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We'll call the 19th meeting of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology to order.
I apologize for the late start, but the previous committee did have some business to finish prior to our meeting.
We have with us today five associations. We are continuing our study of Canada's service sector. Our witnesses are here for up to two hours.
Our first witness is from the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the executive director, Mr. James Turk. We also have, from the Canadian Chiropractic Association, Richard Gehrke, president, as well as the director of government and interprofessional relations, Mr. John Tucker. From the Canadian Dental Association, we have the president, Mr. Darryl Smith, and the director of corporate and government relations, Mr. Andrew Jones. Here today from the Canadian Healthcare Association is the CEO, Ms. Pamela Fralick, as well as Denise Desautels, the director of policy and communications. Lastly, representing the Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec, we have Mr. Etienne Couture, the president.
We will start with the Canadian Association of University Teachers. I will ask you to keep your opening statements to five minutes maximum. We will go across the table, and then we'll start with questions from members.
Mr. Turk, we'll start with you.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers welcomes this opportunity to present its views to the committee. We represent more than 57,000 academic staff, at more than a hundred universities and colleges in all provinces of the country.
I'm sure you'll all agree that teaching, research, and the community service work that our members perform is critical to the social, cultural, and economic development of Canada. There's virtually no politician in the country—and in this room, I assume—whatever matter their political stripe, who hasn't talked about the importance of post-secondary education for the future of the country. Yet governments all too often ignore the serious challenges faced by post-secondary education.
I want to address three challenges in my presentation today. The first is the crisis in human resources. As you know, many of our members who were hired during the great expansion of the 1960s and 1970s are retiring. Close to 45% of all full-time university teachers are 50 years of age or over. As academic staff retire, they are increasingly being replaced by part-time and contract faculty. At some universities, close to half of the undergraduate courses are taught by non-tenure-track contract faculty. These positions are poorly paid, have few or no benefits, no job security, no academic freedom, and don't even have access to proper offices or support for doing research and scholarship. This has serious implications, not only for the contract academic staff themselves, but also for their students, their full-time colleagues, their institutions, and their communities.
The human resources crisis is intimately linked to the second challenge that I would like to discuss, the ongoing federal underfunding of post-secondary education. Even with the recent increase in the Canada social transfer, federal cash transfers for post-secondary education are still more than $1.2 billion short of what would be needed just to restore funding to the 1992-1993 levels, adjusting for inflation and population growth.
If you feel, as we do, that the federal government should be contributing or investing one-half of 1% of gross domestic product—that is, half a penny for every dollar earned in the country—in post-secondary education, as was done in the late-1970s and early-1980s, then the shortfall is closer to $4 billion.
The impact of underfunding shows up in the human resources crisis, but also in rapidly rising tuition fees and student debt, deteriorating infrastructure, and diminished library holdings, all of which threaten the accessibility and quality of our post-secondary institutions.
The federal government has played the decisive role in funding post-secondary education since the 1950s, when inconsistent and low levels of provincial funding for post-secondary education made it clear there had to be a federal as well as a provincial role. Today, the federal government can and must do more to provide adequate funding to the provinces in an accountable and transparent manner.
The final challenge I want to mention is with regard to research. The federal government has substantially increased research funding in recent years. Much of this, however, has come with an emphasis on applied research that will pay off commercially. The buzzwords have been innovation and commercialization, which, in this lexicon, are synonyms. Basic research, or research whose primary objective is the advancement of knowledge and the understanding of how things work—with no necessary emphasis on practical or commercial gain—is devalued. Yet developments that have proven important and commercially significant typically come from basic research. By devaluing it, we are killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
As Canada's Nobel Laureate, John Polanyi, reminded us several years ago, “When we tie discovery research”—and he was referring to basic research—“ too closely to development, we force our university scientists to run while hobbled in a three-legged race, one leg tied too nearly to industry. This is a mistake we are now making.”
One of Canada's foremost business leaders, Mike Lazaridis, the founder, president, and co-CEO of Research in Motion, put it more pointedly:
I keep hearing that there is something fundamentally wrong with the university research system in Canada. Some very influential people believe that we are not getting the proper “bang for the buck” from our investment in university R&D....
A particularly dangerous version of this thinking holds that professors should patent more.... I have some experience with patenting, and I believe that this is wrong-headed....
Lazaridis continued by saying that the priority should be the funding of basic research:
The number one reason to fund basic research well and with vision is to attract the very best researchers from around the world. Once here, they can prepare Canada’s next generations of graduates, masters, PhDs and post-doctorates, including the finest foreign students. All else flows from this.
