Science and Research Committee on March 22nd, 2022

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to welcome the witnesses joining us this evening.

My first questions are for Ms. Maxwell, from Evidence for Democracy.

I read the report your organization released back in November. It provided a progress update on each of the 35 recommendations in the Naylor report. In fact, this spring, April to be precise, will mark the fifth anniversary of the report.

In the report, you conclude that the Liberal government has implemented only nine of the 35 recommendations in the past five years. One of the main recommendations in the report was the creation of a Canada research coordinating committee. A call for applications was put out in 2019, but no progress has been made since.

You should know, Ms. Maxwell, that I asked Canada's chief science advisor, Mona Nemer, about that very thing, but I didn't get an answer. She didn't know what I was talking about. In February, I also brought it up to Dr. Nipun Vats, the assistant deputy minister of science and research, who was supposed to get back to the committee with an answer. Unfortunately, a month later, we have yet to receive it. We want to know what is happening at the department with that call for applications.

This is my question. In the wake of the Naylor report recommendations, how does this lack of progress hurt the competitiveness and productivity of Canada's science ecosystem?

[Rachael Maxwell]

I am going to pass this over to my colleague Farah Qaiser, who actually led Evidence for Democracy's work on our review that you mentioned on the fundamental science report.

[Farah Qaiser, Director, Research and Policy, Evidence for Democracy]

Thank you, Madam Chair and Mr. Blanchette-Joncas, for the question.

The recommendation you're talking about is for NACRI, the National Advisory Council on Research and Innovation. You're correct that there haven't been any updates since.

When we were carrying out this research to look into progress since, we found that there have been no public details about this committee. There was a call for applications in 2019, but there hasn't been an update since. There was a secretariat. There were two employees who were listed as within the Council on Science and Innovation secretariat, but I can't find that information anymore.

That body was intended to act to provide broad oversight of federal research and innovation. It was meant to include sciences as well as innovation leaders from both business and civil society. It was going to act as a convening body to really connect research and innovation.

In terms of an update from someone within the federal government, I will point you toward a recent news article. It was published in University Affairs on March 2, 2022, by reporter Brian Owens. There was a quote in there from a spokesperson from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada where they noted that the government “continues to work towards” implementing the council but they didn't offer any specific details or timeline.

I share your frustration. I unfortunately do not have additional insights to note, but we're eagerly awaiting details on this too. This body could help connect research and innovation in Canada's science ecosystem.

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

Thank you.

I always strive to approach things constructively.

I want to discuss something with you. I read the report, which set out 35 recommendations. Nine of them have been implemented, 13 are in progress, and 13 are outstanding. In other words, 25% of them—or one in four recommendations—has been implemented.

What do you think of that?

Which recommendations would you say the government needs to prioritize?

Which ones does the government need to act on immediately?

[Farah Qaiser]

Absolutely. I do want to note that nine recommendations are complete, but there are 13 in progress. Technically, 22 out of 35 recommendations have seen some progress. That is a notable win. But you are correct in saying that there are 13 recommendations that are still unresolved.

These include NACRI, or the council of science and innovation body you referred to. Other unresolved recommendations include the call to implement a first ministers conference on research excellence, bringing together both provincial and federal actors when it comes to talking about and investing in science and research. Another unresolved recommendation is to harmonize legislation across the federal funding agencies, as well as to review the current allocation of funding across the federal funding agencies.

I will note that these remain unresolved, but I do want to point out that there are a few caveats to consider when it comes to looking at the fundamental science review. This review was published in 2017. It's been almost five years. There have been two mandates and two governments since. We've also been living through the COVID-19 pandemic. The science landscape in Canada has changed, as has the global science landscape.

I do also want to note that while the fundamental science review had a large and broad scope, it wasn't inclusive of all the different inputs in Canada's science ecosystem. It didn't include government science and it didn't include applied science, so it's not a very complete report.

What I want to note in my last 30 seconds is that whether we use the fundamental science review as a guide or not, it is urgent that we continue to invest in Canada's science and research ecosystem. The challenges we're facing—climate change, future pandemics—are not going away. The costs of not having the right evidence on hand will be far greater in the long run than the immediate costs of investing in science and research today.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

We will go now to Mr. Cannings.

The floor is yours for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I think I will stick with Evidence for Democracy for now. I was going to ask about the Naylor report card that you presented, but Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas just did that.

You also put out a report on transparency in government research and policy, called Eyes on Evidence, in January. I wondered if you wanted to expand on that. I'll ask you a specific question about how transparency can or should be built into government legislation and policy. I was peripherally involved in drafting the species at risk legislation. It was built on a model of transparency. There was scientific evidence presented to the government by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. The government then made a policy decision, but the evidence on all that chain was clear and public.

I'm wondering if that's a model that is used in other pieces of legislation or policy—or should be. Perhaps you could give me a sense of where we are in Canada with using evidence in policy-making.

[Rachael Maxwell]

I'll speak for a few seconds and then pass it over to my colleague. She led the Eyes on Evidence work specifically.

