Science and Research Committee on March 31st, 2022

[Dr. Stéphanie Michaud]

The $15 million of NCE funding that we currently hold runs until March 31, 2023. We have been allowed to operate as a network of centres of excellence until March 31, 2024, but this is self-funded.

We are very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to apply to the strategic science fund. We're waiting to hear whether or not we will be able to continue in the competitive process. If we are funded under this program, the funding would begin in April of 2024, which means there's a one-year gap between when our NCE funding ends and when the strategic science funding would begin, if we are successful.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

Your recommendation would be to fill that gap with funding to give you that bridge financing, so to speak, which would allow you to get to the next application process.

[Dr. Stéphanie Michaud]

It would allow us to be able to continue to carry out our activities and not lose the momentum we have built up since being funded in 2015. We could continue to execute on life-saving clinical trials and deliver value for the private sector, the academic sector and patients across the country.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, Dr. Michaud and Dr. Bell.

Madam Chair, I will move on to Mr. Deschênes.

It must be incredibly difficult to attract top talent in terms of professors, as well as students, to a rural area. I look back to my own university days and I think most of the people I attended university with were more inclined to apply to large urban centres.

How have you overcome that issue? What can the government do to support enrolment numbers in small or mid-sized universities, specifically in those in rural areas?

[François Deschênes]

Thank you for your question.

Certainly, getting enough research grants is an important factor in terms of attracting and retaining students. Ultimately, it makes it possible to pay those grants back in the form of scholarships to students. Scholarships are an important factor in financing an education. Using these...

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Lawrence, there's a lack of interpretation.

We will go back and give our rector an extra minute to be fair.

Can we check that the interpretation is there now, please?

[François Deschênes]

Testing. Can you hear me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

We do, thank you very much

Thank you, Mr. Lawrence.

Go ahead, Mr. Deschênes.

[François Deschênes]

As I was just saying, the funding provided by the federal government through grants and scholarships is one of the important factors. When universities in the regions receive these scholarships and grants, they return them in large part to students in the form of funding, as is well known. So these are additional resources that enable us to attract students to the regions, because this means we can offer scholarships that are competitive on the same footing as the other universities. That is a key factor in terms of attraction.

We know that often, when students enrol at universities in a region, they come to like the region and decide to settle there to make their careers and contribute to the region. On that point, I would say that about two thirds of our students, perhaps even three quarters, work in the region after graduation.

It is a very important vector for attraction and retention, and so it is essential to support it.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you for that answer, Rector.

I have one last question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Please keep it very short, Mr. Collins.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

To Dr. Eaves, I'm thinking about the incredible export numbers you talked about earlier. Could you elaborate on “project bedrock”? You talked about matching government funding from the provinces.

What can the federal government do to support that initiative, from a funding or policy perspective?

[Dr. Allen Eaves]

It's to help support the facilities that we need to go with clinical products. Our focus has traditionally been on the research-use-only products, but we're now moving into clinical grade products. Our media are in 40 different clinical trials.

We want to be able to do the same for the components that go into vaccines, and testing reagents for the pandemic. We have the capability to do this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Dr. Eaves, I'm sorry to interrupt. I hope someone else will pick up this train of thought.

Mr. Blanchette-Joncas now has the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to welcome the witnesses who are with us this evening.

My questions will be mainly for Mr. Deschênes and Mr. Carbonneau.

Thank you for being with us this evening, gentlemen.

Mr. Deschênes, I quite liked your opening presentation. You highlighted a number of problems faced by small and mid-sized regional universities. I would like to carry on from what you were saying, when you mentioned that Quebec's university network was an extensive one. I would say that Quebec's university network is the biggest university network in Canada. I'm proud of it and I'm a proud representative of the Université du Québec à Rimouski, from which I graduated.

Mr. Deschênes, you made clear the inequality between universities in the regions and those located in the big urban centres. Could you propose concrete solutions to combat this phenomenon?

[François Deschênes]

In terms of concrete solutions, I spoke earlier about the challenges that arise in the evaluation process, in terms of how the circumstances of researchers in smaller institutions in the regions are taken into account. That is an important factor. We have to make sure that the evaluation committees are representative and that there is vigilance in this regard.

