Evidence of meeting #3 for Science and Research in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was excellence.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
How would you make sure, then, that you're not getting lower-quality research in that regard?
Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
In fields where researcher bias can get in.... I mean, it's inherently subjective. As we agreed, we're not talking about physics, mathematics or whatever, where research quality is like you're curing cancer.
Is there a tradeoff? I don't know, but evaluation is highly subjective in the subjective social sciences, so it's a tricky problem.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
Have you found research by your colleagues who come from what I guess has been called “diversity-seeking backgrounds” to be of lower quality than research by others?
Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
Let me confine that to economics, since that's where I have the most expertise to do disciplinary evaluation.
I don't think so. I haven't really thought about it, actually. I'd say that no, we generally hire based on merit.
Liberal
Taleeb Noormohamed Liberal Vancouver Granville, BC
As you're saying, you're hiring based on merit and you have not seen that the quality of the research has been diminished because a more diverse group of professors or academics have been recruited. How do we handle this to make sure that we continue to have academia that reflects the population but doesn't diminish the quality of research?
You're saying to me that, in your experience, it has not diminished the quality of the research, but at the same time we're saying we need to be doing something different.
Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
Keep in mind that economics is very much a positivist discipline. We are very much committed to truth and using data to answer questions, so I think there's a lot less room for researcher bias. However, if we had more conservatives, there would probably be more research on things like productivity or the negative effects of government bureaucracy.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I'm sorry for interrupting.
The time is up for Mr. Noormohamed, and with that, our second round of questioning comes to an end. We will end the panel here.
I really want to thank both witnesses for appearing before the committee today.
We will suspend the meeting for a few minutes to allow the witnesses for the next panel to check in.
Thank you once again.
I will suspend the meeting for a few minutes.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
I call the meeting back to order.
I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of our new witnesses.
Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking. I don't think we have anyone on Zoom.
As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.
With that, I would like to welcome our three witnesses for this panel. We are joined by Dr. Malinda Smith, associate vice-president of research in equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of Calgary. We are also joined by Mr. Martin Normand, president and chief executive officer of the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne. Our third witness for today is Ken Doyle, executive director of Tech-Access Canada.
All witnesses will have five minutes for their opening remarks.
We will start with Dr. Smith. You have the floor for five minutes for your opening remarks.
Malinda Smith Associate Vice-President, Research (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion), University of Calgary, As an Individual
Hello, honourable chair and members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to contribute to this important deliberation.
A recent theme in public and parliamentary debates is that equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility in research funding compromise merit and academic freedom. The claim is mistaken and is directly contradicted by a substantial body of empirical research.
The evidence shows the opposite. EDI in research funding strengthen universities by expanding talent, mitigating biases, dismantling barriers and reducing systemic inequities. These conditions make academic freedom meaningful. Without EDIA, freedom and excellence remain privileges for a few. With it, these become the shared guarantee of the many, fuelling Canada's research capacity and global competitiveness.
On merit, traditional measures like publication, citation counts and institutional prestige are important benchmarks, yet they may disproportionately reward those who already benefit from access to elite institutions, funding and networks. They may privilege conformity to established norms, incremental work rather than path-breaking work, and reputational advantage over originality.
Frameworks such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, or DORA, call for a more holistic understanding of merit through approaches that value interdisciplinarity, collaboration, mentorship and societal impact. This does not lower standards; it better captures the full spectrum of leadership in research and innovation.
Empirical evidence is clear: Diversity strengthens research and innovation at every level, from individual scholars to the research teams to the institutional ecosystem. Page and Hong demonstrate mathematically and empirically that diverse groups outperform homogeneous ones, even when the latter consist of highly talented individuals, because they bring distinct heuristics and problem-solving strategies. Across climate modelling, biomedical research, AI and SDGs, diversity generates insights that no single expert or like-minded group could produce.
Hofstra and colleagues identified the “diversity-innovation paradox”. Women and racialized minorities produce more novel work, yet are systematically under-recognized. Without EDIA measures, our institutions may suppress the very breakthroughs that excellence requires.
Rock and Grant show that diverse teams make better decisions by avoiding groupthink. Forbes Insights links diverse leadership to measurable gains in profitability and innovation.
In Canada, Momani and Stirk document a “diversity dividend”. Institutions drawing on broad talent enjoy better performance, productivity and adaptability.
My recent research identifies an “excellence dividend”. Inclusion is a precondition for originality, quality and global impact. By removing barriers and valuing diverse epistemologies and ways of knowing, we strengthen research capacity and societal benefits.
