Science and Research Committee on March 31st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

I call this meeting to order.

We welcome our guests to the second panel of our ninth meeting. As you know, this is the inaugural science and research committee and the inaugural study on the successes, challenges and opportunities for science in Canada.

For this panel, our committee is really pleased to welcome, as an individual, Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac, an assistant professor and Canada research chair in diversity and transitions of early childhood, from Mount Saint Vincent University. We are pleased to welcome Dr. Victor Rafuse, director and professor at Dalhousie University with the Brain Repair Centre; and from TRIUMF, we have Dr. Nigel Smith, the executive director.

We will now go to testimony. You will each have five minutes. When you see me give the yellow card, that means we're at the four-and-a-half-minute mark. I do my best to be fair to everyone.

We will begin with Dr. McIsaac for five minutes.

The floor is yours.

[Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac, Assistant Professor, Canada Research Chair in Early Childhood: Diversity and Transitions, Mount Saint Vincent University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and to the committee, for the invitation to share my thoughts on the successes, challenges and opportunities for science in Canada. It's really an honour to have the opportunity to speak with the committee this evening.

Before I begin, I do want to start by acknowledging that I'm joining from my home in Halifax, which is in Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq nation. I also would like to pay respects to the histories, contributions and legacies of the African Nova Scotian communities, which have been here for over 400 years.

I'm an assistant professor within the Faculty of Education and the department of Child and Youth Study at Mount Saint Vincent University. At the Mount, I'm a tier-2 Canada research chair in early childhood, as was mentioned.

Tier-2 positions are awarded to exceptional emerging researchers who have been acknowledged to be leaders in their field. During my tenure, I have established the Early Childhood Collaborative Research Centre, which engages families, as well as partners in policy and practice, in research to enhance early childhood well being.

I receive tri-agency funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, along with funding from non-profit organizations, provincial government sources and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

In my remarks, I'm going to focus on three key points. I'll get right to it.

First, we're facing complex population health and social issues in Canada. The pandemic has had different impacts on us all. It has certainly highlighted the inequity that exists in our communities. As we look toward an equitable pandemic recovery, applying an engaged scholarship approach to science in Canada would mean bridging the gap between theory and practice by integrating scientific and practical knowledge. This means ensuring that our research questions are relevant and meaningful to Canadians. In my work, this means leveraging family voices by considering how the social determinants of health influence families and a child's well being.

Knowledge mobilization is a central part of our work. We do this by engaging partners in the co-production of research, as well as extending our traditional research outputs to support research to have an impact on policy and practice.

One brief example is a recently completed photo voice project with newcomer families in Halifax, where we learned more about how they navigated programs and services for young children. Families took pictures of their daily lives and talked to us about the challenges they faced related to employment and language, and also how they relied on their social networks to support them in their settlement journey.

The results of this research were shared through an outdoor photo exhibit and in other public spaces such as libraries and museums. It is helping to inform adjustments to the implementation of programs for families in communities alongside new research that we're conducting with our settlement agency partners.

Second, I provide my remarks today as an early career researcher. Other witnesses have shared their advice for increased investment in funding for research. As you consider these investments, I'd like to highlight the importance of incorporating an equity lens in research funding.

While the pandemic has resulted in some new opportunities for funding, it has also highlighted the disparities that have emerged within the scientific community, particularly those that relate to gender, race and caregiving. While there have been a few studies that have identified these early experiences, the long-term impacts on the career progression for many of these individuals, including our trainees, will take some time to emerge. We need to be proactive and develop supports for those scientists most affected by the pandemic to avoid a further depending of the inequities.

Finally, a topic brought up in the first part of this session was the need to be thinking about enabling research across the country and recognizing institutional and regional assets. As a smaller institution on the east coast, there are perceived barriers to our capacity for large-scale research, which we often see through the peer review process. Often missed are the unique strengths that come from working at a small institution like Mount Saint Vincent University, which is strongly committed to fostering equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility.

An example of this is that our institution was established for the advancement of women, with social responsibility and social justice at its core. We are one of 17 universities and colleges from across Canada, and the only Nova Scotia institution, selected to work with the tri-agency Dimensions team to foster increased excellence, innovation and creativity within the post-secondary sector across all disciplines through a focus on equity, diversity and inclusion.

My research program is also greatly enabled in our small province through the ability to foster strong partnerships with policy-makers and communities. This is something that can be different in larger regions.

Thank you again for the invitation to share my remarks. I look forward to your questions and further discussion about the successes and opportunities for science in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Dr. McIsaac. We appreciate hearing from an early-career researcher, and we thank you for being here.

We will now go to Dr. Victor Rafuse for five minutes. The floor is yours.

