Science and Research Committee on Sept. 17th, 2025

[Malinda Smith]

Thanks for the question.

Of course we have more work to do, and that's a great program from L'Oréal and UNESCO.

In the tri-agencies, NSERC and CIHR are doing great with their inclusion chairs and their women in science and engineering chairs. I think SSHRC needs similar kinds of chairs.

In the STEM disciplines, we certainly need more women. As I alluded to in my presentation, it's not because women aren't doing well in high school or education or getting jobs. There are certain enabling conditions to allow them to flourish once they're in the academy that might not be there. It may be something like family-friendly policies, for example. We've just recently had maternity leave and parental leave added to post-docs. This allows the pipeline to flourish.

The other thing I can say is that when women do get into the academy and into the disciplines, they do flourish. We see this, and it's evidence-based. I'm not talking about anecdotes or discriminatory practices; these are evidence-based outcomes published in peer-reviewed studies on a mass scale in Canada, the United States, the U.K. and Europe.

There are some blockages with moving from associate professor to full professor. That's improving. There are pay gaps; the gender wage gap continues to exist. For women in leadership, the block is still 30% at the university president level. Interestingly, though, most of the women who enter leadership are from the STEM disciplines, mostly engineering. I think that is fascinating.

The gender gap continues to exist, but some progress is being made.

[Jennifer McKelvie, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Thank you.

There is the adage, “If you can see her, you can be her.” I know that in many of the mentorship programs I participated in, that was part of it.

One of the things I know NSERC has done is to allow for extenuating circumstances to be indicated on a proposal so that you could indicate, for example, that you were on parental leave. When you compare research excellence in terms of metrics straight up—and this is one of my concerns with blinding—if we just look at total numbers, there are extenuating circumstances: somebody might have been on parental leave, for example, or maybe on multiple parental leaves.

Is it important that we continue to include those sorts of things in applications, even if we proceed with a blinding type of approach?

[Malinda Smith]

One of the benefits of the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, as Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella pointed out way back in 1984, is that we have to look not just at the academy, for example, but at the wider society in terms of these kinds of issues.

Yes, we do need to look at extenuating circumstances. We know, for example, that women do more parental care, child care and family care, and that care work is uncompensated. At the same time, those who have less of that care work have the ability, obviously, to do, say, more publication. There's a balancing act that we have to deal with, which has nothing to do with excellence, knowledge or capabilities. It is the circumstances.

The second thing I would say about the balancing of a parental leave is that we now have parental leave, so spouses can take leave. I'll give you an example from COVID-19. When you look at the care work done by women and men, for example, and look at the binary division, men were publishing more during the COVID pandemic. Women were taking care of children and taking care of their parents. They were actually working online plus doing all these things because kids were at home. How do you deal with the fallout from that? If you take maternal leave, your salary is also then frozen. What EDI policies do is help to mitigate some of this potential unevenness that is not about your excellence, your capabilities or what you achieve, but about these other circumstances.

There's some work to do. Universities, colleges and CEGEPs are going a long way to address these issues. I also think the tri-agencies and their funding criteria are doing a lot to balance these things for the graduate students now, for the post-docs and certainly for new scholars as well as senior scholars.

[Jennifer McKelvie, Liberal, Ajax, ON]

Is the work that has been done to come up with those recommendations grounded in engagement with the scientific community?

I once participated in a very large women in science summit that produced recommendations. Has there been engagement from the tri-councils on how they can improve? Is that an active conversation?

[Malinda Smith]

I'll give you three examples.

One is from 2012, when the CERCs, the Canada excellence research chairs, were first launched. There were 19 men and no women. The Conservative federal government at the time led a study into what was going on. It had two presidents, including Indira Samarasekera, who was at the University of Alberta at the time. That study led to a number of indicators of what gave rise to the gender gap in research funding.

More recently, the Council of Canadian Academies produced a report on EDI in the secondary research system—

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'll ask you to quickly wind up. The time is up.

[Malinda Smith]

I'm sorry.

That's another study. Dimensions EDI also did an assessment.

There are a lot of studies that highlight what could be done, and it comes back to the “will” question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now proceed to Mr. Blanchette-Joncas. Please go ahead. You have six minutes for your round of questioning.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses who are with us today.

