Science and Research Committee on May 2nd, 2024

[Martin Maltais]

It's not an easy question to answer.

I'll try to be brief.

While it's true that individuals are the bearers of quality and excellence, they develop in a specific context, and institutions are part of it. It's an undeniable equation.

That said, I'll describe the equation's corollary.

A colleague of mine called Michel Umbriaco used to compare universities to a symphony orchestra. He would say that the more investment a university receives for research, the higher the quality of the music it plays. When all is said and done, quality is not really infinite. The same is true of a university's research capacity.

At some point, the allocation of funds needs to be revisited. How to get to that point? First of all, a share of the money—at the top of our list we would refer to the amount required for research in French—and say that it has to be proportionately higher than the relative weight of francophones in the country, which is 9 million over 41 million.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

I went over because that was an important thought to capture.

Thank you for that.

We next have Mr. Canning for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

Thank you all for being here today.

I'm going to start with Ms. Oukouomi, with the Canadian Federation of Students.

I first want to thank your organization, and all the other students who banded together in Support Our Science to force the government finally to raise the level of post-graduate scholarships and fellowships to a rate where you could at least live. I'm not sure whether you could live well, but now a master's student, if they get a scholarship, will be getting $27,000 instead of $17,000. It's a big difference. There was a lift in the amount of tri-council grants, which will also help fund other students.

I'm just wondering if you could comment more fully. In that sphere alone, what more needs to be done with the kind of support the federal government provides? It strikes me as good, but it's not up to the levels we see in other countries, for instance.

[Gishleine Oukouomi]

The first thing is to increase the total amount. Right now, the amount that each student can receive is being increased, but the number of students with access to the funds in question remains limited. Only yesterday, students were asking me if they were certain to get a scholarship if they excelled in their studies. My answer is always “no”.

From the financial standpoint, pursuing higher education is not appealing to students. When the costs and benefits are analyzed, higher education, research, and innovation are not financially rewarding. I am currently working on a Ph.D., and in comparison to others who began working after their bachelor's degree, they are earning a lot more than I am, and their living conditions are much better than mine. Yet Canada's ranking for research depends on the number of students who are conducting research and driving innovation. I would therefore say that overall funding has to be increased.

We also talked at length about francophone students. Our proposal is that the three granting councils should include francophone identity as one of the factors in establishing minority status, as is done for black or indigenous people, and that francophones should receive priority funding because most of them have trouble studying, publishing and receiving support in French, or even finding a francophone research supervisor.

More money is really needed. There's absolutely no doubt about it. What the government mainly has to do is make funding conditional. At the moment, when the government gives money to the universities, it doesn't tell them where they should be spending it. Sometimes universities receive money that doesn't end up in the hands of students. It goes instead to pay large salaries to senior university administrators, which is rather distressing when you compare their living conditions to those of students. So more funding is needed, and it's important to ensure that it gets paid directly to the students.

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

If I can pick up on that, the general funding that governments, both provincial and federal, give to universities has declined over the last 30 years. That's one of the main causes that tuition fees come up. Students are on the hook for that.

I'm just wondering if you think it would be valuable for the federal government to have a funding stream. When they're sending money to the provinces, as we do now, there are no strings attached at all. You could send money to fund universities, but it's used to pay for roads. Would it be useful to have a program that said, “This stream of money is for post-secondary education period”, and let the provinces decide how to spend that, but say, “This is what it's for”?

[Gishleine Oukouomi]

Yes, absolutely.

We have always argued for the establishment of a federal post-secondary education agency. Like health and other areas, education is a provincial jurisdiction. We understand that. However, at the federal level, a safeguard is needed to monitor what is happening. When we plead our case to the provinces, they refer us to the federal government. When we speak to the federal government, we're told that the provinces are free to…

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm sorry. We have to stop. We are getting very close to votes now. Thank you.

I'd like to get another round of questioning in, if you're able to stay for that.

[An hon. member]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

We're just juggling that. We're going to work on that during the break and see what we can do for the second panel.

For now, let's do a quick vote. Then we'll come back and talk about the remainder of the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm going to call us back. Thank you, everyone, for your flexibility.

We'll do five-minute rounds: five minutes for the Conservatives and five minutes for Liberals; and then two and a half for each; and then we'll do a quick panel change to get an hour in with the tri-council.

We'll start with our first questioner, Mr. Lobb, for five minutes, please.

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

Thanks very much.

Did we lose a guest, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm sorry. Unfortunately, she couldn't stay.

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

I guess you guys get all the questions, then. Congratulations.

Depending on what school, organization or representative has appeared before the committee, one theme they have mentioned is that there should be more funding overall. We know we're going into tough times from a budget perspective, with massive multi-year deficits, which do play a part, but that's not an excuse not to fund research.

However, some of the big U15 representatives feel like they're adequate to do the heavy lifting, but if you want to provide funding to the smaller universities, or those not in the U15, they're happy to see what's left over. The smaller universities or the universities that aren't in the U15 say, “Give us a chance, and we'll show you what we can do.”

It does seem, though, that the system is a little rigged towards the U15 and taking care of the U15. Am I wrong in saying that? I think I've heard testimony saying that they'd like to set it up in a way that kind of.... Maybe I'm saying this the wrong way, but it does rig it towards them.