[Dr. Victor Rafuse, Director and Professor, Dalhousie University, Brain Repair Centre]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, I'd like to also thank the committee for this opportunity to give my presentation today. I'd also like to thank the government and previous governments for their support of research in Canada. Without that support, we would not be where we are today. Is there room for more? I guess that's why we're here. Thank you for your support. I think that's something that's often missed in these opportunities.

I'm going to focus on three things. Many of them you've probably heard several times. They're fairly broad. They're not specific.

The number one issue is the importance of hypothesis-driven research. Hypothesis-driven research is the foundation of all innovation across Canada and the world, across every field. It doesn't matter which field you're looking at, because it all goes back to hypothesis-driven research.

In our field, the sciences and medical sciences field, it's basically coming from the tri-council. The tri-council, whether it's NSERC, SSHRC or CIHR, is not just the foundation for hypothesis-driven research for the most part. It's also the engine of research across Canada. That really is what drives the research in individual labs. Without that research in individual labs, there is no greater research in Canada. If you have initiatives, and for people to be able to participate in them, they have to have an active lab. To have an active lab, they have to have, in our field, tri-council funding.

It's critical, it's important and it's at a moment of stability. We've adjusted the stability, but it needs to grow, so that the health of the research community in Canada can grow with it.

The second thing that I think is critically important—and it was already touched on even this evening—is geographical diversity. Geographical diversity is critical in research. Canada prides itself on being a diverse country, from St. John's to Vancouver, from Windsor to Iqaluit and beyond. This is what makes Canada Canada, and this is what makes Canada great. It's not only what makes Canada great, it drives the economy. It's what's healthy for Canada. It's also what's healthy for research. You need research from across Canada to challenge and then build on the ideas of all research around the world. Without that, it creates a level of non-equity, and the health of research in Canada suffers dramatically from that.

A point on that is equity of research in federal funding is not as equitable as it could be, in my opinion. Every time there's a federal grant that adds a match to the federal grant, you knock out a large number of small universities. You add that match and we can match.... There are ways that we can match some of the smaller initiatives, like the smaller, individual CFIs, but once they come to a larger CFI or any of the larger grants where there's a match, it's gone.

Therefore, it's not a federal program. It's not available to everyone. It's critically dire for the really small provinces. In Atlantic Canada, it would be P.E.I., where CFIs for individuals is almost zero because they can't access funding. To say the CFI is true federal funding, in my opinion, is not accurate. It advantages the wealthier provinces over others.

The third issue is a bit more vague, but it's an issue that we've been working on as neuroscientists across Canada. It's to try to come across a neuroscience or a brain policy. I'll leave it with the point that the aging brain is increasing the need for this at a rate that we've never seen before in mankind.

It's particularly dire in Canada, where our aging population actually outpaces the rest of the world's.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you so much, Dr. Rafuse. We appreciate your being here, and we're grateful for your expertise.

We will now go to Dr. Nigel Smith from TRIUMF, please, for five minutes.

[Dr. Nigel Smith, Executive Director, TRIUMF]

Good evening, Madam Chair and committee members.

Thank you so much for inviting TRIUMF to appear before you on this important study. My name is Nigel Smith and I am the executive director of TRIUMF, Canada's particle accelerator centre.

I would like to first acknowledge that TRIUMF is located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam people, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history and traditions from one generation to the next on this site. This land has always been a seat of learning.

Located on the campus of the University of British Columbia, TRIUMF is a world-class subatomic physics and accelerator facility that, using world-unique infrastructure, carries out fundamental science and applied research that is changing the world. Founded more than 50 years ago, TRIUMF plays a significant role in Canada's science and innovation ecosystem as one of the largest major research facilities colloquially known as “big science” facilities.

These enterprises—SNOLAB and the Canadian Light Source being other examples—provide infrastructure that no single university can support and, by bringing together a critical mass of researchers and engineers, can develop new ways of addressing problems and enable Canada to compete at scale in the global science and innovation enterprise.

TRIUMF is owned and operated by a consortium of Canadian universities, with operations primarily supported by federal investment over the last 50 years, for which we are highly grateful. Over the last five decades, well over a billion dollars of capital has been invested into TRIUMF, including the largest conventional cyclotron in the world and a new $100-million accelerator complex in final construction.

Collectively, the massive investment in TRIUMF has created the opportunity for many successes in Canadian science. From advancing our understanding of the origins of the universe to developing next-generation materials and cures for cancer, we are at the forefront of research domestically and act as the portal to other world-class international facilities like CERN in Geneva. We have enabled Nobel Prize-winning research, addressed emergent crises and played a leading role in Canada's effort to establish itself as a global innovator for medical isotopes. We are currently developing radioisotopes for both diagnostics and therapy, with a new $60-million facility coming online later this year, supporting both federal and provincial needs around isotope security and innovation.