A narrow focus on commercialization ignores that the most innovative and valuable research to date normally began with no anticipated commercial outcome, but rather was guided by what knowledgeable scientists thought would be intellectually important to pursue. We encourage the government to increase the amounts of unrestricted grants available through federal granting agencies. This will help protect the integrity and independence of academic research and ensure that proposals are assessed first and foremost on their scholarly merit, the surest way to protect the public interest.
I look forward to answering your questions.
:
I thank you all on behalf of the Canadian Chiropractic Association, which represents our 6,000 members Canada-wide, for this opportunity to offer our rationale and practical application of how we can help decrease cost to the Canadian health sector and reduce patient load on general and family practitioners as well as neuro and orthopedic specialists.
Our distributed document touches on issues challenging our increased utilization and on studies rationalizing our cost-effectiveness and efficiencies at treating neuro-musculoskeletal conditions. Now, that's a bit of a mouthful, but in plain language we speak of back pain, neck pain, and headache. Further detail on any of the materials referenced is certainly available upon request.
I'd like to elaborate on two or three items mentioned in our document, as this may lay the foundation for further discussion.
I'm an Alberta practitioner; thus, I am more familiar with Alberta models of care. The simplest, most straightforward example of chiropractors' cost-efficiencies and treatment effectiveness comes from our Workers' Compensation Board model. In short, chiropractic care gets workers back on the job more quickly and more cost-efficiently than any other health care provider, period. Couple this with the Health Quality Council of Alberta survey last year, which related patient satisfaction to chiropractic care at 90%, second only to pharmacists' services.
Workers' Compensation Board experiences in other provinces emulate the Alberta experience; thus it's a common example across the country.
An example not so common, again from Alberta, is the national spine care initiative, in conjunction with the University of Calgary, which sees a team of chiropractic, physiotherapy, and physiatry triaging for neurosurgeons. Simply put, the quicker back pain—and any health care consideration, for that matter—is diagnosed and directed to the most appropriate health care giver, the better the outcome, be that direction to conservative care, namely chiropractic or physiotherapy or strengthening and work hardening processes, or direction to surgery. It's a matter of the right treatment at the right time for the right reason.
This kind of model, using the low-tech, comparatively low-cost diagnostic skills of chiropractors, is of significant cost-benefit to the system. Chiropractors are highly trained health care providers with the ability to diagnose. Thus, not only are we effective at treating, but we're vastly underutilized at directing traffic.
This is slowly changing, in fairness, and just recently—this past month as a matter of fact—one of our chiropractic researchers with a research chair at Mount Sinai Hospital was indeed given treatment privileges at this hospital, but patients pay personally for those services. That stated, we run into barriers. The Canada Health Act sees that all dollars go to the medical model, and it should be no surprise to anyone around this table that the medical model needs help and not just in terms of more doctors or more dollars. Utilization of a host of low-tech highly skilled health care givers such as nurse practitioners, physiotherapists, physiatrists, psychologists, and chiropractic doctors with diagnostic capabilities could be more fully utilized, to economic and manpower advantage to our health care sector.
Thus, the point we wish to leave with you today, and discuss with you, is that we could decrease cost to Canada's health sector by reducing the physical load on medical colleagues by taking on a sizeable portion of their practices that deal with musculoskeletal conditions, roughly 30% of their workload. Finally, we feel that barriers should be reduced, preferably removed, for those population bases, namely low socio-economic status folks, Department of National Defence members, and first nations people, who find difficulty if not absolute downright impossibility accessing chiropractic care.
I thank you.
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Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today on behalf of Canada's 18,000 dentists.
As president of the Canadian Dental Association, I hope to shed some light on the dental manpower situation in Canada, and inform your discussions of the Canadian service sector.
Dentistry is an important, although distinct, part of our Canadian health care fabric. Some $11 billion are spent annually on dental services in Canada, which represents 7% of our total health care spending of a little over $160 billion.
The growth in this sector has occurred fairly steadily, and is well aligned to the growth rate of total health care spending. Over the decades, I can say that the type of care being delivered and the manner in which the care is provided has evolved. Most of us in this room can expect to have our own natural teeth well into our senior years, a relatively new phenomenon, and these advancements can be credited to a number of factors.
We have had the benefit of water fluoridation, better education, and improvements in general health care. In addition, dentistry has moved from the drill-and-fill era of yesterday to a sophisticated and highly effective team-based model of health care delivery led by Canadian dentists. This essentially can be described as a one-stop-shopping model where everything from preventive care to diagnosis to treatment is available under one roof from a team of highly qualified and specialized providers. In many ways it could be used as a model for the evolution of health service delivery throughout Canada.
For the most part, dentistry does not suffer from long waiting lists, provider shortages, or professional burnout. There are many valuable contributors to the dental team, each focused on the area that makes sure of the best use of their training and knowledge—in short, an effective use of limited health care resources.
