Science and Research Committee on March 21st, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Welcome to meeting number 78 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the Standing Orders. Therefore, members are attending in person in the room, but we also have some members as well as some witnesses appearing remotely by Zoom.

While speaking the official language of your choice, you can use the interpretation button at the bottom of your screen. If interpretation is lost, please let me know immediately, and we'll suspend until we regain interpretation.

Address questions through me, as you usually do. For members and witnesses attending in person, watch out that your earphones are away from your microphones so they don't cause feedback for our interpreters. We want to keep them safe throughout the meeting. Speak slowly and clearly, and when you're not speaking, keep your mic on mute, please.

With regard to a speaking list, the clerk and I will do our best to work our way through that. We'll have a list to work with that will change as we go.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(i) and the motions adopted by the committee on Tuesday, January 30, and on Thursday, February 15, 2024, the committee is commencing its study on the distribution of federal government funding among Canada's post-secondary institutions.

It's now my pleasure to welcome, from the Alliance of Canadian Comprehensive Research Universities, Dr. Nicole Vaugeois, associate vice-president, research and graduate studies. Dr. Chad Gaffield, CEO of the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities, is appearing virtually. He is returning to our committee. We also have Philip Landon, the chief operating officer of Universities Canada.

Welcome to all. It's great to have you back at our committee. I'm looking forward to this study.

Thank you to Maxime Blanchette-Joncas for this study.

We'll get started with five minutes for each of our speakers, starting with Dr. Nicole Vaugeois.

[Dr. Nicole Vaugeois, Associate Vice-President, Research and Graduate Studies, Vancouver Island University, and Co-chair, Alliance of Canadian Comprehensive Research Universities]

I'd like to thank the committee for this opportunity to hear the views of the members of the Alliance of Canadian Comprehensive Research Universities, otherwise known as ACCRU.

Our alliance represents 46 of 92—or 50%—of Canada's universities. Our members are small and mid-sized universities representing all 10 provinces and the Yukon.

While there is considerable diversity in our member institutions, some characteristics include world-class expertise in disciplines that are often closely aligned with the economic, social and environmental priorities in their regions. They provide a gateway to Canada's learners to access post-secondary education in their region and language of choice. They provide transformational training opportunities, often at the undergraduate level. They have strong ties to their regions, with established relationships with industry, community and indigenous partners. Several are quite new. They have small faculty complements, limited research infrastructure and under-resourced research administration teams.

We applaud this committee's initiative and hope that it sheds light on some of the historical and current realities of federal research funding distribution in Canada.

From our extensive analysis, key metrics from funding competition data show that the current distribution is heavily concentrated in institutions located in Canada's largest urban centres. For example, 79% of all federal funding goes to 15 of Canada's universities that represent 52% of Canadian researchers and 59% of grad students. Twenty per cent of the most financed researchers in Canada receive 77% of all funding, and the top 1% of them receive 23%.

Despite our members representing 50% of Canada's universities, we receive 12% of SSHRC's funding, 9% of NSERC's, 2% of CIHR's and 4.5% of CFI's. Canada has been aware of these inequities since 2001, and despite the recommendations in the 2002 study by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology to address the problem, things have gotten worse.

Research in Canada is not limited to a couple of postal codes. For example, our researchers are undertaking studies on a broad range of Canada's most pressing priorities in health and in natural and social sciences. These include discoveries in food security, wildfire mitigation, emergency management, rural health, homelessness, the toxic drug crisis, advancements in our resource sectors and more.

These universities punch above their weight in terms of ROI in research. A limited amount of funding can be transformational for them. They're also vulnerable to swings in research funding that would be inconsequential to some larger institutions.

We support many of the recommendations of the Bouchard report for additional funding to the councils; however, we strongly believe that this funding must be done in a much more equitable way. Currently, the distribution of funding in Canada is often biased because it's based on previous success rates: Success begets success. This limits the return on investment in research, known as the Matthew effect, and it widens the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Changes to this distribution model are long overdue. Special programs are often launched in ways that preclude participation by small and mid-sized universities. One of the impacts is that 90% of funding that goes to student research is embedded in investigator-driven grants. Until funding support is bolstered for students in a way that's not tied to success and tri-agency funding, many of Canada's students will not have access to the funding they need to conduct research training unless they relocate to institutions with higher allocations.

Direct costs must be borne by institutions in order to administer research funding. The amount of money you get through the research support fund is also based on your previous success in tri-agency funding. This leads to small and medium-sized institutions having a very difficult time keeping up with the growing number of compliance requirements that are happening at universities, the most recent being research security.

As your committee undertakes this important work, we encourage you to ask, is the distribution of federal funding addressing the priorities and needs of all Canadians? Is it limiting our competitiveness and innovation potential? Is it meeting the training needs of all of our Canadian learners?

