Science and Research Committee on April 30th, 2024

[Dr. Kalina Kamenova]

Thank you for this question.

Through you, Mr. Chair, what could be done in this case, I would suggest, is a greater emphasis on developing funding programs that support intellectual property development and commercialization. Allow the colleges to develop expertise in supporting our business partners to navigate the complex IP and commercialization pathways and then push innovation up the technology readiness scale.

Right now, colleges are limited to supporting our businesses in terms of technology validation in labs, in relevant environments, and how it is demonstrated in specific environments as well, but we don't go behind this process. What would help is if we were able to build commercial IP and commercialization capacity and if federal funding could support us in this. Then we could support companies with the filings of patents and with the further development of their products so that they could become commercialized and reach markets.

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

Thank you for your answer, and I want to make sure I understand correctly. In concrete terms, do you need specific funding or financial support to help you with commercialization and to foster innovation?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have 30 seconds.

[Dr. Kalina Kamenova]

I mean funding that would allow us to develop capacity within the institution, and training, and also funding that would support companies to do marketing for their products.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Next we have Mr. Cannings for the final two and half minutes.

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

Thank you.

I think I'll turn to Dr. Chrétien on this.

I forget which one of you commented on how colleges, in doing a lot of applied research, especially with industry, operate on a time scale that is different from the time scale for the pure research that's done at many universities and colleges.

I'm wondering if part of the solution or part of the plan we should have going forward is to have adapted programs or new programs that have a different model of time scale and intake periods, so that if some industry comes in with a project they need done right now, there can be applications made quickly.

I'm wondering if you, and perhaps Dr. Kramp as well, could comment on that.

That's my question.

[Dr. Michelle Chrétien]

Thank you very much. It's an excellent question.

Through the chair, I think you've hit the nail on the head in terms of the way colleges and CEGEPs engage with industry to provide a rapid response to the challenges we're facing. We currently have some new programming through NSERC that is addressing that. The Mobilize funding was recently launched. I believe last year was the first round. It provides more flexible funding that enables and encourages the type of rapid response you're talking about.

I would also draw attention to the technology access centres, which both of my colleagues have mentioned. I think all three of our institutions are hosts to a technology access centre whose specific funding purpose is to provide rapid response to industry, in order to help us mobilize the resources of students and faculty to serve industry.

I think your comments are spot on about making sure we keep that front and centre in our minds, as we evolve new programming and funding for colleges.

I'll let my colleagues add anything I've missed.

[Dr. Kari Kramp]

Through you, Chair, I would say that was well said by Dr. Chrétien. I agree. Thank you very much for bringing that up. It is something on which we need to maintain an emphasis.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you for your presentations and for the very rich discussion we've had this morning.

I'm also thinking of the role colleges play in building homes, in personal support workers, in dental technicians, in early learning and in child care. For any of the societal needs we have, colleges are very instrumental in helping us get to the other side of the challenges. Thank you again for your service.

We're going to suspend for a minute or two so we can get our next panel in place.

Thank you again to our witnesses for being here today. Any other information they can provide in writing for our study would be most welcome.

We'll suspend for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you to our technicians for getting our online connections done.

Welcome to the second half of our meeting.

I have a few comments, briefly, for our new witnesses.

Wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. If you're participating by video conference, please select the language of your choice and have your mic on mute if you're not speaking.

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 resumes its study on the distribution of federal government funding among Canada's post-secondary institutions.

It's now my pleasure to welcome, from the Institute for the Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement at Simon Fraser University, Dr. June Francis.

It's great to have you by video conference.

In person, we have, from the Canadian Committee for Science and Technology, Dr. Donna Strickland, professor.

It's great to have you with us. It's actually an honour to have you join us today.

From Saskatchewan Polytechnic, we have Dr. Susan Blum, associate vice-president, applied research and continuing education.

Welcome to you, Dr. Blum, as well.

We'll start off with Dr. June Francis. You have five minutes.

[Dr. June Francis, Professor and Director, Institute of the Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement, Simon Fraser University]

Thank you very much.

My name, as you know, is Dr. June Francis. I'm the director of the Institute of the Black and African Diaspora Research and Engagement at Simon Fraser University. I'm also a professor in the Beedie School of Business and I chair the anti-racism data committee for the Province of British Columbia.

I want to acknowledge that at Simon Fraser University, we work on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people. My pronouns are she and her.