It's significant to note, I think, that this evolution and successful outcome has occurred in the current context of a partnership system of payment, which exists almost entirely outside the reliance on government dollars. Of the $11.3 billion spent on dental services annually, $10.8 billion is accounted for by private sector spending. Employer-sponsored dental plans have proven a cost-effective means to maintain oral health and a valued benefit to employees. In this respect, the federal government has made an important contribution to oral health by maintaining the non-taxable status of dental plan premiums. We applaud the government's continued and appropriate recognition of the value of maintaining the health of our workforce.
I realize I have probably painted a rosy picture for you, and you may be starting to think that not everything is entirely perfect, and of course you would be right. The trend toward increased private spending on dental care has a negative counterpart, as reduction in government spending in many cases means reductions in care for children, seniors, or the poor. The pendulum has perhaps swung too far, and as a profession we have become increasingly aware of access-to-care issues over the last few years.
Unlike the situation in medicine, access issues in dentistry are not primarily due to shortages of skilled providers, although there are some rural regions in which this is the case. For the most part, the absence of dental plan coverage combined with the inability to pay directly for care leads to a portion of the population missing out on needed services. The dental profession has already reached out to these groups in formal and informal ways, and many dentists quietly provide pro bono services through their office when ability to pay is a barrier to care.
Additionally, the ten dental schools across the country provide community dental clinics where senior dental students provide a wide range of dental services at greatly reduced rates. As a result, in many ways dental students are subsidizing the provision of care through their tuition fees. Tuition fees are the highest of any profession in Canada; this in itself is an issue. We are concerned that the sticker shock associated with the high cost of education may further upset the balance of dentists in rural versus urban areas. As a rural practitioner, this is an issue that is near and dear to my heart.
Another recommendation made by the Canadian Dental Association is that special consideration be given to financing our dental schools, which are really hospitals, on the basis of their unique community outreach that attempts to compensate for reduced public spending elsewhere. However, this issue in itself would warrant another presentation, and I believe I'm approaching the end of my time.
Thank you again for inviting the Canadian Dental Association to testify today. I and my colleague Andrew Jones, who is joining me today as a witness, will be happy to respond to any questions you may have.
Thank you.
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Thank you for inviting me today. I will be speaking in English; however, I can answer questions in French, if you wish.
[English]
I would like to start with some numbers regarding the health care system.
In 2006, just over one million people across Canada, or one in ten employed Canadians, worked in the health system. That represents 6% of the total Canadian workforce. Health is one of the major employment industries in Canada.
Of the $160 billion spent on health care, between 60 and 80 cents of every health care dollar in Canada is spent on health human resources. That equates to $96 billion to $128 billion that went towards health human resources.
The health sector is a significant component of the Canadian economy. According to Statistics Canada, the monthly gross domestic product for health services in November 2007 was $67.9 million. That equates to 5.5% of GDP.
That captures health care as a service industry, but if you also include pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing as well as medical equipment and supplies manufacturing, the amount contributed to the GDP for health services and health manufacturing would increase by an addition $5.2 billion. That's a total of just under 6% of GDP.
Finally, over 100 medical world firsts have occurred in Canada's research hospitals, reflecting, if you will, the entrepreneurial spirit of the medical industry.
A number of health human resources issues are addressed in great detail in the brief you've received from us, but I will focus on a couple of highlights of the highlights, if you will. I know a number of these issues are not unique to the health sector, but we believe they are exacerbated within this setting.
First of all, there's a global shortage of health service providers. The World Health Organization estimates that worldwide, there needs to be a 70% increase in the world's health workforce to address current and projected shortages.
Research suggests that these numbers will only worsen in the coming years, for a variety of reasons, including population aging. I know we've all heard about this in many different contexts.
In terms of aging, in 2005 the average age of individuals in Canadian health occupations was 41.9 years. That's 2.3 years older than the average age of the general Canadian workforce. But to add a little bit of flesh to that particular statement, approximately 38% of the nursing workforce is over 50 years of age and heading towards retirement.
We want to bring a highlight to our aboriginal populations as well. Census data from Statistics Canada have shown that the first nations, Inuit, and Métis populations are growing much faster than the total population. Again, we know this statistic.
We do believe strongly that all levels of government must provide resources to achieve and maintain an appropriate supply mix and distribution of health care providers from these populations as well as to adapt educational curricula for health sector workers to ensure cultural competence of individuals providing health services to this population.
I will briefly mention retention and recruitment issues. In 2006 the unemployment rate for all occupations in Canada was 6.3%. However, the rate for health occupations was 1.2%. In both robust and weak economies, tight labour markets make it difficult, some might say impossible, to recruit the full range of workers required in the health care system.
We also know a lot from the popular press and research about generational and gender issues. I emphasize that health care is a 24/7 industry. I won't repeat here what we all know about the shifts and the needs and expectations between generations, but I can affirm that these differences affect the health system greatly.