Canada does have the potential to leverage its considerable research talent to lead this critically important research, but this will be possible only if we recognize that we've designed a system that privileges some and disproportionately limits others.

If left unchecked, this gap will continue to widen and limit our research excellence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much, Dr. Vaugeois, for getting us started here.

Now we'll go over to Dr. Chad Gaffield from U15 for five minutes, please.

[Dr. Chad Gaffield, Chief Executive Officer, U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you today.

I want to, first of all, thank you again for all your work to enhance science and research in Canada.

My remarks today focus on the awarding of research funding by the federal granting agencies to Canada's post-secondary institutions. From time to time throughout the history of federal funding for research, this topic has arisen, characteristically when research support has not kept pace with growing expectations for Canada's research ecosystem.

As you know, U15 Canada is composed of the 15 leading research-intensive universities, which came together in 2012 to create an association dedicated to helping advance research and innovation policies and programs for the benefit of all Canadians. U15 Canada's focus on federal research-related activities complements the work of other associations and explains why we are pleased to be founding members of the Coalition for Canadian Research.

Canadians are rightly proud that we are home to world-class universities competing on the global stage. These universities act as domestic research hubs. They play leading roles in providing industry leaders, policy-makers and governments with access to the global pool of knowledge and to highly qualified, talented people who drive innovation across all sectors.

In many cases, research-intensive universities act as catalysts in Canada's entire diversified research ecosystem, which includes not only universities, but also research hospitals, colleges, polytechnics and other organizations.

For example, research projects funded by the Canada first research excellence fund in 2022 include 11 projects, with six involving U15 members collaborating with 18 additional institutions. Such collaborations are common in all granting programs, as illustrated by research on the environment. For example, a CFI-funded project now includes top researchers from the University of Waterloo, the University of Alberta and Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, who are studying contamination in waste management and hoping to devise cost-effective solutions.

In another example, the transforming climate action project is a major initiative led by Dalhousie University with Université du Québec à Rimouski, Université Laval and Memorial University.

It is essential to emphasize that the awarding of all research grants follows a rigorous, independent, non-partisan, merit review process involving scholars, scientists, engineers and other experts across campuses, industry and government. Canadians can be rightly proud that federal support for researchers is based on the individual merit of their work as determined by independent experts, with no preference based on the institution of the applicants. The rigorous merit review processes at the federal granting agencies have been continually updated to reflect insights and evidence about how best to make the difficult decisions to fund specific applications.

Canada is internationally recognized for its best practices in the assessment of scholarly and scientific research. Recently, the Bouchard report made recommendations for enhancing the awarding of interdisciplinary, international and mission-driven research grants. We look forward to the government's response.

The most important factor in our discussions today, however, is the increasing gap between the available funding and the growing expectations for and potential of Canada's research and innovation ecosystem. As a result, researchers from all institutions compete for insufficient funds. For this reason, U15 Canada enthusiastically supports the Bouchard report's recommendations to increase the annual core budgets of the granting councils, as well as to provide globally competitive support for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

A major federal investment in the research ecosystem would better support research activities in institutions of all sizes and mandates. For this reason, the current erosion of research funding will undoubtedly be a central focus of your current study, as well as your committee's continued advocacy ahead of the forthcoming federal budget.

Thank you very much.

I am looking forward to our discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much, Dr. Gaffield.

Now, it's over to Philip Landon, from Universities Canada, for the last five minutes.

[Philip Landon, Chief Operating Officer, Universities Canada]

Good morning, members of the committee.

Thank you for inviting me to appear today to discuss the important issue of funding for Canadian educational institutions.

Universities Canada represents 97 institutions of all sizes, from research-intensive universities to comprehensive regional institutions to smaller focused institutions, all of which are part of our rich and varied research ecosystem.

As you know, our universities are pillars of their communities, working to solve the complex problems of today and tomorrow. Perhaps most importantly, they're training the highly qualified talent Canada needs, equipping over 1.4 million students with the skills needed to drive the success of the Canadian economy.

Academic research and development is a major driver of Canadian innovation and economic growth. Universities conduct more than 40% of Canada's R and D, producing over $55 billion annually in economic activity, and supporting 680,000 direct and indirect jobs in communities of all sizes. When it comes to research funding, however, Canada is falling well behind our peers, who have made significant new investments to support advanced research training.

The number and dollar amount of Canada graduate scholarships have not kept pace with inflation or the growing graduate student population. It is estimated that each year thousands of recent Ph.D.s are leaving Canada to pursue careers abroad, representing an annual loss of $740 million for Canada. This poses a serious problem for Canada's economy and future growth. Canada's universities are facing significant financial restraints, both in research funding and in other funding mechanisms.

While today's study is focused on the distribution of federal funding among Canadian universities, I want to caution the committee against approaching this with the mindset of needing to take away from one institution to support another, or redistributing a shrinking pie of research funds. An approach like this would set us even further behind our global competitors.