I mentioned off the top that since 2015, mandate letters have all stated a commitment to the use of science and evidence-based decision-making. We really appreciate these repeated signals, but what really spurred our interest in transparency was that, from our position, we think that if the public is to assess what progress is actually being made in this endeavour in evidence-informed decision-making, they must be given the opportunity to scrutinize the relationship between evidence and policy decisions that are impacting their lives. That kind of transparency gives citizens the chance to consider whether they agree with how evidence is being used to formulate public policy. This is why transparency is really mission-critical here to evidence-informed policy.

From this position, we undertook the Eyes on Evidence study to examine transparency specifically in the federal government. Put simply, can the evidence behind policy decisions be found by the lay public, or can someone from outside government understand what the government is proposing to do, and why?

I'll pass it over to my colleague. Farah actually led this work and can provide more specifics.

[Farah Qaiser]

In doing this work, as Rachael mentioned, we ask if the public can find the evidence behind policy decisions. We used the transparency framework that was developed in the United Kingdom by Sense About Science. It includes different categories, such as asking what information we know about the issue itself, how and when we will know if the policy has worked, and why the specific intervention was chosen. Can we find the evidence behind these questions?

What we ended up doing was collecting a total of 100 random federal policies from 10 different federal departments and agencies. All of these policies were announced between January 2021 and June 2021. We applied the transparency framework and we gave them scores between zero and three. In each case, could we find the evidence behind the issue at hand or the intervention that was proposed? When would we know if the policies worked?

What we found, sadly, was that, overall, the transparency of evidence usage across federal policies scored very low. They scored either zeros or ones. This means that it's very difficult for members of the public to find evidence behind policies. They're left questioning. If this policy announcement is made, how will we know when the results of this policy will be shown? How will we know why this was made? For example, why was a ban proposed, rather than a tax refund, a rebate, an eviction notice or something like that?

We found that there were different transparency scores across different federal departments and agencies. In general, we were left wanting. Yes, there was evidence mentioned, but there was no source or reference provided, or we noticed that there were pieces of evidence on different parts of websites, but they weren't included in the policy announcement in the first place.

In short, we found that it's very difficult for members of the public to find evidence, but we see promising signals. In conversations that we've had with federal departments and agencies, we've seen that folks are surprised by the findings. They didn't realize how big an issue it was, and they are thinking about how they can make these pieces of evidence more accessible for the public.

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

Thank you.

I probably have a short amount of time left, but I want to ask both Evidence for Democracy and Dr. Coates about this science literacy among decision-makers.

Perhaps I'll just ask Dr. Coates to expand on his comments, because I have the yellow card.

[Dr. Ken Coates]

I'll be very quick.

There is a lot of documentation on the problems of scientific literacy. We have civil servants gathering together with six or seven people who are asked to make multi-billion dollar investments in very complicated scientific situations. It's a really big problem in western democracies. With no disrespect to the politicians at all, these are really complicated issues. You have to make big decisions about these kinds of things.

We don't systematically go about making sure that the politicians and civil servants have the necessary background. It's ironic, because I also see a problem where we then default it onto expert committees that tend to be self-preferential and very averse to risk. They tend to support the work they're already doing—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Coates, I'm sorry to interrupt. You were just getting started. I apologize.

Dear colleagues, we're now going to go to the second round. This is for five minutes.

We'll begin with Mr. Tochor.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

I'd like to carry on some questioning with Madame Maxwell. You talked about how this government has lots of signals and a lot of nice words, but, unfortunately, there isn't a lot of action that follows the nice words.

I think one of the most negatively impactful policies, maybe in this country's history, is around the vaccine mandates. To be clear, I'm a pro-vaccine, anti-mandate parliamentarian. I believe that the policy was not based on science.

I'd be interested to hear your comments on how you would investigate or give a report on whether science was used to enact the mandates that were put in place during the election last year. How would you develop a framework that would look at whether science was used at all?

[Rachael Maxwell]

I'm not quite sure where to start with that one. In a sense, you've sort of made the case for our transparency framework. As my colleague mentioned, unfortunately we didn't find that there was a strong demonstration often in the relationship between the evidence and information being used and the policy decision.

In a sense, the starting point would simply be our transparency framework. We could apply that framework; you can apply that framework. The framework itself does not require subject matter expertise, so anyone can use it. You yourself could use it and assess the policy announcements and related documents to see how well the policies associated with vaccine mandates score on the transparency framework.

I don't know if my colleague wants to add any additional information.

[Farah Qaiser]

I will just add the caveat that just because we can't see the evidence from the sidelines doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There might be confidentiality reasons; there might be crisis-time circumstances.

That is just one caveat to keep in mind. Just because we can't see the evidence from the sidelines doesn't mean it doesn't exist. However, that's sort of the case to point out that perhaps evidence should be available as a default, and only in crisis times should evidence remain private for a while.