My first question is for Mr. Normand.

Since Bill C‑13 was passed, the federal government now has a legal obligation, not just a moral one, to ensure the substantive equality of French and English. I would remind you that Bill C‑13 sought to modernize the Official Languages Act. However, researchers who submit an application in French see their chances of success reduced. In addition, the members of the evaluation committees aren't always truly bilingual. Peer review committees do their own language assessment.

Are you prepared to explicitly include this obligation in the funding rules and to establish real parity committees and correction mechanisms so that the scientific merit of francophone researchers is judged fairly, without linguistic prejudice?

[Martin Normand]

Obviously, I think all the granting councils need to review their practices and policies when it comes to the actual assessment of applications submitted in French.

As we've seen, there have been a number of studies on the subject. We looked into the matter, and the Association francophone pour le savoir also looked into it, as did a number of other people.

During the grant application evaluation process, language biases are induced, particularly by a judgment on the purpose of the research. This is the case, for example, when research focuses on francophone communities. We were even told that research in French was less objective because it corresponded to a political choice; so we thought that the results would be coloured by that political choice. We've heard a lot of things.

Beyond that, it has been shown that the linguistic capacity of evaluators has an impact on evaluating the excellence of grant applications. In the case of certain assessment applications, comments from assessors showed that they certainly didn't know enough French to understand the application they were assessing, even though they had clearly stated that they knew French. As a result, researchers received evaluation reports in which completely outlandish suggestions were made, or made suggestions that were already in the grant applications. Clearly, the applications were misunderstood.

There's a whole infrastructure that needs to be reviewed in terms of how applications in French are assessed so that they are treated fairly compared to those in English assessed by anglophone peer reviewers.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Francophone researchers in Quebec, like those in the Canadian francophonie, often have to turn to provincial funds—meaning from Quebec—community funds or philanthropic funds to carry out excellent, scientifically meritorious projects. In fact, excellence and merit cannot be limited to projects funded by Ottawa.

Are you prepared to officially recognize these contributions in the evaluation of excellence, so that scientific quality is judged on its merit, and not on the source of funds?

[Martin Normand]

Absolutely. That would be a starting point. Our institution network is one example where excellent research is being conducted using funding from organizations other than the granting councils because of, for example, all the language barriers to federal funding access and the biases against research in French. You devoted an entire study to French-language research in the previous Parliament. All of that should point you in the right direction.

The current situation is that our francophone researchers are looking for other sources of funding. I personally know that some of my francophone researcher colleagues from across the country look for research funding in Quebec to be able to conduct research outside Quebec, precisely because of these systemic barriers.

I'll give you an example. There are researchers in the health field who have spent years trying to access funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, but there's still a barrier in the way. Back home, we have a program from the Consortium national de formation en santé that funds research scholarships. That enables us to leverage and increase French-language scientific production in the health sector, which otherwise wouldn't be produced.

Every year, the Association francophone pour le savoir, or Acfas, presents research recognition awards. These awards are highly regarded in the public sector. Just last year, a researcher from our network who regularly receives funding from our research programs received an Acfas award. The excellence of French-language research is being recognized, but there are still barriers that often prevent those researchers from accessing regular funding programs.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

In terms of barriers, today we know that 80% of federal research funding goes to the U15 universities, which include 15 universities located in major urban centres, and 13 of those universities are anglophone. The smaller francophone universities are often based in our regions and receive much less than they should, despite the recognized scientific merit of their researchers.

Would you support specific fixes, such as caps, earmarked funding, incentives or a reform of the research support fund, to ensure that merit is recognized everywhere, not just in large English-speaking urban centres?

[Martin Normand]

Absolutely. The measures you're suggesting would be positive measures that would fall under the Official Languages Act.

For our part, we're calling on the granting councils to develop positive measures that meet the needs of the francophone scientific community and the needs of francophone communities as a whole. The new Official Languages Act includes new obligations, and I think public decision-makers and senior officials have to be made aware of the scope of those obligations. The government has to develop positive measures that embrace the asymmetry of the linguistic communities. Since the Official Languages Act aims for substantive equality, those measures will directly ensure that research funds are distributed equitably and that the appropriate funds reach the institutions of French-speaking Canadians.

[Maxime Blanchette-Joncas, Bloc, Rimouski—La Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

Thank you.

