Science and Research Committee on April 16th, 2024

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bélanger, do you know whether the concentration of research funding in Canada affects graduation rates?

[Philippe-Edwin Bélanger]

Unfortunately, I don't have any data on that.

I know that graduation rates can vary quite a bit from institution to institution. For example, the INRS has a great graduation rate even though we're a small university.

I don't have data on the comparative graduation rates of the 15 universities.

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

It would be great if you could look into that and get back to us in writing.

Can the concentration of funding affect research funding accessibility and equity among certain linguistic communities, particularly francophones?

I can give you the following figures: we know that 79% of research funding goes to the 15 largest universities in Canada and that 13 of the 15 largest universities in Canada are anglophone. The anglophone network is therefore more extensively funded than the francophone network. In your opinion, do these data indicate that anglophone students have better access to research funding?

[Philippe-Edwin Bélanger]

I'm going to go back to the quota concept again. I think quotas would restore balance to granting scholarships.

I think that the funding situation in terms of francophone versus anglophone universities is improving. For several years now, francophone universities have managed to obtain a slightly larger share of the available funding.

What concerns me about francophone universities is the capacity of francophone communities to submit their grant applications and scholarship applications in French. I think that francophone students in Canada should be assured that scholarship applications are being evaluated in the best way possible.

Personally, I think that more work needs to be done in that regard. I still have some concerns about the linguistic ability of committee members selected by the research councils. My concern has more to do with the evaluation of applications in French.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

There were very good details in that answer as well.

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to turn back to Dr. Whitaker again.

You mentioned in your presentation, at the top, that there was some inequity in SSHRC accessing funds for research, that there was more research and fewer dollars. How much of that difference is simply due to the fact of which research is being done? Is there some difference between social science research and engineering or life sciences research—the NSERC stream—in terms of the capital cost of having a lab doing that sort of work? Is this part of that, or has that been factored into your comments?

[Dr. Robin Whitaker]

Thanks for that. I anticipated that I might get that question.

There are some forms of social science that require larger amounts of money. Polling research and so on sometimes do. But you're right, of course, that the cost of maintaining a medical lab or a basic science lab can be higher than that of many forms of social science research.

I think we're talking not necessarily about an exact balance but rather about a rebalancing with a view to increasing and making access more equitable across the board. About 60% of researchers in Canada are in a SSHRC discipline, so the fact that only one-fifth of the granting council money is dedicated to SSHRC does seem to be something of an inequity. Of course, there is also the question of interdisciplinary research and that new frontiers fund that I mentioned, for which the success rates are quite low. That indicates a lot of potential for research across a variety of disciplines and focuses.

Again, I think the big question is this: What can we do to increase and enhance the health of the system as a whole?

CAUT has suggested a number of measures that we think would help. This committee is doing really important work. As I mentioned, I think it's also time to have that national conversation. Universities and colleges have been struggling for quite some time. The proportion of public funding available has decreased significantly since the early 2000s, and that has an effect on the ability of researchers to best purpose the money that is available at present.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for your work with us today.

Philippe-Edwin Bélanger, Fahim Quadir, Dr. Robin Whitaker and Dr. Eric Weissman, thank you for your testimonies and your answers. If there are some answers that need more work, please submit them in writing to the clerk. We will include them so that our analysts have them as they prepare our study report.

We'll suspend for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I call the meeting back to order.

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

It's now my pleasure to welcome and thank our witnesses for coming this morning.

First, from the Olds College of Agriculture and Technology, we have Dr. Ben Cecil, president and CEO. There's some great work at Olds right now. I'm looking forward to your testimony. The University of Guelph does a lot of similar work.

From the Ontario Tech University, we have Dr. Steven Murphy, president and vice-chancellor, who is joining us via video conference. Welcome, Dr. Murphy.

We'll start with five minutes from each of you. We'll be close on time.

Let's get started with Dr. Ben Cecil for five minutes, please.

[Dr. Ben Cecil, President and CEO, Olds College of Agriculture & Technology]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ben Cecil, President and CEO of Olds College of Agriculture & Technology. I am very pleased to be here this afternoon.

I'm here to talk about the distribution of federal government funding impacts on college research activity.

I'd like to address the matter from three perspectives, namely, equity, eligibility and impact.

Let me begin by setting the context of research funding at colleges. There are approximately 120 publicly funded colleges in Canada that support local businesses, entrepreneurs and social innovators through the research expertise of their faculties and staff. These colleges advanced over 8,000 projects, created over 2,400 prototypes, designed over 1,800 new products, developed over 1,000 new process improvements and created over 900 new service offerings, and that was just in 2021-22 alone.

These advancements were driven by industry and business partners that had real challenges their organizations could not solve. They sought the help of a college to assist them in solving real-world problems for their organizations. The intellectual property generated by these advancements remained in the hands of the external partners, ensuring the results of the research remained within the Canadian economy.

I will speak to the impact such advancements have to the economy shortly, and, specifically, within the context of my institution. What I can state at this juncture is that those advancements I cited above were supported with only 2.9% of federal research funding, or about $110 million.

