PARLIAMENT AND SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
The new federal Science and Technology Strategy does attempt to increase the departmental accountability and to put in place a common set of management principles for all S&T departments with a common goal of strengthening the Canadian innovation system.
There will be a new Expenditure Management System. All departments will be required to report on their priorities, initiatives, spending plans, management challenges as part of their departmental plans. This new Expenditure Management System also provides for separate departmental performance reports to be tabled in Parliament each fall. I believe there is a good potential for improvement in this area.
In our 1994 report we emphasized the need for information not only at the department level but on a government-wide basis. We considered a consolidated report that would provide information on the performance of departments and agencies and government-wide and horizontal issues, since many issues go beyond the areas of responsibility of individual departments, as well as on Canada's performance in science and technology overall.
We believe this is essential to provide parliamentarians with a basis to assess whether the government's expenditures on science and technology reflect Canadian needs and opportunities and to hold the government accountable for results.
Canada has tried to implement new science and technology policy frameworks in the past without success. There is a significant level of scepticism among informed opinion about the implementation of this new strategy, according to the Auditor General.
I think the litmus test of the value of the strategy and framework will be the degree of acceptance and implementation by the government, Treasury Board and its secretariat, and science-based departments and research establishments. We believe your Committee can play an important role in ensuring this will happen.
[T]he only oversight mechanism that is feasible is through parliamentary committees. I would urge this Committee to fulfil an oversight role, focusing on ensuring that the departments do indeed provide adequate details to define their priorities in science for their longer-range objectives, the suitability of plans proposed to cope with program changes, and the cumulative impacts of the cuts and other changes in the different departments that have science activities.
Our. . . recommendation is that this Committee hold hearings to monitor the progress of the S&T strategy. We suggest that the methodology developed in 1994 by the National Advisory Board on Science and Technology committee on federal S&T priorities be used. We also suggest that external advisers, who are members of departmental advisory bodies, be invited to appear before this Committee.
Statistics Canada is devoting considerable effort to measuring science and technology in the Canadian economy.
I think four questions are important if we are going to monitor the S&T strategy. While the questions may be important, the answers are even more interesting. . . They are simple questions. What does the federal government spend on science and technology? Where does it spend it? What does it spend its S&T money on? What does it get for it? Those are the four questions. As I said, they are relatively straightforward questions, but the answers are not simple.
The witnesses we have heard clearly feel that government and Parliament do not pay enough attention to science and to science-based industry.
I have a comment on the idea of a science caucus, or some body like that, which will have a direct focus on science. I believe it has to be something that is not just caucus-driven, but it must bring in the private sector.
I know I challenged you earlier when I asked how many people were at the Ottawa Life Science Conference, but if we have the collaboration of those in the government sector who can articulate and help develop the culture and the leadership, and those in the private sector, they have to be charged with the same things. If we have a forum in which we can say, to be able to reach that goal we're going to have all these communications, all these messages, and all these nuances that we're going to have to deliver over time, and it's really darn important that this one, this one, and this one are there to continue to give the nuanced messages, to continue to tell the students who were at the Ottawa Life Science Conference that this is important right now, and way down the line as well, and to tell those companies that are trying to build that this is important for the country. . . You create that drive, you create that feeling, you create that momentum.
I've thought about holding a forum here, a breakfast or something, at which we could get Members of Parliament to come out every month and hear about the exciting things that are happening with respect to science in Canada and discoveries and new start-ups that frankly are changing the view of the world of these individual people working in our Canadian centres.
NORTEL has taken up the cause of promoting a science culture. It has set up both student and teacher internship programs in the Ottawa-Carleton region to give students an experience of science in action, and to raise the level of science teaching.
I believe that the government, the people in Parliament, can be very influential in getting the students and the young to enter the fields of science and technology by promoting those fields so that students understand there is a future out there and the future employment opportunities are very high. . .
I think there are two ways in which Members of Parliament can be very useful. The first one is communicating to the country, to the population, to the public your interest in science and technology. Just the fact you have this Standing Committee on Industry means you are interested in the innovation gap. Raise the awareness of the public, and communicate with the industry. This kind of communication is vital.
The second aspect is for future of Members of Parliament. We should try to see if we can get people with actual science and technology backgrounds in these positions in the future
The Committee was told that Parliament should also as well as keep a broader eye on the social impacts of the advance of science.
Although the technology and the tools are essential features of the information highway and it is important, as your Committee understands from its deliberations and from the interest that each of you have, that science and technology as part of ideas and innovation be the key driving forces of building the new Canadian economy, a knowledge-based economy, one should look more deeply at the knowledge-based society. The fundamental importance is of course the individual and the tools we place in individuals' hands and the opportunities we make available to them.