[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, April 25, 1996
.0936 
[English]
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): I call the meeting to order.
We're working on the Order of Reference dated Thursday, March 7, 1996, relating to the main estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1997. Is there unanimous consent that I call votes 95 and 100 under Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you.
I'd like to introduce our witnesses today from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Dr. Thomas Brzustowski and Mr. Steve Shugar.
Welcome. I understand you have a short brief.
[Translation]
Mr. Thomas Brzustowski (President, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council): Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to meet with the committee. I am gratified by the committee's interest in the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council which I believe to be a vital part of Canada's national system of innovation.
[English]
As you know, investment in research in the natural sciences and engineering in our universities - and that is the mandate of NSERC - produces important outcomes for Canada. I'd like to express these along the lines of our three main lines of business, which we've identified.
Basic research adds to our stock of knowledge in important fields, and more than that, it gives Canadians access to knowledge generated around the world. In this day and age, access doesn't mean getting your hands on it; it means being able to understand what it says and what it means. This is a very strategic activity. It can produce immense benefits in the long term. They're very hard to predict in the short term, but we have all around us evidence of the long-term benefits.
Second, project research puts new knowledge to productive use in the economy in addressing shorter-term problems that have been identified as important.
Third, research done in the universities also produces highly qualified people who can make use in Canada of all the advances in science and engineering from around the world. That is the key, of course, to bringing science in, to having access to the world's knowledge and having people who know how to use it. The university is a unique institution in our society because it combines the two functions of research and the training of highly qualified people.
University research provides Canada with a broad base of expertise across all the scientific and technological disciplines. Students are trained by this research. They have a much lower rate of unemployment than the population at large. Canadian companies hiring these graduates acquire the know-how, the ideas and the skills, and all of these are vital to our companies as they seek to prosper in the global marketplace, in which the use of knowledge seems to have become a key to success.
The impact on Canada's economy of university research and training in the natural sciences and engineering occurs mainly through two forms of innovation.
.0940
Product innovation brings new goods and services to market, and I insist that the definition of ``innovation'' must include ``bringing to market''. One illustration of that impact is the multitude of companies across the country that owe their origins to university research and to the students and researchers emerging from university laboratories and classrooms. These companies create jobs, pay taxes and create further spin-offs in their communities, all contributing to new economic activity, prosperity and in fact economic growth and high-quality jobs.
NSERC has recently prepared a booklet detailing some of the companies whose existence can be directly attributed to NSERC funding, and copies have been provided for your information. I see a number of members have that book in front of them. This is our very first attempt at such a summary. We believe it's only a small sample of the new economic activity arising from university research in Canada.
The second form of innovation is less visible but every bit as important. It's process innovation, which enables established Canadian businesses to improve their productivity in what they have already been doing. The impact of successful process innovation may be to create new jobs; it may be to limit the extent of downsizing required to remain competitive; it may be the whole difference between staying in business and going out of business in today's economy.
Canada depends on research in our universities contributing to our prosperity and well-being in the ways I've described above, but at present, as you know, the university research system is under considerable strain.
NSERC's support for research in the universities has always paid for only the direct costs of research. That system has been in place for at least thirty years, and probably rather longer than that. All the indirect costs, including the salaries of the professors who are the principal investigators, including the libraries, the laboratory facilities, the supporting services and the like, are met by the universities from their own operating budgets, which come to them by transfers from the provinces and from tuition fees.
The indirect costs, we believe, are roughly one half of the total costs. That is to say, NSERC provides half of the cost of research, and somebody else, through the universities, provides the other half.
Recently each of these components has been under pressure. NSERC's budget has been decreasing because of the fiscal pressures on the federal government. The provincial transfers to the universities are also declining because of the fiscal pressures on the provincial governments. The result is a squeeze from the bottom in the research infrastructure through the universities and from the top through the direct costs we're able to provide.
The situation is made worse by a third consideration, which is that much of the physical infrastructure - the laboratories, the machine shops, the fume hoods in chemistry buildings and all of those things that support university research in Canada - was provided as part of the building projects when the institutions were expanding in the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps some in the early 1980s. Many of these facilities have now to be modernized or replaced, but nobody knows where the funds for that will come from.
