Science and Research Committee on March 31st, 2022

[Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac]

I'll just maybe mention its relevance.

I think with the early learning and children care agreement, one really important connection to science is the opportunity it provides for early career researchers. It addresses a really important barrier that a lot of early career researchers are experiencing during life transitions that many of them are having at that time.

I'm really happy to see that happening, and that relates to enabling researchers to do science, to have access to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. McIsaac. That was really—

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I'm hoping some of my other colleagues will get back to you both on those....

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Ms. Diab.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas will now take his turn for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I first want to welcome the witnesses who are with us today.

My first questions are for Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith, in the Chief Science Advisor's annual report, she cited a rather major problem concerning Canada's megascience infrastructure. She referred to “considerable complexity and heterogeneity in the government's approach to support these major research facilities.” She also talked about a lack of “formal coordination among the multiple organizations who fund and operate them.”

Based on your experience, do you observe the same things?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

I think the coordination has certainly proved that this is one of the areas where additional improvement could be made in thinking about a national strategy for some of the major research facilities, and thinking about the priorities we are trying to address as a country, the tools we need and the way we develop those tools.

I think one of the areas this touches on is that the length of time required to develop and build the sorts of infrastructures that TRIUMF represents is measured in many years. We have been operating, for 50 years, a variety of different accelerators, and if we upgrade those accelerators and bring in new technologies, these can be decadal programs. Having the ability to sustain a strategy and program over the length of time required for the full lifespan of a facility like TRIUMF is extremely critical.

Of course, there are new committees looking at coordination between the councils and CFI, and although that coordination is certainly improving, I think this is an area where additional improvement would really benefit Canada.

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

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

You talked about strategy. What improvements do you think could be made to achieve better strategic management of these big megascience facilities?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

I think it revolves around thinking about the priorities the country has, the sorts of tools and techniques that will be required to deliver on those questions and the ability to tie together, and work collaboratively on, the infrastructures that we need to develop. As you build a new large-scale accelerator, for instance, it will take many years and hundreds of millions of dollars. The ability to understand the sort of science it will address, making sure that you are bringing in the [Technical difficulty—Editor] through building that strategy, is collaborative and about making sure that you are talking from a bottom-up perspective. What are the researchers in universities and researchers within the country trying to address? There are also some elements of the top-down perspective that we have grand challenges we know we will need to address in the future. What are the tools and techniques we will need to address those grand challenges and make sure that coordination occurs across a time scale commensurate with building these facilities?

As an example, in looking towards climate change and understanding how we can address climate change, we will need to bring in a whole host of different tools, including the ability to understand, for instance, advance materials. If we're looking to develop battery technology, we need to understand how batteries work, how the surfaces and interfaces work. That's the sort of area that a facility like TRIUMF excels at by using particle probes to understand how surfaces and materials operate.

We need to make sure that we're looking as a country at the sorts of questions that we [Technical difficulty—Editor] how we bring all of these things together from both the bottom up and top down.

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

Thank you, Mr. Smith.

You talked about several problems that involve coordination and the need for a vision, among other things. Can you also tell us what the main challenges are that Canada will have to meet in terms of megascience?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

That's a great question. I think it touches on many of the grand challenges that people will be aware of in terms of climate change, which is an obvious one, and looking at how we can bring our tools to bear. TRIUMF is a fundamental research facility. It's based in particle physics. It's based in nuclear physics. We need to make sure that we're also able to address many of the challenges that our community is looking to explore over the next few years.

That fundamental research, as has already been mentioned tonight, is the inspirational angle that will bring people into research. One might think that discovering the Higgs particle was extremely esoteric, but it was a fantastic opportunity to really inspire the next generation of researchers or next generation of engineers. Hence, although it's a very specific particle physics question, the highly qualified personnel, the students and the post-docs who get inspired by those sorts of questions, then go on to lead other opportunities and other options that will address these grand challenges.

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

Thank you very much for presenting this information, Mr. Smith.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

We really appreciate the discussion.

Now we will go to Mr. Cannings for six minutes

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

Thank you.

I'll continue with you, Dr. Smith. Thank you for the invitation to tour TRIUMF. I had the wonderful opportunity many years ago to tour TRIUMF when it was still pretty young—and I was obviously a lot younger too. It would be interesting to see how TRIUMF has changed. I also had the random luck to be put in a cabin on a train across Canada with one of the scientists from TRIUMF who worked on the CERN particle detector team in the Higgs particle project. Don't test me on how all of that works, but it was all very interesting.

All of this is to say that it was very exciting to be working at UBC, as I was back in the late seventies and early eighties, when TRIUMF was just starting. It was very much a point of pride there. At that time, I think three universities had teamed up—hence the name—and it was a really big example of co-operation in big science.