Governance matters. Governance structures are crucial to sustaining these gains. Universities embedding EDI into recruitment, mentorship, funding and decision-making safeguard academic freedom. Transparent evaluation criteria and institutional autonomy shield scholars from external interference and internal inequities alike. At a time when distorted, anti-woke narratives are being imported into Canada and are eroding public trust, it is essential for Parliament to recognize that EDIA is not a political trend but a constitutional, legal and evidence-based approach.
Academic freedom differs from free speech: Free speech protects civic expression, while academic freedom is a professional right anchored in collective agreements, disciplinary standards and institutional autonomy. Free speech protects nearly all lawful expression in a democracy, however unfounded or unpopular. Academic freedom, by contrast, safeguards the freedom to teach, research, publish and participate in public debate without fear of censorship or reprisal. It is structured by disciplinary standards, scholarly expertise and methodological rigour. It protects the conditions under which evidence-based inquiry can advance knowledge, especially on controversial issues.
However, academic freedom is not evenly distributed, as we know. Marginalized scholars are more vulnerable. This chilling effect narrows inquiry and research agendas and silences debate, and EDIA directly counteracts these pressures by protecting diverse scholars and enhancing the diversity of the knowledge produced.
The policy implications are clear. EDI is not a dilution of standards; it's a strategic imperative. It ensures that Canada's knowledge economy draws on the full range of talent, which strengthens conditions for rigorous inquiry and positions Canada as a global leader at a time when innovation draws on the diversity dividend and the pluralism dividend.
Equity fuels freedom, diversity drives merit and inclusion unlocks the excellence dividend. EDIA is the framework that makes freedom and excellence real, durable and widely experienced. Without it, Canada risks leaving talent untapped. With it, Canada can lead globally.
Thank you for your attention. I welcome your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you, Dr. Smith.
We will now proceed to Mr. Normand.
Mr. Normand, you will have five minutes for your opening remarks. Please go ahead.
Martin Normand President and Chief Executive Officer, Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Research in French is one of the driving forces behind the Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne, or ACUFC, and its 22 members located in eight provinces and one territory. Several ACUFC initiatives, such as the Réseau national de formation en justice, the Réseau de recherche sur la francophonie canadienne, the Consortium national de formation en santé or, more recently, the Observatoire de la formation en petite enfance, play a pivotal role in the production and mobilization of knowledge in French across Canada.
Federal investments in research definitely have a real impact on priority sectors of the Canadian economy and lead to direct benefits in francophone minority communities. Many researchers in our network work on topics of national interest, such as education, health and justice, but through a francophone lens.
However, the French-language science and research ecosystem in francophone minority communities is facing complex challenges that you've already heard about, such as precarious conditions, structural inequities and an accentuated decline in French-language publishing. Without concrete positive measures to reduce language and institutional barriers, particularly in the assessment process, in the exploitation of language data and in the discoverability of scientific content, the current imbalance will only exacerbate persistent inequities and undermine the vitality of francophone communities. That's why we need to rethink how we evaluate, support and invest in research in French in Canada.
The federal granting councils must assume their full responsibility by fully implementing their obligations under the Official Languages Act. Many studies have raised the anglicization of research, the internationalization of research objects and the predominance of publishing articles in English in Canada. These trends, which cast doubt on the excellence of research in French, help standardize scientific production rather than encourage research that meets local data needs.
As the Government of Canada engages in major national projects and building a more unified Canadian economy, it is important that all segments of the population can benefit. That's why the research excellence criteria must allow research in French and research on francophone minority communities to fully participate in these efforts.
The granting councils must actively develop an organizational culture that promotes and recognizes excellence in the production and mobilization of knowledge in French. Despite trends, they must adopt positive measures to ensure that research in French contributes to the vitality of francophone communities. They are also meeting emerging challenges and have increased data needs, which the ACUFC members in the French-language research community want to address. The research that answers these questions has scope, relevance and concrete effects.
However, despite efforts, the assessment of excellence is not immune to linguistic and institutional biases. ACUFC members come from urban, rural and remote areas. They are small, medium or large institutions. Awareness and training about unconscious bias in research conducted in French and in the interest of francophone communities are essential. The perpetuation of these biases in the criteria and evaluation hinders the development of a culture of research in French across the country. The federal granting councils are required to aim for substantive equality between the linguistic communities in the deployment of their programs.
We would also like to echo the testimony of Colleges and Institutes Canada as part of this study. Expanding college eligibility for granting council funding is imperative. The colleges of the Canadian francophonie are making a bold contribution to building a single Canadian economy. The research they conduct is in partnership with local francophone businesses and organizations and contributes to the training of a highly sought-after francophone and bilingual workforce. The granting councils must build on this new strength of colleges in cutting-edge fields and recognize the research excellence that emerges from it.
I will conclude my remarks with two recommendations.
