[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, May 16, 1996
.0935 
[English]
The Chairman: Order.
We shall resume consideration of our 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 for me to call votes 105 and 110 under under Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
The Chairman: We have here Dr. Lynn Penrod, the president of the council. I believe she's joined by Elaine Isabelle and Bruce Mitchell.
Would you like to open with a presentation? Then we'll take it from there.
Dr. Lynn Penrod (President, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It's a pleasure to be here today to present to the Standing Committee on Industry SSHRC's strategic outlook and expenditure plan for 1996-97. We appreciate the opportunity to review with you the council's current and forthcoming initiatives to consolidate and enhance research and training in the social sciences and humanities in Canada.
As you know, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council was created in 1976 under the Government Organization (Scientific Activities) Act to promote and assist research and scholarship in the social sciences and humanities and to advise the minister on related matters. Under this broadly defined mandate, the SSHRC has implemented a diversified program structure that provides grants and fellowships to develop and consolidate the national research capacity and provide leading-edge knowledge to enhance our understanding of the values, the relations, and the institutions that shape our world.
In order to fulfil its mandate, the council assists in the training of highly qualified personnel in the social sciences and humanities. It supports the full spectrum of research activity, from basic and theoretical research in economics, history, literature, and international law, for example, to applied and practical studies in ethical decision-making, the management of technology, regional development, and educational policies.
Through its strategic partnerships program, the SSHRC sustains the development of a critical mass of expertise in areas of immediate interest to practitioners and decision-makers in the public and private sectors. It also funds activities aimed at the communication of knowledge among scholars in Canada and abroad and to a wider community of users in the public and private sectors.
The 1996-97 overall budget of SSHRC is in the order of $91,245,000. If we exclude the transfer for the networks of centres of excellence, the council's budget is 16% lower than it was in 1994-95, before the implementation of phase one of program review. Needless to say, absorbing such an important cutback has proven to be a major challenge, given the rising needs and expectations of society, government, and the research community we serve.
The council reviewed a number of options last year to allocate this reduced budget. It decided to impose selective cuts to its core programs and to withdraw its support to activities that were deemed less central to its mandate. Nevertheless, the impact of the cuts for the coming year is real and will translate into considerably lower success rates in the majority of our programs.
That being said, the council undertakes its next planning phase with a certain degree of optimism, for a number of reasons.
Under phase two of the networks of centres of excellence program, three new centres - the sustainable forest management network, the health evidence application and linkage network, and the telelearning network - include researchers from the social sciences and humanities. By recognizing the unique contribution of all the sectors involved in scientific and technological advances, this approach holds promise for more broadly defined and integrated science policy in Canada.
No doubt inspired by the conclusions of the 1995 NABST report to the Prime Minister, the recently released S and T strategy will provide a favourable context for consideration of the contribution of social sciences and humanities research in policy development. In addition, the industry portfolio action plan will provide a framework for a more concerted approach to the development of research partnerships at the federal level.
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We can only hope that the objective of increasing interdepartmental coordination in science efforts will formally extend beyond the portfolio and lead to the inclusion of SSHRC as a major partner in the management of the recently announced health services research fund under the auspices of the Medical Research Council. The social sciences and humanities research community must be recognized as central to the development of a comprehensive research framework to address the reform of the health care system.
[Translation]
During this fiscal year, given the stiff competition for subsidies and a reduced budget, the SSHRC will continue to support the most competent and most productive researchers, the best graduate students and the most promising coordinated research initiatives that contribute the most to this country's intellectual vitality and socio-economic prosperity. The council will spend more than $34 million to establish a solid humanities research base and will provide subsidies to individuals and research teams who come up with new ways to analyze Canada's society, culture and economy.
The SSHRC will continue to support multidisciplinary and coordinated research on major social issues that could help the decision makers formulate policies. In cooperation with partners from the public and private sectors, the council will provide funding for research programs in areas of mutual interest.
Moreover, as a part of its major joint research initiatives, the SSHRC will support a limited number of exceptional research projects that provide training opportunities in an interdisciplinary context. In 1996-97, a budget of over $13 million will be earmarked for strategic and joint subsidies.
To fulfil its commitment to train qualified humanities researchers, the SSHRC will provide more than $25 million to exceptional doctorate and post-graduate students. It will also support programs that encourage exchanges and wide dissemination of research results to universities and the public. Programs on research transfer will have a budget of more than $4 million in 1996-97.
[English]
As we approach the end of the century, Canadian society is faced with difficult choices on a number of fronts. Social programs, health, constitutional reform, ethical decision-making, the environment, human resources training, immigration, economic development and culture are all issues of high public concern. The humanities and social sciences research community is adopting a diversity of approaches and practices to meet these intellectual and social challenges.
More researchers are working in collaboration and adopting interdisciplinary frameworks to address the complex and interconnected problems of contemporary society. More researchers are providing leading-edge and practical information to address critical issues, such as the structural adjustments required by technological advances and by the globalization of the economy and the changing nature of our social institutions. More researchers are working in partnership with governmental organizations and NGOs to define research priorities and to provide policy-relevant input. More graduate students are being integrated into SSHRC-funded research programs and activities where they not only gain hands-on research experience but also receive a salary to assist them in pursuing their studies. We are thereby able to provide direct support and employment to more than 2,700 students per year.