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

Madam Maxwell, on the Evidence for Democracy website, I notice that you used to run Can Scientists Speak, on whether government scientists felt muzzled. I see that report from 2015, but I haven't seen it updated and it's a little puzzling. In 2018, we had the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada reporting that over half of government scientists felt muzzled in the Trudeau government.

I'm just interested to know, if you haven't done that report again, is there a reason; or is it going to be coming out here shortly?

[Rachael Maxwell]

Yes, that work was done by our predecessors at Evidence for Democracy. We stand by that work. It was important work, particularly at that time.

Since that time, there has been a huge effort around rolling out science integrity policies across federal departments and agencies, which in part has addressed this issue around whether scientists can speak freely. If I understand correctly from the office of the chief science adviser, they are working on science integrity policy 2.0., hopefully furthering federal scientists' ability to speak freely and openly about their work.

In terms of the current sentiments within the federal public service, from our position at Evidence for Democracy, we have the information at hand to provide you with an informed response, but we certainly encourage you to get in touch with the Professional Institute of the Public Service on that question.

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

There's more than that. That was in 2018. I would encourage you to study the subject matter again to look at the actual effects.

Once again, you said there are plans in place, but did that actually result in better transparency? Even as recently as last year, the Canadian Medical Association Journal expressed concerns about the science around COVID and I would say that there's probably a benefit for a look over to see if things were actually improved or not.

I believe our time is almost up here, so I once again thank the witnesses for taking part today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thanks, Mr. Tochor.

Something that I really appreciate about this committee is the respect and dignity that we show one another.

With that, we will go to Mr. Collins for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I'd like to start with Mr. Balsillie.

Sir, I represent the riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, so I can't let the opportunity pass without saying thank you for the “Make It Seven” campaign back in the 2000s. I was a member of council at that point in time, and I know you put a lot of your own personal time, energy and resources into that. A heartfelt thank you for everything you tried to do for Hamilton.

Seinfeld has Newman as his foil and Hamilton has Bettman. There's no need to comment on that, but thank you for everything you did, sir.

I went to the Council of Canadian Innovators website. It's very clear on the front page there that you talk about access to capital. I heard the constructive criticism that you provided to a couple of the other questions that were asked of you, specifically, investments may be...into institutions and what that has yielded in terms of innovation, and what's come of it. I know that successive provincial governments, of different political stripes, have made big investments into your area, where you came from, in Kitchener—Waterloo. Certainly in Hamilton, McMaster Innovation Park is doing tremendous work, currently, on the vaccine as well as on autonomous vehicles, amongst a couple of projects.

It sounded like your comments—and I just want to be clear—were that we're making investments in innovation but maybe not in the right areas.

Can you clarify that in terms of the comments you made earlier? On the website it says, “We believe that Government investments into innovation should be directed towards high-growth firms”. I'm just trying to rationalize that statement with your other statements, and looking for some guidance in terms of where weighted investments should go with institutions and/or other organizations that are into innovation.

[Jim Balsillie]

Sure. Thank you for your question and your kind comment.

I'll go to the panel I chaired for the Province of Ontario. We only had three recommendations. They said that sometimes the most vexatiously complex problems have the simplest of solutions. Number one, we don't teach it, we don't govern for it, and we don't provide services for it. All the rest of the world does. It's not whether we spend more or less, it's whether we develop the capacity to keep owning what we come up with. Owning ideas works on a fundamentally opposite principle of the tangible economy. You physically own the jacket you are wearing. That's called a positive right. But the design of that jacket is a negative right. I can stop you from making that if I own the design. But it's very hard to do without proper training, without proper governance and without proper services.

I'm not saying spend more money or less money; I'm simply saying, have the capacity and the institutions and the accountability structures that say you have to treat this responsibly. If you dig just a little bit deeper, you will be very disappointed with how we've treated this national security and prosperity asset over the past four years. That's a very sad story; but the good-news story is it can be fixed very quickly with, effectively, no money.

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

Okay. Thank you for that.

On access to talent, you talked about competing with the U.S., and you gave some statistics there in that regard, in response to another question. I think, again, on the cover page of the Council of Canadian Innovators, it says, “We believe high-skilled talent is the jet-fuel Canadian companies need to reach new heights.”

You talked about immigration and some other things that we can do to improve upon that. Can you expand upon your previous answer in that regard in terms of whether it's retaining the talent that we currently have that is coming through the McMasters of the world, or other universities and institutions? How do we compete in terms of attracting people from other parts of the world to come to Canada and provide us with that expertise?

[Jim Balsillie]

Yes, I think you need to have deliberate strategies. I think we've had strategies, as a nation, to bring the branch plant here, but not really to keep the high-end talent here, and to keep all the positive tax effects, management effects, wealth effects and security effects.

All roads go to a magnet for talent and for growing domestic companies. It basically requires a spillover analysis, but you can't do that analysis if you don't have capacity. That's why I recommend the economic council for the analytical capacity, which Canada cancelled and stripped out of its civil service in 1992.

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

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Mr. Collins. It's a good discussion tonight.

Now we will go to the two-and-a-half minute round. We will start with Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.