Science and Research Committee on April 11th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I call the meeting to order.

This is meeting number 80 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. We have members and witnesses appearing virtually today.

If you're on Zoom, you can choose the official language of your choice. Interpretation services are available for this meeting, so at the bottom of the screen just choose floor, English or French. If interpretation is lost, please let me know immediately and we'll suspend until interpretation services are available.

For members in person, it's a normal meeting. We ask you to address your remarks through me, and I'll recognize you by name. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled, as normal, by the proceedings and verification officer.

Although this room is equipped with a powerful audio system, we also have to be very careful for the interpreters. We don't want our earphones near our microphones creating feedback. If feedback does occur, take your earphone out immediately. However, please, let's stay away from having feedback for the sake of those using headphones.

As a reminder, we should be speaking slowly and clearly for our interpreters. With regard to a speaking list, we'll do the best we can to maintain the order we've been given, whether you're here virtually or in person.

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

It's now my pleasure to welcome the witnesses.

From Thompson Rivers University, we have Dr. Shannon Wagner, vice-president of research. She is here in person. Online, from the University of Calgary, we have Dr. Ed McCauley, president and vice-chancellor, and from Western University, we have Dr. Penny Pexman, vice-president of research.

Each individual will have five minutes for opening remarks, and after that time, we'll go to questions.

We will start off with Dr. Wagner for five minutes.

[Dr. Shannon Wagner, Vice-President, Research, Thompson Rivers University]

Weyt-kp xwexwéytep. Shannon Wagner ren skwekwst.

Good morning. My name is Shannon Wagner, and I am the vice-president of research at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, B.C.

Today, I am here proudly representing small and mid-sized universities that are pushing the boundaries of knowledge to address regional, provincial and national research questions and priorities. We are proud of our vibrant campus life and our commitment to open learning, with nearly 29,000 students.

We are very proud to be guests on the traditional territory of the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc for our first house in Kamloops and to T'exelc for our second house in Williams Lake, B.C. Our relationship with our host first nations guides us in our approach to all academic and research initiatives for our institution.

Our university, while deeply committed to teaching and learning, has carved a niche in research creation and dissemination. Now recognized among the top 50 research universities in Canada, TRU has shown notable growth and is second in our tier in research income. Our strategic research plan addresses key challenge areas that inform academic planning, which guides undergraduate, graduate and faculty education and research.

A flagship initiative at TRU is addressing the urgent need for research and education on wildfires. The establishment of the Institute for Wildfire Science, Adaptation and Resiliency, under the scientific leadership of world-renowned wildfire researcher Dr. Mike Flannigan, marked a significant step toward better understanding and managing the effects of wildfires. TRU and the Province of British Columbia have partnered in a first-of-its-kind initiative to create an ecosystem for wildfire studies, which includes a state-of-the-art building that will house all aspects of wildfires, from basic training through to advanced research, so that research-informed training is an expectation rather than a goal.

Equally important is our knowledge makers program, which empowers indigenous students to engage with and contribute to academic scholarship, offering them a platform to be heard and recognized on an international stage. Collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization showcased the power of indigenous knowledge in addressing global challenges like food security, further highlighting the impactful work done by our students and faculty.

These initiatives demonstrate the critical role small and mid-sized universities like TRU play in making a difference regionally, nationally and globally. The contribution of institutions like ours drives forward innovation, understanding and change. To support this ongoing and valuable work, beyond our endorsement of the ACCRU's recommendations, I propose several enhancements that would boost the contributions of small and mid-sized research institutions.

First, rethink funding models. Refocus the merit-based funding system to prioritize the quality and impact of research proposals by democratizing access to funding, while reducing emphasis on an applicant's previous research success. Perhaps this could also be accomplished by creating funding calls, beyond special calls for early career, targeted to those who have not been previously funded.

Second, level the research environment. Address disparities that give preference to applications from institutions where research infrastructure and ecosystems may be more plentiful, when those disparities do not present true barriers to successfully completing research.