How does that work nowadays between TRIUMF and Canadian universities, or universities from wherever, who actually have a say in and are part of that team that runs TRIUMF?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

We have expanded the number of Canadian universities who are effectively members of TRIUMF. We're just going through an incorporation process at the moment, but we hope that by the end of the year we will actually have 21 Canadian universities as members of TRIUMF. That goes all the way from Vancouver through to Halifax. That demonstrates the interest that the university researchers have in being part of an endeavour like TRIUMF. It allows their researchers to engage in the research that interests and drives and inspires them.

We have expanded from the “TRI” in TRIUMF, which stood for TRI-University Meson Facility. We no longer use that acronym. I don't know what the word would be for 21, but it keeps changing. We are certainly a demonstration of that ability within Canada to collaborate between the universities. It also demonstrates the need for these major research facilities because an operation like TRIUMF is too large for any one or even three universities to sustain. We are constantly looking to bring in other researchers and other universities to support the work we're doing.

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

Just to expand on that, how does this work when your scientists are working at CERN? Are you connected with CERN in a real way, or is it just people applying to work at CERN and getting time on the accelerators?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

We have two aspects there. One is the detectors that the researchers are interested in, and also the accelerator at CERN, the Large Hadron Collider. One of the aspects that TRIUMF is engaged in at the moment.... We secured $10 million to build components of the next generation of the LHC. It's what's called the high-luminosity upgrade to the accelerator itself. TRIUMF is ideally suited to provide those components, because we are world experts in what's called superconducting RF technology, which is used in these accelerators.

The contribution that we make to CERN as the accelerator is, in some sense, a gateway that we use to allow our researchers to engage in the science there as well. Canada is not a member of CERN, but it's associated with the research there, so by having this in-kind contribution to the accelerator, we make sure that Canadian scientists are more than welcome to utilize the facilities.

For the projects involving the detectors, we also act as a springboard, if you like, so that we are doing coordination work, but also using things like our detector technology team here in developing some of the techniques that might be used at CERN. That then becomes very collaborative with the university researchers.

There are two angles there. One is the detector and one is the accelerator itself.

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

I'll switch quickly to what you mentioned about isotope analysis and medical isotopes that you produce at TRIUMF and are produced in other parts of Canada. There was a crisis situation a few years ago, I think, around Chalk River, where suddenly there was a gap in isotope production.

Where is that right now and how do you fit in? What about the other isotope producers in Canada? How does that work? Do you work with CNL? How is that all organized?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

This is an area where there is a lot of collaboration between the players within Canada, and this is to do with the development of technetium 99 as a radioisotope for medical imaging. There are several players. The Canadian Light Source has an approach. TRIUMF is heavily engaged in the production of these isotopes, as well, so we developed a new process to allow us to create those isotopes.

We work with Chalk River. We work with CNL. That's part of that collaborative aspect of ensuring that we're working across the major research facilities generally, but this is an area that is growing, and TRIUMF is aiming to be one of the—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I'm sorry, Dr. Smith. It's the worst part of this, when all of you are sharing such important information in your research. Please forgive me.

We are now going to go to the five-minute rounds. We're going to hear from Ms. Gladu for five minutes, please.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today. I'm going to start with Dr. Rafuse.

I've had the pleasure of touring Dalhousie and the Brain Repair Centre, and I know that we are leaders in brain research in Canada. The question for you is how we maintain that leadership and strengthen our position in the world.

[Dr. Victor Rafuse]

The maintenance of leadership depends on our ability to continue to attract young researchers. I think it was mentioned earlier that young researchers are really the future of research in Canada, and we have to find better ways across Canada to make sure that we attract young people across different cultures and disciplines to do research. That's one of the biggest challenges that we're faced with.

We are definitely working more closely now with our fellow institutes across Canada, and I think that's a recurring theme. Dr. Smith was alluding to it as well. Collaboration in Canada is one of the key things that keeps Canada strong.

We have our local strengths and we're challenged to maintain them, but as a nation, something that we're faced with daily is how to continue to attract young researchers and keep them in science. It's a big challenge and it's a national issue that we all have to address.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

Dr. Smith, I have had the pleasure of touring TRIUMF as well. That's a very impressive facility.

I have the same question for you. We're leading there. How do we strengthen our position to make sure we don't fall behind?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

This touches on the question of building an ecosystem across the major research facilities and making sure we are able to support that ecosystem in a way that optimizes the investment that is being made.

This is where I would go back to ensuring that we are building a strategy across the major research facilities and then providing sufficient support across the entire life cycle of those facilities, not just for the capital investment, but also for the operational aspects of a facility, which are generally about 10%, year on year, of the capital cost.

It is about ensuring that we can build, maintain and operate that world-class, top of the game facility through continued investment across the lifespan of the lab.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

All of you know that the Naylor report recommended that the government increase the spending for research and that the funding has not yet been realized.

A quick question for each of you is, would you agree that we should implement that recommendation from the Naylor report?

I'll start with you, Dr. McIsaac.

[Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac]

More funding is certainly a common thread, probably from all of the witnesses who have been brought forward. I think—