Science and Research Committee on Sept. 25th, 2023

[Margaret McCuaig-Johnston]

No, and the IP sometimes—not always, but sometimes—rests with the Chinese company.

Yes, that's yet another dimension. There are many dimensions to this problem. That's why it's taken a while for the government to get its head around it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Great. Thank you.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, you now have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are for both witnesses, who will be in the best position to answer them.

I would like to know their opinion on the testimony we heard last week, which stated that Canada's competitiveness, particularly with China, could sharpen the greed of some researchers. I think you know where things stand.

Federal government investment in research and development has declined over the past 20 years. However, China has significantly increased its investments, from less than 1% of its GDP in 2000, to almost 2.5%. Canada invested 2% of its GDP at the beginning of the millennium, and in 2020, it invested a little more than 1.5%.

Has the fact that some researchers were interested in doing business with certain countries ever compromised the national security of research?

[Margaret McCuaig-Johnston]

Again, ASPI has developed a critical technology tracker that shows that China leads now in 37 of 44 technologies. That's a big concern. One of the reasons they're leading is they've been standing on the shoulders of Canadian, U.K. and U.S. researchers. The U.S. is next after China in all of those technologies, but where would the U.S. be if Canadian, U.K., Australian, German and other researchers were all partnering together to get behind an allied standard and an allied effort to be first in these technologies?

We know from China's long-term plans, which go out to 2050, that they intend to have the strongest military, the most advanced innovation and the strongest economy. Why are we helping them to do that when we know they will attack neighbours? It's not just Taiwan but India as well. Will they take all the fish from the Phillippines? Their behaviour is bizarre and quite dangerous.

We also need to be putting a lot more money into innovation here in Canada. The numbers on innovation have just been dropping over the last 10 years.

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

If Ms. Puglisi wants to add something, she can send us a written response.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Great. Thank you both.

Mr. Cannings, you can bring us home for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to follow up on the last question that Mr. Blanchette-Joncas asked Ms. McCuaig-Johnston, and that is Canada's investment in innovation and in research.

We heard a comment earlier about Canadian scientists being lured to get involved with China, just because of the money offered for the research and for salaries. Is that something that Canada should be doing better—our investments have been dropping off—and can we compete with China in offering our scientists the money they need to do their research?

[Margaret McCuaig-Johnston]

It's very hard to compete with China, because they're pouring trillions into research and development. We don't have the money to compete with that. We were at our peak in R and D investment back in the early 2000s, when we had a surplus. Since we lost our surplus, there has been less and less invested.

I see it. My first ADM assignment was in the Department of Finance, so I was funding R and D. It should be seen as an investment. When our R and D investment can be put together with investment from the U.S. and other countries, it will have more traction and more power. We should not be taking our Canadian resources and handing them to the Chinese. This pains me to say, because I worked for many decades on those collaborations, but China has changed under Xi Jinping.

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

Just quickly on that, with students, how concerning is it for researchers here to take on Chinese students, who are well funded, for that research?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have 30 seconds.

[Anna Puglisi]

I think the student issue is a challenge worldwide. We talk about it a lot in the U.S. We have a leaky STEM pipeline. There are wide swaths of our own populations who are not participating in STEM, and so it's important to invest in the future, because that is really, in lots of ways, what's going to counter a lot of what China is doing.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's terrific. Thank you. Thank you both for your testimonies.

Thank you, members, for great questions.

Thank you again, Margaret McCuaig-Johnston and Anna Puglisi, for being here with us this afternoon in relation to this study. If you have any other information—I know there were some questions we had to cut short—please direct it to the clerk. If you have any questions in general, the clerk is here to help us in any way she can.

We're going to suspend briefly now. If Mr. Cannings can stay online, we'll bring in our next panel. We should be up and running within the next three or four minutes, so stay close and we'll get going.

Thanks again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I call the meeting back to order. Welcome back.

We're going to get into our next panel. After a really good discussion in our first hour, I'm looking forward to this hour as well.

This study we're doing is pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, December 5, 2022. The committee is commencing its study on the long-term impacts of pay gaps experienced by different genders and equity-seeking groups among faculty at Canadian universities.

It's my pleasure now to welcome our witnesses today.

First we have Airini, provost and vice-president academic at the University of Saskatchewan. From Simon Fraser University, we have Joy Johnson, who is president, via video conference.

Thank you both for joining us today.

We'll start our first testimony for five minutes with Airini, please.

[Airini, Provost and Vice-President Academic, University of Saskatchewan, As an Individual]

Hello. Thank you so much for the invitation to speak.