The pandemic has also highlighted the requirements of having resilience within the national research and development ecosystem. Major research facilities play a critical role in this regard, sitting at the interface between academia, industry and government, with the ability to be agile in addressing these emergent issues. As an example, in the face of the COVID pandemic, several Canadian major research labs joined forces, led by Nobel laureate Art McDonald, to rapidly design, prototype and move to market a new type of ventilator to assist in the pandemic response. This also demonstrates the benefit of having that strong network of major research facilities within Canada.

There are challenges in delivering these successes, however. Canada has a globally unique approach to major research facilities, and the associated challenge of managing the full life cycle of these labs has been identified for many years. Much work has been done on this topic over several decades—and we understand ISED has taken up the matter again recently—but it does remain pressing. From the perspective of the major research facilities, we are national assets, here to help, but we require established frameworks and champions to plan and execute effectively over the long time scales required to develop these types of infrastructure.

This challenge is also an opportunity. By optimizing the support mechanisms for the major research facilities, Canada can extract maximum value from the major investments already made, provide a multidisciplinary environment to train highly qualified personnel, attract leading talent to Canada and continue the legacy of world-leading research and benefits for our society.

In summary, TRIUMF and Canada's other major research facilities have a demonstrable track record for delivering world-class science, enabling the success of the research community in Canada, translating this research into societal benefits and providing valuable training to highly qualified personnel. There are challenges in optimizing the investment being made in these facilities, but these national assets can and do deliver for Canadians.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to invite the committee to tour TRIUMF should such a visit be possible as part of your deliberations or simply during the next time you find yourself in Vancouver. The scale of our infrastructure really should be seen in person to be appreciated.

Thank you very much for your time and the opportunity to speak to this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Thank you, Dr. Smith.

I'd like to thank Dr. McIsaac, Dr. Rafuse, and Dr. Smith for coming tonight and for your important perspectives. You have this brand new committee that really cares about what you have to say.

With that, we're going to go to our first six-minute round with our members.

Mr. Soroka, you have the floor.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and to all the witnesses for coming tonight. I appreciate that some have been with us for a few hours longer than others, depending on which part of the country you're from.

Dr. McIsaac, I was quite intrigued by early childhood learning assisting with different types of ways to improve our society. I've always looked at the fact that we should really be starting before the child is even born.

Are we actually getting enough funding to assist, even before childhood, or are we just more focused on the child that's already alive, and not even with the parents before they become parents?

[Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac]

Thanks. That's a really important question.

There's been a lot more attention paid to the area of early childhood, and certainly as we understand more and more about how critical those early years are for a child's trajectory, and for a family as well.

In terms of the split of funding between different areas and facets that influence early childhood, that's a great question, and I'm not sure, but there could be more.

We also know so much about how the social determinants of health of a family in a community can really impact the child, and that certainly starts before the child is born. It's a really important area and one that needs more attention.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you for that.

I was more intrigued if you had any more information. If you did want to share that in the future and if you think of something later, you could write us to supply that as well.

[Dr. Jessie-Lee McIsaac]

Okay, I will do that.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

I would like to now go to Dr. Smith. You had spoken a lot about the different types of funding opportunities, where universities are partnering to create these new research facilities. I was just curious when you talked about the new facility for isotopes.

How was that funded and how did that become such a world-leading facility?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

The funding for that was a combination of federal, provincial, and additional research funds from other organizations. The $60 million that was required to build the facility came from a variety of those sources. It demonstrated one of the challenges of building the research portfolio in having to draw across all of these various sources of funding to make sure that you were able to actually execute on these sorts of programs.

It was an extended period of developing research proposals, developing research threads, and pulling together the overall portfolio. We are at the moment just about to complete the first outfitting. We're working with some provincial partners to complete the internal outfitting of some of the labs that will remain open.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you for that, Dr. Smith.

You said that we're able to compete with other countries around the world with the funding that we currently have, and yet other countries have twice our GDP.

Could you explain how we're able to compete, even though we're not being funded as highly as other countries?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

It's a matter of choice in the areas in which we work. One of the benefits the Canadian system does have is the way that people will collaborate together and actually make decisions and focus on particular areas.

I'll give you an example with the particle physics community in Canada. We work in the accelerator lab in Geneva, called CERN, which is the global facility for particle physics. There are a variety of detectors that are looking for things like the Higgs particle, and so on. The Canadian community came together, and rather than deciding to work on all four of the detectors, we decided to work on a single detector. By doing so, by working solely on ATLAS, we've basically been able to focus all of our efforts onto that single detector and had a real impact within the ATLAS collaboration.

It's basically a question of the choices that are made and the collaborative ability of Canadians and Canadian researchers to focus and pull together on a variety of different areas.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you for that as well, Dr. Smith.

