Thank you, Madam Chair.
It is with great pride that I will read the motion resulting from the work that my fantastic colleagues on the committee and I have accomplished.
Whereas the three federal research councils, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), promote research on research, which requires access to high-quality data;
That the Committee request the Government to direct the Tri-Council to develop a data management protocol and a secure data-transfer process to allow for the evaluation of funding distribution;
That this protocol aims to make accessible, in a disaggregated, anonymized, and secure form, all data relating to submitted funding applications, whether funded or not, for all student and faculty funding programs, beginning at the master's level;
That the dataset include all anonymized and disaggregated variables necessary to assess equity, fairness, and potential bias, including but not limited to career stage, field of research, language of application, institution type, and equity-deserving group self-identification variables collected under existing Tri-Council frameworks...
That access to these data be granted to accredited researchers who have received approval from a recognized research ethics board, and that such data be shared under a security protocol consistent with the international Five Safes model used by Statistics Canada and its Research Data Centers;
That this process complies with all relevant federal privacy and data-governance legislation, including the Privacy Act and the Directive on Privacy Practices;
That the Government assume responsibility for coordinating this process and submit to the Committee, within 30 days, an action plan specifying the organization responsible for data retention and transfer, the anonymization and security procedures, as well as the implementation and dissemination timeline.