Third, focus on regional needs. Regional needs and the unique strengths included in the relationships with community are not always the easiest factors to account for in existing funding calls. Valuing the unique strengths and relationships that researchers and institutions have with their communities will supercharge regional research ecosystems.

Fourth and finally, promote collaboration. Encourage and facilitate interinstitutional partnerships to tackle national and global challenges. Programs like the recent NSERC Lab2Market, which required interinstitutional partners for eligibility, are excellent models for how to bring together post-secondaries across Canada.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present this morning. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much, Dr. Wagner. You were right on time.

Now we'll go to Dr. Ed McCauley, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Calgary.

Welcome. You have five minutes, please.

[Dr. Edward McCauley, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Calgary]

Good morning from sunny Calgary and the traditional territory of the people of the Treaty 7 region.

We're home to one of Canada's research-intensive universities. Since 2011, the University of Calgary has been intentionally growing its research capacity by focusing on impactful solutions that are beneficial to Canadians. By 2021, we had become the youngest institution on Canada's top-five list of research universities, and we have one of the fastest rates of growth in research funding, which ranks among those of much larger, more established institutions. Our research community consistently demonstrates excellence and transdisciplinary collaboration, which are among the reasons our external research funding continues to grow.

For many years, the research performed at the University of Calgary and our sister institutions has made Canada more prosperous and healthier. We have done so in partnership with the federal government, which leverages further investment and helps us attract talent to solve some of Canada's pressing problems.

A good example is One Child Every Child, a Canada-first research excellence program. At $125 million, it's one of the largest federal research grants to a university in western Canada. We have leveraged this funding to attract other partners to build a $268-million research and innovation ecosystem with our community and industry that will dramatically improve health outcomes for children and youth across the country.

We are grateful for the support of the federal government, as it creates leveraging opportunities to accomplish important shared goals.

Other players also recognize the economic, social and health benefits of research. Last year, the University of Calgary had $545 million in externally sponsored research. More than one-third of that came from industry and non-profit organizations. There is broad relevance and broad benefit to the research we perform. It advances discovery. It generates economic activity. It creates jobs. It supports existing industries, and it helps create those of tomorrow.

Federal funding plays an essential role. It supports talent and the creation of new ideas for the benefit of society. However, funding levels are eroding. Since 2020, federal funding has fallen in real terms by 19%. At the same time, our competitors are increasing their funding. The stakes are global.

We need to increase research funding to attract and retain talent, create new ideas and grow enterprises. The top economies in the world are doing just that. We also need to maintain a merit-based allocation of that funding based on rigorous, independent review. Canada's current system is considered an international best practice. While it is true that U15 institutions like the University of Calgary do receive the largest amount of this funding, we also receive most of industry's funding—75%, to be exact. A strong innovation and start-up ecosystem has broad spillover benefits when university research is mobilized towards innovation.

At the University of Calgary, we have activated several commercialization pathways, including the Hunter hub for entrepreneurial thinking, mentoring programs for innovation training, a set of evergreening, philanthropically driven venture funds, and several sectoral innovation hubs. For the third consecutive year, the University of Calgary is the top start-up company creator among Canadian research institutions. Our ecosystem is working to mobilize research.

U15 institutions are the anchors of Canada's research ecosystem, but we are not silos. We routinely collaborate with other institutions. Just last week, the University of Calgary and University of Alberta partnered with the University of Lethbridge and Northwestern Polytechnic in Grande Prairie to expand rural medical training. We have many joint ventures with the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, a polytechnic in Calgary, with Mount Royal University and with other post-secondary institutions across the country.

Increased federal funding will help to promote those collaborations by supporting scholars, and, through these partnerships and collaborations, it will help smaller institutions grow, just as the University of Calgary has grown. The merit- and excellence-based funding model is key to this success. It is a proven winner and is the envy of other countries.

The core problem with Canada's research funding model is not how the research funding is allocated, but that the funding is falling in actual terms and diminishing our capacity as a nation to conduct impactful research for the benefit of Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you, Dr. McCauley.

For the final five-minute presentation, we'll hear from Dr. Pexman from Western University.

