Science and Research committee  Vancouver Island University, my own university, has over 1,000 grad students, and I think we get four master's scholarships. It's always a very interesting conversation about who gets funded and who doesn't, and there's more of a burden on the university to make sure they're finding funding for those students.

Science and Research committee  I don't know the composition of those committees; I just know the practice of how reviewers are called. We would have some reviewers, obviously, who have had funding there in past, but I couldn't speak to the full composition of those committees.

Science and Research committee  Certainly, there's an opportunity for us here to redefine not only what excellence looks like in research, but what outputs Canadians can expect from that research money. What are those outputs? Are they solely publications? Are they innovation translations into industry and the non-profit sector?

Science and Research committee  Yes. Certainly, success begets success. I think some people in here are aware of the most recent research security one. People had to have $2 million of research support funding coming to their institution as a cut-off to be able to get any, even though we all have to comply. I would argue that small institutions are the weakest link for research security in the country.

Science and Research committee  Yes. Certainly, I think the biggest one for us is that we struggle to attract talent, talent being the researchers themselves and the grad students who go with that. We have created a space where excellence is defined as being only certain institutions. If you're a researcher who wants to contribute in your career, you're making decisions based on how Canada has been defining research excellence.

Science and Research committee  We have started to really try to take a look. We always look at the competition data, but we have been looking through it over time. I mentioned earlier the 2001 report. At that point in time, when this was flagged as an issue for Canada, the U15 had 63% of funding. Twenty years later, and a few special programs to help smaller institutions, and they're now at 79%.

Science and Research committee  Definitely. There is excellent research happening at the U15, definitely, and Canada needs that. To Chad's comment earlier, that's definitely there. But if you're able to get lots of money for infrastructure, and you're able to get 176 research chairs, who then apply for funding every year, and they get more of that money, and then they get more research chairs, and then they get more RSF....

Science and Research committee  Yes.

Science and Research committee  I think it depends on the program, but that's not a standard metric. Because we keep talking about these being competitive awards, there is systemic bias in here. Reviewers are chosen from the pool of people who've had funds before. If you've had funds before, you get called as a reviewer.

Science and Research committee  It's 79%. I've seen different numbers. It's 78% to 79%, and the top 1% received 23% of Canadian funding.

Science and Research committee  Yes, it definitely does. Some of that is.... I'll focus on the students. Really, our goal here is to train Canada's next generation of researchers. One of the biggest impacts it has is for those learners to be able to make it to post-secondary. We know from studies that rural students are under-represented in post-secondary institutions.

Science and Research committee  Yes, that's well said. It's a bit of a hamster wheel. Some new universities, like Yukon University or Capilano, are really having trouble here because, in order to attract talent, you need to be able to show that you have some infrastructure to be able to do research, that you have time to do research and that you have grad programs and students who actually have funding to come to university.

Science and Research committee  I think we have to uncover every possibility, and that includes institutions' own resources, the government's resources and industry and community partner funds. It's a career-limiting move for me to sort of pick on any folks there, but I think we need to uncover every rock here.

Science and Research committee  I think there's room for.... There is the investigator-led—meaning a researcher comes up with their own questions and pursues knowledge there—and then there's the applied research. I don't see them as being on the continuum. I think there's a nice middle ground where the nation and regions themselves can identify the priorities here.

Science and Research committee  I think I will use the word “redistribute”. Going back to 2001 and 2002, we were saying that we were going to come up with some special programs to give some of these new, smaller universities a leg up to be able to compete, a redistribution of some of the bigger pots, particularly the ones that small institutions aren't even eligible for.