My name is, yes, Airini. I'm a professor specializing in equity in higher education. My career includes working for governments, the OECD and the United Nations, and I hold the role of provost and vice-president academic at the University of Saskatchewan.

I'll cover three areas today: the University of Saskatchewan's context with regard to pay gaps, actions universities can take and actions the federal government can take. Together we can advance science and research to benefit a more equitable and prosperous Canada.

The University of Saskatchewan is similar to many universities nationally. Right now, in a new cohort of assistant professors, we have more faculty who are women than men. Over the next decade, we expect to see women trend closer towards 50% of full professors.

Even with good news, we know there is a pay gap, especially at the full professor level. There are specific data points we track. We work to evaluate performance inclusively and apply compensation fairly with women, indigenous faculty, faculty of colour, 2SLGBTQIA+ faculty and those with disabilities.

The causes of the gender pay gap that we're seeing are around the full professor ranks and who makes it to this rank, starting salaries and research productivity. Elder and child care responsibilities affect the productivity, and we saw this especially during the pandemic. My colleague Professor Scott Walsworth and others have written on this most recently. There's the time-consuming service work and more teaching and there's workplace discrimination and the achievements of women being devalued and undervalued. This suggests that alongside the pay gap actions, there are also pay discrimination actions.

What can a university do, then, to address the gender gap?

In 2015, the University of Saskatchewan introduced the gender pay equity increase, which was negotiated with the faculty association and provided a lift to base. This narrowed the pay gap by 2% for women faculty. It was a band-aid solution, though, and we are working on systemic solutions, including career progression, training in EDI and anti-discrimination, flexibility in workplace arrangements and access to child care services. We're aware of provinces and institutions that have introduced pay transparency. Research has shown that this can reduce the gender gap and reduce salaries.

On a note about indigenous and EDI pay gaps, in 2023 our university launched the indigenous citizenship verification policy. This means we can now track measures of inequity such as compensation. Following the lead of other universities, USask will launch a regular equity census, and the data obtained will enable us to examine diversity and gender pay gaps and identify actions. We had to put policies in place so that we could start this work.

Two long-term impacts are the gender inequality in pensions—and we know the committee has heard about research by Professor Smith-Carrier and team on the gender wage and pension gap that's about half a million dollars and grows over the career of a woman faculty—and then there's the talent for science and research. Canada is in a global and highly competitive talent market for top researchers. Making a difference in gender equality and inclusion is essential. The alternative may be to continue to lose women and equity-seeking scientists from Canada despite high productivity levels and potential.

You may be thinking that many of the actions on the wage gap in universities will be for the universities to see through, and that's true. Even so, government may wish to consider three levers for change: investment, influence and information.

In terms of investment, the primary route for government influence is through the granting councils. Government may wish to ask for data that universities are tracking and then use this to inform policy. This was done very effectively with Canada research chairs. Granting councils could ask for grant recipients to provide assurance of pay equity within their research teams.

In terms of influence, this committee's report will be influential, because you're seeing pay gaps affect science and research. Government could ask for sector outcomes to be reported on, associated with your report.

With information, ongoing audits of pay and gender are already happening through the government's gender results framework. In collaboration with universities, the framework could generate case studies, beginning with pay gaps experienced among faculty at Canadian universities.

In closing, everyone has a right to be paid fairly. Government and universities can work together to attract and retain the talent needed to advance science and research to benefit a more equitable and prosperous Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much. You're bang on time. I appreciate that. I look forward to the questions on your presentation.

Our second presentation will be from Joy Johnson, the president of Simon Fraser University.

[Dr. Joy Johnson, President, Simon Fraser University]

Thank you very much. I probably will be echoing some points of Dr. Airini's excellent presentation.

I want to thank the panel for inviting me to speak today. I do want to acknowledge that I'm speaking to you today from the rainy west coast on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Kwikwetlem people.

I do appreciate the opportunity to be part of this dialogue.

At SFU and at universities across the post-secondary sector, we recognize the importance of diverse viewpoints and perspectives. In a historically male-dominated field, which academia has been in the past, gender diversity among faculty is something we take very seriously.

SFU has made important strides in increasing the number of women faculty members at the university, but we also know that those numbers don't show the whole story. B.C. has one of the highest gender pay gaps in Canada, with women in B.C. earning 17% less than men did in 2022. This systemic issue can be seen replicated across the post-secondary system.

In 2015, SFU completed a study on gender disparity in faculty salaries. The study found that although we were making strides in terms of gender parity, the increased representation did not translate into improvements in women's pay relative to that of men. The gender salary gap at that time was about 10%.