The combined effect of these three pressures, if they're unchecked, will be a deterioration of Canada's capability for university research, which will require time and money to reverse. It took a lot of time and money to build up. It will require a lot of time and money to reverse a decline. We believe this constitutes an emerging national problem that has yet to receive the attention it deserves.
It's not in NSERC's power to solve it - we're just one of the components - but we're determined to bring it to the attention of all those who might be able to take part in the solution.
That is the end of my remarks.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you very much.
I should mention before we get into the questioning that my understanding is the bells will ring this morning at 10:10, a half-hour before the vote, so I would suspect the vote will be at 10:40. We should keep that in mind.
Mr. Leblanc.
Mr. Leblanc (Longueuil): Dr. Thomas - it's easier for me to say that thanDr. Brzustowski - where are you from?
[Translation]
Mr. Brzustowski: It's a good Polish name.
Mr. Leblanc: I see.
.0945
You said the federal and provincial governments are cutting everywhere, which I feel is necessary. One of your greatest challenges is no doubt to communicate the benefit or the results of research. There should be greater cooperation between academics, research centres and businesses to promote research results and to make everyone benefit from them. Has your council thought of a better way to manage research results so that they could provide greater benefits?
Mr. Brzustowski: That is a very important question that I will answer in English, if I may,Mr. Chairman.
[English]
Knowledge is a very interesting commodity. It has no value unless it's used, and it gains in value the more it's used. Your question, Monsieur Leblanc, is very appropriate.
A whole division of the staff of the council and a whole program deals with partnerships between universities and industry. This is the area of project research, and the project involves an industry partner bringing money to the table. This means that industry partner sees a potential use for the knowledge that might be generated, sees a benefit that is predictable and is attractive enough to warrant the investment. So in the area of project research, in fact the research generates knowledge we know we need. There are people ready to use it.
The area of basic research is a very different matter. It's very difficult to predict in advance how the knowledge might be used, when it might be used and by whom. One of the criticisms very often levelled at the whole science and technology infrastructure in this country is that we have yet to learn, on a national basis, how to put knowledge to productive use in the economy. We have relied on our natural resources for a long time. As an economy, we have to learn how to use knowledge better.
But some of these processes take a lot of time. I recently had a letter from a professor whose PhD thesis from the 1960s became an approved drug last year in the United States. That's how long these things take. In Britain a survey was done of the time lapse between the results of basic research and their use, and there was quite a detailed table. One item that stuck in my memory is it took 76 years from the time the physics first were understood to the use of those physics in fluorescent lights, which we see everywhere.
To summarize my answer, the whole area of project research in the council, on which we spend $100 million and which attracts additional money into the universities, is aimed at finding partners who'll want to use the knowledge that will be produced. In the area of basic research the knowledge is a public good available to everybody, including people outside of Canada, but the people who generate that knowledge can also use knowledge generated around the world, outside of the country.
There are long-term benefits from basic research and there is short-term, more predictable use from project research. We're paying a lot of attention to that.
[Translation]
Mr. Leblanc: We have noticed that sometimes it is very sophisticated research. The research was fruitful, and when it came time to market the results of that research, we had to sell them to Japan or to the United States.
.0950
Do you have a better way to manage research development so that the industry could benefit from the research being carried out? Shouldn't there be closer ties between research and our production capacity?
[English]
Dr. Brzustowski: Undoubtedly, yes, Mr. Chairman, but a lot is happening that is good. The problem as stated in the question has arisen and we all know very visible examples. But recently a number of changes have been taking place.
The whole notion of financing innovation, providing venture capital, in this very uncertain area between the research discovery and the technology: that's beginning to grow. In the area where the risk is more predictable, between the proven technology and the marketplace: that's beginning to grow. Funds are being created from which such activities can be supported. But the whole question of what we call the ``receptor capacity'' of industry for knowledge is being addressed. I'd like to give an example.
In terms of one of the national programs, the networks of centres of excellence, the Neuroscience Partners based in Montreal, the people leading that realized they were producing important research that might lead to significant advances in therapy of damaged nervous systems. But they doubted whether there was industrial capacity to use these results. They went so far as to organize an investment fund of their own that would help create small companies that would use the results of their research.