I would propose another possibility: include a section in the forms that could be used to draw attention to those circumstances so they can be better described and better understood. That would mean that when achievements are evaluated, we would be able to draw attention to those circumstances. That is an important factor.

As well, I spoke earlier about how quotas are established when funding is granted in certain programs. That is another important factor.

I also addressed the issue of matching funds and the contribution by the institutions. Here again, the playing field is not level, so we need to be able to draw attention to that. Ideally, in fact, there should be no match in the grants. We are not funding bodies and the money we receive is used to train students. When a match is requested, that means we are diverting money to provide it. This is particularly the case in small institutions where there is little financial leeway. These evaluation criteria should be changed.

With respect to establishing programs, to start with, there has to be a desire to establish programs and criteria that fit our circumstances. With that said, there should not be a race to the bottom. There is excellence everywhere, and the important thing is to give them the ability to prove themselves. Even if the smaller institutions don't have a critical mass when it comes to the number of researchers, that doesn't mean at all that those researchers are not as good. It simply means that they may be on their own and they have probably developed an instinct for greater collaboration with other researchers. We have to determine how to clearly draw attention to that in the evaluations. I think that is a large part of the key to success at that stage.

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

Thank you for that explanation, Mr. Deschênes.

You also spoke earlier about measuring excellence, which could be a good way of reducing that inequality.

Could you tell us more about that approach?

[François Deschênes]

In fact, I am a strong advocate of measuring potential from different angles. We often evaluate excellence using a certain number of indicators: for example, how many scientific articles a person has produced and how much funding was associated with them. We look at the person's history and full of admiration, we say this person is excellent. Another person, however, one in less optimal conditions than the first person, may have somewhat lower production. How would we be able to evaluate that excellence and put it in perspective in order to convert it into potential—that is, evaluate whether that person has potential?

So it comes back to what I was saying earlier: I think we need to have appropriate criteria and committees that are aware of these situations.

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

Thank you.

You also said that over 25% of researchers with doctorates are denied funding, and that this boils down to a loss of expertise, of brains that can't put their talents to work.

What concrete solutions could you propose so, ideally, that doesn't happen?

[François Deschênes]

Studies show that, all things being equal, grants, even small ones, are important. That is, productivity doesn't increase tenfold when the grant is ten times higher. So what is important is to be able to provide post-docs who have been trained for research, everywhere in Canada and in the institutions in major centres, with the minimum resources for doing research. That means that we will be able to put a majority, if not all, of our post-docs whose brains are trained for research to work.

I think that programs in the various granting agencies that will reach out to these researchers to put them into action, this will be a factor that will change the future when it comes to potential.

There is also another important factor: the smallest institutions are often less focused on health, since they don't have faculties of medicine. We have to be able to recognize that health research takes various forms and also support it in all its forms, even if an institution doesn't have a faculty of medicine.

That is another way of doing things differently, of innovating, all over, and finding solutions tailored to the various regions of Canada.

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

Thank you, Mr. Deschênes.

What do you think that we, collectively, lose by not funding the brains that have been specially trained to do research?

[François Deschênes]

We are depriving ourselves of an unbelievable capacity to develop solutions that are tailored to the situations in our communities.

In fact, the analogy I often offer is of a person who has lots of money and buys a lot of cars, but can't use them because they have no money left to put gas in them.

At present, there are brains that are asleep that Canada could be gaining more from. This is an enormous loss. As I said, we don't know where the next revolutionary idea will come from.

As decision-makers, let's try to create fertile ground for all these researchers.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I'm sorry, but time is up.

Thank you for your questions, Mr. Blanchette-Joncas.

We will now go to Mr. Cannings, and if you allow me, it is Mr. Cannings' birthday, so we wish him wonderful returns today and for the year.

Mr. Cannings, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's unnecessary, but thank you.

As Mr. Collins said, this is a very interesting panel.

I'm going to begin with BioCanRx. I met with Ms. Michaud of BioCanRx a couple of weeks ago, so I got a bit of a taste of what you've been doing. It sounds very innovative and exciting, a sort of distributed network of science, and applying that science to do very exciting and important things, like changing things for cancer patients.

I have so many questions. I'll begin with Dr. Bell. When we're considering the government investment into this network that includes universities, investigators and private investors, where does the IP from this rest? If we are going to export this, how can Canadian companies benefit from your work?

I'll leave it there.