In addition, the research community is more aware than ever of the social responsibility of research and of the need to respond to increased demands for intellectual, social and financial accountability. While maintaining its commitment to its core research and training activities described above, the council will continue to introduce policies and mechanisms that will enhance the diverse contributions of the social sciences and humanities research community to intellectual, social and cultural challenges.
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During 1996-97, the SSHRC will release a new strategic plan for the coming five years, 1996 to 2001. Given our limited resources, it will not be possible to introduce major new initiatives. Rather, the new plan will further consolidate the policy and program directions set out previously with the aim of maximizing the federal investment in social sciences and humanities research.
We will continue to encourage research collaboration by promoting teamwork and networking, interdisciplinary research, and international collaboration to increase the breadth and interrelatedness of approaches to national and global issues. We will pursue our focus on training by including training objectives in all our programs in order to expand and enrich the graduate student experience. We will promote the communication and transfer of knowledge to ensure that research results are widely accessible and that they serve to enrich the critical thinking, information, and analysis needed to bring about social, economic, and cultural change in Canadian society.
We will seek new strategic alliances and funding partnerships to support highly relevant research to assist policy needs. We will increase our capacity to measure performance by developing new tools to assess research outcomes and achievements.
The main thrust of the council's new strategic vision is to provide a more flexible program structure, which will promote intellectual innovation and the integration and transfer of knowledge while being more responsive to the increasingly diversified research approaches and to the expectations of society.
In particular, the council will aim to strengthen the linkages between society and the research community and to increase the awareness and impact of research in our fields. We believe the Canadian public and decision-makers will understand the benefits of the investment in humanities and social science research if its significance is better defined and better communicated.
The research community must become more sensitized to the need to better articulate the intellectual, social, and cultural contribution of its activities and to more effectively communicate and target the results of research to appropriate clientele. The council intends to explore new and more effective mechanisms to meet these objectives.
The strategic plan directions were developed in close collaboration with council members. They were also reviewed in the course of a national consultation held in the spring and fall of 1995. The council will finalize and release the new strategic plan before the end of the calendar year. We will also start to plan the gradual implementation of the plan over this period.
[Translation]
The strategic plan will provide new opportunities for researchers and society to work together and use humanities experts to understand and resolve socio-economic problems. The SSHRC will further expand the joint initiatives program in the years to come. Under that program, the council works with partners from the private and public sectors to define and fund joint research programs in fields of mutual interest. One of its goals is to make sure research results are taken into account when formulating policies and when making decisions on government management.
I would like to draw you attention to a new initiative involving the SSHRC and a federal consortium comprised of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Health Canada, Heritage Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and Status of Women Canada. Under this agreement, four immigration and integration centres of excellence will be created involving over 300 researchers from 15 universities throughout the country, as well as a number of community organizations and representatives from provincial and municipal governments.
The purpose of those centres is to promote, coordinate, conduct and communicate state-of-the-art research on immigration to explain the impact on social, economic and cultural life as well as on education, housing, social services and health care. The Canadian program is the cornerstone of an international project called Metropolis involving about a dozen countries through the OECD and UNESCO.
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As part of its strategic programs, the SSHRC will set up five major education and training research networks in 1996-97. Those networks will study key issues affecting manpower development in an increasingly competitive global environment.
The program, which was developed in cooperation with partners from the federal government, will fund interdisciplinary research teams, will help forge intersectorial alliances and will facilitate the transfer of knowledge to users.
During the coming year, the SSHRC plans to encourage greater intersectorial cooperation. On April 10th, we held a meeting with our partners and humanities research users to discuss our strategic plan.
Representatives from various federal departments and social and economic organizations attended the meeting to tell us what they thought were the most promising ways to work together and to promote humanities research. They were very interested in continuing this dialogue, which is critical if we are to better coordinate our efforts. We plan to use that experience in the upcoming year to make sure decision-makers and users are involved in defining our new strategic themes.
On the international front, there have been some activities that have given the SSHRC more visibility and should be mentioned. The Council represents Canada on the OECD group on scientific systems where it is actively involved in defining the next three-year plan. The Council is also a member of Unesco's Intergovernmental Council for Humanities Research, the MOST, which supports research on managing social change. And we continue to support international efforts to establish a research program on the human dimensions of global change. In the near future the council will also be part of an External Affairs delegation that wants to renew the joint scientific commission we had with France where, for the first time, strategic and sectorial cooperation in humanities is on the agenda.
On the operational front, the SSHRC will consolidate two major initiatives taken last year to streamline our operation. The program branch now has a new management structure and we will continue to streamline our administrative procedures. Last year, the administrative services of the SSHRC and the NSERC were merged as were the financial, administrative and human resources departments, and this year our computer services will be amalgamated.
[English]
I cannot conclude this presentation without expressing my concern, shared by many, including the committee on finance, for the future of university research in this country. In a time of fiscal constraint, all public expenditures are under scrutiny and all departments and agencies are required to participate in deficit reduction objectives.
However, it must be recognized that funding university research is a long-term investment that is essential for a dynamic, internationally competitive, knowledge-based economy. It is also an essential for an improved quality of life and social well-being in the context of changing social values and proliferating technical choices and opportunities.