We will now start our second round.

MP Singh Mahal, please go ahead. You will have five minutes for your round of questioning.

[Jagsharan Singh Mahal, Conservative, Edmonton Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks for allowing me time to ask questions.

Thank you to all the witnesses who came up today.

I will start with Mr. Doyle.

In your introduction, you advised the panel that you work with colleges and applied research, and you have a network of more than 70 institutions nationwide. When it comes to federal funding, you see an imbalance between what universities receive in research funding and what colleges and applied research receive in federal funding.

Can you elaborate on that? What is your advice? How can we take care of those in the committee?

[Ken Doyle]

The college applied research is a relatively new phenomenon. It's based on a very successful model from Quebec that dates back to the 1980s, but the rest of Canada really only jumped on board in the early 2000s, so it's understandable that there would be an imbalance between university and college support.

What that looks like at present is that last year the federal government funded universities for R and D to the tune of $4.3 billion, and the support for colleges was $135 million. That's about 97% and 3%.

Also, there are 100 universities eligible for this support and 120 eligible colleges. It is imbalanced. I'm not sure why that is, but that's just what the numbers show.

[Jagsharan Singh Mahal, Conservative, Edmonton Southeast, AB]

If the federal government allows more funding to these colleges and these applied research centres, how would they be more productive? How would they add to society? How would they bring more value to that money?

[Ken Doyle]

Part of the root cause might be in the fact that 20 years ago, government took programs that were designed to enable universities to do what they do so well and just took the word “university” out of it and put “college” in its place.

We've always lived in the granting councils and have been seen as a tool of academic R and D, but although we're huge supporters of advancing knowledge and all that, that's not what we do. That's not our DNA.

The way to modify the current situation would be with a support program for college R and D in that model, seeing us as a tool of industrial R and D and not as advancing academic knowledge. To date, that does not exist and has not existed.

I probably would prefer to see something like that, rather than torturing the poor granting councils into trying to conform themselves to accommodate the unique dynamic of college R and D.

[Jagsharan Singh Mahal, Conservative, Edmonton Southeast, AB]

Thank you.

Can you also shed some light on why applied research is so important and what types of results it yields, compared to other research?

Today, it is now the world of AI, and we have heard heavily about it. How do these colleges fit in to the world of AI, and how do you take it forward?

[Ken Doyle]

That's a great question. AI is a very hot topic, and three of our centres specialize in AI.

As I mentioned, there are 70 centres across the country supporting the sector of importance to their region, and a lot of them support something vertically, such as an aerospace technology access centre supporting the aerospace industry. Some other centres are more of a platform technology, like digital integration systems and centres, and their expertise is applicable across industry verticals. AI is one of those.

We're seeing tremendous demand from companies, mainly from analog industries—agriculture, forestry and fishing—that would like to apply large language models and artificial intelligence to improve their bottom line. Whether that's increasing their revenue or decreasing their costs, they're ready, willing and able to adopt it. They just need somebody who can be completely objective to shepherd them through it, and one thing we do, as part of that “public good” role, is squash techno lust. When companies go to a trade show and are seized with something very novel and innovative, maybe they don't need the Lamborghini solution when something much more modest, like a bicycle, would work for them and their operating reality, and we can tell them what the right fit is for their use case. AI is one of those things we're seeing tremendous growth in, and we're fortunate to have the capability and capacity to assist with that.

[Jagsharan Singh Mahal, Conservative, Edmonton Southeast, AB]

To sum up, since we are in a funding committee, on a scale of one to 10, if you want to draw a balance between university and funding for colleges, which apply practical solutions, where do you want to see a balance, number-wise?

[Ken Doyle]

I'm rational, and I would never ask for anything that our sector couldn't deliver on. The imbalance of the $4.3 billion against $135 million is what it is, but given our current capability, I think the right number is somewhere around $150 million a year, maybe growing by 10% a year to meet the demand and really let this model grow. Dumping billions of dollars into it to make it a fifty-fifty split would be suboptimal for everybody.

[The Chair, Liberal, Salma Zahid]

I'm sorry for interrupting. The time is up. Thank you.

With that, we will proceed to MP Noormohamed.

MP Noormohamed, you have five minutes for your round of questioning. Please start.