In my brief submission to you today, I would like to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in research funding and submit that greater distribution of funds among universities of various sizes would better support these goals.

As acknowledged by the tri-agency action plan on DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion— “In order to achieve world-class research [in Canada], we must address systemic barriers that limit the full participation of all talented individuals” and “create a culture where...EDI considerations...[are] second nature.”

Likewise, the Bouchard report points to the need “to improve the underrepresentation and underparticipation of certain groups and encourage diversity across the research ecosystem” if we are supposed to address the “complex problems” we face that require “a broad range of perspectives and experiences.” Of course, as many of you know, the Canadian government acknowledged this inequity in the 2022 budget, where it aimed research funding directly at the under-representation of Black Canadians in academia.

Many universities, including mine, signed the “Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education”—again, a commitment to redress anti-Black racism and foster flourishing for Black academics and researchers. The charter specifically calls for addressing the under-representation in funding agencies, including the tri-council and other federal funding agencies, again to address Black under-representation.

However, I submit to you that the success of all these efforts—all of the efforts directed at trying to increase the ingenuity and know-how of the broad range of racialized researchers who have, to this point, been excluded—will only actually work if researchers gain access to research grants to open and lead, in particular, new approaches—sometimes radically new directions in research—to fully represent the range of human know-how beyond the Eurocentric paradigms and subject matter that have dominated much of this research.

I will also say briefly that many of the awards from granting agencies support this idea that racialized people are, in fact, under-represented. We can go into that data if you wish, but I'll submit that we have that data.

Let me just say that Black and racialized researchers are not concentrated in U15 universities. In fact, they are fragmented across the research spectrum of universities. Therefore, more diverse funding would better address the needs of DEI in research. Innovative approaches, such as the Institute of the Black and African Diaspora, have emerged to support these new directions and to break the stranglehold of entrenched research paradigms. However, again, they're not concentrated in U15 universities. As a Black academic, I can attest to the numerous ways in which large universities have acted to perpetuate and create the very inequities in research that we're seeking to address by their processes, policies and approaches.

I want to also point out, if we want funnels, that Black and racialized students often start their careers in the universities that are closest to them because of a range of factors for graduate work, including financial factors. Many are often at small and medium-sized universities. Research funding, therefore, to these universities is essential to provide the access and support and mentorship if we are supposed to build a pipeline of future researchers to address this racial equity gap.

In conclusion, a more equitable spreading of research funding beyond U15 universities is essential to support more equitable, world-class research in Canada.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll move on to Dr. Donna Strickland, Nobel laureate for physics, who is representing the Canadian Committee for Science and Technology.

[Dr. Donna Strickland, Professor, Canadian Committee for Science and Technology]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

As the chair pointed out, I am here as a witness because I represent a group of outstanding scientists from across the country. Our group wants Canada to play a larger role in global research and development because in the long term this research will produce societal and economic benefits for Canada.

Just to be clear, I am not speaking on behalf of my university or any of the universities where my colleagues work.

We also would like to point out that we do appreciate that the standing committee must have helped convince the government to increase R and D spending, particularly with respect to student scholarships, and we want to thank you for this leadership.

Although we were happy to see that R and D spending was going up, we, of course, wish to see the tri-council funded at least to the level the U15 asked for so that we could recover the loss from inflation that we have been suffering, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

It is not just about the money, though. What we would also like to see is a scientific advisory group formed, as was mentioned in the budget. We would like the advisory group to be made up of leading Canadian scientists and innovators. Having such a committee of scientists advising the government is done in many countries.

President Biden has a President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, PCAST, made up of 30 of America's top researchers in science and technology. Frances Arnold, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry the same year that I won the physics prize, has been one of the two external co-chairs of PCAST since 2021.

One of the key science questions the president has asked PCAST to answer is, how can we ensure the long-term health of science and technology in our nation? This is a question that our government also needs to be concerned about. Science should not be politicized. By its very nature, science has a long time horizon and does not fit into the short time scales of sitting governments and even less so into industries' quarterly and annual reports.

Other countries take the long view so that their children will be better off. My favourite example, as a few of you already know, is Korea, and not only because they spend almost 5% of their GDP on research and development. They do this not only because of military needs—as an aside, we too could build up our military spending by spending more on research—but also because they know that the country has reaped the economic benefits that this research has led to.

Korea has an intertwined system of support for research with government, academia and industry all playing equal roles, and then all benefiting equally from the participation.