I still want to question you on another part. You said there are also challenges when you're collaborating, and you just mentioned how there was a focus dealing in one area. Does that mean that two or three other researchers didn't get to have their projects completed? Are these some of the challenges? How do you get around those challenges?

[Dr. Nigel Smith]

I think one of the key aspects here is the scale of the projects that we have to deal with in areas like particle physics, nuclear physics and even moving into medical isotopes. These are large-scale platforms that one needs to develop. The way that you have to build those platforms is to make sure that you have a consistent strategy across the community.

I think this is one of the areas where particle physics and nuclear physics, in particular, do well. There is an extended discussion within the academic research community pulling together a long-term strategy, a long-term program, that is then put towards funding within federal and provincial structures.

By ensuring that you have focus from the community, that then allows you to basically capitalize on that focus when one goes for funding.

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Thank you for that, Dr. Smith.

I'll move on to Dr. Rafuse. You mentioned—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

Mr. Soroka, I'm sorry. Your six minutes is up.

Thank you for those questions; they're important questions.

Now we will go to Ms. Diab for six minutes.

The floor is yours.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Welcome to all our witnesses here this evening.

As the chair said, this is the inaugural science and research committee of Parliament, the first of its kind.

Welcome to all of you from one coast to the other coast. Although, I have to say, being a member who represents Halifax West, that I'm extremely pleased and privileged to be able to ask both Dr. McIsaac and Dr. Rafuse a couple of questions tonight in the very few minutes that I have.

First, I want to thank both of you. There have been other witnesses in the past who have made similar points, but I really want to thank both of you for shining a light on some of the inequities in research and funding when it comes to smaller jurisdictions, particularly like Nova Scotia, and, quite frankly, like Atlantic Canada.

I've visited both Mount Saint Vincent and the repair centre at Dalhousie. The Mount has great work happening on early childhood and also on aging with the centre that you have. I know we punch above our weight.

Dr. Rafuse, let me just start by asking you directly about the research that you and your team are doing at the Brain Repair Centre. Just tell me a bit about that and what you're doing provincially, nationally and internationally—as much as you can in a short few minutes.

How does that help the research patients practically? I'm going to let you explain some of that because I know you didn't have a chance to do that.

[Dr. Victor Rafuse]

Thank you for the opportunity to address that question.

The Brain Repair Centre is a medical neuroscience institute, as you well know. By using the word “medical”, that basically means the patient outcome is really the final outcome. In all of the research we're doing, we're actually thinking about the outcome for the individuals who are facing the disorders they have.

We've developed a system at the Brain Repair Centre to focus on three main areas. They're very inclusive. One is neurodegeneration. You can break it down that most neurological disorders that occur in aging have to do with neurodegeneration. There's a neurodegeneration research group. There's a neurodevelopment group.

Neurodevelopment starts as early as in the fetus, but it also continues throughout life, and certainly in adolescence, where there are a lot of developmental issues that we don't think are development issues, such as autism, schizophrenia and the emergence of things like bipolar disorders. Those are really developmental disorders, and that's another main focus.

The third main focus, because we have a localized strength in that area, is on mobility issues, and particularly mobility issues that pertain to mobility from spinal cord disorders. That would be spinal cord injuries and diseases of the spinal cord, predominantly things like ALS and spinal muscular atrophy.

Those are our strengths in what we do. We're very collaborative. I think what we've done successfully is that we've connected with all institutes across Canada. This is a recurring theme. There's collaboration right across Canada. We've set up a network of institute directors across Canada to make sure we're talking together frequently. That's part of a brain strategy that we're working on right now.

More locally, I think it's important that we're working outside of Halifax and including the strengths of New Brunswick and P.E.I. We haven't reached out to Newfoundland yet, just because of time at this point. We would like it to be a maritime or Atlantic Canada initiative.

With regard to how we are addressing the patient, again, it's benched to a bedside approach. I think that's always important. It's terminology that's used very often, but I think it's often...I wouldn't say misused, but not taken as seriously as it should be.

A lot of our scientists are actually clinical scientists who come into the lab because they're faced with problems. For example, Dr. Adrienne Weeks is a neurosurgeon who specializes in brain tumours. She takes the problems she's faced with in the OR with her patients and she brings them into the lab.

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

Dr. Rafuse, I want to ask Dr. McIsaac a question.

Before I do that, because I'm worried my time is going to run out—

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

You have 35 seconds, so make it really short

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

—I just want to remind you that the committee would love to take written comments from anyone who wishes to make them.

Dr. McIsaac, I don't know if I have any points, but with early childhood education, I know you've advocated for an affordable child care policy based on research and school-based health promotion and social determinants.

Can you tell us the value of that social science and health promotion research for Canadians, and that type of research on public policy?

[The Chair, Liberal, Kirsty Duncan]

You have 15 seconds to do social determination.