Looking at gender as one example, women have constituted 80% of the total health workforce over the last 20 years. So we know that the generations perhaps want to work a little less or a little differently from how some of us have. When you add into this the preponderance of the female population within the health workforce, issues such as maternity leaves, day care needs, and the 24/7 demands of the health system truly do exacerbate the problems of our health system.
I will briefly mention as well research and innovation within our health world. Over 85 spinoff health and medical companies employed more than 2,000 Canadians and generated close to $1.5 billion in investment capital between 1999 and 2006. It's a clear contribution to Canada's economy. We are trying to convert people to seeing health not as a cost but as an investment.
I have a final point, on internationally educated providers. As I mentioned earlier, there is a global shortage of health professionals, and we in Canada, as do other countries, face ethical issues in actively recruiting these internationally educated providers.
It is utterly critical that Canada work towards greater self-sufficiency in achieving an adequate workforce supply within our health system. The Canadian Healthcare Association does not support the aggressive recruitment of health professionals from lesser developed countries, most of which are also facing severe health provider shortages.
In conclusion, I'd like to leave you with three points from these brief overview comments: the health sector is a benefit, not a cost, to the health of Canadians and thus to the Canadian economy; the health service sector is a substantial component of the economy and the labour force; and recruiting, retaining, and maintaining the full scope of Canada's health workforce is vital to assuring Canada's competitive position in the world.
We do not leave you with just these overview comments. You will find approximately two and a half pages of well-defined recommendations in the brief for your consideration. We look forward to continuing this discussion.
Thank you.
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Mr. Chairman, committee members, good morning. I am pleased to be here with you to study the service sector in Canada. To this end, I will be speaking to you about the engineering field. Thank you for providing this opportunity to express our point of view.
The Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec is a non-profit organization representing 56,000 Quebec engineers. The mission of our organization is to serve the common interests of all engineers in all sectors of activity. To this end, we publicly promote their interests. We provide engineers and engineering students with career-related services as well as commercial benefits.
As part of its mission, the Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec has taken a keen interest in the effects of globalization on the organization of the labour market, particularly on knowledge-based jobs such as engineering. In recent years, we have carried out two specific studies: one on the phenomenon of job offshoring and the second on the situation in the manufacturing sector, with the underlying theme of the impact on the work of engineers.
To gain a good understanding of engineering in Quebec, it is essential to grasp the place of engineering in our society. First of all, more than 30% of engineers work in the industrial sector of manufacturing and production, 20% work in the consulting sector and another 20% work in the public and para-public sector. The work of one engineer generates almost 80 direct jobs. The work of one engineer in the industrial sector generates almost 100 indirect jobs. A large number of jobs in the services sector are attributable to the industrial sector, which remains the true engine of an economy that is balanced, diversified and creates value.
Globalization is an inescapable reality and we must make the best of it. We have to focus on the opportunities it provides. That was confirmed by our study on the impact of offshoring on Quebec engineers conducted in November 2006. Knowledge-based jobs such as those in engineering are no longer immune to international competition and the phenomenon of offshoring. These changes have repercussions for the organization of work, employment, the economy and the social fabric. We can tell you that globalization is transforming the work of engineers. Today, the latter work in a network that includes suppliers and partners located throughout the world. This requires many changes in order to accommodate different time zones and a variety of cultures.
There are a number of factors contributing to the type of changes faced by our industries. We see that you had the opportunity to discuss this before preparing the report Manufacturing: Moving Forward – Rising to the Challenge. In Quebec, we can count on engineering expertise that enjoys exceptional renown. On the international stage, the reputation, competence and effectiveness of Quebec engineers are well known. In terms of economic development and the services sector, it is in our interest to further promote this calling card in discussions with foreign countries.
As regards the opening of markets for our companies, the Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec recommends that Canada concentrate on negotiating free trade agreements with countries where market conditions—particularly in terms of protection of intellectual property, labour standards, social and environmental considerations—are comparable to those prevailing in Canada. The Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec believes that Canada must make it a priority and actively pursue negotiations for a free trade agreement with the European Union. In the past, our businesses could compete with others playing by the same rules. This applies even more so to the services sector.
Commercial trade in Canada must first and foremost be promoted in order to increase trade and to open markets for companies, for services and industries. We believe that there are still too many interprovincial barriers. The study we conducted last October attempts to provide our industrial sector with the tools to face the challenges of globalization. The first conclusion of our study is the need to implement a strong and coherent industrial policy.
This industrial policy must be founded on innovation, investment and productivity. It must be based on solid developmental projects, such as high-speed trains, aluminum processing or the electric car. The first aim of this policy must be to develop sustainable development technologies for industry and services. The time has come for Quebec and Canada to focus on developing its exportable know-how in the area of developing environmental technologies.