I think that is a very nice, integrated approach. We're not doing this, but we certainly are part of funding and managing the networks of centres of excellence, each of which has freedom to act as it sees fit to achieve its aims. As a result of the Neuroscience Partners working, in a decade - maybe more, these things take time - we will see therapies, we will possibly see drugs, we will see treatments and interventions that may improve the quality of life of people who are injured, who have their spines injured, their nervous system injured.
I cite that as an example because I'm very impressed by it. We didn't design it. I don't think we had the wisdom at the centre and the granting agency to design it. The people right there, who have the network, the connections with business, the connections with the hospitals, the connections with the researchers came up with this idea. It seems to be working.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you.
Mr. Leblanc, I understand you're sharing your time.
Mr. Ménard, you have about two or three minutes left on the first round if you'd like to pose one question.
[Translation]
Mr. Ménard (Hochelaga - Maisonneuve): I would first like to wish you good luck in your new position, as I know you were appointed President just last October.
The government recently published its science and technology policy, and I would like to know what the relationship is between the Minister's overall policy, the mandate you have as a research agency, and the fact that you cancelled 19 programs that were deemed not essential prior to the announcement of the national policy.
I know you are a major player and your mandate is in natural sciences and engineering but wouldn't it have been better to wait for the minister to give you your mandate under his national policy before abolishing those 19 programs?
On the second round, I will ask you about the rating of the 15 centres of excellence, but let's first look at the sciences and technology policy and the termination of those 19 programs.
.0955
[English]
Dr. Brzustowski: Mr. Chairman, first of all let me admit right away that I could not name the 19 programs, and I don't know exactly where they lie. I know they don't lie with us.
On the question of policy, I think if there would be one word I would use to describe the national problem we have in science and technology, that word would be ``fragmentation'' - fragmentation among departments of the federal government, fragmentation among orders of government, fragmentation by province, fragmentation by institution, even within industrial sectors, possibly not as many industry associations doing research together as one would like to see.
The most encouraging single feature I find in the science and technology strategy that has just been published is that it's a step in the direction of reducing the fragmentation, at least at the level of the federal government.
For example, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council is one of the agencies in the portfolio of Industry Canada - so-called. What that means is that even though, as you said, our own mandate is very clear, we now work alongside other agencies such as the Space Agency, Statistics Canada and NRC. Even if our mandates don't overlap, at least we know we're working in the same direction.
We meet frequently and we try to have coherent strategies. They also help develop agreements and arrangements where the mandates can be made to overlap, such as our own agreement to involve NRC, universities, ourselves and industry in a way that brings university labs, NRC labs and industry together. I find that very encouraging.
I also find encouraging the idea that the external people who offer advice to the government departments for their research activities will meet together in a common coordinating committee and look at the coherence of the strategy.
That's the background, the science and technology policy.
On the other side of the fence are the economic pressures and we'll all exposed to them. We are living and have been for quite a few years in what I call a crisis of public funding in this country. There are pressures to reduce spending everywhere and there are frameworks for that.
I think decisions might have been better made if we already had the regime in place of less fragmentation and more consultation across in making decisions so one would make decisions with a national picture in mind, being strategic about it. I hope that will come in the future. In the meantime, history is history and what has happened has happened.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you. Mr. Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt (Okanagan Centre): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome,Dr. Brzustowski. It's good to see you, it's good to get to see the head of this new organization. I wish you well in your endeavours.
The questions I have deal with something we started talking about when we met the other day. It has to do with the university community in Canada today, really the proliferation of community colleges to become universities and universities right across this country.
I was rather intrigued by your comment that there is a way perhaps that something could be done to meet this crisis of finance in Canada by perhaps not everybody at university doing everything else. You talked, I think, just a moment ago about fragmentation. All these universities are doing all this research. There are 15 centres of excellence, but there are, I don't know, 100 universities in Canada now, pretty close to that. I'm just wondering if you can make a comment on that issue.
