Science and Research Committee on March 21st, 2024

[Pari Johnston]

I think Sarah talked about merit review and the success metrics, the indirect costs of research and the limitations that we have. The other one I would add is course release. The faculty at our colleges who are doing the research are also the ones who are doing the teaching, and the granting council programs right now do not allow supports within their programming for faculty course release. That's a huge barrier, and that is something that could be addressed.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay. Great.

What about—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you. We're getting a lot of ground covered. Sorry, Ryan.

It's over to Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Johnston, I'd like to talk about funding eligibility and allocation with respect to a program your members use.

I'm talking about the technology access centre grants. In Quebec, we refer to these centres as college centres for technology transfer. These grants are provided through the college and community innovation program. The maximum amount is $350,000 per year for five years. However, in Quebec, the federal government has capped the grants at $100,000 a year, which is a bit strange.

Ms. Johnston, why is the federal government's cap for Quebec institutions lower? How do you explain that?

[Pari Johnston]

That's a good question.

I'll start by pointing out that Quebec colleges are really ahead of the curve when it comes to research. That's what I've learned over the past three months visiting our CEGEP campuses. I've seen how much more involved the CEGEPs are in this field. They're subsidized because the province is willing to make that investment, which is excellent.

The challenge, as I understand it, is that the college and community innovation program has allocated different amounts to Quebec institutions because the province has also invested. Ms. Watts-Rynard may be able to tell you more about that.

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

We're being penalized because we invest more.

What do the members you represent think about that, Ms. Johnston? It's a serious inequity. People are being penalized because their work is further ahead. Their funding is being capped. That means eligibility for funding is not the same in Quebec as in the rest of Canada.

Would you please comment on that? People have gotten extremely upset over much less than that.

[Pari Johnston]

We've recommended that the program be expanded so everyone gets the same funding. That's our position.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

I was reflecting on that as we were talking. Sometimes when you find other sources, you get overlooked by the federal government. It's good to bring that forward. Thank you.

Mr. Cannings, you have two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

Ms. Watts-Rynard or Ms. Johnston, I don't know if you remember my question, which I rambled on about, but perhaps you want to comment on it. In the near term, are there any things the federal government could do to make it easier to access research funding for colleges and institutes?

[Sarah Watts-Rynard]

I think that something we've spoken about is thinking about the totality of the existing investment in research, thinking about the colleges and polytechnics as an integrated part of the ecosystem and then trying to transition some of those review processes that very much push towards publications and prior funding. Something like the research support fund is available to the bigger institutions. That gives them the capacity to write more proposals.

It's not just a matter of the review processes themselves having a bias. It's the fact that the institutions that have the funding have more funding, and the more funding you have, the more resources you have. When we start thinking about how to better use polytechnic and college applied research, what we're talking about is reimagining the entirety of the pot, thinking about where the ecosystem can benefit from primary research, and then thinking about translating that for the market, which is actually the place where our institutions really excel.

It means throwing out the traditional sense of how you decide what is merit. Merit has largely been about previous funding and publications. Those things don't make sense in our world, and yet that is the reason these institutions are very good at the work they do.

[Pari Johnston]

I would agree with exactly what Sarah said.

On the point of the research support fund, to ensure the capacity to be able to be responsive.... The research that we have seen shows that the.... Right now, within the CCI program, if you get a grant, you have to pay for your indirect costs. The research support within that grant is capped at 20%, and the indirect costs are higher than that. It also means that it's taking away from the research grant itself. That is not the same for the universities.

These are examples of definitions, terms and conditions that have been defined and have not kept up with the evolution of the sector's capacity or its contribution, as Sarah has noted, to the broader ecosystem. We're really interested in making sure there is a reimagined look at where our research sector is now, to meet Canada's biggest challenges.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today and for your responses.

I have a comment.

I was at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic High School in Guelph last week. They were building robots. I used to build robots. I did that because of my college background at Red River College. They were all thinking of university. I said, “Do you know what? The college network is a very good place to learn how to build robots.” They won a global competition last year in Texas at the high school level. We need to support this kind of innovation.

Thank you for your testimony.

Thank you to the committee for giving me a minute and 28 seconds to indulge. I love this stuff. I really appreciate the passion that you bring and that the committee members have brought to this discussion so far. If there are additional comments, please send them to the clerk. I know we had to interrupt you a few times. We thank you for being here today.

Now we're going to move into committee business.