We urge the committee to focus instead on ways the government can ensure that sufficient funds are available to all universities and accessible to researchers at institutions of all sizes and that they have the opportunity to submit successful research grant applications.

As a first step, this does require a significant investment in the research ecosystem. As I think this committee knows, we're calling for an increase in the core research funding streams of Canada's granting agencies by 10% annually over the next five years. These granting agencies are the heart of Canada's innovation economy and are key to creating a wide array of research training opportunities that cement the in-demand skill sets that Canada needs.

The government must also support research excellence and prevent a brain drain of top talent to other countries. We recommend doubling the number of Canada graduate scholarships, increasing their value by 50% and indexing them to inflation so that we're not having this conversation again in 10 years.

These recommendations were made by the government's own advisory panel in the Bouchard report, and in this committee as well, following the study on the Government of Canada's graduate scholarships and post-doctoral fellowship programs.

The government should work to reduce application barriers. Lead investigators are increasingly spending less time doing their research and more time doing the administrative work related to cumbersome funding application processes. This has an especially heavy impact on smaller teams that can't afford to have a single researcher pulled away from the research.

Recent research security measures illustrate this challenge well. Safeguarding our research from unwanted IP transfers is absolutely necessary, and Canadian universities have become world leaders in building capacity in this space. However, this also puts a significant administrative burden on universities. Smaller institutions receive much smaller sums, or sometimes are cut out completely from research support funds in research security areas, leaving individual researchers with limited supports.

The Bouchard report also recommends structural changes to the research ecosystem to make grants more accessible, including by building a single application point for grants. We support this recommendation.

It's important to note, though, that even with the removal of these barriers, immediate investment in research is critical for Canada's economic success and to rebuild Canada's research capacity, foster innovation, create jobs in towns and cities across the country and secure our nation's competitiveness in the 21st century.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Thank you all for being right on time with your presentations and giving us a few extra seconds.

I have a reminder before we get into the questioning round. We have some committee business at the end. Thanks to the members for adjusting their schedules for the 30 minutes of committee business that will follow our studies this morning.

We'll start off with our first questions from Ben Lobb from the Conservatives, for six minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Nicole Vaugeois.

I noticed the list of schools that don't make the top cut. As far as I can see—I'm an Ontario member of Parliament—the University of Guelph, for example, isn't in the top level of research funding. When you look at the economy in Ontario—I know this is a Canadian Parliament, but certainly we're looking at this—agriculture and agri-food are the leading driver in Ontario. Shouldn't there be another...?

I'm not trying to do Lloyd's bidding here, by the way.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You're getting extra time on this one.

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

I'm in an agricultural riding. Shouldn't there be more dollars focused on that? That is definitely one of the country's priorities. Everything we can do helps to feed the rest of the world. What are your thoughts on that?

[Dr. Nicole Vaugeois]

I think that would be shared with a number of other ridings where agriculture is a real priority. I'm a coastal girl on the islands, so I would include aquaculture in there as well. Sometimes there have been boutique programs that have been done with different federal government ministries working with the tri-agencies that have been successful at that.

I would like to see more of those, because I think that would get at some of the regional differences that a researcher in a large metropolitan area isn't going to have the same access to. Guelph would be one of those, yes.

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

Another area of priority across the country, but specifically in Ontario, is energy. I know that McMaster does a lot of research in nuclear energy, but there's also the Ontario Tech University in Oshawa, and there are others.

Would it not make more sense to take a look at what we're doing across the board here and ask what our priorities are here? What is in the best interest of the nation? Then we can look at funding some of those schools so we can continue to graduate and educate people who can step right in and get great jobs in the economy.

[Dr. Nicole Vaugeois]

I think there's room for.... There is the investigator-led—meaning a researcher comes up with their own questions and pursues knowledge there—and then there's the applied research. I don't see them as being on the continuum. I think there's a nice middle ground where the nation and regions themselves can identify the priorities here. Researchers could then be better positioned with the partners, the industry players, the actors and the context that would help them be more successful. That kind of research, in my experience, has much more impact in the region and stands to benefit more Canadians.

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

I'm not trying to pick a fight with any universities, because I've probably had friends through the years who have attended most of them.

Take, for example, the University of Toronto, the biggest one of all. They have $3 billion in endowments. They have over $100 million annually going into their investment income. They have over $30 million a year in fees they pay these people to manage that large amount of money.

Should we not be asking the biggest universities to do more with their own dollars instead of coming to the government and crying poor? I mean, I'm not trying to pick a fight with the big ones, but is that a possibility that we should be looking at?

[Dr. Nicole Vaugeois]

I think we have to uncover every possibility, and that includes institutions' own resources, the government's resources and industry and community partner funds. It's a career-limiting move for me to sort of pick on any folks there, but I think we need to uncover every rock here.