Consider the example of Samsung. The Samsung company started back in the 1930s, almost 100 years ago, as a grocery store. Through government help and the obvious business savvy of the owner, that grocery store got into several other lines of trade. After the Korean War, the Korean government wanted Samsung to get into technology and gave them the funds through large tax breaks to start research in this emerging field.

When I first visited Seoul National University in 2011, I was taken to my colleague's optics lab in the tall, multi-storey Samsung building on the campus. My academic colleague was being well funded by Samsung, not to do research that would become a product in a year or two—that research and development was undoubtedly being done in Samsung's own research labs—but to work on futuristic holographic TVs, which we are still waiting for.

Samsung is now spending more money than the whole U.S. CHIPS act to make sure that Samsung can make the chips they will need in the future. Canada doesn't even have a CHIPS act. Where might that leave us? Right now, the chips are made in Taiwan.

We were left behind waiting for vaccines from other countries because we did not support our own biotech research from academia through to industry, so we had to wait until the other countries rightly made sure their own citizens were looked after first.

We want our government to follow best practices from other countries where government, industry and academia work well together and allow all three to benefit from the research. It doesn't have to be the Korean model. Denmark has tax laws about companies being owned by foundations, and these foundations have to support research. In 2023, I was hosted by the Novo Nordisk Foundation to give a public lecture at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen, where the foundation had just announced the Novo Nordisk Foundation quantum computing program with funding of 1.5 billion Danish kroner, or about $200 million U.S.

A larger academic research entity is the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, which was established back in 2007.

Last fall, it was announced that in a $500-million U.S. deal, the pharma giant Novo Nordisk, a company under the foundation, has acquired a University of Copenhagen spin-out, developing a novel therapeutic for obesity and type 2 diabetes. I watch commercials for this product on CNN all the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm sorry. We'll have to call it quits on that at that point. Thank you for your testimony.

We go now to Dr. Blum, representing Saskatchewan Polytechnic.

Welcome.

[Dr. Susan Blum, Associate Vice President, Applied Research and Continuing Education, Saskatchewan Polytechnic]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for the invitation to appear as part of your study on the balance of federal government funding to post-secondary institutions.

I bring to you, as part of my comments, 16 years of experience overseeing research administration at a U15 university, and now almost nine years of experience at a top-10 polytechnic and college.

Today I am here before you to highlight the critical aspect of Canada's academic landscape—the distribution of federal funding and the invaluable role of polytechnics. In a nation celebrated for its cultural diversity and innovation, it's imperative to recognize the pivotal role played by polytechnic institutions in driving research, innovation and economic growth.

As we delve into the intricacies of federal funding mechanisms, it becomes evident that these funds serve as a lifeline for post-secondary institutions, enabling them to sustain operations, conduct research and provide pivotal student support. However, the distribution patterns of these funds reveal disparities and merit our attention.

The college/polytechnic sector only receives approximately 3% of total federal research funding support. While larger research-intensive universities demand and command a significant share of federal research funding, it's essential to acknowledge the under-representation of colleges and polytechnics in this allocation. Despite their substantial contributions to applied research, workforce development and industry partnerships, colleges and polytechnics frequently receive proportionately less federal funding compared to their university counterparts.

In applied research, by definition, we utilize the research that has taken place in the university sector to work with industries and community partners to solve problems and deliver timely solutions. Both sectors are extremely important to Canada.

This disparity not only impedes our capacity to invest in infrastructure and faculty development but also hampers our ability to offer innovative solutions tailored to meeting the evolving needs of industry and communities. In essence, it's a disservice to the essential role that polytechnics play in fostering practical education and training and providing real-world solutions.

The value, however, of polytechnics extends far beyond training. These institutions serve as catalysts for innovative and economic advancement, forging close ties with industry and community partners to address real-world challenges and to develop practical solutions. All our IP stays with our partners, even co-developed IP, which allows innovation to move forward at a faster rate. Our collaborative approach not only enriches the education experience for students but also fosters a culture of innovation that benefits society as a whole.

For example, our faculty and researchers work with start-ups and SMEs, as well as with multinational companies in Saskatchewan and also across Canada. Saskatchewan Polytechnic, for example, was number one in the country for number of partnerships working with industry and community.

The demand is huge, but the limiting factor for us to work with industry and community partners to drive that innovation is funding. We could do so much more if funding were available to support our industry and community partners to move innovative solutions forward.