The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is in a unique position to assist in providing critical information to make the difficult decisions that individuals, families, organizations, and governments painfully and acutely face every day. The fields defined by its mandate are directly related to major social concerns: health, the family, the environment, cultural vitality, economic growth, the educational and economic conditions for job creation.
The council's strategic focus on the development of interdisciplinary and integrated knowledge building and on cross-sectoral alliances is an important step towards a better coordination of the complex interface between research activities and society's needs. The established links with the university network put the council at the junction of the research interests of the academic community and the objectives of the public and private sectors. It can thus serve as a catalyst and a broker for establishing and sustaining essential linkages among all sectors concerned with a healthy research and policy base in this country.
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We can only hope that the incredible potential of the research community we represent will be able to flourish in the challenging fiscal environment we are all facing.
[Translation]
Thank you for your attention.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation.
[Translation]
Mr. Leblanc, do you have any questions?
Mr. Leblanc (Longueuil): I would like to congratulate you on an excellent brief, one that is very clear and precise. I generally agree with what you said today. I have always felt that the humanities were one of the most important areas to focus on.
We must protect our natural resources. It is really intellectual capacity that must be developed in these modern times. Although I agree that cuts must be made, I feel your organization is one whose budget should have been increased so that our intellectual capacities can expand so that we can be competitive internationally.
I know it is a medium and long-term investment. Our intellectual capacities and human development must be expanded. Was it the government who forced you to make cuts, or did you decide to do so yourself, when we should really be spending more on research and intellectual capacity.
Dr. Penrod: You have raised an issue that is of great importance to the SSHRC. We try to work within our budget and we plan our expenditures based on the need to broaden our ability to transfer knowledge locally, nationally and internationally.
But we always have financial problems. We try to make the best choices to maximize our involvement in basic research on Canada's intellectual capabilities. It is a major problem.
Mr. Leblanc: On page 8, you mentioned a federal consortium comprised of organizations such as Immigration Canada, Health Canada etc. Do you work more closely with universities and major corporations who have a greater need to know about human capacity, human relations, etc.? Are corporations and universities also part of your consortium?
Dr. Penrod: I will ask Ms Isabelle to answer that.
Ms Elaine Isabelle (Director General of Programs, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council): We always work fairly closely with universities. In fact, universities support us a great deal in all our activities. Obviously, our council pays only those funds that are directly associated with research. So there is quite a lot of cooperation with universities and the council.
.1000
As for joint programs with the private sector, thus far we have managed to set up a joint program with Northern Telecom, for example. One of our objectives is to enhance cooperation and partnership with the private sector. It is not solely for funding purposes. I think it is also important that partnerships be established so that our partners can help us define research objectives and priorities.
So one of our objectives is to promote partnership with the private sector. We already have close, established ties with universities.
Mr. Leblanc: Even if your mandate is at a very high level, are you also thinking of looking at our major needs in terms of marketing, computers or robotics, for instance? Do you go that far or do you leave that up to other sectors, other levels?
Ms Isabelle: One of our more interesting initiatives is a technology management program.
It is a joint effort with the National Science and Engineering Research Council. It is a social process of technology management. How can you incorporate humanities into that technological field? Indeed, there are deficiencies in the area of technological transfer and management. That is a priority area for us.
Part of our strategy is also to fund managing for global competitiveness projects. That would be a direct component of the field you mentioned.
[English]
The Chairman: Walt Lastewka.
Mr. Lastewka (St. Catharines): Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I really appreciated your presentation this morning, but I had hoped there would be more information on the report card of the group. As you said on page 7, ``The research community must become more sensitized to the need to better articulate'' - and so forth - the findings.
I have two or three questions. First, how do you look at your responsibilities in the report card? How do you look at whether you've made progress or not? How do you share that with the rest of the country? That's number one.
Second, we hear about some of the grants and projects that are sponsored and.... I'm not sure whether this was the group that sponsored the research into the Detroit Tigers or not, but maybe you could clarify that. We always hear about some of the research being done and that probably mars all of the good work being done.
Maybe we'll start off with those two questions.
Dr. Penrod: On the issue of the report card, I think it's quite clear, as you're well aware, that the research funded through the council is vetted through a very strict peer review system. The peers, the external experts, review the proposals for research programs and fund on the basis of a very high-level, quality review before the research is funded.
When we work especially in the area of strategic programming as well, those themes are set up in consultation with the research community and with others so that we are focusing our research dollars on issues of critical national importance - for instance, applied ethics, women and change, managing for global competitiveness and so on.
.1005
When researchers then undertake their programs of research, they publish and they make public their results, and we attempt to do whatever we can at the council as well to communicate the results to the public to make sure those research findings are well known.
Again, I think it's a critical responsibility of our researchers to do that communication and to do it well, and to make sure that on our report card we are properly moving the results of the research out to the public, to policy-makers, to those people who need to know what the researchers have found out. The initial vetting is very strict and it is applied across the board on terms of merit and excellence. The results then need to be reported and we do monitor that.
I think you'll see that in my presentation I've attempted to point out that we would like to do that better. It's always difficult to make sure that we're getting the information from researchers to the people who need to know the results. We certainly are trying to do that. And we have systems of monitoring and do that on a daily basis.