First, I recommend that the granting councils adopt a real plan for implementing their obligations under the Official Languages Act, which includes positive measures aimed at recognizing research excellence in French.
Second, I recommend that the granting councils undertake a strategic review of their policies and programs with a view to reducing linguistic and institutional biases that undermine scientific production in French.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you.
We will now proceed to Mr. Doyle for five minutes.
Please go ahead. You have five minutes for your opening remarks. Thank you.
Ken Doyle Executive Director, Tech-Access Canada
Thank you for the invitation to appear today.
We know that Canada has world-class researchers, but we're losing ground when it comes to turning ideas into market impacts, and that's where Tech-Access Canada comes in.
Tech-Access Canada is the national network of technology access centres. It's what some call the best-kept secret in Canadian R and D. The model has been studied by the OECD and is uniquely Canadian. Think of it as a public good like a lighthouse or a fire department, but for the innovation economy.
Our model is simple. We're based at publicly supported Canadian colleges and CEGEPs. We provide small companies with access to specialized equipment and world-class facilities and the experts who know how to use them. We help businesses commercialize faster, innovate on the shop floor and become more productive. Each centre focuses on sectors that matter most to their region.
Four things make us distinct. Together, they explain why 6,000 companies a year rely on us.
First is dedicated capacity. We employ 2,400 applied R and D specialists, from scientists to technologists to welders, working with 500 million dollars' worth of highly specialized equipment, all housed within two million square feet of dedicated applied R and D space at our 70 centres from coast to coast.
Second is industry-driven projects. Every project starts with a company's challenge, whether that's refining a prototype, extending food shelf life or integrating robotics into production. We solve problems in days, weeks and months—not years. We move at the speed of business.
Third is team-based innovation. Each project brings together a multidisciplinary team of R and D experts as well as college and university students, giving young people the chance to acquire sought-after hands-on innovation skills before they graduate.
Fourth is non-dilutive support. Companies keep the intellectual property. We take no equity stake, no royalties, and there are no strings attached. We give the companies the flexibility to get to market fast without scaring away potential funders.
This combination works. Each year, thousands of small and medium-sized Canadian businesses trust us to be their fractional R and D team accompanying them on their commercialization journey.
Let me take you back to 1993, when Canada was on top of the sports world. The Toronto Blue Jays were back-to-back World Series champions, and Patrick Roy and the Montreal Canadiens hoisted the Stanley Cup, defeating Wayne Gretzky. That wake-up call forced teams south of the border to change how they played. They shifted to using data analytics and deep benches of specialized role players, while Canada has been waiting decades for another World Series or Stanley Cup parade.
Our research system is in the same position. In the 1990s, Canada invested heavily in research excellence. By the measures of the time—world-class labs, international benchmarking, talent attraction and retention, and peer-reviewed science—we succeeded, but while we took a victory lap, other countries evolved their definition of excellence to include impact, inclusion and applied outcomes. The game changed, and we're still playing by 1990s rules.
What's the result? Canada is world-class at turning money into research but still struggles to turn research into money. Put another way, we're excellent at producing research, but we haven't yet cracked the code on consistently translating it into market impact. The data don't lie: Last year, Canadians paid $17 billion to license foreign IP, yet we took in only $8 billion from licensing made-in-Canada IP outside our borders. That's a nine-billion-dollar trade deficit. Over the last decade, that gap has added up to $80 billion.
Something has to change.
This isn't “either-or”. It's “and-and”. I strongly believe that basic and applied research both matter, but as Einstein once said, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it's stupid.
Executive Director, Tech-Access Canada
By current standards, collaborative applied R and D doesn't always count, yet by global standards, it is excellence. That's exactly what Canada's technology access centres deliver every day, using specialized equipment and smart people to solve a company's innovation challenge, scaling it up to commercialization and helping Canadian firms win export markets, create good jobs and grow wealth here at home—but our beautiful model doesn't fit neatly into the 1990s-style funding programs.
Now, I'm not asking to open up the granting council programs to allow colleges to participate or to revise the evaluation criteria to benefit colleges and our distinct way of doing things, or even to stack review committees with our people. I'm asking for a dedicated program within Industry Canada, outside the granting councils, that recognizes applied excellence and adequately supports collaborative industrial R and D at the speed of business.
This doesn't require more bureaucracy, just smarter plumbing: fewer portals, shorter forms, faster decisions and basic outcome tracking. We have a proven model with Canada's technology access centres. What we need now, in light of our lagging productivity and competitiveness while our global rivals are moving faster, is the right support, and to scale it so that Canadian innovators can compete and win.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
Thank you.
We will now proceed to our first round of questions. Members will have six minutes each.