We have Michelle Rempel Garner with her hand up.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I have a motion that I would like to move:

Given that,

(a) 40% of Western University students are experiencing food insecurity and require assistance;

(b) The Western University Student Council’s food center reports a 600% year-to-year increase in Western students requiring their assistance;

(c) The Liberal Government’s 23% carbon tax increase will make food more expensive for students at Western and across Canada;

And in order to help students feed themselves, the committee call on the Liberal Prime Minister to immediately cancel his 23% carbon tax increase and report this recommendation to the House.

Chair, in the testimony that we heard today from many university groups, they talked about how Ph.D.s and others people who are involved in Canada's research enterprise were leaving the country. I do think it is incumbent upon us as a committee, when we're tasked over and over again with looking at funding recommendations related to students involved in research in Canada's universities, to admit the fact that the inflationary pressure on Canadian students is huge.

The genesis of this motion came from a story about the Western University Students' Council food centre reporting a 600% year-to-year increase. Since the story came out, it has been corrected. It's actually 40% of all Canadian students who are experiencing food insecurity.

A lot of that is attributed to increased housing costs, but also increased food costs. On the increased cost of food, we've heard many stories in the House of Commons and in various committees about how agricultural producers' costs of production have increased significantly.

What happens is that food costs increase because of the carbon tax on grain drying, for example. We also heard about the mushroom farmer here in the south end of town. The carbon tax increases the cost of food, and then there are fuel surcharges and whatnot, so it costs more to get the food to the grocery store. Then the grocery store has to pay carbon tax on keeping the heat and the lights on. Increasing the cost at this point in time is really problematic for food insecurity. That is justification number one.

One of the other points that I want to make for the committee is that the carbon tax isn't working. Recent reports have shown that Canada is still going to miss its 2030 emissions target by over 50%.

There are some other interesting stats that don't really get talked about, such as that 70% of Canadians are worried about climate change, myself included, but support for keeping the Prime Minister's carbon tax policy registers with only 18% of Canadians. I think the reason for that delta is that they understand that in Canada there aren't substitute goods for high-carbon products. What's happening is that we have this carbon tax increasing and increasing, which is supposed to transition consumer choices to lower-carbon goods and services, but those goods and services don't exist.

We haven't seen major transit infrastructure projects built. I have one in my city for which the funding was allocated in 2015, and it hasn't been built. We aren't seeing major investments or build-out in Canada's electricity grid. We're seeing the electricity grid in my province, for example, burn out, and people driving electric cars are being told not to plug in their cars on cold days in winter.

This is not to say that we shouldn't be looking for solutions to climate change. That's absolutely necessary, but all of the evidence shows that, as Canada is a cold, natural resource-based economy and we have to drive, the carbon tax as it's structured by the Liberals is not actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, it is creating food insecurity for students and, in turn, creating problems for Canada's research enterprise, and it is certainly a pressure on grocery prices, so increasing it right now would not be great for Canada.

Mr. Chair, I do want to draw your attention to the fact that people will say, “Oh, well, there's a rebate with the carbon tax.” The Parliamentary Budget Officer has actually done a significant analysis on the carbon tax. In Ontario, as of this year, the carbon tax still costs an average Ontario family $500, and that cost is scheduled to triple or quadruple by 2030, so I don't understand where a student right now, who already has to go to the food bank, can come up with this extra money.

If it's not working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if it's causing food insecurity, if the rebates aren't covering the cost of the carbon tax, and everybody knows it, why would we keep it?

That's a question that you don't have to take my word for or the word of literally millions of Canadians who have shown through polling that this tax is highly unpopular. You can also look at Liberal premiers across the country and Liberal opposition leaders. I'll note that, in Ontario, the Liberal opposition leader herself has voiced opposition to the carbon tax. The Liberal premier of Newfoundland has voiced opposition. NDP leadership candidates in Alberta have voiced opposition to the carbon tax. Why? It's a policy that doesn't work. It makes life more expensive.

The last thing I'll say, Chair, is that I do believe that the climate emergency needs to be addressed with policy that works, and if the Liberals and the NDP continue a dogmatic adherence to a policy that is not reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, while further driving up the price of goods and, at the same time, in the context of this motion, driving Canada's talent out of Canada, we're never going to be able to address greenhouse gas emissions reductions. That dogmatic adherence to a policy that does not work is highly problematic.

Again, I would hope that colleagues on this committee would understand that they have tried this out, and it's clearly not working. It's clearly detrimental to folks across the country, and it's time to go back to the drawing board. Going back to the drawing board means getting rid of this tax and, at the very least, in the meantime ensuring that the increase that is scheduled to happen on April 1 doesn't happen—if for nobody else, then for the students at Western University.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you for putting the motion on the table and for your comments on it.