To be competitive and to capitalize on the know-how of our Canadian engineers, we must take action and focus on the development of brain power, the main raw material of leading edge, high value added sectors. We must also increase the productivity of our plants and development of our infrastructures, increase investment in research and development and provide for modernization of production.
The Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec recommends that government focus on the research and development diagnostic. Not only would this allow us to identify improvements most conducive to productivity gains, but it would also focus on the development of innovative and durable goods and services. We also urge the various levels of government to rethink innovation programs and include measuring the return on investment in terms of employment and know-how.
In innovation, the involvement of an engineer with expertise in various areas is essential. University and on-going training of engineers and the workforce in general remains a cornerstone of the success of our companies and a priority for the Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec. We need to remember that training our future engineering graduates is an important lever of economic development.
The good news for future graduates is that there is full employment for engineers in Quebec. The unemployment rate for engineers is hovering at 3% compared to 7% for the general population.
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Thank you for the question. It's very pertinent to dentistry.
In the late 1990s the profession realized that Canadians wanted health care of the same standard to be delivered across this country. So it didn't matter whether you were in Nova Scotia or British Columbia, there were expectations. As a result, it was important that practitioners had the ability to move across the country.
All the licensing bodies in Canada came together with the profession, and now we have total portability—any professional licensed in any province can move between provinces. That's been a very good thing for the profession.
In the area of foreign-trained individuals, we also realized there was a necessity to make sure the profession had access to people from other places. Working with the universities and regulatory authorities, we have a way to bring people into this country to allow them to practise. Recently we tried to make it even easier for foreign-trained people to come, and we're dealing with foreign-trained specialists right now. It's really an educational issue, to make sure people can come from other places to teach in our institutions, and to allow general practitioners to move. So it's an important area for us.
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Thank you for your question.
A classic example, just very recently, comes to mind that I can highlight.
We have a chiropractic doctor, Dr. Tondreau, who just got back from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, of course, they work under conditions I can't imagine, but certainly Dr. Tondreau recognized that the amount of hardware these folks pack, the cramped conditions in which they live, the travelling arrangements, these kinds of things that facilitate their tour of duty have significant implications on their health, musculoskeletal health particularly. He also indicates that about 80% of the kinds of conditions represented from soldiers in Afghanistan are because of musculoskeletal conditions.
He wanted to volunteer his services, actually, to help out, not to be paid for that and after regular duties, but he wanted to volunteer his services to treat his colleagues. Due to military red tape, he wasn't permitted to do so. He's a recognized health care practitioner in a country where all ten provinces recognize licensure and are regulated, yet he is not permitted to look after his colleagues in the profession in which he was educated to do so. It just doesn't seem right.
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I always have something to say, but on that specific point I think I would broaden the discussion to mention the wait times. We all hear so much about those. Moving forward, again, the federal-provincial issue is so difficult, but this is an area where the federal government can have some influence.
The wait times program, as conceived a few years ago, was and still is an excellent program. We are seeing results and a great deal of optimism in certain areas. But there are two problems. One is that the focus of those wait times was so specific it neglected other critical areas. The example I will give you is joint replacements. As one of the five conditions, surgery was covered but post-rehabilitation was not included in the package.
So there is this concern that, yes, a Canadian will get their joint replacement surgery, but without, say, proper care in advance or physiotherapy afterwards, they're going to be back in the queue. We need to take a look at the breadth of what is included in those five wait times.
The second issue, of course, is that in those few years when we focused on these fives areas, other conditions created their own wait lists. It's time to really step back and evaluate and determine where we go next with the wait times issue.
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Certainly you do hear a great deal about physician and nursing shortages. These are our largest health provider groups. Who among us would not want to have their physician or their nurse at a time of need? So that's a natural issue to hear about.
From a Healthcare Association perspective, I'd like to support what you said. It really is about the mix, and the need is at all health provider levels.
I also, by the way, chair a group called HEAL, Health Action Lobby, which you might have heard about. It represents 36 national health associations and organizations. When we go around the table, no one says, “Gosh, we have so many health providers, we don't need any more.” So it is across the board an issue, and needs to be looked at.
Earlier I mentioned this paper that's describing a mechanism that can get governments, at all levels that are necessary, to have that debate together and make sure we do act appropriately in addressing the issue.
Welcome to all of the witnesses. I was thinking, as you were making your presentations, that you represent the professions that so many parents aspire that their kids will get into. It's great having you all here in one room.
I do have to say, since we have some health care representation, that I just went through quite an intense experience with a family member in the health care system. I tell you, after a long hospital stay, access to some of the best physicians on the continent, and a very successful outcome, I have nothing but singing praises for our health care system--and we didn't have to produce a credit card at the end of it. It was a very successful experience, thank goodness.