MP DeRidder, we will start with you. Please go ahead.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to everybody for coming today. Thank you for your expertise.
I'm from Kitchener. We are home to world-class innovation. Our innovation ecosystem is unmatched. What I see within our ecosystem, though, is some cutting-edge technology not reaching monetization, number one, and number two, not staying within Canada when it does. To that end, $62 billion of net investment left Canada in the past five months.
Mr. Doyle, my questions will be for you today. One of your SMART centres is located right in my community. Thank you for coming with your expertise today.
First, how does the current spending support real technology adoption through monetization, which is vital in tech hubs like Kitchener?
Executive Director, Tech-Access Canada
The funding is there. It's just that demand so far outstrips supply that it's quite frustrating for our centres and the companies they support. It's more frustrating for the companies on wait-lists. We surveyed the centres recently, and we're looking at 850 companies on the wait-list. The average wait is 11 weeks for a spot to open up and then get that support, with 2,800 person-days of support identified as being our service to these companies.
The demand is there. Canadian companies want to innovate, but just like a hockey team on the ice, it can't be six against one. They need help. We are those objective innovation intermediaries that can help them advance their game-changing idea from something scribbled on a napkin to a product hanging on store shelves. It's just that the current way of funding things seems skewed a little bit more towards basic and discovery research and not so much towards the later ends of experimental development and commercialization.
If you look at the granting councils, I believe you'll see that their budget is in the neighbourhood of $3 billion a year, and it's focused on incredible basic discovery research, as I said. Then you look at a program like the National Research Council's industrial research assistance program. It has “industrial research” in its name, and I believe it's around $350 million a year. We have a 10-to-one imbalance of inputs going in the basic side and then commercialization coming out the other end.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
You mentioned moving toward more commercialization and economic development. In your opinion, what do you think is the current return on taxpayer investment with our government programs today? Are the taxpayers of Canada and Kitchener getting a positive return for their investment when it comes to economic development?
Executive Director, Tech-Access Canada
I think it really depends on the criteria. If you look at excellence after the....
The granting councils are great at funding people and projects, but once that cheque is cut and the project's green-lit, there's very little follow-up and follow-through on the impacts of it. Students are developing into highly qualified people and we're publishing and getting citations and patents, and that's all well and good, but when you look at the balance of trade and the IP deficit that we have, showing clearly that Canadian companies need to license intellectual property from abroad and that the IP that we're producing doesn't seem to be that attractive to our international friends, perhaps we are creating things that are solving problems that Canadian innovators and companies don't quite have. If that leads to blaming the receptor capacity of industry for not being able to adopt and implement these innovations, that's unfortunate. Our global friends have developed models that do look more along the balancing of applied and basic research that maybe we should look a bit closer towards.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you for that.
You mentioned the bureaucratic process. What I'm hearing from our community right now is that to receive funding, to be a part of funding, they have to get through a very bureaucratic process. Instead of going through the bureaucratic process, is there a way that you think we should focus on being more industry-focused and monetization-focused for tech sectors like Kitchener?
Executive Director, Tech-Access Canada
You have the innovators who want to get a bit of help to get that rough prototype refined and ready for scale-up to production, but at present, the one program that does support colleges in the applied research domain has a stream just for project supports. The turnaround time from application to decision averages nine months. For a small Canadian company, they could have been out of business six months ago by the time they get a decision, and there's no guarantee it will be a “yes”, because the demand outstrips supply so much.
As a taxpayer, I absolutely want to see the best projects funded, but how “best” is determined leaves a bit to be desired, especially with respect to industrial R and D. NRC IRAP does move a lot quicker. They can turn around a similar-sized decision within 30 days. In our own flagship program at Tech-Access Canada, in the interactive visits, we're averaging turnarounds in 48 hours and moving projects from request to completion in 51 days, so it is possible. It just requires the will to do so, and maybe avoiding the risk aversion that comes into ensuring that potentially bad things aren't funded; there's just got to be a line.
Conservative
Kelly DeRidder Conservative Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you very much, and I agree. I think we need the will to do so.
I'm good with my questions today. I'll defer the rest of my time to my colleague Jag when he goes ahead.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Salma Zahid
You only had 10 seconds left, so it's almost done. Thank you.
We will now proceed to MP McKelvie for six minutes. Please go ahead. You have six minutes for your round of questioning.
Liberal
Jennifer McKelvie Liberal Ajax, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair. My first set of questions is for Dr. Smith.
I am a former researcher; my post-doctoral work received an award for women in science from L'Oréal and UNESCO. Part of it was a requirement to give back and to support other women and encourage them to enter the field.
I want to know this: In your opinion, how are women doing in the fields of science and research across the different disciplines in the university? Do we still have more work to do?