On the second question, yes, we are. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council did fund the research on the Detroit Tigers baseball team. It's a rather interesting program of research, and I'm sure members will be aware that there were some criticisms of this. There were some comments about why this was funded.
Interestingly enough, the results of that research are going to be - and are - critically important in terms of major sports franchises and the economic development of municipalities. Although the title sounds perhaps a bit esoteric, this has actually been very important, precise, applied research that I think many members of both public and private sectors will find useful.
I certainly take your point that sometimes the titles are a bit misleading. As you well know, you can't judge a book by its cover. You need to find out more behind it. Quite often, when we have the time to get policy-makers or members of the public together with the researchers who are doing this research, there is an ability at that point to understand the relevance, the importance and the potential impact of that research.
Mr. Lastewka: Since our funding and the government are under continued public scrutiny because of the situation we find ourselves in, do you as the council take the responsibility to make sure that is clearly exemplified and communicated to the community?
Dr. Penrod: Yes, we certainly do. It is part of the way in which we fund that our researchers are required to provide productivity reports and to communicate their results.
In some of our programs...for instance, in the strategic programs I mentioned, researchers communicate beyond the academic community. We are very vigilant in making sure our researchers understand that they have a responsibility to do that.
Perhaps Elaine would like to comment on that a little bit in terms of how we deal with the issue of communicating clearly to the public what it is we are doing with our money in our programs.
Ms Isabelle: You raised the issues of report cards and of progress or no progress, and as the director general of programs I'd like to comment on it from a program perspective.
We place considerable importance on program evaluation. In other words, on a highly scheduled basis we evaluate all of the programs we deliver. We look at them in terms of what their objectives are and how well they are achieving those objectives. Those reports come back to our council and they result in changes to the program, like tightening up on criteria and the focusing of objectives and so on. I can honestly say that over the past four or five years a number of programs have gone through considerable improvement because of this attention to program evaluation, with the focus on why we have the program and what we're doing.
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For example, right now our council has recently received an evaluation of our strategic themes funding and programming. That evaluation included bringing in people from the user sector, people who are interested in the outputs of this research, to tell us how they perceive what we're doing. Do they find the research we're funding useful and relevant? How can we improve what we're doing?
On another front, we have going on an important project on the whole issue of research outputs. How do we measure how we're doing, not just the outputs but also the impacts? This project is going on in consultation with the user community, with the researchers, to determine how we should measure the extent to which we're successful.
How should we do this report card exercise you're asking about? We're currently establishing a database of issues that we think are relevant measures of outputs and impacts, not only what came out but also whether it made a difference. So in terms of our program management, this is a priority area in which we've invested quite a bit in recent years, and I think to good advantage.
Mr. Lastewka: I'm not questioning the fact that on the projects.... I guess what I'm questioning, and what I would like to see more shared...and I want to share with you that I myself was involved with a lot of research on the engineering side. To me it's important.... As you mention on page five, society is faced with difficult choices on various fronts. You mention all those fronts.
It would be nice to see a summary from time to time, whether it's yearly or every two years, that as a result of spending x dollars on social programs, research has shown this or that, such that we, as members of Parliament and as taxpayers, can understand that we're spending money but we're also making advances, going forward. I understand some research gets a lot of advantage, and some less, but the money spent in there has helped to move society forward.
You've covered a number of the areas; it would be nice to understand what advances have been made as a result of the research in those areas.
Dr. Penrod: I think that's a very important point, and certainly is something, as Elaine mentioned, in our study of impacts, we've done. We did it in the context of program review. We did a series of case studies where we attempted to go back and look at SSHRC-funded work done even as long as ten years ago, to trace not necessarily a dollars-and-cents impact from the work, but in the sense of whether policy did change. Was there a change resulting in the way we deal with regulations in, say, the correctional system because of some research taxpayers' money had gone to fund maybe ten years in the past?
We did find some very interesting examples. We've used those in case study form. I think it's probably one of the best ways the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council can present these kinds of findings in the sense of communicating to everyone where the impact is.
As you certainly appreciate, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to put it into terms that are immediately realizable, but it is certainly very important that we be able to track. I hope we're doing that better all the time. When the investment was made, along the line where were the impacts felt in even something as simple or complex as making a decision about a regulation?
[Translation]
The Chairman: Do you have another question, Mr. Leblanc?
.1015
Mr. Leblanc: On page 34, when you talk about cooperation and strategic research, under "major joint research activities", one can see the budget has increased considerably every year. It's on page 34, chart 16. That is very interesting and I would like you to expand on that. Why is it you spend nearly $1 million, if not more, every year?
Ms Isabelle: It is a new program. As part of the assessment of major research programs, we have established a new program with clearer objectives, which focuses more on cooperation and interdisciplinary research. It is a program that keeps expanding. I think this is just the third year of the program. That is why you see an increase in funding.
Mr. Leblanc: Could you give us more information on the program? Who do you work with? Could you expand?
Ms Isabelle: It is not a partnership program. That is not one the program's requirements. It is based more on interdisciplinary cooperation. The program also has an international cooperation component, but it does not have to be socially relevant. Obviously it includes project that have some economic or social relevance, but it is not of the selection criteria. It could be relevant in terms of knowledge or social impact. The program is not based on partnership with the private sector or departments, as is the case with strategic themes. It is more a partnership between various disciplines and, in many cases, different countries.