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

The other point I want to touch on with you is that, obviously, it's not realistic for just a big tidal wave of money to hit the smaller universities for research dollars. What would be the right step, the practical step, for some of the mid-sized and smaller universities for research?

[Dr. Nicole Vaugeois]

I think I will use the word “redistribute”. Going back to 2001 and 2002, we were saying that we were going to come up with some special programs to give some of these new, smaller universities a leg up to be able to compete, a redistribution of some of the bigger pots, particularly the ones that small institutions aren't even eligible for. Concerning all of the Canada excellence research chairs and the CFRE fund, small institutions aren't even eligible for those.

We continue to fund some at the expense of others. I do think there is redistribution potential, but we need some targeted small institution funding, yes.

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

Mr. Gaffield, it's good to see you here again, or to have you here virtually.

What are your thoughts on the idea of re-evaluating the pot of funds going out, the redistribution of dollars, and maybe asking some of the bigger universities that have huge endowments to do some of the heavy lifting so that others can be lifted up as well? Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

Sure. Thank you very much for the question.

The discussion this morning is highlighting the difficulty I've experienced inside selection committees. One is faced with really compelling proposals, whether they're related to farming, agriculture, food or energy—they're right across the board—and one has to make exceedingly difficult decisions simply because it's a competition and there's a limited amount of funding.

I want to emphasize this, because there is no distribution happening. In fact, these are competitions, and some are deemed to be more worthy than others just by virtue of this independent, expert review, so I think that's important to keep in mind.

The second thing—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's great. Thank you. We'll have to save the second part for another answer.

Thank you, Mr. Lobb, for the series of questions.

Thank you, witnesses, for your answers.

We'll go over to Mr. Turnbull for six minutes, please.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to all the witnesses for being here today. I really appreciate the opportunity to have you here and to hear your various perspectives on this important matter.

Mr. Gaffield, maybe I'll start with you. You made some remarks in your opening statement that struck me: the word “catalyst” and how these research-intensive institutions that are larger could be playing a catalyst role. I found that interesting, because it gets to the heart of the issue.

I did a lot of work in the non-profit, charitable space for most of my career, and we found there's a lot of competition for limited resources, similar to what we're discussing here today. We found that organizations that can be competing for those resources can also overcome that by intentionally collaborating. We also found that some of the larger institutions in that space that have capacity can be treated as shared platforms. That was the term we were using back when I was doing work on this. They can utilize their administrative capacity, etc., to help smaller institutions do a lot of collaborative, in-depth work.

Ultimately, what are we all about and what are we trying to achieve? It's not institution building, really; it's about the research. It's about advancements in research and innovation.

How does U15 accomplish this, and is there more that U15 can do? Given this opportunity to talk this through together, is there a way that U15 can do even more in lending its capacity and its scale to float all boats, in a way?

[Dr. Chad Gaffield]

Exactly. I appreciate this question, for a variety of reasons.

One is that, first of all, I think it's really misleading to juxtapose little universities, middle universities, big universities and so on, because when we look at much of the research activity that happens, in fact, the large, urban universities, which are the research-intensive universities, often act as hubs. Whether it's on a regional basis, nationally or globally, they're bringing together talented researchers from whatever institutions might be relevant.

The examples I gave earlier—and there are many, many more—show that it's quite an intertwined ecosystem. Canada needs those global leaders at the same time as they need opportunities for talent to emerge from anywhere. You never know where the next great researcher might emerge from, and we want to be able to give them opportunities to become part of these major initiatives that address issues, whether they're in agriculture or energy, as we were talking about earlier.

I want to emphasize the importance of.... When we look at measures and percentages and so on, keep in mind that it is really the big, urban universities where the medical faculties are. For example, to include CIHR funding and then to assess that in terms of any so-called distribution is very misleading. Obviously, U15 institutions get the vast majority of CIHR funding, simply because they have the doctoral medical schools.

My sense is that when you look at it, it is a much more integrated system that, happily, we have in Canada, as in the U.S. and Great Britain and so on. Global institutions are playing that role in being a catalyst within their locations across Canada.

[Ryan Turnbull, Liberal, Whitby, ON]

Okay, thank you.

My understanding, as well, is that the large majority of grants are awarded based on merit and it's a competitive process. There are some that are allocations depending on the size of the university, or how many research chair positions you have, or the success, as you said, of past years. However, there are also a large number that are collaborative, or large awards of collaborative proposals, so many institutions do collaborate.

Ms. Vaugeois, I'm wondering if there are evaluation criteria—and I just don't know this myself—in the tri-council for collaboration. In other words, is collaboration encouraged in the awarding of those grants? In essence, if there's more collaboration, you're more likely to be successful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Dr. Vaugeois, you have about a minute.