For the committee's info, we have extended support services until 1:30 if we're going to vote on this today, just to give you that framework.

We have a speaking list that has Mr. Tochor, Mr. Turnbull, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, Mr. Cannings and Mr. Soroka on it.

If we can get to the vote today, it would be wonderful, but of course, it's up to the committee.

Mr. Tochor, you have the floor.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to thank my honourable colleague for her remarks. If she was the good cop, I'll be the bad cop.

This policy stinks, and government stinks right now. You guys are not listening. To all members of Parliament, next week we are not sitting. We will have a full week, and I would encourage you to talk to your constituents about this motion we have put forward. Really, do more than talk. Listen. Listen to Canadians. Canadians are suffering, and if you think that's not tied to your dramatic drop in the polls, get off your arse and start returning calls, and start—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Watch your language, and go through the chair, please.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Chair, I would say to all members, next week go and knock on a hundred doors. Go listen to regular Canadians and hear first-hand how this policy is devastating Canada.

The motion here today is based upon a reliable news story that shows how our students are suffering. There is a 600% increase in food bank usage. What if that was your child? What if that was your family? What if that was your constituent? It is your constituent, guys. Everyone in this room is reflected in the numbers of food bank usage because of the policies of this Liberal government. From the article that this motion is based upon and the research that was conducted, 40% of all university students, not just Western University students, are experiencing food insecurity that requires assistance.

This government consistently takes away people's ability and opportunity to provide for their families and replaces that with the government, making more people reliant every day on the government to survive instead of opening up the opportunities for Canadians to achieve their true potential.

This is why the carbon tax is such a devastating policy and why on April 1, April Fool's Day, Canadians will be played like fools again. Once again, we're increasing the carbon tax by 23%.

I go back to our role as parliamentarians, which is, to the best of our abilities, to represent the views of Canadians—the Canadians we represent in our ridings who send us here to share their views, to the best of our abilities, and vote accordingly.

I challenge Liberal and NDP members. Next week, we're not sitting. There's a great opportunity. Your inboxes are full of emails. There are probably calls from people wanting to talk to you about how much pain they are in because of the policies of this government. It is a dangerous thing when governments stop listening, because citizens don't stop. It doesn't stop their pain and it doesn't stop them wanting you to hear how poorly this policy has affected Canadians' ability to provide for themselves—to feed, heat and house their families.

I hear the argument that there's this rebate, that the rebate makes up for all this extra tax. Chair, I would submit that for many Canadians, if not the vast majority, there's more month left than money left in their paycheque every month. It is getting worse and worse. I've heard first-hand from families that are having trouble with the carbon tax increases. It's also troubling for business operations in our ridings. More and more business owners have communicated to me how much of a difficult situation they are in because of the carbon tax. There are swaths of companies on the verge of bankruptcy. We're jacking up taxes by 23%. Wow. Where does this end?

One of the arguments around the carbon tax is that it's a few cents on the litre and it's not a big deal. Those people haven't paused and thought about all the inputs that go into everything that Canadians pay the carbon tax on and what we buy as consumers. I have an example. This is timely because earlier this week I was talking to a colleague from Quebec. I have a lot of respect for him. He made the comment that they don't pay the carbon tax. I said that they do. If you buy anything from across Canada, you're paying the carbon tax for those goods.

The example I shared was about a bottle of beer. As Canadians, we like to indulge in a beer from time to time. Hopefully, it's a beer brewed in Canada. Chances are that if it's brewed in Canada, Saskatchewan is in that bottle. If it's the barley that we grow out on the prairies, that producer, before he plants that crop, will pay for diesel in the shipping of that seed to the farm. During seeding, the diesel that inputs that crop is also hit with the carbon tax. Any inputs that are put onto that crop also get hit. Ultimately, in the harvest of barley out of Saskatchewan, you pay the carbon tax. If it's a wet year, you have to pay the carbon tax on the drying of said grains. You then have to transport that crop to a buyer. That all gets built into the costs for that producer.

For the most part, we sell our grains on the world market, where we can't charge a premium because they have a carbon tax on them. If it's cheaper for countries to get those inputs from the States or Brazil, they will, because they don't have the carbon tax.

Going back to that bottle of beer we were talking about being brewed for Canadians, the cost is also going up on April 1. Congratulations. It's going up. The price of beer is going up. Going back to that bushel of barley, before it gets shipped to that brewery, it will also pay a carbon tax. The brewery, if it's located outside of Quebec, will pay a carbon tax. Ultimately, it will be shipped to Quebec for my colleague to enjoy, and he believes he doesn't pay the carbon tax. I'm sorry, but he does.

