Science and Research Committee on May 2nd, 2024

[Ted Hewitt]

I'm not sure there's a report. There's correspondence that would be available.

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

I'd like to see the correspondence of their explaining the research—

[Ted Hewitt]

Sure.

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

—and the research itself, because this is questionable. We have a cost-of-living crisis across Canada, which is hurting the amount of research that is done at our post-secondary institutions, and here's an example where tens of thousands of dollars went to questionable research for partisan reasons. For every group that comes in here looking for additional dollars, there were additional dollars in SSHRC that went to research for partisan reasons.

[Ted Hewitt]

It was not, in our view. I reject that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Okay. We'll move on to the next five minutes with Ms. Bradford, please.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you so much to our witnesses. It's wonderful to have the three tri-council funding agencies here together in person.

This is a question I'd like each one of you to answer from your perspective. On April 18 of this year, Dr. Dena McMartin of the University of Lethbridge told this committee that members of review committees responsible for awarding funding have to pass judgment on the institutional capacity of institutions. In her opinion, these review criteria pose a problem, as the experts are not in a position to make these judgments.

Do the evaluation criteria based on the host institution's institutional capacity cause inequitable funding decisions? What adjustments could be made to the peer review process?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

I'll start first if you want.

We're always checking for biases and distortions in the review process. I don't know how familiar you are with the discovery grant system. We have hundreds of committee members evaluating them. We had 3,000 applications this year and we awarded over 2,000 grants.

Questions that are asked about institutional capacity would be mostly, I believe, for experimental, large-scale research and whether that is feasible. I would agree with the comment that this would not necessarily always be.... It's a difficult call in some cases, right? We have members of our staff who are there and who are always reminding the committees that they shouldn't go in those directions.

Of course, no system is perfect, but we are proud of the fairness of our granting system. Those issues have been flagged to us and we're continually working with the committees—we're in direct contact with them—to try to continually have the best practices.

It's a very good point and something that we're continually trying to mitigate.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

[Dr. Tammy Clifford]

Perhaps if I could just add to that, I agree with Dr. Adem's comments as well.

In terms of the peer review committees that we have for our project grant competition, we have about 60 peer review panels who operate twice a year. We do have members of staff who are at those peer review panels, and we are monitoring for comments that might suggest a bias according to institutional size as well as some other elements.

To Dr. Adem's point, though, these applications that are submitted to us do receive institutional sign-off. When the institution or the university itself signs off on it, they are effectively saying, “We're able to do the work".

Is it a perfect system yet? No, but through monitoring and the training that we do provide for peer reviewers, we're working to be able to address that particular potential bias as well as others.

Thank you.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Hewitt.

[Ted Hewitt]

I have a similar response.

It's interesting; my first position was at the University of Lethbridge, so it's a place I know well.

It's a smaller institution, by the way, and I would say that it has similar processes in place. We try to keep committees broadly representative, so that there are people from larger institutions and smaller institutions.

We also have a system of observers who sit in committees. These are academics who don't participate, but they listen and provide reports where they believe there are anomalies or issues.

Peer review is not a perfect process, as we all know. We can learn from this at the end of the day and make sure that instructions to committees are taken appropriately to make sure that certain things do not happen and certain assumptions are not made.

This is what we do, basically.

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

Continuing with you, Mr. Hewitt, grants from the research support fund that help the institutions finance the indirect costs of research are calculated based on the funding that institutions have received in the past. The program provides for higher percentages for institutions that have received less funding.

This mechanism does not apply to the research security component of the fund, and the committee heard that smaller institutions receive small grants.

To be eligible for research security funding, institutions must receive at least $2 million in direct research funding from the granting agencies.

Should this threshold be changed?

[Ted Hewitt]

Are you asking my opinion?

[Valerie Bradford, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Yes. That's all you can offer, right?

[Ted Hewitt]

I think it should be reviewed. This was a decision that was taken in consultation with the department to which we report, and that would be Innovation, Science and Economic Development, or what we affectionately call ISED. That was the decision that was ultimately taken in order to make best use of the funds in their view at the time.

Should we be reviewing that? Absolutely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

Thank you.

Monsieur Blanchette-Joncas, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are for the three witnesses who are here.

A number of witnesses have voiced their concerns about the funding allocated to French-speaking researchers, that is, to francophone researchers. They agreed with certain recommendations made by the Canadian Federation of Students and the Association francophone pour le savoir, among others. They proposed that francophones be recognized as an under-represented group. At present, the funding they are granted is lower not only than their demographic weight, but also than the proportion of francophone faculty in Canada.

Do you think there could be an incentive, or even a criterion, that would allow for there to be dedicated envelopes at the funding organizations in order to ensure the vitality of research in French?

[Ted Hewitt]

That would be a good way to ensure such vitality. With that said, we contribute to support mechanisms organized by the Université de Sherbrooke and funded by both Acfas and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

We are also going to create other mechanisms for encouraging researchers to submit grant applications in French, but there are—

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

Mr. Hewitt, what I am trying to find out is whether you would agree to that kind of criterion being adopted. At present, it does not exist.

You are explaining what you do right now, but it does not seem to be working, since there is still an imbalance. I am trying to find solutions.

At present, francophone researchers in Canada are at a disadvantage because research funding is concentrated in the anglophone university network: 80% of research funding is divided among 15 universities, 13 of which are anglophone universities. If we do a quick calculation, we see that there is an imbalance. Francophones have to leave home and enter the anglophone network or contend with obstacles in order to get access to higher education.

As the guardian of the funds allocated for funding research in Canada, do you agree to there being ways of ensuring an equitable proportion of the funding in order to fully redress the imbalance for French-speaking researchers in Canada?

[Ted Hewitt]

It is a complicated problem, and we are no doubt going to study it with our colleagues and Acfas.

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

Mr. Adem, do you want to add something?

[Dr. Alejandro Adem]

Thank you.

I think one of the big problems is that since 2014, only 4% of discovery grant applications, for example, were made in French. As well, only 8% of applicants reported that French was their preferred language of correspondence. I think this is not a good situation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Lloyd Longfield]

We are at time, but do you have a brief comment, Dr. Clifford?

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

Ms. Clifford, do you agree with the proposal?