[Dr. Penny Pexman, Vice-President, Research, Western University]

Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for inviting us to participate in today's discussion.

My name in Penny Pexman, and I am the vice-president of research at Western University. In my remarks today, I will share some insights into the exciting work led by Western researchers with federal grant funding and will echo calls for further investments to strengthen the talent pipeline and catalyze Canadian research and innovation.

At Western, we provide more than 40,000 students with an exemplary learning experience that engages and challenges them to meet ever higher standards in the classroom and beyond. This experience benefits tremendously from having opportunities to interact with other top minds and access unique and leading research facilities. It is one way we develop leaders, thinkers and entrepreneurs who are able to navigate the complexities of our world and solve some of its biggest challenges.

We are proud to be located in London, the geographic centre of southwestern Ontario. Our campus is enriched by students, trainees and faculty from across the region and by numerous local partnerships with hospitals, industry, not-for-profits, indigenous communities and other organizations.

As a member of the U15 group of Canada's leading research-intensive universities, Western plays a vital role in advancing knowledge, driving innovation and developing next-generation discoveries that improve local and global health, economies, culture and societies.

It was in London, for example, that Western professor Dr. Ivan Smith introduced cobalt radiation therapy at our affiliated hospitals, doubling the survival rate for early stage cervical cancer to 60% and benefiting tens of millions of cancer patients. It was also where Dr. Fred Possmayer discovered a method of extracting and purifying natural surfactant from a cow's lung to help premature babies breathe, saving millions of lives worldwide.

Western is also considered the birthplace of the modern practice of wind engineering. Built in the 1960s, the first-of-its-kind boundary layer wind tunnel laboratory has been used to test many of the world's most significant structures, including the CN Tower, the Confederation Bridge and, more recently, the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest structure.

Subsequent government investments have since allowed Western to establish an unparalleled cluster of unique wind research facilities and programs that today are helping develop building codes, supporting the construction industry, understanding our environment and keeping buildings and their occupants safe. It takes time and sustained investments to develop research strengths at this scale.

While excellence is rooted in our history, Western continues to pursue and lead partnerships aimed at advancing next-generation discoveries that improve global health, economies, culture and societies. For example, Western has recently launched a nuclear hub that leverages our expertise and infrastructure to strengthen partnerships with industry, hospitals, academia and indigenous partners. We will co-develop a pan-Canadian strategy that ensures the country remains a leader in nuclear research, innovation and training and continues to deliver real solutions that address decarbonization and advance life-saving medicine.

Many other research efforts include partnerships with small to medium-sized institutions across the country, including a partnership with Capilano and Thompson Rivers universities that provides better training to early childhood educators. Another, with Simon Fraser, Dalhousie and Memorial, is preparing primary care providers for future pandemics. Closer to home, we're working with Windsor on initiatives related to composite materials and technologies.

These are just a few examples. As we say at Western, impact takes many forms, from individual scholars creating and promoting knowledge to collaborative teams developing novel technologies and solutions to grand challenges, from researchers influencing policy to artists creating culture and bringing joy to our lives, and from efforts to understand the fundamental questions that drive curiosity to knowledge that supports the development of our business, legal, health and education systems.

This is why I would echo the U15's recommendations to maintain the principle of the independent expert review process for research grant applications based on the established excellence and rigour of the federal granting councils; to invest in the core funding budgets of the federal granting councils and CFI; to increase federal funding for graduate scholarships and doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships by 50% and double the number of awards; and to implement the governance advancements to the research support system proposed in the Bouchard report.

We encourage the federal government to make a major investment in the federal research ecosystem to support research at all Canadian institutions and ultimately benefit communities like ours in London and across Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

That's terrific.

Thank you to you all for being right on time with your presentations and for some great information to start our study.

Thank you to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas for bringing this forward as a motion and for helping the committee prepare for today's work.

We'll start off our six-minute rounds of questions with Michelle Rempel Garner from the Conservative Party.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I'll direct my questions to Dr. McCauley.

