline or field they're in? Please shed some light on that.

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

People ask me about where the funding for research goes, and primarily it goes to people, to students and trainees. I think around three quarters of the funding for NSERC goes to people, so it's important that they be adequately supported.

Obviously, areas such as computer science and electrical engineering, which are competitive areas where the market has a lot of demand, require competitive offers. As a professor at UBC, we struggle to make offers that are competitive when competing with universities in the U.K., Europe and the U.S. I think it's important for us to maintain competitive stipends and support for students. We certainly all agree on that, and Canada has so much to offer as a country, and our universities are wonderful institutions, centres of knowledge and innovation, so it is important for us to support these young people as best as we can.

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

Perfect. Thank you.

Dr. Hewitt, I will ask you a quick question. I know you were the inaugural chair of the Canada Research Coordinating Committee. Do you see differences in terms of particularly from when you started until now, given COVID? What else can we do to support our researchers?

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

It was an honour and a privilege to take on that role. Based upon where we started, the measures we have taken and put into place over these past few years have been remarkable.

We do have a report we published just this year that we can certainly pass along to the committee and it lists some of those accomplishments.

In terms of the work we did in equity, diversity and inclusion, for example, across the agencies, the changes that were made to the Canada research chairs that went through the CRCC who were involved all the way, programming we put in place—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Hewitt.

[Dr. Ted Hewitt]

—to harmonize support for early career researchers. I could go on and on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Hewitt, thank you. Sorry to interrupt.

We will now go to—

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

Madam Chair, can we ask that those reports be sent to the committee. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Ms. Diab. Absolutely.

Now we will go to Monsieur Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to begin by thanking the witnesses for joining us this evening to participate in the committee's study.

My first question flows from something my fellow member just talked about, the creation of the Canada Research Coordinating Committee in 2017.

I'll start with you, Dr. Strong.

In 2011, Quebec combined its three research funding agencies under the umbrella of the Fonds de recherche du Québec. That was more than 10 years ago.

Have you consulted your Quebec counterparts to learn about the benefits of bringing research funding agencies together under a single umbrella?

[Dr. Michael Strong]

Yes, indeed, we are very close with Rémi Quirion, a colleague who chairs the FRQ, the funding agency that's in place. We have had a number of conversations over the course of the last several years with regard to the successes he has seen by bringing those entities together under one roof. It has allowed a number of advantages that he sees in place with regard to the ability to bring more broadly based policies in, with regard to open science and so on.

In direct answer to your question, yes, we have had conversations with him and work very closely in a number of our program developments.

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

Thank you.

I'd like the other witnesses to answer that question, if possible.

Mr. Adem, would you like to go next?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

Yes. Of course.

I think the model of Quebec is certainly a very interesting one. Coordination I think had some very positive aspects.

On the other hand, the range that our agencies have is quite enormous. I, myself, as a mathematician and physical scientist would not feel qualified to make judgements about humanities much less about medical sciences.

I know that in the day I have to make decisions where my knowledge of the field, the fact that I am an academic with a certain background, allows me to have that view. Also, I may say, Canada is a very broad country and there are different points of view across all the provinces in the country. We tend to always go towards a confederation model where we put together the diverse points of view and work together.

What I see emerging is the close collaboration that we have among the agencies creating that sort of role that Dr. Hewitt has in the sense that we are constantly in touch, we're working together, and we have a number of joint initiatives, but we also have that diversity when it comes to issues, for example, of technology in the case of what we talk about in the natural sciences, or these deep health issues that Dr. Strong talks about, or the social sciences and humanities. I think we need to have that expertise, and some differentiation I personally think is valuable.

Thank you for your question.