A couple of you raised specifically issues around demographic changes or generational changes in your professions. I'm sure all of you are facing that.
Mr. Turk, you raised an issue about perhaps a deteriorating quality in the kinds of jobs that are resulting.
I'd like to ask each of you, what are the challenges you're facing with that generational change, and what are the strategies you have in place in your professions to meet the demands, not just for today but for the future?
:
Before I begin, I will just point out that I grew up in a family in which my father was an engineer, and he was gravely disappointed that I let down the family by becoming a professor.
In any case, the challenge I described in the presentation is a very serious one. A study done at Carleton University several years ago, for example, showed that more than half of all undergraduate courses at that time were being taught by non-tenured people on contract, with low pay and so forth. That's largely a result not of some desire of university administrations to emulate the model of the Hudson Bay Company or other retail sectors, in which the majority, if not the overwhelming majority, of employees are part-time; rather, it's a response to underfunding.
With university budgets not able to meet the growing need in terms of growing enrolment and the need for more sophisticated lab equipment and larger library collections, the way they're coping is with a human resources policy that relies less and less on full-time faculty. And the consequences are quite grave.
The solution we see to this is to lobby aggressively with all of you for more adequate funding, as I mentioned in the presentation. We think that going to the standard of one-half of one penny for every dollar generated by the Canadian economy as a worthwhile goal for the funding of post-secondary education by the federal government is a key part of the answer to that.
:
The answer is a complicated one. There are some programs that require a co-funder, which is usually a private sector partner. In effect, this partner has veto power over whether the project gets public money. In other cases, the granting councils themselves, sensitive to the fact that the federal government is putting great emphasis on commercialization, give their programs more of a commercial orientation, believing this to be the best way to encourage the federal government to provide the kind of funding we desperately need in this country.
So some programs require commercial linkages. More informally, a certain pressure guides people to favour projects that may have a commercial bottom line. The difficulty, however, is that our ability to predict commercial success in research is abysmal.
Paul Berg, who got the Nobel prize at Stanford for his research on the splicing of DNA, which arguably helps underwrite the entire biotech industry today, said that if he had had to pass through a commercialization screen to get this money, he wouldn't have gotten a dime. Yet his work now helps to underwrite a multi-billion-dollar industry. If you talk to most scientists, whether it be in physics or biology or chemistry, they'll point out that the most important commercial developments in their field have by and large come from basic research.
So we shouldn't dismiss commercialization, but we should remember that we can't forecast what's going to be of value. We really need to trust good scientists to identify good science. That's what Mike Lazarides and John Polanyi are both saying.
:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to see you. I missed the beginning of the meeting as I was meeting with the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters. I realize that the issues I wish to address overlap and that the comments are the same.
Mr. Couture, you spoke about the manufacturing sector being the heart of our economy. We are definitely in the grips of an unprecedented crisis and that certainly affects the engineering profession. At the very least, it is about know-how. And when we meet with people from the academic community, we gain a better understanding.
We have already discussed, Mr. Couture, the need to provide tax support for research and development and innovation in the form of refundable tax credits, loans and loan guarantees to encourage investment. As Mr. Turk said earlier, one thing is certain: the results of research are not necessarily immediate. We have to promote investment, at least in research.
Mr. Couture, tell us a little about how the Réseau des ingénieurs du Québec intends to weather the crisis in the manufacturing sector, particularly with respect to research, development and innovation.
:
Many questions, and not simple ones.
I regret to say that my own view is that our ability to forecast accurately is much less than any of us would like. The U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics is probably the best in the world at trying to forecast what kinds of jobs there will be in five years and in ten years. If you go back and look at their forecast from five years ago, they're woefully wrong, despite their best efforts. I think the Canadian occupational projection service stopped making projections some years ago for the same reason. We have to make those efforts, but I think we have to recognize that we have to take those forecasts with a grain of salt and try to make our best guesses, which means having research as good as we can.
I wouldn't say there's not significant investment in research in Canadian universities, nor that there isn't significant funding for Canadian universities, but it's certainly less than we need in order to meet the objectives that all of you as politicians hold for our sector. We have a lot of people retiring, as I mentioned. Our problem is not a shortage of young people coming up to assume those positions, but that the kinds of positions they are being offered do not allow them to pursue a proper academic career, and hence will mean that we'll have fewer researchers and fewer people grappling with these questions in future than we do now. Those are the challenges, and at the heart of them is financial investment. We don't invest sufficiently in post-secondary education and in research.
:
Well, I would like to be the first witness to come and say that I'm from a sector that doesn't need more money, but I can't do that. It would be a way of getting your attention, were I able to make that claim.