The University of Calgary has become a top-five research-intensive university. Hearty congratulations. That is a higher rank than many larger central Canadian universities enjoy. The University of Calgary has done this even though it doesn't have the geographic proximity that some of these other institutions have to the central Canadian business cores or even access to the lobbying federal government folks involved in the research funding community.

I take from this that federal research funding is very important to the University of Calgary, but would you attribute part of your institution's success to your management of strategic objectives like a diversified portfolio of funding—that is, industrial funding, philanthropy and mixed land use—in order to leverage the impact of federal research funding?

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

A few years ago as part of our strategy, we challenged the University of Calgary to combine our expertise from across all our different disciplines to tackle some of the biggest problems that Canada, Alberta and Calgary faced. We recognized that there was no one funding source that could do that.

Working with the community, we mobilized resources and mobilized investment around excellence in particular areas, while taking care to ensure that we were attracting talent from around the world to help us provide solutions. We then partnered with our communities, which is very—

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

You are my former boss, so I still feel awkward cutting you off, but I have only six minutes. I'll try to behave.

Can I take a “yes” from that?

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

Yes.

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

Okay. That's excellent.

We're looking for recommendations. Would you recommend that the federal government encourage research institutions that apply for federal research funding to diversify their portfolios in a manner similar to you in order to leverage research funding and get outcomes such as skilled workers, intellectual property commercialization, etc.?

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

Yes. Our scholars do that. Our scholars recognize that we need diverse funding sources to solve problems. Putting highly qualified personnel around you is really key, and it's part of our review process for grants that have come forward from the federal level and from other jurisdictions.

The training of highly qualified personnel is really important for producing new talent and new ideas.

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

We've started to hear a lot about the concept of focusing on research excellence and merit as opposed to, let's say, another model that's based just on regional allocation. If we're going to define that, would you characterize outcomes, such as the training of skilled workers, knowledge translation and commercialization of intellectual property within Canada, as components the federal government should be classifying as research excellence or merit when looking at the allocation of research funding?

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

Yes, those are some of the key components. The real proof is the demonstration of impactful research and knowledge mobilization. We have big problems to solve, and institutions across Canada pull together to actually do that.

Those are some of the components, but there are others, to make sure we're creating what are vibrant local or regional ecosystems and to ensure the talent we produce actually has the ability to grow and promote prosperity.

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

If we look at what would be established as “research excellence” and at the quantitative ways of evaluating funding applications, the list of things you talked about should be given consideration.

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

Yes. It's part of that consideration, but the key thing to remember is that research excellence is actually defined on a global scale. It defies borders.

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

That's a great point.

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

It's great ideas that can improve the world around us, and that world is very large. It's not restricted to just Canada.

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

One of the things I'm really proud of, being a University of Calgary staff alumni, is that the University of Calgary, particularly over the last 20 years, has really leveraged federal funds into more investments back into the institution, more investments back into research. In terms of a recommendation for this committee, would you say that the federal funding models for research should include the ability to leverage federal research funds to attract more funds for those research programs?

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

We have to have a clear level of funding to promote excellence, to promote talent and to promote discovery. We need to be able to generate those ideas. We also then need to look at programs in which we can combine resources to tackle some bigger problems. However, individual scholarship and the support of individual scholars are key. We can then mobilize that together to solve some of the bigger problems that require leveraging.

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

What I'm getting at here is that there has to be a demonstrable value-for-money proposition for the Canadian taxpayer when we're doing this. I understand that basic research is important. It might not necessarily result in something right away, but we have to show that there is translation into the Canadian economy.

Within that broader set of metrics we talked about, should those sorts of things be included in the allocation of research funding, as opposed to non-defined metrics? Do you think that would get more public buy-in for these types of expenditures?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have 30 seconds.

[Dr. Edward McCauley]

I think it would help. We already do that, and the granting council presidents would probably be better able to speak to that and to what we incorporate in all of our applications. However, we have to create new knowledge and then we have to mobilize it. We need all sorts of vehicles to make that happen along the way. Leveraging and gathering resources from other areas will be an important part of that mobilization, but the mobilization is important for Canada. We have to tell that story.

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

Thank you.