Interestingly, this result seemed to apply only to research faculty. We found no evidence of a gender salary gap among our teaching faculty. We also found that the gender salary gap for research faculty was largely attributable to what we refer to as “off-scale” salary supplements, or what you might think of as market differentials, rather than a gender gap in placement on the base salary scale.

We also found that faculty who take parental or medical leaves, regardless of gender, faced lower odds of promotion, and therefore the gender salary gap, we have continued to conclude, is real and systemic. However, it's complicated, with many overlapping factors. This is why this conversation is so very important.

I want to give you a quick outline of some of the actions we're taking at SFU to address the gap.

Similar to the University of Saskatchewan, in 2016 we implemented salary adjustments to begin to address the gap. Those included a permanent salary increase of 1.7% for our women faculty, as well as an additional financial award of 1.7%. Since then, we have seen some evidence that the gender salary gap for research faculty is shrinking. It was 10%; it is now sitting around 7%.

There is still more progress to be made.

One of our biggest challenges in further addressing the issue has been a lack of comprehensive data. In recent years, there's been growing awareness and concern about data limitations and administrative data that reproduce the gender binary and an absence of information about other dimensions of diversity relevant to understanding salary inequities. We have a new vice-president of people, equity and inclusion. In her work, she's trying to move forward to really address this issue.

In British Columbia, there are several pieces of legislation that have recently been passed, including new pay transparency legislation and broader anti-racism legislation. We believe these are important legislative pieces that will help our work.

We're also working to address disparities for other groups targeted by the Employment Equity Act, including people with disabilities, indigenous peoples and visible minorities.

A lot of this work rests on better data collection. To that end, we are implementing an institutional-level diversity data framework. The intent, really, is to gather better data and to monitor and think very carefully about our diversity objectives and ways in which we can cultivate a more equitable and inclusive campus.

When I became president in 2020, it was a priority of mine to address equity, diversity and inclusion. I think it's a very important issue for all of us. I want to say that there's still much more work to be done. I am proud of the progress we've made but recognize that we are not where we need to be.

I look forward to your questions and to the discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's terrific. Thank you, Dr. Johnson, for your remarks.

Now we'll turn to the questions, starting with Ben Lobb for six minutes.

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

Thanks very much, and it's great to be here.

My first question is to the president at Simon Fraser. How is it possible that there's a pay equity difference among the research staff?

[Dr. Joy Johnson]

One of our issues is that we have offered, over time, market differentials for particular areas. These would be differentials that are given to areas where it's hard to recruit people or where their salary expectations are higher.

For example, in our business school, in our accounting program, many of those faculty get market differentials, but we see actually more men represented in those departments than women, and therefore we end up across the board seeing higher wages for men overall.

Similarly, we've seen certain market differentials being offered in our engineering faculty. This is to attract and retain faculty that get offered compensation on top of base salary, and that really is what, I think, tends to exacerbate this issue.

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

Just so I'm clear, there was some talk about staff who are more focused on research versus faculty who would be teaching. Are you saying it's the same, or is there a distinction between the two, in your mind?

[Dr. Joy Johnson]

We hire some faculty who are teaching faculty. They're lecturers at the university. Their full-time role is to engage in teaching, and we do not see a wage gap in that group, but our tenure-track faculty are also responsible for research in service, and that's where we're seeing the gaps.

I think that speaks to what I said earlier about market differential, but there are also some of these other dynamics in terms of parental leave and other factors that tend to take people out of the workforce for a period of time and basically disadvantage them in terms of their salary growth.

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

There was one other point you made about data. It was that there wasn't enough data. Did I misunderstand what you were saying about data?

[Dr. Joy Johnson]

It has been an issue for us, and I think for many universities across Canada. We have not, to date, collected detailed information from our faculty on all of the demographic categories that, in my view, will influence and impact salary outcomes. Currently at SFU, we're moving forward in this regard, but we're not there yet. We're not collecting information about race. We haven't collected information about indigenous identity or about disability.

Some of the constraints have been because of privacy issues, but we are overcoming those now. Some of the legislative changes are going to be requiring us to collect and report on some of this data, and I think that's going to really help us a great deal.

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

With this topic of study being in Canadians' minds for quite a long time, why hasn't there been more of an effort, I guess, among faculty staff to collect this data? There are thousands and thousands of staff that work at universities across the country. Why wouldn't they have had some focus groups put together to study this years ago? It shouldn't be a surprise today. Do you have any ideas on that?