Mr. Leblanc: Fine.
[English]
The Chairman: Mr. Murray.
Mr. Murray (Lanark - Carleton): Dr. Penrod, thanks for joining us today.
I'd like to go back to the theme Mr. Lastewka brought up. The impression I have from your presentation is essentially that you're going to be having an awful lot of meetings over the next five years and talking to an awful lot of people, and that you also recognize there's been public criticism of some of the funding the council's been responsible for.
If we seem overly sensitive to some of that, it's because it's politicians who end up having to defend it. When you're at a town hall meeting and somebody starts reading off a list of projects and everybody in the audience starts laughing, and you're trying to explain why it's good stuff, it's a little difficult.
There's a pamphlet called ``Pigs at the Trough'' that's put out annually by the National Citizens' Coalition, and some of your grants figure largely in every edition of that. You have a lot of very bright people working at the council. Perhaps it would be possible to devise a popular-format report on what you do that might make things more easily understandable for the general population. I'm not saying you have to wallow in the muck with the ``Pigs at the Trough'' brochure, but it would be helpful if you could help us explain some of those things.
We get this sort of thing often. We get clippings in the mail all the time and try to reply to them.
Dr. Penrod: One of the decisions we at the council made last year was to produce a book called Exploring the Human Dimension, which is a very accessible way of finding out about what we've really produced with the grants we've funded. It's thematically organized in the areas of, I believe, health, family, the environment and ethics.
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It was our attempt to deal with this problem up front, to make sure we went forward and said this is what we do and this is the impact it's had. We have copies of that available and would be happy to provide them. It has had wide distribution, but again, it may be very helpful in order to make sure we are communicating at the right moment the objectives of the council. I'm sure it would be helpful to you as well.
Mr. Murray: Just as an example, Stats Canada has daily releases to the media of the work they do. I don't know if you do that sort of thing, but again, we rely on the media to report this accurately. If you don't do it now, it might be helpful to start. Again, I recognize your limited resources.
I want to ask you about your board of directors. I think you said there are 22 members on the board.
Dr. Penrod: Yes.
Mr. Murray: What involvement do they have in approving research plans? I don't imagine they get down to the micro-managing of the grants to various individuals, but what is their mandate?
Dr. Penrod: The mandate of the board, as you can imagine, is to set basic policy directions for the council and to deal with areas of policy concern at the highest level.
The process I was describing in response to an earlier question has to do with peer review, and again, those peer review committees are set up further down from council. They do not involve council members. They involve members of the research community, at times international experts, and, depending on the peer review panel, members from other sectors. That is where the decisions about what is actually funded are made.
The board is much more concerned with approving and deciding on matters of, say, a strategic theme or something like that. The final decision would be made at the board level in those areas.
As Madam Isabelle has pointed out, we do ongoing evaluations of our programs. When we find out what's working well and what could work better, the board is responsible for making the decisions as to how we should proceed at the highest level of our programming in terms of, for instance, doctoral fellowships, post-doctoral fellowships, what changes need to be made there, how we can be more effective and how we can produce the programs that will respond best to the research needs of the country.
The Chairman: Ian, just before you say anything, since I set up those policies when I was on the board eighteen years ago, you will respond very correctly that you like these policies, it's a good way of proceeding and so forth.
Mr. Bodnar (Saskatoon - Dundurn): They couldn't be better.
Mr. Murray: Actually, Mr. Chairman, I was just about to say nice things about the council.
Despite my earlier comments, I want you to know I believe most members of Parliament do understand the importance of what the council's doing and the importance of supporting researchers in universities. It's just that, again, when we have to defend the expenditures of public money, it's sometimes difficult.
I have a final question. You've talked to an awful lot of groups in government, and I'm curious as to how you actually feed some of the results of the research into public policy. A lot of this ends up in learned journals that a lot of people don't read. How do you separate the wheat from the chaff and get some nuggets that are really useful? Is somebody at the council scanning all this material and feeding it into various government departments?
Ms Isabelle: That issue is very important at the council and was a major focus in our last strategic plan - getting the message out. As you mentioned, information in scholarly journals is perhaps not the most user-friendly way to move the message out.
In some of the approaches we've developed, we find that involving upfront, right in the definition of the project, those who are interested in the research is in fact one of the most effective ways of making sure that when the research is completed, they're aware of the results. It also is important from the point of view of whether we are asking the right questions.
So more and more we are requiring in our strategics, for example, and encouraging.... We are making every effort we can to get researchers to consult with, for example, community groups if they're doing action-oriented, community-based research.
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In the definition of the project, we're asking who has been involved in defining the projects. The projects that bring the user in early have a much better chance of success. So a number of things are developing. For example, we're requiring dissemination plans in strategic projects. We want, at the time when the project is submitted, a description of how the researcher intends to get the message out.
The other big challenge for us is that of course the metrics have to change. If we're going to measure success for academics solely in terms of the number of publications in refereed journals, and if we don't somehow have an impact on changing the reward system, then it's very difficult.