Secondly, when we're talking about post-secondary education, we're not talking just about university, but also universities and colleges, apprenticeship training, and a whole range of adult education that's necessary after high school. In that regard, the majority of Canadians do participate in some form of post-secondary education. In fact, the participation rate in Canada is one of the highest in the world.
The fact that they earn more is a reason we should not try to fund post-secondary education increasingly by tuition increases, because insofar as they earn more, they pay more in taxes. In fact, if you look at analyses that have been done, university graduates pay back far more than the total cost of their education as a result of the increased taxes they pay because of their higher income. So it is an investment, in that sense.
:
I'd like to pursue the idea of our tax dollars paying for post-secondary education.
One of my grandmothers lived until she was 99. She regretted all her life that she couldn't get past high school, because our family didn't have the money to send anybody to university and my parents never had the opportunity to go to university. I think it's fair to say that for many people in Canada, the post-war generation was the first to be able to go to university. To me, it was a great democratization of our learning, which unleashed a lot of creativity and a lot of value to us, not only as an economy but also as a society.
I know that even though tuition fees have risen dramatically, so has registration at universities and colleges. It is higher today, I understand, than ever. I do have a concern about the squeeze on affordability. And Dr. Smith raised the issue of dental fees. Yes,I guess a student will earn all of those back once they are in the workforce, but boy, oh boy, together they're like a house mortgage when you start off your career.
At what point do you lose that balance between affordability and the democratization or accessibility of post-secondary education, so that the average family can aspire to have their kids go to post-secondary education?
:
I think most families in this country aspire to have their children go on to some form of post-secondary education, whether it be university, college, or another kind of training.
As the proportion of government funding has decreased, the principal replacement has been increased tuition fees. That's having two kinds of consequences. Remember that in Canada the principal source of assisting students is through loans. We're one of only two major industrialized countries that does not have a national needs-based grant system for funding post-secondary education students. So one of the consequences is substantial student debt. But the willingness to take on debt is also something that's socially and culturally variable.
In families that have historically been poor, are risk-averse, and don't have some experience that there's life beyond debt, the children don't even go on because of the formidable financial barrier that seems to be in front of them. We see that most strongly in the professions. You heard from the Canadian Dental Association about dentistry. In medicine there was a study at the University of Western Ontario where before tuition fees started going up dramatically, the average income of a family of a medical student was $80,000 a year in the mid-1990s. By 2002, the average income of a family of a medical student at the University of Western Ontario was reported to be $140,000 a year.
We simply can't have a situation in which family wealth rather than the individual's ability is the determinant of who goes on to get an education. We're at that stage in various ways. We need to find other ways to fund it, and we've proposed some in our finance brief. I won't go into them here for time reasons.
:
It's a very good question, and I totally agree with my colleague here.
Who we attract to the professions is really important. One of the great things about this country—I know I'm an example—was my ability to access the system...from my parents. I probably would not have been able to go. I would not have been able to afford it.
The real issue for us too is that it really affects what the graduate does after university. I'm an example of a dentist who graduated with minimal debt, and I was able to establish a practice in a very small rural community of 2,000 people in northern Alberta. There was no dentist there. Our problem now is that most of our graduates are forced to go where there are already dentists and work for other dentists as associates.
When you're dealing with access to care, it is critical that our graduates have the ability after graduation to not only have the technical and clinical training necessary to provide services, but as importantly the financial resources to be able to establish or participate in communities that need them. It's not just rural places and inner-city areas. Quite frankly, you graduate with $200,000 worth of debt—I think Andrew will say that's about the average number. The cost of a dental practice is about $500,000, and you need a home. A new graduate is looking at $1 million if he wants to establish a practice. What do they do? They go to Calgary or Toronto.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thank the guests for coming here today.
Most of you today had presentations representing professions that have a lot of similar challenges. You talked about tuition, availability of your professions in the future, and the challenges you have in the systems you're in, whether it's government, the private sector, or the public sector.
My question is to all of you, or to anybody who can answer it.
Are there European models out there, mostly in the Common Market, that Canada could look at and that would definitely help your profession? Most importantly, are there any that would get Canadians a better bang for their buck, whether it's out of their pocket or through their tax dollars? In your professions, does the European market have systems in place that are a little more advanced or that would have ideas we could use?
:
I'm contemplating what I can say that would be useful in response to that question. My best response is yes and no. It segues a bit on the comments just made. I should be a politician--sorry.
It's not just the European countries; it is around the world. The “yes” part is that we absolutely have to constantly be looking at the other models of health care, whether it's the educational aspect, treatment, insurance, or any of those pieces, but not just in Europe. There are other countries as well; Australia and New Zealand are the obvious candidates that come forward. The U.S., frankly, we can learn from, but a contextual piece needs to be added to that. What Canadians need and what our context is may not work.
