Science and Research Committee on Feb. 17th, 2022

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Dr. Gerdts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Mr. Collins, for your important questions.

Now let's go to Mr. Blanchette‑Joncas for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, allow me to welcome and thank the witnesses joining us this evening.

My first questions are for Mr. Davidson from Universities Canada.

Mr. Davidson, I carefully read the briefs that you prepared. I even studied the last three, which were prepared for pre‑budget consultations in previous years, and I saw that the same recommendations were repeated several years in a row. One of them is more striking; you recommend that the federal government increase investments in Canadian research to remain competitive on the international stage.

Can you tell us how much the federal government should be investing in terms of GDP?

[Paul Davidson]

If I may, I'd like to ask Ann Mainville-Neeson to respond to your question.

[Ann Mainville-Neeson, Vice-President, Policy and Government Relations, Universities Canada]

Thank you very much.

This question is a very important one. You analyzed our briefs. Recent research indicates that Canada has accumulated a deficit of at least $1 billion, simply to reach the competitive level of countries like Germany, Great Britain and Finland. These countries have made significant multi‑year investments and investment commitments, which provide greater stability for research funding.

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

Thank you for that information.

Ms. Mainville‑Neeson, if you would like to continue on the subject, I would like to hear how this billion dollars could be invested. Do you have any suggestions?

[Ann Mainville-Neeson]

Yes, indeed I do have suggestions.

First, we have suggested that more than $770 million be invested in graduate and doctoral scholarships.

We are also proposing an investment of $1.12 billion over five years for the funding agencies, the three granting councils.

Then, we are proposing an investment of $100 million per year to fund research by the new research chairs. A number of new research chairs have been announced, but the funding proposed for them does not really include the money they need for their research itself. So we are proposing that more than $100 million per year be provided to support the research.

We are proposing an investment of $75 million for the commercialization fund.

We have also suggested other funding so that, for example, we can participate in Horizon Europe, a major European fund.

We are also proposing an investment of $135 million per year in security for the research. This is important funding, because new responsibilities are being imposed on the research sector, with a view to ensuring security.

Finally, we are proposing an investment of $500 million over five years for accessibility and for accessible and sustainable campus infrastructure.

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

Thank you very much.

I would like to continue talking about infrastructure.

To be competitive, we clearly need financial resources, but we must also have infrastructures. You talked about green infrastructures, on the cutting-edge of technology.

What can you tell us about that? What do you suggest so that we can be really competitive?

[Ann Mainville-Neeson]

In my opinion, we certainly need investments in order to be, to use your words, on the cutting-edge of technology. The investments must allow us to be competitive on a global scale. If the research infrastructure is not green itself, it will not provide green results.

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

Thank you very much.

I have another question for you, Ms. Mainville‑Neeson.

You represent a number of universities in Canada, some urban, some not.

What do you suggest we do to help universities in less urban centres, so that things are more equitable?

[Ann Mainville-Neeson]

If I understand correctly, you come from the region around Rimouski, which has a very good university.

Investment is just as necessary in rural areas as in urban ones. Researchers have to be recruited from all over Canada. We need diversity in the kinds of researchers; if we are to find our brightest and best, we must look for them in both rural and urban communities.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you for asking those very important questions, Mr. Blanchette‑Joncas.

Thank you, Ms. Mainville-Neeson.

Now we will go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks again to the witnesses for being here. It's good to see you. It's good to see a couple of faces of old friends—Mr. Davidson and Ms. Johnston. It has been a while and I wish we could be there in person.

This is all very interesting. I have about 45 questions written out here. I'm going to start with Dr. Annan and maybe move to Mr. Davidson.

You mentioned, Dr. Annan, some of the challenges, about some of the research being fragmented and a lack of data sharing. I know from some experience that the academic research especially, and also I'm sure private sector research, is very competitive and cutthroat, and it's difficult to get people to co-operate. However, when we have these wicked problems, sometimes that can be put aside. I know I have seen some remarkable academic papers come out recently on conservation issues, which is my field, written by authors who would almost never talk to each other.

Is there a way that universities or organizations like Genome Canada can develop processes that bring these people together to do the important work that really needs to be done?

[Dr. Robert Annan]

I might ask Pari to weigh in on this too, because I know she thinks a lot about this.

I will just say that when it comes to fragmentation there are two pieces. One is that at the level of the researchers we find actually that increasingly there's a real appetite for collaboration. Sometimes there are processes that inhibit this, particularly around data and data moving between provinces. For instance, if it touches on health data there are real challenges, as we have all learned during COVID.

There are some challenges there, but we, like other agencies, are working hard to incentivize that. There are also structural challenges, though, around fragmentation. This is an emergent property of, frankly, chronic underfunding, because what ends up happening is researchers are trying to keep their labs going. They are trying to fund really big projects, and they end up taking funding from different places, wherever they can find it, which means you end up with pots that aren't necessarily lining up with shared deliverables, shared timelines and so on. The research tends to be siloed because of that scarcity of funding, as opposed to a situation where a project could be funded in whole by a single agency, allowing that research to be much more coherent in terms of sharing.

Maybe I will ask Pari to say a bit more, especially when it comes to data sharing in Canada.

[Pari Johnston, Vice-President, Policy and Public Affairs, Genome Canada]

Thanks, Rob, and thanks, Richard, for your question.

It really is, as you noted, sometimes these wicked problems that can help break some of the bottlenecks that have existed.