This leads me to my first point which is equity. The federal research funding programs need to be reconsidered and reframed, so colleges are considered as an equal partner in the research ecosystem. Colleges have demonstrated over the last 20 years that they have an impact on the communities and industries they serve. They deliver results to real-world solutions and real-world challenges in real time.

This begs the question, is the distribution of federal research funding addressing the priorities of Canadians? Is the funding supporting the challenge-based research being conducted at colleges adequate to address the issues facing Canadians today, such as climate change, affordable housing and food security to name just a few?

Colleges have risen to the occasion by increasing their capacity and capabilities to support challenge-based research, enhancing Canada's social and economic well-being, yet, they do so on only 2.9% of the federal research budget. There is an opportunity before this committee to help redefine and reframe the role of colleges as equally valued full partners within the federal research funding ecosystem.

I just mentioned colleges as equally valued full partners which leads me to my second point of eligibility. Presently, the federal research funding system uses metrics, such as the number of publications, prior tri-council funding success, holding a research chair position or number of HQPs to award research funds. These are not the metrics of colleges. Our metric and the language we use is impact.

Colleges are being asked to have similar administrative functions and due diligence as universities in areas related to research data security, technology transfer or IP management, ethical compliance and animal care compliance. Colleges cannot support the same level of administrative function as universities without a similar indirect cost funding model as universities. The simultaneous inequity and ineligibility for colleges to receive the same extent of research support funds needs to be re-evaluated.

Finally, I would like to address my last point which is impact. Colleges are deeply embedded in their regional economies. Connected to industry, colleges are asked to help address real-world challenges being brought forth by external partners with real-world solutions they can implement immediately. That linkage between challenge, solution and commercialization is impact. It is measured by revenue growth, job creation, innovation and economic growth through commercialization.

Olds College is ranked number two nationally for research impact amongst colleges. Since its inception in 2018, the smart farm—the cornerstone of research at Olds College—has supported 263 companies and organizations, and 142 projects. This has resulted in 394 process and product improvements with over 720 jobs created. It has contributed over $811 million directly back to the firms that we have worked with, which channels its way directly into the Canadian economy. That's over $6.39 million per small and medium-sized enterprise that we work with. Members of the committee, that's impact.

The college sector provides a significant impact to the Canadian economy. This brings me back to my original question: Is the distribution of federal research funding addressing the priorities of Canadians? Do the investments Canadians make into our research ecosystem have a direct impact on the things that matter most to Canadians, namely, jobs, food security, climate change, affordable housing, etc.?

Are Canadians seeing value in their investment, and is that investment giving them the output and the impact they expect?

Thank you very much to the committee. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you, Dr. Cecil.

Now we'll move to Dr. Murphy from Ontario Tech University for five minutes.

[Dr. Steven Murphy, President and Vice-Chancellor, Ontario Tech University]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, members of the committee. I would like to thank you for having me today. It's good to be back.

I would like to start off by stating that Ontario Tech is a STEM-based institution with approximately 12,000 students. We're located in Oshawa and proud to be in the Durham region.

We do not strive to be a comprehensive university; we know our strengths, energy and engineering, and we focus on them. I'd like to focus my comments today on how Canada can address two major problems related to research.

First, Canada has a productivity problem. We are less productive per capita every year and have fallen behind our traditional global peers. As we know, at the heart of the productivity problem, although the Government of Canada invested $3.42 billion in research in 2021-22, compared to our global peers, Canada has fallen way behind. In 2021, Canada invested just 1.7% of GDP on R and D compared to the U.S. at 3.5%, Japan at 3.3%, Germany at 3.1% and the list goes on.

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

At Ontario Tech, we are recognized internationally for our research strength, and our impressive reputational trajectory continues upwards with a fresh distinction as Canada's research university of the year in 2023. In fact, Research Infosource recently reported its five-year university spotlight highlighting a key number of research areas of growth, which I think are germane to our conversation today.

We're ranked number one in Canada in cross-sector collaboration publications percentage growth. That talks about the importance of collaboration in research. We're ranked number two in Canada in corporate research income percentage growth, which means that we are working with corporate entities to solve practical, real-world problems. We're ranked number two in Canada in international collaboration publications percentage growth, which means we're solving research dilemmas that face the globe.

With total university research income now surpassing $23 million annually and growing by about 8% every year, Ontario Tech boasts strong growth in not-for-profit research income, international government research income and international collaboration. A recent international survey ranked us as a top-three engineering school, and we're extremely proud of that. We're leaders in R and D.

The R and D problem is that we have not seen productivity growth in an awfully long time, and, over the past four decades, we have slipped significantly compared to other countries. The Bank of Canada argues that three elements contribute to stronger productivity: capital intensity, labour composition and multifactor productivity. All three of these point to the importance of the job market and being highly trained in fields like AI that will change the productivity needle.

Ontario Tech is well positioned to respond to this labour market demand. It's through the programs in computer science, engineering, business and IT, business analytics and artificial intelligence, where we have really well-established research programs, that we're going to be able to graduate our labour needs to counter the productivity problems. You need to have that cutting-edge research and those ideas that take shape in our students' minds and blossom as they enter the workforce.