Furthermore, the impact of polytechnics extends to regional economic development. Through our focus on entrepreneurship and innovation, our institutions stimulate job creation, attract investment and drive economic growth in our communities. We foster tech transfer and accelerate business growth by transforming research findings into commercial products and services, creating value for both academia and industry.

In conclusion, the distribution of federal funding must reflect the diverse contribution needs of Canada's post-secondary institutions. By addressing funding disparities and providing targeted support to polytechnics and colleges, we can enhance access to quality education, drive innovation and foster economic prosperity across this country. Let us reaffirm our commitment to investing in polytechnics as engines of progress to ensure that they continue to lead the way in applied research, innovation and economic development for our country.

Thank you for inviting me here today. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you all for your testimony.

We're going to go to the first round. I'm going to have to do some trimming and have these questions limited to five minutes.

We're starting with Mr. Tochor.

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

Thank you so much, and thank you to both of our witnesses.

Dr. Blum, it was very encouraging to hear that a post-secondary institution in our province of Saskatchewan is—if I heard this right—number one in terms of partnership with business.

How did we achieve that?

[Dr. Susan Blum]

It's been just developing those relationships and having the expertise within our institution.

Our institution, as you know, supports the entire province. We support all industry sectors. When industry or a community has a problem, we can pull together a team to deliver those solutions.

The big difference from the university in our sector is that our faculty don't run their own research programs. We only support. We drive solutions and work with industry partners. Then our partners see the value of that. It happens quickly and in a timely fashion.

If we can get research funding, that might take a little bit longer. Some of our partners just fund on their own so that they can get the solutions they need.

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

It's very much encouraging to have a post-secondary institution that's looking at real-world impacts and ways that research can improve our society. I'm very encouraged by that.

Unfortunately, on the negative side, I do know that in our city of Saskatoon, with the cost of living crisis that's taking place, the food bank is in record use right now.

What have your heard from students or employees about how they're dealing with the record cost of food right now?

[Dr. Susan Blum]

We're sensitive to that for the students. Within the research area, we actually initiated looking at researching food security among our students. We're also working with local food supports and providing opportunities at campus for our students.

I know that housing is an issue in Saskatoon, but I don't think it's as critical as in other areas of the country, given some of the housing availability that we have. The cost is cheaper in Saskatoon and Saskatchewan than in other places across the country.

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

We started to get hit on the housing, but definitely on the food. The 23% increase on the carbon tax has hurt the cost of food and people's lives, as we've all heard.

Another area for opportunity is what's happening with the new campus. You have experience at both the university and Sask Polytech. Can you explain, if you were associated with some of the capital campaigns to replace buildings at a university versus a polytech, if there are any differences there? Are there differences in approach that you think that Sask Polytech is taking or differences in the two facilities?

[Dr. Susan Blum]

This campus is very exciting. It's the first place anywhere in the country where we're going to have a U15 university, a top polytechnic and an innovation park all together in one location. The opportunities for collaboration for that sector are huge.

We have really good, close relationships within the community and with industry partners. That definitely helps support moving areas forward in the new campus. The collaboration on the applied research front, with student exchanges and so forth, are going to be significant with this new initiative.

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

Thank you.

It's my understanding that before coming to Sask Polytech, you spent 16 years leading the administration on research ethics, grants and contracts for the University of Saskatchewan, and then you started Sask Polytech in 2016. Is that correct?

You're probably positioned perfectly for this question.

What's the difference between accessing funds at the universities and Sask Polytech? What is a simple solution—or one of the simple solutions—that could be done by a new government to make the funding of post-secondary institutions more fair ?

[Dr. Susan Blum]

That's a great question.

Yes, there's a big difference. There's some applied research at universities, of course, but a lot of it is basic theoretical knowledge research, which is critical for our society. In the polytechnic sector, it's all about the partners and dealing with solutions, so we need funding mechanisms that can work at the speed of industry, as was talked about at the earlier session, and are more timely.

I noticed right away that part of it was sort of trying to fit a square peg in round hole to fit into some of the standard tri-agency processes for the college and polytechnic sector. It is different, and we need to be supporting community. I see it as supporting community and industry, and we help to move that forward. We need funding supports to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Those are great questions and great answers. Thank you.

Now we'll go to Ms. Kayabaga for five minutes, please.