What we see in the U.K., for example, is that the U.K. has had tremendous success with its national health system. Many Canadians and professionals look at it and wonder why we don't have that federal national control, as opposed to the provincial-federal-territorial breakdown, yet they're experiencing difficulties now of various types.
There's no time to go into detail, I know, but we have to constantly stay on top to see what is being offered and what we could perhaps borrow to help address some of our issues within this Canadian context. That's the “no” part of it.
:
There are a couple of solutions we need to look at, three that I'll put on the table now, and there may be some other information I can send forward.
One is that we do need to look at maximizing scopes of all health professions. That's been touched on here but not in that language, so we need to make sure all health professionals are doing what they should be doing within their scopes and the full use of that scope. This was touched on a little bit by our chiropractic colleagues. It will lessen the load, whether it's nurses or physicians.
Another point would be advanced practice, which is a growing trend in a number of health professions over the last couple of years. It's quite new. The nurse practitioner is a version of that. There are many health professionals who are able to take on additional duties that would then allow others—to use physicians as the example—to focus on their specialty areas and not have to do the things that others can do.
The third item I'd bring forward is primary health care. The federal government invested a great deal of money, $780 million, into establishing a new way of delivering primary health care through an inter-professional modality. We're dropping that a little bit. The funding ended. There was an expectation that it would simply continue. I think it needs more investment, so I would urge this committee to take a look at that as well.
:
Thank you very much for that; I'm mindful of my own time now.
Mr. Turk, I want to return to the issue of research. You told us that basic research is being devalued in the current political system or the current government.
I've been on this committee for seven years. Perhaps I can review how the federal government actually funds research.
The NSERC budget in 2006 was $914 million. All basic research grants and scholarships do not require matching funds. There is a small program in commercialization. The CIHR budget of $900 million...very famous research by Dr. Ray Rajotte out in Alberta.
Most of the SSHRC budget is geared toward basic research. If you look at CFI, $4 billion is for infrastructure funding; 40% requires 60% matching, usually matched by the provincial government and an institution. If you look at indirect costs of research, that is geared almost explicitly toward basic research. If you look at big science projects, like the synchrotron or the SNO lab, that's geared toward basic research. You have some smaller programs, new networks of centres of excellence and centres of excellence and the commercialization of research.
The criticism of federal government funding research, it seems to me, would be that we don't fund applied research enough. The facts that I have, or that are certainly available, show that the federal government funds basic research a lot more, as a proportion, than it funds applied research.
So I don't understand why you're making the statement you make in your presentation.
:
I think I began my presentation on research by indicating that the federal government had significantly increased the funding for research. What I was talking about was the kind of pressure there is to focus research in more applied or more commercially viable areas.
If you look at the presentations of the granting councils to you; if you look at the discussion in the research community; if you go back to four or five years ago, when the Prime Minister's advisory council on science and technology created the expert panel on the commercialization of university research; if you look at the discussions, which I'm sure all of you have been part of, around the concept of innovation, which does not mean innovation as the dictionary would define it but means commercialization, all of that will demonstrate that the climate is very much one of trying to skew things toward what will pay off. And that's understandable, because people want benefits from the research they fund. But the way to skew things is to encourage, informally and formally, more “commercialize-able” ventures.
I guess all I'm saying is that we're not opposed to commercialization. In fact, we benefit from commercialization. It's just that we can't forecast what's going to be done. We're trying to dampen down the pressure to have a commercialization screen applied, whether by the federal government or by granting councils or by universities, which are spending enormous amounts of moneys in technology transfer offices and various other initiatives.
So very much the climate in which we work is where the commercialization side of things is touted. We want to keep reminding...and I'm very happy to hear your words and your view that there is a great value attached to basic research. We certainly think that's justified.
:
Yes, and I think there's no disagreement. The question is simply what's the best way to realize that goal?
I would just cite, in concluding, a comment made by Noam Chomsky. He may be known to many of you as a left-wing critic of American foreign policy and also as one of the most respected linguists in the world. He was giving a talk to our counterpart organization in New Zealand a year or two ago. Chomsky said to them: You know, I've spent my entire life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and for most of the 35 years I've been there, the principal source of funding was the U.S. military, through the Pentagon. More recently it's been corporate funding. What I would say is that things have gotten worse as it's gone from the military. My whole life I've been a critic of the military, but the military, the Pentagon, understood that when it undertook funding, it funded basic research and had faith that ideas of use to it would come by trusting scientists to do what they thought was useful. Increasingly nowadays we're getting more demands that the researcher be able to identify realizable goals as a result of the research as a condition of getting funding.
So that's what Chomsky said, and I found it ironic in a certain sense. But I think large sections do understand the value of basic research.