What are your thoughts on that?

[Martin Maltais]

Thank you for your question.

You're absolutely right. That's really the way it is. When you're part of a group that gets preferential treatment from a system, you're not going to complain about it. You'll always want more. The question for the federal government is whether that's good for Canadian society. The system disregards 9 million out of the 41 million people who make up Canada's population.

Now, what impact does that have on francophone researchers, who are members of a group that is currently marginalized? All the figures we've seen so far show this. It's undeniable. And yet, in Canada, we have all kinds of measures to deal with situations of that kind. We are world leaders in this area. We have measures to help all kinds of groups, but we don't yet have equivalent measures to deal with French-language needs. And for French-speaking researchers, the situation is even worse.

It was suggested earlier that researchers could simply be asked to check a box to indicate that they are francophone. More funding could also be given to smaller universities, and resources shared with them. There are 65,000 francophone researchers in Canada, 35,000 of whom are in Quebec. That means there are 30,000 in the rest of Canada, and most of them don't conduct research in the French language. They don't earn their living by doing research in French. That's a major problem, and I'll give you a brief explanation of why that is.

The country is undergoing demographic growth. Every year, Canada's population grows by 1.5 million. For how long will it be possible to pursue adequate research activities across the country, and in all the French-language universities, unless we can recruit enough francophones to teach in our universities?

This is becoming a key challenge at the moment and answers have to be found. They won't be found in the current system, because we have to be able to train our own French-speaking researchers in Canada.

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

I have one other question for you folks. On an almost daily basis you can read an article in any of the news publications in the country about the living conditions and standards that some of our university students are facing and, certainly, exponential growth in foreign students attending Canadian universities. I think back to when I was of that age—

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

I'm sorry, Mr. Lobb, but we are at time. Could you ask the question quickly, and we could ask for a reply in writing?

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

I guess I'd just ask if we should review what the numbers should be. Do you folks have an idea of what the obligations of a Canadian university and a Canadian taxpayer are? Also, what is the correct number of foreign students as a percentage of the school population?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Great. Thank you very much.

Thank you to our witnesses.

We now go to Dr. Jaczek for five minutes, please.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Certainly, we've heard through the course of this study that more funding is needed for science and research here in Canada. I'm sure everyone is very happy to see that our proposed budget includes those measures.

However, our task on this committee is to look at the distribution of those funds. We've heard some suggestions that probably do have an impact on smaller colleges and universities, in particular, the administrative burden of the applications themselves. As we were told, lead investigators are increasingly spending less time doing their research and more time doing the administrative work related to cumbersome funding application processes. It's obviously much heavier on smaller institutions.

Do you have any particularly concrete suggestions for how this administrative burden—in other words, excessive red tape—could be reduced?

[Sophie Montreuil]

Thank you for your question. It's an excellent one.

Our association represents francophone researchers across the country. I've often said that being a francophone researcher in a Quebec university is completely different from being a francophone researcher in an anglophone or bilingual university elsewhere, for example at a francophone campus like the University of Alberta's Campus Saint-Jean. They are two completely different realities.

In June 2021, we published a report at the end of a two-year study in which we surveyed some 500 francophone researchers across Canada, excluding Quebec. One of the findings was that their teaching load was higher than for a francophone professor in a Quebec university, as is the case for my president. They have more courses to teach, more marking to do, and more administrative tasks. Universities and faculty members have three missions: teaching, research and community services. One of these missions is already overloaded and the other two remain. They definitely have less time for research and for finding funding for their research.

They need help to have more time. We were saying earlier that university funding is a provincial jurisdiction. Not only that, but it's the institutions themselves that decide whether or not to create faculty positions. Nevertheless, it's important to at least continue to emphasize that francophone faculty members, irrespective of their university's status, are entitled to submit funding applications in French. It's in the legislation. If their university can't provide them with the traditional forms of support, we now offer a new service. I won't go into the details, but there are some uncomplicated ways to facilitate the research grant application process for francophone researchers.

To increase funding for research in French, there have to be more applications. For there to be more applications, improved conditions in the institutions are required. What's needed, therefore, is a linked process that begins by making it easier in the institutions to submit funding applications in French, to enable universities like the University of Saskatchewan to submit some very solid funding applications in French—francophone researchers are just as good as anglophone researchers—and this would generate more research funding.

Every link in this chain has a role to play.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

Do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

You have 30 seconds.

[Helena Jaczek, Liberal, Markham—Stouffville, ON]

I think I'll pass, then.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you, Dr. Jaczek.

We'll go over to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'll continue with questions for Mr. Maltais.

Mr. Maltais, your colleague just explained the current vicious circle with respect to the distribution of research funding in Canada. We are clearly talking about a number of incentives, such as earmarked amounts—you mentioned this a little earlier—that would require the introduction of criteria to achieve genuine equity in terms of funding for francophone researchers in Canada.

Among other things, I'd like you to discuss the value assigned to science and French in Canada. The committee prepared a report, and it showed clearly that the success rate in applications to the granting agencies for French-speaking researchers in Canada is lower, not only in terms of the overall percentage, but also when funding applications are submitted in French rather than English. I'd like to hear what you have to say about this.

What can actually be done to ensure that French-speaking researchers have genuine access at an equivalent level to funding, no matter what institution they are from?