Dr. Brzustowski: I've used the word fragmentation very carefully. Let's first of all look at some numbers. We have in Canada, for example, in a country of close to 30 million people, about 40,000 undergraduate students in engineering, of whom something close to 8,000 graduate each year. That is lower per capita by a factor of two or three than our closest partners and lower by an order of magnitude than some other countries in the world.
.1000
There isn't an excessive supply of these people. Neither are there classrooms with gaping rows of empty seats. We don't have those either. The fact remains, we have a large number of institutions, and the fact remains, there's a social pressure from the public to upgrade qualifications. People find there's social prestige in having a university degree. It's very clear that in some of our immigrant communities this is a very strong driving pressure. There is, in a sense, a mood in the country that credentialism is something that very few people criticize and a lot of people practice.
So that aside, we support about 60 universities. In fact, the top 10 receive about two-thirds of the funds in that, so the support is smaller for the rest.
We're a huge country. We have long distances. We have a very dilute population. Our institutions are dispersed, and Canadians value regional capabilities. It's very important to us. We seem to have found the network model - maybe not the only one, there may be many - that is beginning to show that it works in this environment.
We have the capability of creating intellectual critical masses of scholars for research while still leaving people in their home institutions so they can teach students in their regions, they can interact with industry in the regions. This is a learned behaviour. We're into the second phase of the program and each phase learns from the lessons of the earlier one. This is a Canadian model that does seem to work.
It is my opinion that while many of our universities express the same aspirations, they all want to be research universities. The fact is, they are much better adapted to meeting regional needs than one might think if one just listened to the aspirations they express. I find that very encouraging.
We're finding that the Internet, SchoolNet, all of these electronic connections may be fashionable - some people call them trendy - but I think they have made a qualitative change in the ability of people to interact at a distance in a very informal and responsive way. What that means to me is that it will be possible to support a very small group of excellent researchers in some small institution without everybody else in that institution doing research, and they need not be isolated from their colleagues. They can be on a network with colleagues in other universities. I'd label that a Canadian model, which I think has every chance of proving a major success.
We have fourteen of these networks working in the federal program of networks of centres of excellence. Ontario has seven at the provincial level and there are others around the country developing. I find that very encouraging.
Mr. Schmidt: The thrust of my question, Mr. Chairman, would also go in another direction and follow on from this answer. Does that mean, then, that the research in Canada will not be university centred but rather centre of excellence centred, which really redounds to individual centred? Is that a more accurate statement? It seems to me that the universities have become communities unto themselves. We said they are regional, but really they aren't. They're their own place where a group of academics do their own thing and they get their prestige from the kind of research they do. That's very expensive. I don't think we can afford that any more.
Dr. Brzustowski: You may find that when I answer your question you'll consider me part of the problem, considering I am some part of the problem. We support individuals. We offer operating grants, research grants to individuals. We encourage collaboration. We are told, and it is demonstrated to us time and time again, that there's a great deal of collaboration among researchers internationally, nationally, and regionally, but the fact is, we do select individuals for their excellence and fund them.
.1005
Some of these people in fact work in an isolated mode, because the field lends itself to that, but many, many others work in networks or work in teams. Even with individual grants, they collaborate. The reason they do that is that the important problems today are so complex that it's very difficult for a person to go off in the corner, isolate himself or herself from the peers and from the community, and come up with something important. Today's world of advancing knowledge is too complex for that.
Mr. Schmidt: I still haven't got to the question that...but somehow, by your answer, I'm asking the right question, I guess.
Dr. Brzustowski: Sorry.
Mr. Schmidt: It's all around, I think, the issue I'm trying to get at. The question is, should we have as many universities in Canada today as we have doing research as they're doing it? The intent was perhaps exactly as you say, which is that it ought to be more individual oriented rather than each community thinking it has to have its own international, global importance as a research centre.
Dr. Brzustowski: Let's go back to something I said right in my introductory remarks about what defines the university as a unique institution. In fact, it is a place where knowledge is generated through research and knowledgeable people are taught.
I don't think I would want to send my children, and you probably wouldn't want to send yours, to be taught by an individual who has been teaching from the same notes for the last 20 years and hasn't been generating new ideas or interacting with people who do.