The number and dollar amount of Canadian graduate scholarships, as we know, has not kept pace with inflation or the growing graduate student population. It is estimated that, each year, thousands of recent Ph.D.s leave Canada to pursue careers abroad, representing an annual loss of $740 million to the country. This poses a serious problem for our future and our growth.

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

We're a glowing example of an institution that is only 20 years old but has to go up against the U15 and others with established records. We're really proud of the Canada research chairs we have and the trajectory that we are gaining, but we are definitely swimming against the current.

Every university has its competitive niche. At Ontario Tech, all things energy, engineering and STEM more broadly are our areas. In fact, roughly 60% of our programs are in STEM fields, which exceeds the provincial average by over 20%.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

We'll have to work the rest into answers, if possible.

We're going to our first six-minute round with Mr. Soroka, please.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll start off with Dr. Cecil.

Could you please describe the specific returns on investment that Olds College has observed from its smart farm initiative?

How do these returns compare to traditional educational models?

[Dr. Ben Cecil]

As mentioned in my opening remarks, we have a significant impact coming from the smart farm. The smart farm is the core of all of the research we do at Olds College. Our focus is agriculture. It always has been and always will be. The smart farm is the cornerstone, where we integrate technology and applied research on an actual commercial-scale farm.

That commercial-scale operation has, over the last five years, received less than $7 million of impact funding from the tri-council, yet $811 million was returned to businesses and partnership firms that have worked with us over the last five years. That's 142 projects over 219 SMEs, almost all of which are based out of the Alberta and the western Canadian economy.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

With programs like the college's brewery, greenhouse and butcher shop, how does Olds College measure the success of these programs in terms of student employability and skill development?

What feedback have you received from industry regarding the readiness of graduates from these programs?

[Dr. Ben Cecil]

The industry has been incredibly supportive, whether it is brewery, meat operations or any of our other programs.

Our measure of success is exactly as you've identified. it is the job-readiness of our graduates. Because we are directly connected to the industries that we serve, our industry advisory councils tell us what they are expecting of a recent graduate and the skill sets they require in their place of employment. That gets integrated directly into the curriculum. As such, our students have a very high degree of employability.

Over 92% of our students are in-field. In other words, what they've studied is where they end up working—in the same field. A little north of 92% have jobs directly related to their field of study.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Looking forward, what are the new areas of applied research that Olds College is planning to explore?

How will these areas align with the evolving needs of the agricultural industry and technology advancements?

[Dr. Ben Cecil]

Some of the challenges we face in agriculture are part of what is known as the grand global challenge: How do we continue to feed more people on less land with fewer negative impacts of commercialized agriculture? How do we minimize our carbon footprint and at the same time maintain yields on a continually decreasing scale of operation?

That scale of operation at the individual farm level increases, but globally, the land mass is decreasing. That challenge results in the greater integration of technologies. Therefore, we have programs on technology integration in agriculture.

For our students now, because we are the school of agriculture and technology, the integration of the two is absolutely fundamental to understanding the future of ag.

Here is a case in point. The newest John Deere combine has more onboard computers than a shuttlecraft. With 32 onboard computers, a modern combine basically drives itself, but it doesn't service itself. It needs to have the technical supports in order for the farmer or the producer to actually have the services needed to continue to produce at the scale that literally feeds the world.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Yes, I know there's quite an evolution of technology. I had a John Deere combine many years ago and it drove itself at that time. It's amazing all the problems that are caused when one ground wire doesn't connect.

[Dr. Ben Cecil]

Exactly.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

How do partnerships with industry leaders contribute to Olds College's strategic goals, especially concerning applied research and technology development?

Can you give examples of how these collaborations have directly benefited students and the agricultural sector?

[Dr. Ben Cecil]

Absolutely. The partnerships we have with industry are foundational to the work we do. While we have had an impact of hundreds of millions of dollars on the regional economy and the national economy, almost all of that support has come directly from industry. Our research profile, while supported a little bit by the tri-council, is primarily supported by industry itself.

We have a direct connection to them because they have problems that they look to us to simply solve. In the context of our role, we can't wait for a Ph.D. student to turn out a paper that has a result after four years. We need solutions in season. In season for us is a very quick turnaround.

The partnerships we have help us continue to advance research, whether it is studying carbon sequestration, nitrogen fixation, ground water support, clean air and clean water or soil productivity, and the list goes on and on.

What impact does that have for our students? We have over 60 students directly connected to research at the college. They are employed by the firms and by the college itself to support research in those firms.

From a curricular perspective, the relationships we have with our industry partners allow us to receive equipment as donations on a regular basis. Every four weeks those donations of equipment are turned over in our labs so that the students are working on the latest and greatest technology, which they will see literally in the field upon graduation. Without those partnerships, we could not do what we do at the college. On any given day, in our trades and skilled trades facilities, we have between $7.5 million and $8 million of equipment on loan. Without our industry partners, we would not have the funding to make that a sustainable operation for the college.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You're just at time. Science on the farm would be a very interesting topic. I'd love to go into that one.

Dr. Jaczek, let's stay on topic for this morning. You have six minutes on this study. Go ahead, please.