Industry committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Nipun Vats. As was mentioned, I'm the assistant deputy minister of the science and research sector at ISED. In this role, I'm responsible for policy and programs related to federal funding of post-secondary research, and for fostering connections between research and its downstream economic and societal benefits.

Science and Research committee  I have to admit I'm not an expert on vaccine production, but to my understanding, private firms have produced those vaccines. There may be some countries where the AstraZeneca vaccine may have had some government involvement in the production, but with respect to the two mRNA vaccines, I believe they're private sector vaccines.

Science and Research committee  To be honest, I don't know if I can say that definitively. There may be special arrangements with respect to vaccine production, where, if you have facilities that can produce at scale that are government facilities, there may be opportunities to do so. I have to admit I'm not very well positioned to speak to that area.

Science and Research committee  That would definitely be a very important part of the plan to do so. You need to have companies that can produce at scale, and not only for the Canadian market. The Canadian market is relatively small, and that's part of the challenge. If you're trying to produce at an economical scale, you'd be producing for Canada but also for other countries.

Science and Research committee  I would turn to my colleagues at the NRC on this.

Science and Research committee  It's a good question. When I say we help to advance policy objectives and to make sure the granting councils' programs are aligned with government policy objectives, the first thing to say is that when it comes to decisions around granting awards, the government plays no role in that.

Science and Research committee  There has been a fairly big effort over the last couple of years to look at how we can build on our strengths on the research side when it comes to vaccines, where we have very strong capabilities to make sure that we can produce vaccines at scale. If you look at what the government did in the last budget to invest in a biomanufacturing and life sciences strategy for Canada, it tries to amplify what we've been able to do on the research side, which has been critical to the development of things like mRNA vaccines, but coupled with more strength with respect to our capabilities on the downstream side in terms of having the production facilities at scale, having the talent pipeline you need to make sure that you can actually support these facilities.

Science and Research committee  The government has been trying to build off the strengths, as we say, in some of these areas where we are global leaders, through some of these strategies that I mentioned earlier in my remarks. If you look at quantum, you see that the investments we made through large-scale research funding programs have created these really strong centres of expertise within Canada.

Science and Research committee  Just so I understand, do you mean areas of focus in terms of technology or something?

Science and Research committee  That's a question we struggle to answer, because if we knew where the puck was going, we'd be able to chase it down. I can give you only some general observations. First of all, there are organizations that do studies with respect to where we're strong in research. For example, the Council of Canadian Academies has done a study in this area.

Science and Research committee  I don't know if I can speak to specifics in terms of delays. The process of selection for these types of committees does take a period of time. There has been a lot of activity, as I mentioned, with respect to drawing on expert advice over the last couple of years, but as regards the timing of appointing such a committee, I'm not really in a position to say.

Science and Research committee  That's right. There are no members appointed to—

Science and Research committee  I'm afraid I don't have any information on that.

Science and Research committee  I think what you're referring to is the total investment in R and D as a function of GDP. The reason I was talking about the private sector is that it's an aggregate of business R and D, government-performed R and D and higher education R and D. You have to look at the three components to understand the cause of Canada's aggregate R and D intensity being low.

Science and Research committee  If you look at the federal government's investment in higher education research, we are actually quite strong. I believe we're first in the G7 with respect to the share of GDP that we invest in research. The area where Canada is relatively weak, which has a really big impact on our overall research intensity, is private sector investment in R and D.