The question is, are they researchers first and university teachers second or are they university teachers first and researchers second? I would say the university community covers the whole spectrum, from those who are there because it's a great place to do research and who teach part of the time to those who are totally committed to teaching but do some research in order to stay current and know what's being taught.
I come back to the question. University education has been shown to be an economic good. It's not just a private good, but in fact a public good. I don't see rows of empty seats in the classrooms. What would we provide as the basis for the intellectual development of these people without the universities? All the people we trade with are in fact investing more in post-secondary education than we are. Just look at Hong Kong, Taiwan, the new technical university in Hong Kong, southeast Asia, the new Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand, and all of those places. We're not exactly leading the world in investment in post-secondary education.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you, Mr. Schmidt. Ms Bethel.
Ms Bethel (Edmonton East): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With respect to your comments on fragmentation, I guess we all know that's a real problem, and overlap and duplication. I would be really interested to hear you, in a succinct and concise way, make a case for consolidating research monies from departments. We know there are millions and millions of research dollars within the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Natural Resources, and so on. Make the case for one coordinating body to manage the research.
Dr. Brzustowski: You're asking me to make a case for something I'm not sure I believe yet.
Ms Bethel: Okay.
Dr. Brzustowski: First of all, I think it's very important that, at the level of strategic planning, everybody involved in every line of research should know what everybody else is doing within the federal government across all the departments. But the departments have their own missions, and they need the research to support their missions. That research is spread around the country, it's affected by local needs to some extent... To some extent it isn't, but to some extent it is.
In terms of strategic coherence, by all means there should be a central body that makes sure there isn't duplication, and where there's overlap it's a constructive overlap that needs to occur, and there's a coherent sort of strategy in the way money is spent. Whether that means there should be a central management body trying to manage the incredible complexity of all that -
.1010
Ms Bethel: Flatten the structure, not...
Dr. Brzustowski: I'm not sure how flat it is at the moment, you see. You're pushing me beyond what I know here. I don't know how flat the structure is.
Ms Bethel: As I look at your mandate - and we're talking about overlapping mandates - as I understand it, accepted health is part of your health research.
Dr. Brzustowski: The natural sciences are all sciences except social and medical sciences.
Ms Bethel: Yet I read somewhere here that one of your new centres of excellence is for information-based decision tools in health care.
Dr. Brzustowski: Oh, yes. The networks of centres of excellence are administered by the three granting councils, MRC, the Medical Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and us. That particular one is a venture of SSHRC and MRC.
Ms Bethel: How is there any coordination? Another one of the centres is on sustainable forest management. I don't know who is doing forest management. I would assume that's even provincial in nature.
Dr. Brzustowski: Exactly. In that particular network of centres of excellence we have the private sector at the table, we have environmental groups, we have the provincial governments, we have the federal government and we have universities. Quite a mob of people are involved in that.
Ms Bethel: There seem to be a lot of mobs in a lot of areas trying to coordinate a lot of fractured, or I guess fragmented -
Dr. Brzustowski: I would label the networks of centres of excellence as an agent of coordination rather than an agent of fragmentation.
Ms Bethel: Then perhaps it could be expanded so that it could coordinate more.
Dr. Brzustowski: I agree.
Ms Bethel: I'm not sure what the mechanism is, but I think generally it's agreed that there needs to be more coordination - flatten the structures, not have many... Provinces have done it with health boards.
I notice, too, that you can have task forces. Is there any task force, or is there anyone looking at this kind of proposal on what kind of mechanism can best unfragment some of this, coordinate it?
Dr. Brzustowski: You focused on the networks of centres of excellence, and that is a very important thrust. A management committee of the networks of centres of excellence includes Industry Canada and the three granting councils.
My own opinion is that the best way, in fact, to bring together and coordinate important research dealing with problems we identify collectively as important across the sectors, to bring the resources together, would be to create more networks of centres of excellence. I'm convinced the model works. I hope there's a phase three, because phase one was good, phase two is even better, and we continue to learn.