To be very honest, this is an uphill battle. Those metrics are defined, first of all, out in the university environment. They're alive and well within our peer review committee. So we're working strenuously to broaden the measures to include important indicators other than the traditional ones, which are a lot easier to measure.
We're having difficulty, for example, with our committee saying to us, ``Well, how should we weigh going out and speaking to a community group against two publications?'' We're attempting to manage the process by giving guidelines and underlining the importance of ``Yes, this counts. Yes, you have to make the bottom-line judgment of how it counts.''
Quite frankly, I think that in the next five years and in our new strategic plan one of the important challenges will be how we can change the metrics, how we can offer incentives to get the message out.
Mr. Murray: I notice that my former employer, Northern Telecom, is involved with you. That signals to me that there must be...I won't call it a sea change, but at least some kind of a change in the way in which the council operates, because obviously companies such as that would be expecting certain results, which I imagine would be very healthy anyway for the future of the council. It's a good vote of confidence in the council, and if you can expand that, then it's going to add to the credibility with the public at large, as well.
[Translation]
Mr. Leblanc: My question is perhaps a little off topic. Since surveys have shown that only 14% of the people trust their politicians, it appears that people have less and less confidence in their representatives. I don't know if you have ever done any studies on that, but it seems to me that the British parliamentary system is somewhat outdated.
It is an important human issue. I have been here for 12 years now, and I know how difficult it is to please others and to inspire confidence. People trust their politicians less and less and it is an important fact that should be looked into. Is the British parliamentary system outdated? Has it evolved quickly enough, kept up with people intellectual abilities?
In some cases, you can see that leaders, the prime minister for instance, have a tremendous amount of power. It is virtually unacceptable for a party leader to succeed using blackmail, rewards or punishment. It is an example, but you often see that. I therefore think the system is obsolete. Representatives and members of Parliament's intellectual abilities have increased significantly since the inception of that system.
I therefore think a detailed study would be in order to see if the British parliamentary system couldn't be changed so that members of Parliament could have more freedom of action and expression, and could express themselves more freely when talking to the public rather than always having to follow party lines. We know full well that that it is pure blackmail in most cases, since we do have a great deal of intellectual ability.
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If only 14% of the people trust their members of Parliament, their parliamentarians, there is a serious problem. I would even say it is a major problem. I would therefore like to know if you have ever done any studies on that. If not, it seems to me it would be a good idea to do so. If a study has already been done, I would like to see it because it is something that interests me a great deal.
Ms Penrod: We could check that.
Mr. Leblanc: I don't know if you have any opinion on that, but you can certainly express it if you so choose. We will not criticize you for doing so, because I think we should all be for freedom of speech.
[English]
The Chairman: Mr. Valeri.
Mr. Valeri (Lincoln): Thank you. I thought I'd switch gears here for a second and look at -
[Translation]
Mr. Leblanc: I asked a question and I would like an answer. Have you ever done a study on that? If so, I would like to have a copy of it.
Dr. Penrod: We could check, and if we do have something, we could certainly transmit the results to you.
[English]
Mr. Valeri: I wanted to switch gears here a little bit and broaden the discussion somewhat and refer to the science and technology review and the strategy that was put forward. You make a comment in your brief that it will provide a favourable context for consideration of the contribution of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. I want to refer to pages 4 and 5 of that particular document, where it says:
- We must build the institutions, partnerships and networks needed to link individual skills and
talents. At the heart of our ability as a nation to meet these challenges lies the creation of a more
effective, integrated innovation system, which recognizes the interdependence and
interconnections between wealth and job creation, quality of life and advancement of
knowledge.
- Canada's challenge is to put our knowledge to work to create an effective and resilient
innovation system... This is critically important for a mid-sized country like Canada... We must
take a more deliberate approach to building the Canadian innovation system....
Dr. Penrod: I think you will have noted that the S and T document, the part you quoted, certainly represents the result of the S and T consultations in which the role of the social science and humanities community was seen as an up-front part of an integrated approach to innovation in terms of research.
One of the examples of where we can see the social science key participation in this would be in the networks of centres of excellence program. That is an integrated use of social science and humanities research up front in a collaborative mode, which will build on what we have in Canada and move it forward.
I think the thing that is really critical in the S and T strategy in terms of the council is that this is not the first time, but is probably the most important time, that social science and humanities research is recognized as a front-loaded part of the equation.
Everything we have described in our brief and in other material, which I've left copies of with the clerk, points to the issue of collaboration and integration on the social side before the technology side begins to run and the social side is then put in as a corrector at the end. I think that is a very important shift, and that is something the council is determined to push forward on as we move through the next five-year plan. That's why collaboration, partnership, and networking are extremely important. I know those are just words that describe modalities, but I believe that's where our influence will be felt as a mover towards innovation and building on what we already have. Three of the four new networks in phase two have SSHRC as one of the partners.
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Technology-based learning is an example where I think we will be building on what Canada already has, and the social science research side of that is very important. It will move us to a sense of greater innovation in the economy.
Mr. Valeri: Can you give me an idea of how our system compares to those of some of our international competitors with respect to innovation? It's been stated that when we compare ourselves to countries that have many fewer resources than we have as a country, we don't do very well with respect to innovation and our innovation system. Do you have any international experience that you can draw on?