We pay the carbon tax in so many ways in Canada. The only way we don't pay it is if we import that good—not from other parts of Canada, but from other parts of the world—which disadvantages our country. This is such a terrible policy for our economy, for our country and for our citizens.

I am very happy to support my colleague's motion, which I believe is timely and warranted in this climate.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

When you mentioned the motion to me, you were hoping to see a vote today. I hope we can see a vote today.

We have a speaking list. I have Mr. Turnbull, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas and Mr. Cannings.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to speak to this.

Obviously, I'm ideologically opposed to what the Conservatives here are suggesting and implying. Unlike them, I'm looking at the facts and the evidence, which are very clear. The International Monetary Fund has said that carbon pricing is actually the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. The IMF has said that for many years. There are jurisdictions around the world that have followed suit, and Canada is one of them.

We also know that economists, like Trevor Tombe from the University of Calgary, have estimated that carbon pricing adds about 0.15% to general inflation. If you think about it, that would be about 15¢ on a $100 grocery bill. When traced through the supply chains, he estimates that it would probably have about 0.33% on the cost of food, so that's 33¢ on a $100 grocery bill.

We also know that the majority of emissions on farms are already exempt from the price on pollution. I know that Ben Lobb put forward Bill C-234, which was stuck in the Senate. I don't know what stage that is at right now, but I know that I disagreed with that strongly because I don't believe in eroding the price signal, and I believe that there are opportunities for farmers to continue to green their operations. That's not to imply, as some have said in the past, that I'm saying that they're not already making efforts to do so. I think farmers are very responsible actors and take care of the land, steward the land, but there are ways that farming can be done that are studied at the University of Guelph.

I'm sure the chair knows this very well, with the Guelph statement and all the work we did on the agriculture and agri-food committee leading up to the new sustainable agricultural partnership agreement, and the additional funding and resources that the government has put forward to ensure that farmers can adopt some of those best practices in sustainable agriculture. I'm very passionate about that.

I also want to mention one thing that bothers me about what the Conservatives keep claiming, which I think is just wrong; it's just false. The European Central Bank, not so long ago, suggested that climate change itself will have an effect on food prices of up to 3% per year—an impact on inflation and food prices that is about 30 times greater than the price on pollution, which is really interesting. The Conservatives keep trying to pit the price on pollution against the affordability challenges that Canadians are experiencing, which we all admit are real. They're not due to the price on pollution, mind you, as they keep claiming.

They never talk about the rebate. I'm surprised that they were courageous enough to bring it up for the first time in this committee, because they seem to deny that rebates exist in almost all of their interventions. Individuals who have done the actual research on this—including the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whom we regularly cite—have said that eight out of 10 families get more back. We also know that it's the low end or middle-income families that tend to get more back. Trevor Tombe also estimated in a recent article that it was about $300, on average, that families net in their pockets in comparison to what they pay in carbon pricing. As a moral argument, I think you're going to lose this battle on every level.

Who should pay for the pollution that's going into our atmosphere? When I ask people at the doors in my riding, they all say the same thing: Industry should pay for the pollution that it creates. That's exactly what the price on pollution does. It ensures that industry, which is creating the pollution, is paying for it. Industry often hands that price down to the consumer, and so consumers are impacted by this, but that's why the rebate is in place.

It's also been estimated recently that one-third of the emissions reduction that Canada can project based on the current policies and regulations that have been put in place will come from the price on pollution. That's just out in The Globe and Mail. Rick Smith from the Canadian Climate Institute put that out. I think that's a significant result for a market-based mechanism.

It was originally proposed by Conservatives, who you would think would be supportive of this, considering they all got elected in the last election based on a platform that included a version of carbon pricing—even though, I would say, our version of it is much more robust and doesn't have some of the drawbacks that their design had in their last election platform.

When we think about this, we should consider that there is really significant scientific research on the fact that human beings are the cause of climate change. The emissions we put in the atmosphere are causing climate change, and the damage to our economy and the amount of money we are paying for that damage are just exponentially increasing.

The Canadian Climate Institute recently produced a report called “Damage Control”, and I've read it from cover to cover multiple times, because it provides a really significant set of data and modelling that's very sophisticated. It looks at the cost of climate change.