To help that along, we're having a meeting quite soon - in May, in fact, in Ottawa - of the chairs of the governing boards. These are people from outside the universities. These are generally private sector people who chair the boards of directors of the networks. What we'll try to do is assemble from them the lessons they feel they've learned so that we can focus on doing it better in the next phase.
Ms Bethel: There will be some examination of it.
Dr. Brzustowski: Absolutely.
Ms Bethel: My last question relates to the centres of excellence themselves. You've gone from 15 to 10. On what basis or on what criteria do you assess the success of networks themselves? What kind of evaluative process do you use?
Dr. Brzustowski: In the first stage, I think there were 11, of which 10 survived an evaluation. Were they meeting their goals? A fairly tough evaluation. Were these people who actually began to behave differently when they were put into a framework where the research was coordinated, or were they just there because this was a new source of funds and the coordinated behaviour was difficult to learn?
Ms Bethel: Are there criteria such as cost effectiveness, and cost-benefit analyses?
Dr. Brzustowski: Yes, there are industrial partners putting money on the table on all of these things. They look at the benefits, the productivity of the research, such things as giving an indication of the new kinds of contacts among the researchers and with the people likely to use the data, which didn't exist before. We measure those. These are important changes in behaviour that we try to measure.
At any rate, of the first competition, ten remained. Then four new ones were launched last year, including sustainable forestry and one that makes very intelligent structures. You can actually -
Ms Bethel: To take the forest one as an example, how do you determine that research isn't being...? How do you know exactly what's out there? Is there some kind of inventory of what research is being done by all of the provinces and by...?
.1015
Dr. Brzustowski: That happened as the network was being set up. That happened in building the proposal, which was eventually approved.
We don't create the network; we respond to proposals. The proposals have to be a hard-nosed bringing together of the really good people in all the areas with the users - the people who are interested in the information - as well as with others who are ready to put money on the table, such as the federal and the provincial governments in their departments.
That particular one was launched only last fall. It hasn't been evaluated yet, but believe me, the proposal took a couple of years to prepare and got a very tough going-over, and a lot of that coordination was done in the proposal-building.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you, Ms Bethel.
We have two minutes left on the first round. Mr. Ianno, would you like to take up the two minutes? Then we'll go to Monsieur Ménard for five minutes.
The bells are ringing. I'm just getting confirmation that it's the half-hour bell, so we'll be going until approximately 10:30, if that's agreeable.
Mr. Ianno.
Mr. Ianno (Trinity - Spadina): Thank you.
Thank you very much for your presentation. First of all, I'd like to say U of T is in my riding and is a centre of excellence, and I'm very proud of it.
What I've been wondering the last two years or so is, what is NSERC doing to ensure that, as the partnerships are forged, monies and royalties will be returned to NSERC so you can reuse that money instead of it just being on a basic grant basis?
Dr. Brzustowski: That's a very interesting question. It opens up the whole area of what the returns are on investment and to whom. Let me answer it with the most immediate past action and then go back, if you'll agree.
We recently ran a competition and distributed a small amount of money to help institutions set in place mechanisms for protecting their intellectual property and deriving income from that.
Mr. Ianno: You just answered part of my question, but what I'm curious about is, how does NSERC get some of it? It's the federal government's money that we want to be dealing with.
Dr. Brzustowski: Well, NSERC, to put it bluntly, doesn't get any money back.
Mr. Ianno: How do we change that?
Dr. Brzustowski: Do we want to change it? Bear with me.
The return from basic research is a public good, and the return to government is for new economic activity: spin-off companies, people employed, paying taxes and so on.
On the project research, where one tries to develop the technology, if one calculates some proportion of licence fees and so on based on some proportion of the total investment between the idea and the product appearing on the market, the return to NSERC at the front end of that would be a very small share. To take it from the research result to technology and then take it from technology to the goods and services in the market, particularly the goods in the market, means this chunk requires a tremendous amount of investment and a very long time.
Universities have been very conscious of this in the States. They were onto this long before we thought of trying to get a return for this kind of expenditure. Generally universities there with budgets of $300 million or $400 million a year get back $200,000 or $300,000 from licence fees from royalties. In Canada, Waterloo gets maybe $1 million or $1.5 million on a budget of 200 times that. So this is not an answer to a university's budget, and if the money were coming back to NSERC, it would be very small compared with ours.