Dr. Penrod: I certainly don't have any specific statistics to give you internationally, except to confirm that you are correct. In terms of innovation, we do not compare as well with some of our international partners as I think we ought to.
However, I believe that if you consider the S and T strategy document and what it states there, that is a way in which we can at least try to become more competitive.
We still are talking here about the critical need for investment on the research side in order to move the envelope forward. That's where you're talking about investment in research in the broadest sense, to be inclusive of the social side as well as of the natural science or the medical side.
Mr. Anawak (Nunatsiaq): I don't have the blue item, so I don't know what's in there. This is more out of ignorance than anything else. I just want to ask a very simple question.
In the 22-member council, are there any Inuit, Indians, or northerners? By northern, I don't mean northern Ontario; I mean above the tree line.
Dr. Penrod: At the moment there are not.
Mr. Anawak: Bear with me. Appointments are made how? Through the ministry?
Dr. Penrod: Yes.
Mr. Valeri: That's enough of that question.
The Chairman: Actually, Jack, there is a very interesting story on how the council tried to get more involved with northern, Inuit, and aboriginal studies many years ago. There was a very long and tortuous process at first as to how to reach out. It took a long time to get everybody's mind around to it.
Morris Bodnar.
Mr. Bodnar: Again, mine won't be a question as much as a comment on your organization.
On page 11, where you refer to the future of university research and your concerns, I can't agree with you more on that. It is not necessarily just university research, but when you look at core research, it is an influence to private industry, because quite often private industry tries to dictate the direction of research.
I am talking about research sometimes just for the sake of research, not knowing in what direction it may be leading, because if you knew that, then it might not be true research.
As we all know, research quite often leads to discoveries that weren't even anticipated. Some of the great discoveries that we have in this world would never have occurred unless some core research had been occurring.
Again, with the emphasis on education in a country, the second step past education is research, in setting up a framework for the improvement of the life that people live in society. But the problem is also one of communication, to which Mr. Murray and Mr. Lastewka referred.
What is very important to us is having very easy access to some information, as in the example given by Mr. Lastewka, such as the Detroit Tigers research, a one-line or two-line response. What is the purpose of that research and what is anticipated as a possible use for it? That's all that is wanted by us.
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Many have been raised. I can recall in the local paper the criticism of research into the mating habits of fruit flies, I believe. When you look at it, it appears hilarious, but the response, obviously, is pest control, and possible pest control without the use of pesticides. A reply was brought to that particular comment in my local paper by, I believe, a local researcher at the university. I'm not sure, though, because I didn't recognize the name.
But we need access to this, because the problem may be one of communication, communication on not an academic level but on a political level. That is what is required.
Sometimes even an explanation that the researcher has done this but we don't know what its possible uses may be, but it's there, is very important as well for us to have. I cannot help but use an example of a university professor at the University of Saskatchewan, a botanist who is now retired. Some research he was doing with his principal, decades ago, was research that was just done as core research and left, which became the core research required for subsequent major innovation in botany, something that was not anticipated at the time the research was done.
More recently, research at the University of Saskatchewan has been put to use in the control of road systems all over North America in the weighing of vehicles while mobile so that they don't have to stop; vehicles going through toll gates without stopping, because electronically recorded licence plates means they later can be billed. That's saving millions in the business community. This goes on and on - something that was never anticipated when the initial research was done.
So I agree with you fully. Unfortunately, quite often research is based on goals ten, twenty and thirty years down the line. Political goals are four years down the line.
Thank you.
The Chairman: Mr. Lastewka, last question.
Mr. Lastewka: Let me tell you, Mr. Martin and I don't always agree, and that's always good, but one of the items I wanted to talk about is that we've been trying to encourage business and industry to put more money into research, because they've kind of backed away and let everybody else do it.
My question is, to what percentage would be the research, in co-opting with business, industry and institutions, say, hospitals and so forth...where moneys are also coming from other sources?
Ms Isabelle: I would say in the neighbourhood of 10%, and in the joint initiatives we have about $15 million in contributions from partners in recent years, generated by those partnership funding....
Mr. Lastewka: Is that increasing, or has it stabilized?
Ms Isabelle: It's increasing. I should be clear that a lot of those partnerships are with line departments - in other words, it's government - and that in fact the private sector - we do have the one I mentioned - is an area where we're continuing to pursue them. But one of the realities is that much of the research we fund has implications for public policy more than for industrial application.
So we tend to find our partners in line departments who need...for example, the one with Citizenship and Immigration, very concerned about public policy and matters related to immigration. So our partner is a line department. When I talk about that $15 million, it's mainly government money, to be quite honest.
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Mr. Lastewka: My concern, of course, would be more on the engineering research side of business and industry. It's always good to see us try to encourage other institutions to start picking up or partnering some of the costs in research, because in the end it's those institutions that benefit.
Dr. Penrod: We've already mentioned the joint chair program that we share with NSERC on the management of technological change. I think that chair program is an example where you do see a very strong contribution from the private sector. Those chairs are usually established between faculties of engineering and management so that companies are very much involved in that. That is where the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council does come together more on the engineering side and where we are obviously very interested in attracting the private sector to participate. Where we can we do it.