On the data-sharing piece, as Rob alluded to, this is certainly one where through the experience of our Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network we were able, by virtue of coming together around the national challenge of creating a network for viral surveillance, to influence real-time policy decisions in real time.

We created this infrastructure of really important governance committees, which included our public sector partners at the provincial health labs, the academics, and the government funding partners to really come together to develop cross-provincial standards around data sharing that probably would have taken a lot longer, but given the urgency of the COVID challenge needed to be developed urgently. It enabled different sectors that hadn't maybe worked together as much—the public health labs and the academics—to develop a sense of trust, and it built up a sense of common purpose.

Our hope is that this has created some movement of the needle for data sharing that can be, I think, really enhanced. That's a strong priority for Genome Canada in our ongoing work, but that sense of purpose and urgency helped create newer protocols and data-sharing practices that wouldn't have existed otherwise.

That's just one example, but we're certainly looking to carry that forward in some of the other challenge areas we have identified in the agricultural space and in climate change genomics, etc.

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

Just building on that, it's encouraging scientists to go beyond just the basic research work they do. When they have findings, whether health-related or environment-related, or whatever their space is, they take those results and make sure that the public finds out about them, that government policy-makers, decision-makers, are aware of them. It's something scientists aren't well trained at.

Is there some movement in universities or big organizations like Genome Canada to help them with that? I know certain projects that do that, but they're quite isolated. I'm just wondering if there's a general thrust to make sure that if we're investing all this money, we should find out about the results and make sure they're used.

[Dr. Robert Annan]

Yes. I think from a Genome Canada perspective, we bake that into all of our projects. Because of the way we do research, there has to be a connection into real-world use, and that can include, say, both industry and policy-making.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Dr. Annan, and thank you, Mr. Cannings, for your questions. We are having a really good discussion tonight.

I would like to get one more round in, if possible, giving each of the parties two and a half minutes. We will start with Mr. Baldinelli, please.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here this evening for great discussions and presentations.

I just want to follow up on comments from my two colleagues, Mr. Cannings and Mr. Collins, who talked earlier about your comments on the system being fragmented, but also on the point one of them made about using these in the pandemic as an opportunity to look forward.

You mentioned structural challenges. We've been hearing from several witnesses about the foundation, the ecosystem, being critical. It's about some of those changes you would think would need to be made as we go forward, so we can come out of this better positioned to capitalize and support not only our institutions, but also those doing the important research taking place.

[Dr. Robert Annan]

On this question of fragmentation, if I can follow up, I would say it's a reality. I don't want to overstate the case. The community works really hard to stay aligned. I talk with Paul all the time, and obviously Volker at VIDO and Genome Canada have a lot of intersections. That's true across the board.

With our mindsets, when we think about fragmentation—and maybe this is a policy tendency—we think about how we need more coordinating mechanisms and meetings and committees or whatever, but that really misses the point, which is you can coordinate, but coordinate towards what? Developing some shared sense of what we need to achieve and setting some strategic priorities allows the system to organize and align itself in some ways.

The second piece is this. I talked about this concept of scarcity, which is something one of my kids taught me about a couple of years ago, this scarcity mindset. If there's not enough funding in the system, then the researchers and others are going to be just trying to find the money where they can. That tends to fracture, and it's opposed to a mindset of abundance, where there's enough funding to do what we need to do, so now let's get to the table and figure out how to actually do the work together. It's an unintended consequence of some of the underfunding that's been mentioned, both here and with other witnesses.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Other witnesses have mentioned the cumbersomeness of the bureaucracy, and that whole notion. One actually indicated the notion maybe of a single shop. You also talked about a single agency, about supporting that kind of work and avoiding the bureaucracy, as opposed to trying to get the funds in hand to do the important projects and work that need to be done.

Maybe that's something we can look at, moving forward.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Baldinelli, I am so sorry. You always bring forward an interesting perspective, and I apologize for having to do this.

Perhaps we could now go to Ms. Diab for two and half minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much.

I actually had questions for all of you, but with two and a half minutes, I'm going to really have to limit this.

I come from Nova Scotia, and before coming into the federal public service I was in the provincial government there. We talked a lot about regulatory barriers to data-sharing among provinces and among institutions. I'm really interested to learn from you about how you see that happening. Do you experience that, and how does it affect the research and the work you are doing in your areas? Is it leading to fragmentation?

I'm not really sure which person to.... I don't think you can all answer that, but maybe Universities Canada would be a good one to start with?

[Paul Davidson]

Sure. I really appreciate the question, and I also really appreciate the work you did while you were in Nova Scotia.

We should be doing both: investing in research, because it's really important that both the federal and provincial governments and the private sector invest significantly, and also looking at unlocking the potential of our research institutions. That involves some element of deregulating and enabling the researchers to get on with the research. I think we've learned a lot through COVID about what we need to do there.

I guess the other observation I would make is that as we move forward—and Rob's been very good about this—we have a tendency to want to jump to the end of the story, to how this discovery leads to X, Y or Z, but we have to make sure that we invest in that front end. If there's a plea that the universities in the country have right now, it's that as we drive to innovation, to jobs and to economic growth, let's make sure we feed our researchers. Let's invest in our researchers. Let's make sure they have the tools they need.

The pandemic has given us a chance to reflect on what has worked in Canada and what can be done better. I'm so pleased this committee has been structured to look at this over the long term.