Mr. Ianno: I guess from -
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): We have to move on, Mr. Ianno, unfortunately.
Five minutes, Monsieur Ménard.
[Translation]
Mr. Ménard: I hope our witness recognizes that we are among those who hope more funding will be available for research. We hope there will be more people doing research rather than fewer.
I fully agree with you that the problem is not really that there are too many universities. You can't say Canada has too many universities. If you look at how much public funding goes to research and development in Canada, you can see we are far from being in a competitive position, since we are second to last among OECD countries.
.1020
I have three questions for you. I know your organization is working on a symposium with a foundation in China, where you have tried in particular to assess the impact research and development have on modern societies.
From what I hear, that symposium was a huge success, and I was wondering whether you were able to determine why in Canada, besides fragmentation, we are in a situation where, despite the fact that we put $8 billion into research and development, of which $7 billion is through government agencies and $1 billion in tax credit, we can get back on track in terms of domestic investment in research and development?
You are one of the major players in research and development. As such, have you thought of additional measures that could be taken besides those announced in the sciences and technology program for the 21st century?
Secondly, scientists and researchers have told me that the formula used by centres of excellence, which is to have specialized fields and to have the knowledge and individuals concentrated in one place, with the works spread out throughout the country, was generally well received and considered to be a winning formula.
However, the scientific community was concerned that in the next few years, centres of excellence would get only $22 million.
Would you be able to give us the rating of those centres of excellence? What advice could you give parliamentarians allowing them to better understand the work carried out by centres of excellence, to understand the formula and to ensure the government continues to recognize it as a winning formula and encourages the various centres throughout the country to carry on with their work?
[English]
Dr. Brzustowski: I will answer the last part first.
We will be very happy to do what we can to keep interested members informed of the progress of the centres. We are learning the lessons. We have been arranging briefings on the centres. We will continue to arrange briefings and make sure members and their staff are informed about them. If they're interested, they can attend.
We're very conscious that we need to do that, because we are learning this lesson. This is not a proven model. This isn't something we can take off the shelf and use. We're learning this.
Let me go back to the conference on impact, the symposium with the Chinese academy of sciences. As a result of that symposium, it was very clear we had to begin a much more serious effort to evaluate not the outputs of our research but the outcomes. But that's a very difficult thing to do, because the outcomes happen possibly with some delay in society after the research outputs.
The research outputs are trained people, results, published information, patents or what have you. The outcomes in society depend on what happens to these things - what people do with them. But we are making a very serious effort to evaluate in a very serious way what is being done. We're putting a lot of effort into this.
We're not alone. A lot of other places are doing this. Members may be interested to know the State of Oregon in the United States is perhaps far ahead of anybody else in trying to see the impacts on their quality of life, their economy and their well-being of research being done in the state, of industrial activity, of all of those.
[Translation]
Mr. Ménard: But there is something very peculiar to Canada. Your colleague from the science council in Quebec City said that Canada is the industrialized nation with the lowest number of engineers working for businesses. Why is it that despite the funds we invest, things haven't taken off as much as expected?
Bear in mind that the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology had suggested that Canada should establish a science academy. Would you like us to have a science academy, as some other countries have, that would be responsible for coordinating all the activities?
If I'm not mistaken, it was the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology that did what little coordination was being done, but it wasn't its main responsibility.
.1025
Do you think that in the next few years Canada should establish a proper science academy?
[English]
Dr. Brzustowski: Let me just answer briefly. If the Academy of Sciences was a symptom of the fact that the culture was changing in the country, that Canadians broadly and deeply understood the impact of science and technology on their lives, I would welcome that. If it was just an institution and people thought if we create this, the problem will go away, then I wouldn't.
The number of engineers isn't small in Bombardier. It's not small in the high-technology companies in this area around Ottawa. It's small in the old industries. We have lots of those and they're improving. It's large in the new industries, and we don't have enough of those. But all of that is part of that science culture, the broad public understanding that translates into political will.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you. I understand we have about 13 minutes or so before the vote.