In other areas we really are more on the policy side. I think the key word for the council at this time is balance. We're attempting to balance the contributions that we hope we can attract from the private sector with ongoing partnerships with government, and then of course continuing to support that basic research endeavour from the academic researchers in our universities.
Mr. Lastewka: As Mr. Bodnar mentioned, it's very important to have some core program where it's not being deflected by industry and business, but then there's a portion that needs to be done with business and industry.
Dr. Penrod: Absolutely. Again, I would repeat that the word is a question of balance and finding the right équilibre among those ways of funding research.
The Chairman: Mr. Valeri.
Mr. Valeri: This is just a very quick point going back to the innovation system and building on the comments with respect to partnership. To what extent do you think the national collaborative projects may be a useful mechanism for creating this kind of genuine partnership between the federal government, provincial governments, and the private sector and for building on the innovation system?
Dr. Penrod: Again, I think there's very powerful potential there in using it, especially in the case of NCE. It seems to me that is a model that is working extremely well. In phase II especially, our researchers are very much more involved there, and I see that as a movement in the right direction.
Elaine, perhaps you'd like to comment on NCEs because you've had a lot of experience dealing with them from the outset.
Ms Isabelle: I think it's a highly innovative and very successful model in the sense that it manages to bring research expertise from across the country into a collaborative mode. I think it's fair to say that we've managed to get researchers who used to compete with each other to come together and work together. We've managed to make considerable inroads in breaking down these rather severe disciplinary barriers where communication in the past was rather difficult.
I'd also like to mention that within our own major collaborative research initiatives program, for example, we have a very interesting project on entrepreneurship that is centred at the University of British Columbia. This one has had pretty extensive private sector backing from the beginning, from the conception of the project. They're looking at entrepreneurship in terms of what works and what doesn't, what the impediments are to business succeeding, and so on. This is nicely linked in to similar initiatives in other countries.
To come back to your question about a national innovation system, I think this type of research on entrepreneurship is probably an important piece of that whole innovation system. That's being researched by a rather large team centred in the school of business at the University of British Columbia.
Mr. Valeri: Thank you.
The Chairman: I'd like to thank the witnesses. It was good to hear about how the council is doing. I would sound like an old fogey if I asked you anything. All the questions I have are probably so far out of date that I'll just keep them to myself. It's good to see the progress.
.1050
Ian, your company took a long time to get around to sponsoring. You got on the same elevator as these people since 1978, you know - in the same building.
Mr. Murray: That's right. But they moved to fancier digs, class A office space.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. You can tell by the committee's questions that the members are very interested in your work. It's a tiny shop, but a very important one in the city, and you do very good work across the country.
Before the committee members leave, I shall touch on future business for a minute.
I didn't run this precise proposal past the steering committee, but we had made a decision at one time to start a discussion on science and technology. I wrote everybody a letter asking them for suggestions for witnesses in science and technology in the coming weeks. We're going to try in early June - I think June 4, which is a Tuesday, is our target date, if we can get people - to have a round table on science and technology and to get some different witnesses to talk about the proposals that were put on the table by the government some weeks ago.
The House will not be sitting on the 6th. That's the only day in that week, so, depending on the witnesses, we'll try for the 4th and the 5th. We'll aim for the 4th. We haven't contacted any witnesses, because I wanted to bring this formally in front of the committee. As I said, if there are other people you want in June, make sure you go to your parties or whatever you want to do to suggest names and we'll make sure that these people will be brought in front of the committee in June.
The second date that's important is May 28. The Canadian Bankers Association will be here. We'll start at 9:30 a.m. They will be responding to this committee's request for regular reporting on their lending to small business. In the morning they'll present their research. It will be a long session, because the data is quite complex and - as we say as researchers, not as human beings - quite dense. They'll try to break it out for us.
In the afternoon there will be a round table with each of the banks at the table. It's likely to be televised. We've requested it and we've got the room. It depends on the House deciding at the last minute that there's something more important, but it's scheduled to be televised.
Mr. Valeri is likely to be in the chair for that day. I have one more week on the road on the Canada Pension Plan.
Are there any specific questions on the matter of notice to the committee?
Mr. Leblanc: At about what time will you start this science and technology round table?
[Translation]
The Chairman: At what time?
[English]
Mr. Leblanc: It's necessary for me to speak with Mr. Ménard. He is responsible for that.
The Chairman: Probably in the afternoon. I guess we will have to contact the witnesses to see when they can be here.
The Clerk of the Committee: Tuesday afternoon.
The Chairman: Yes, Tuesday afternoon.
Mr. Leblanc: For what?
The Clerk: For a meeting.
Mr. Leblanc: If I have some other suggestions about the witnesses, how long do I have?
The Chairman: You have at least a week. We'll add on an availability basis, because I doubt -
Mr. Leblanc: Next Thursday?
The Chairman: Yes, next Thursday is fine. Absolutely.
Mr. Leblanc: Is it the same for the general questions?
The Chairman: Yes.
Mr. Leblanc: Some of the other questions -
The Chairman: Absolutely. It is just so we'll all be on the same wavelength as to what questions.... Those were prepared by the researchers. So, when we phone them, people will feel comfortable as to why we are asking them to come.
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We are adjourned until May 28.