moved:
That this House condemn the federal government for its regressive research and development policies in regard to Quebec, in particular its unilateral decision to cut the federal contribution of $7.2 million planned for the Canadian Centre for Magnetic Fusion in Varennes.
Mr. Speaker, given the short time available, I will share my 20-minute period with the hon. member for Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
The non-votable motion put forward by the official opposition for debate today is about research and development.
For a few years, the Bloc Quebecois has been deploring the fact that Quebec is being underfinanced by the federal government in the area of research and development. Year after year, the figures clearly show that Quebec does not receive its fair share of the money invested in research and development by the federal government. More recently, the latest round of federal cuts has widened the gap, especially the federal government's withdrawal from the only major scientific project in Quebec, the Varennes tokamak project.
My motion reads as follows:
That this House condemn the federal government for its regressive research and development policies in regard to Quebec, in particular its unilateral decision to cut the federal contribution of $7.2 million planned for the Canadian Centre for Magnetic Fusion in Varennes.
I would like to set the record straight on a completely erroneous piece of information often used by the Minister of Natural Resources in answering the official opposition's questions. In fact, my colleague from Anjou-Rivière-des-Prairies pointed this out to the House this afternoon during statements by members just before question period.
When the minister compares Quebec's share with that of the other provinces, she never includes the amounts allocated to the national capital region, almost all of which is located in Ontario.
Let us look a little more closely at this situation, in light of a study done by the Quebec Ministry of Industry, Trade, Science and Technology on federal spending in research and development.
Between 1979 and 1991, six out of ten provinces were overfinanced, Ontario, of course, coming out ahead with a $3 billion surplus.
During the same period, Quebec was seriously underfinanced by $2.5 billion, followed by Alberta with $1.5 billion, British Columbia with $369 million, and Saskatchewan with $124 million. In the last few years, however, the situation has been getting a little better in Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Alberta.
The most common indicator showing how intensive the research and development effort was is the ratio of net domestic R and D expenditures to gross domestic product.
On that score, if the federal government had been fair, this ratio would have been 1.82 per cent, instead of 1.71 per cent in 1991.
Research and development funding is usually divided between intra- and extra-mural expenditures.
On the subject of intra-mural expenditures, that is to say expenditures for federal laboratories, the study showed that, for one thing, only 13.8 per cent of intra-mural expenditures went to Quebec, compared to 57.7 per cent to Ontario.
The high concentration of federal laboratories in the Ottawa region only partly explains why Ontario received such a large share of the funding. In the areas of natural science and engineering, the federal government has been carrying out more intra-mural research outside of Ottawa, but still within Ontario, than in any of the four other major regions of Canada, namely Quebec, British Columbia, the prairies and Atlantic Canada.
It is also estimated that, between 1963 and 1991, Quebec lost, in intra-mural funding alone, more than $5.3 billion in 1991 dollars.
In addition, in 1991, the relative scarcity of federal research and development laboratories in Quebec translated into a shortage of more than 2,230 person-years, or eight times the combined staff level of the Biotechnology Research Institute and the Industrial Materials Institute, two of the main federal laboratories in the Montreal area.
Finally, as regards assistance to businesses, or extra-mural expenditures, the study concluded that, with its $32 million deficit, Quebec was the only province to have incurred in 1991 a significant deficit in terms of federal industrial research and development expenditures.
There is an unmistakable connection between the location of federal research facilities and the allocation of federal business. It is therefore little wonder that, over the 1979-1990 period, Ottawa businesses were awarded more contracts and that the annual amounts paid to each of them for federal research and development work were much higher than anywhere else.
A June 1995 study commissioned by the INRS, Quebec's national institute for scientific research, came to similar conclusions. The authors of the study also pointed out that only 25 of the 156 federal laboratories in Canada are located in Quebec. This means 16 per cent of them, compared to 62 per cent for Ontario, or a 40 per cent difference. Laboratories in Quebec only employ 3,002 of the 22,360 scientists and technicians working in federal facilities, barely 13.4 per cent of the total, compared to 49 per cent for Ontario.
The authors of the study also pointed out that, since 1980, the Government of Canada has been favouring the advanced technology sector. The effect of this policy is that the four federal laboratories in Quebec simply do not compare with the new ones in Ontario and Manitoba. For example, a huge federal facility employing 2,227 researchers in the nuclear energy sector was set up in Ontario, while another one employs 925 people in Manitoba. There is simply no comparison with the situation in Quebec.
Quebec's largest laboratory was established in the airspace sector. It employs 268 people, while another facility located in Ottawa recruited 297 people. It would have been much simpler to centralize, for once, the aerospace industry in a single Quebec location.
A new communication and information techniques facility hired 180 people in Quebec, but three similar laboratories located in Ottawa employ 566 people. The authors of the study also indicated that the proportion of contracts awarded in Quebec under the federal contracting out policy went down from 21.6 per cent to 13 per cent over a period of about 20 years ending in 1994.
Since 1985, this proportion never exceeded 15.5 per cent. In fact, barely 4 per cent of Quebec companies active in research and development get federal contracts in the science and technology sector. In Canada, there does not seem to be money available for science, research and knowledge. Yet, these will be the keys to success in the 21st century. By contrast, the federal government can afford to spend over $7 million on flags and kites, as pointed out yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition.
I ask the government to reread the letter written by the president of the Canadian Association of Physicists, Mr. Vincett. Before concluding, I will read a few excerpts of his letter. In reference to the background, Mr. Vincett writes:
"Your government has consistently stressed the importance of science and technology to Canada's economic future. You have kept cuts to the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council to a level less than that suffered by many agencies. More recently, your government's report `Science and Technology for the New Century' has again emphasized the critical role of science and technology".
In reference to the issue, the president says:
"Recent deficit reduction efforts have obliged Natural Resources Canada to concentrate on its core mandate which is not of course science and technology. Yet the budget which supports science of broad national importance has not been transferred to Industry Canada. As a result, major national science facilities will lose their funding. This together with the likely effects on the university research infrastructure of cuts to the transfer payments and the significant closures which are occurring as a result of cuts to the national science and engineering research council place your entire science and technology strategy at serious risk and endanger the future health of the economy as we move into a knowledge based world".
In reference to the importance of basic science, Mr. Vincett writes:
"The threatened damage to Canada's basic effort will be a disaster for future economic growth since basic science is the foundation upon which most technological and economic advances depend. As the chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia said in 1994: `Public support for science-is one of the very few categories of government spending that deserves to be increased-studies have shown conclusively that the overall return to society from investment in knowledge creation is extremely high"'.
The solution proposed by the president is the following:
"This issue transcends individual government departments. Unlike most of the developed world, Canada does not have a co-ordinated policy for the establishment, operation and closure of national scientific facilities. As a result, actions in one department can have a devastating effect on programs in another. I strongly urge you to establish an expert committee to report to you quickly on what such a co-ordinated policy should contain".
It would be in the interest of the ministers who received a copy of this letter, and the Prime Minister, to read it over again, to make sure Canada is not headed for an even worse economic future.