I have Mr. Shepherd on the list, and then another two people. So if you can be very brief, everybody can get their question in and then we can get out to that vote.
Mr. Shepherd (Durham): Thank you very much.
You mentioned the policy on sustainable forestry. I'd just like to pick up on that so I can understand how you're fulfilling your mandate.
I was out on the west coast and I visited your forestry research station on the Victoria watershed, in that area. I understood they were doing a lot of research on infestation of wood and so forth. At the same time I talked to a lot of people in industry.
I discovered MacMillan Bloedel had a great little research project going on making a better box and so forth. I talked to some researchers who were all impressed with Weyerhaeuser in the United States. He talked about Oregon, inventing a better tree through biotechnology.
It seemed to me our whole thrust toward research and development, and your mandate, is scattered all over the map...and whether in fact we don't need to have a more concentrated orientation of the things we can do well.
Dr. Brzustowski: You've identified an important problem. First, we don't run any labs. In fact, our function in the forestry area is to do what you're suggesting. We're bringing together the network of centres of excellence on sustainable forestry. There's a program operated from the networks of centres of excellence by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and by ourselves.
It brings together industry people. It brings together the forestry people in Alberta. It brings people who are the environmentalists, biotechnologists, people who are interested in insect migrations. It brings together all of those people who are scattered in their areas into one common unit in which they have developed a joint strategy for addressing common research problems in forestry.
I see the same problem as you do. We see ourselves as part of the solution. This particular grouping across many universities, across many companies, across many research institutes dealing with forestry, has been brought together into that network to work on a common strategy.
Mr. Shepherd: But is it a common focus? Do we say we're interested in doing biotechnology in the forestry industry because we think that's where the action is going to be, say, 20 or 30 years from now? Aren't we weakening our approach by having everybody running around in different research projects all over this country whether it's in the private sector or public sector?
Dr. Brzustowski: I would hope the people in the networks of centres of excellence... I can't answer your specific question as to what priority they picked, but they picked a common, focused area that they can focus all their resources on. They call it ``sustainable management'', and I suspect it has more to do with the sustainable management of existing resources than developing new trees. But I firmly believe they are addressing exactly the fragmentation problem by coming together. That's why I value the model so much.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): Thank you, Mr. Shepherd. Ms Brown, this will be the last question.
Ms Brown (Oakville - Milton): Welcome to this position and to this committee.
Dr. Brzustowski: Thank you.
Ms Brown: I'm all in favour of what you're doing. I think we should be doing more of it, because it's the wave of the future. So that's where I'm coming from.
.1030
I have this thing about the administrative costs, which I notice have been going down - good for you. With this thing about selection committees, I don't know how many individuals are involved in these selection committees. I suppose for certain purposes you convene a body of experts in that field and they maybe come here for a day or two, look over proposals and make recommendations. A lot of those people probably have their flight to Ottawa covered and their hotel covered, but they probably also get an honorarium. How much would that be on average?
Dr. Brzustowski: Our selection committee members have their expenses paid but do not receive an honorarium. We receive, we think, something in the order of 14,000 person-days of volunteer time annually from unpaid volunteers who review papers and proposals and make the decisions on allocating our research grants.
Ms Brown: I am a very happy camper, then. I heard a few years ago that these people, who have good salaries, particularly out of already tax-supported jobs in the universities and government departments, would come for a couple of days to Ottawa, have all their expenses picked up, and then go home with a little cheque for their trouble, even though they were already paid for those work days through their regular employer. But that has been stopped, correct?
Dr. Brzustowski: I don't think it was ever in place in our system. I think you and I share the belief that one full-time salary from the public sector per capita is the limit.
Ms Brown: That's great. Thank you.
The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Valeri): I have two announcements.
First, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council will appear before the Standing Committee on Industry on Tuesday, April 30, 1996, subject to confirmation.
Second, I would like to thank the witnesses for the very interesting dialogue. I'm sure there will be follow-ups from various members who haven't had an opportunity to get their questions in today because of the vote. I thank you for the information you've brought to the committee.
The meeting is adjourned until 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 30, when we shall have before us the Canadian Space Agency.