Science and Research Committee on March 23rd, 2026

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

If I were to tell you that the cuts were to appropriate drug cases for hepatitis C patients and other folks who were receiving care, as well as to programs and research supporting farmers and crops and profitability for farmers, would that seem reasonable to you? Would that seem to be the type of cuts the organization would have seen?

[Robert Annan]

Yeah; I mean, I do know that we certainly had to shift resources around in a lot of projects.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Those significant cuts were made by a Conservative government. Can you talk a little bit about how, after 2015, your funding was increased?

[Robert Annan]

Again, really it's before my time. I can speak mostly about what's happened since about 2018-19, which is when I joined the organization.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

You have seen funding increase over those years, have you not?

[Robert Annan]

We have. It varies from year to year, but generally we've been pretty stable since that time.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Is it fair to say that this government has been consistent in increasing your funding and giving you the support that's been required to do the work you need to do?

[Robert Annan]

Overall, yes, we've been pretty steady over the last five or six years.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Perfect. Thank you.

Dr. Michaud, you have expressed some concern about the cuts that you have had to manage and absorb. Can you talk a little about the increase in funding that you had seen over the course of the last decade prior to these cuts?

[Stéphanie Michaud]

Yes. We have been in existence since 2015. We were funded through the networks of centres of excellence program. We received a total amount, from 2015 to 2024, of $40 million through the networks of centres of excellence program. Due, I believe, to the strength of the application we put forward to the strategic science fund, making the compelling case of the gap we bridge in the ecosystem, we received an increase from what was our approximately $5 million a year through the NCE program to overall, over five years, $38 million.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

I note the questions asked by my friend opposite and his concern for some of the cuts and some of the challenges you now face. If, for example, a government that was not this government, but the party opposite, had taken power, would you have had any concerns about the fact that there were targeted restrictions on research on such things as embryonic research and stem cell research?

[Stéphanie Michaud]

That is really completely outside the area of research that we fund. I'm really not in a position to comment.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Would it concern you if government were directing what you could or could not research?

[Stéphanie Michaud]

Again, this is completely outside of my scope of expertise. We do not fund any kind of stem cell research or embryonic research, so I don't have the expertise to comment.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

My question is not about those specifics. My question is, how do you feel about government directing what you should and should not research?

[Stéphanie Michaud]

I think that when these applications are put through we define exactly what our scope of work is going to do. This is carefully evaluated by experts, who are brought together by the government and validated in this way. That kind of validation exists at the application stage.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Annan, if I could, I'll switch to you on a similar question. When government starts to determine what you can and cannot research—and I'm giving an example here of a party platform that says embryonic research would not be allowed—does it concern you at all?

[Robert Annan]

I'm not familiar with the platforms in question.

I will say that there's a tension at play. I think it is absolutely the responsibility of the government to set broad strategic direction. I would actually argue that we need more of that at the level of setting targets, objectives and goals.

Having said that, I think there are great risks when governments get involved in directing science at a level of specific sorts of technologies or directions, as we're seeing in some other national jurisdictions right now, and limiting research that has great benefit and potential for both health and the economy.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

If I were to dig in a bit, then, on embryonic research, what would be the risks if Canada were to say that we're no longer going to do embryonic research?

[Robert Annan]

This isn't really an area of particular expertise for me; however, Genome Canada does fund a lot of work when it comes to ethics, policy and genomics research, including human research.

Globally, there is a moratorium on doing any kind of what we call “germline editing”—research involving persistent changes in the genome that can be passed on—but it is also an area of ongoing discussion and debate, because the ethics are complicated. We do find that we want to keep the options open for the future and that there may well come a time where we see that the benefits outweigh the risks and costs.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

I guess, then, that the question becomes, how do we ensure in this conversation that when we're talking about governance, when we're talking about making sure that structures are in place, government is not imposing on researchers and on research?

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting. Your time is up. Maybe it will come in the second round.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

With that, we will now go to MP Mario Beaulieu.

Welcome to this committee for this week.

Please go ahead. You have six minutes.

[Mario Beaulieu, Bloc, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Mr. Tessari L'Allié, in light of the discussions the committee has had on the lack of independent audit bodies for scientific systems, what model of an independent mechanism do you recommend for assessing the safety and societal impact of AI systems? How can we avoid its politicization?