Again, the Conservatives are the first ones when there's a flood or a drought in the Prairies to whine and complain, wanting us to bail out everybody and wanting the federal government to step in and resource all of the farmers who experienced losses, which is our business risk management program. It is a really big program that's increasing all the time, and we're getting pressure to increase those programs. Well, what about preventing climate change from happening and dealing with the root causes of it? They don't acknowledge, ever, the cost of climate change on the economy.

Climate change is going to threaten the very prosperity of our economy and destabilize the world economy. It already is. This is a quote from the Canadian Climate Institute report: “Climate change is a macroeconomic risk that threatens to significantly undermine future prosperity”. I think that's a significant statement.

The modelling they have done suggests that, by 2025, which is next year, we'll experience losses of $25 billion, which is 50% of projected GDP growth in this country. Just think about that for a second. It's 50% of GDP growth. If we want to grow our economy, just think about how we'll be falling behind and how Canada's prosperity as an economy will be compromised by not addressing climate change if the Conservatives have their way.

By mid-century, by 2050, they say that it will be $78 billion to $101 billion. That is three to four times greater than what it will be in 2025, so, in 25 years, the multiplier effect of the damage to the economy from climate change will be three to four times greater than what it is essentially today. By the end of the century, they estimate that it will be $391 billion to $865 billion. That's getting close to a trillion dollars by the end of the century if we don't address climate change.

I don't know why, but the Conservatives just never seem to acknowledge that climate change is having more impact on household budgets and inflation and is compromising the economic prosperity of our economy. I can't understand it. I can only assume that it's because they're stuck in the past, and they just don't want to admit that climate change is real, which is very consistent with what we heard coming out of their convention before, when they had a resolution on the floor, and they couldn't get agreement on even acknowledging that climate change is real.

We had the chief science adviser here. I asked her, is there any doubt in your mind that climate change is real? She said absolutely not, that the scientific evidence is sound and clear. If you go and look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that panel has produced 4,000-page reports documenting, with the most significant amount of evidence and data, that climate change is real.

However, the Conservatives would scrap the price on pollution, which is literally the most effective, cost-neutral, revenue-neutral mechanism, with all the proceeds returned to Canadians. They would scrap the most effective market-based mechanism that they proposed to address climate change.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

For the interpreters, please keep your voice down.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

I'm sorry about that. I got a little overanimated.

I don't know if the Conservatives are just doing this to grandstand today, or whether they want to actually study this in the 11 or 12 meetings that we already have scheduled. We have five meetings on the U15 study. We have six meetings on the Arctic research study. I think we have about 15 or 16 meetings left. Maybe they want to study this further down the road when it's their turn, but I'm not really sure why we should spend more time debating this today, given the fact that their turn doesn't come up for at least another 11 or 12 meetings from now.

Perhaps I'll end there, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

We're getting close to time.

We have Mr. Blanchette-Joncas next, and then Mr. Cannings.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will try to be concise and specific.

I love live performances, and we're being treated to quite a spectacle today. Quite a few things about this spectacle surprise me. We just saw my Liberal colleague get all worked up about the importance of climate change, yet his is the party that bought a $34-billion pipeline to produce and export more oil. This government is the one trying to convince us that it sees climate change as a priority.

I don't really see vegetarians owning butcher shops. But that is how this government operates. It says it's green. It says it's fighting climate change. Then it goes and spends our money, our taxes, on a $34-billion pipeline to produce more oil, pollute more and export that oil outside Canada.

Both parties are engaging in some very partisan speechifying. They're politicizing this committee, and that makes me sad.

My Conservative colleagues seem to be concerned about students' cost of living. On Tuesday, March 19, 2024, there was a multi-party press conference about increasing federal student funding. That funding hasn't gone up at all in 20 years.

The Bloc Québécois, the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party were at that press conference. We were there, along with the Union étudiante du Québec, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars, Support Our Science and the Ottawa Science Policy Network.

The only party not there was the Conservative Party of Canada. They want power, but they don't think it's important to increase scholarship amounts at all, even though that funding has been stagnant for 20 years. If anyone understands the importance of taxes, it's the Conservatives, but they also need to understand what inflation is. They don't care that this funding hasn't gone up in 20 years.

Here they are, tying themselves in knots to convince us that they care about food insecurity and the cost of living for students, all the while blaming the carbon tax. They're contradicting themselves, and they cannot be trusted to support scientific research. They most certainly cannot be trusted to support students whose scholarships, as I said, have not increased at all in the past 20 years.

That's all I have to say, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

The clerk tells me we have about four minutes because of the adjournment, so Mr. Cannings, if you want to intervene, you can. If you'd like to move to adjourn, you can try to do that and see whether the committee allows it.