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37th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, February 7, 2002

0905

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka, Lib.)

Dr. Matthew Spence (President and Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research)

0910

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook (Associate Director and Adjunct Professor, Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology (CPROST), Simon Fraser University)

0915

0920

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Professor Benoît Godin (Institut national de recherche scientifique (INRS); Director, Observatoire des sciences et des technologies)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Prof. Benoît Godin

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Prof. Benoît Godin

0925

0930

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. James Rajotte (Edmonton Southwest, Canadian Alliance)

Dr. Matthew Spence

Mr. James Rajotte

Dr. Matthew Spence

0935

Mr. James Rajotte

Dr. Matthew Spence

Mr. James Rajotte

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. James Rajotte

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

Mr. James Rajotte

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

0940

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

Prof. Benoît Godin

0945

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Dr. Matthew Spence

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères--Les-Patriotes, BQ)

0950

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Bergeron

Prof. Benoît Godin

0955

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Bergeron

Benoît Godin

M. Stéphane Bergeron

Prof. Benoît Godin

1000

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma--Manitoulin, Lib.)

Dr. Matthew Spence

1005

Mr. Brent St. Denis

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Brent St. Denis

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Brent St. Denis

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Brent St. Denis

1010

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. St. Denis

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP)

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Prof. Benoît Godin

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Dr. Matthew Spence

1015

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Matthew Spence

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais

Dr. Matthew Spence

1020

Mrs. Desjarlais

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. Andy Savoy (Tobique--Mactaquac, Lib.)

Dr. Matthew Spence

Mr. Andy Savoy

Benoît Godin

Mr. Andy Savoy

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Andy Savoy

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Savoy

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Andy Savoy

1025

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

Mr. Andy Savoy

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. Andy Savoy

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

1030

Mr. Andy Savoy

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Dr. Matthew Spence

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. James Rajotte

Dr. Matthew Spence

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

1035

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. James Rajotte

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. Brent St. Denis

1040

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Dr. Matthew Spence

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Mr. Andy Savoy

Prof. Benoît Godin

1045

Mr. Andy Savoy

Dr. Matthew Spence

Mr. Andy Savoy

Dr. Matthew Spence

1050

Mr. Andy Savoy

Prof. Benoît Godin

Mr. Savoy

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook

Mr. Andy Savoy

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

Dr. Matthew Spence

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka)

CANADA

Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology

NUMBER 066

1st SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE

Thursday, February 7, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0905)

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka, Lib.): Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), study on the three federal granting agencies, peer review funding, and the Canada research chairs program, we have two witnesses here today. Dr. Matthew Spence is president and chief executive officer of the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research. Mr. Holbrook and Professor Benoît Godin are from Simon Fraser University.

Thank you very much for being with us today. You've probably seen and heard that we've been having many witnesses and discussions on peer review. We welcome your input here today in our discussion with the members.

I'll start right at the top and ask Dr. Matthew Spence to begin.

Dr. Matthew Spence (President and Chief Executive Officer, Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to begin by thanking the committee, and through you, the Government of Canada for your extraordinary vision and commitment to the innovation agenda and the recognition that we are moving into and are part of a knowledge-based economy, and that the capital of that economy is people--our fellow Canadians and their ideas. That is a very valuable commodity, and obviously highly mobile. Developing it and retaining it in Canada is a challenge for all of us.

I also want to thank you personally, because I've grown up through that system and been supported by it, and I hope that in some small measure I've been able to repay the faith that Canada has put in me over the years.

Just to put my comments in context, I am a physician, a scientist, and more latterly I've become totally demented and I'm now an administrator. I started out in Alberta; lived, studied, and worked in Quebec; worked in Nova Scotia; and more latterly, have returned to Alberta. Accordingly, I've been a student, a professor, a physician, and an administrator, and I've experienced peer review at all levels, from the beginning through to the end. I have been a recipient of funding, and I am now a funder. While I have been told it is more blessed to give than to receive, I can assure you it's quite a bit harder.

The foundation I have the honour to head is an arm's-length organization set up by the Province of Alberta to develop medical and health research in the province of Alberta to increase knowledge, but also to see that knowledge applied for the benefit of the health of Albertans and all Canadians. It is a gift from the people of Alberta to the people of Alberta, so we are stewards of that gift and very conscious of our responsibility to administer it properly.

I think from the point of view of the committee, the importance of our organization is that we've experienced a lot of the things, the tensions, I've seen in some of your deliberations. We have large institutions and very small institutions that we help to support. We're currently supporting personnel in 13 faculties in three universities varying in size from 35,000 to 6,000 students. We are also trying to develop and stimulate health research in regional health authorities of Alberta, where the population may be 35,000 in an area as large as the maritime provinces.

So it's a very wide remit in terms of geography and institutional style. It is also a wide remit from the point of view of moving all the way from molecular biology through to the health of the population in the community, and from very fundamental studies in a university through to technology commercialization and the development and implementation of small and medium-sized industries.

We invest in people because we believe people are the gold of the system. It is brains that will be the currency of the future, so we feel this is the most fundamental investment we can make. We invest in them all the way from high school through to retirement.

We have a tacit and overt partnership with all other funding agencies, so the health of the federal granting system is of critical importance to us. Without the federal investment in the province, our platform simply would not be possible, so we take a real interest in what is happening at all levels of this country.

The other thing is that we are a small province--we are only three million people--and we recognize it's important to look beyond our borders in terms of our comparators. So we benchmark internationally. Our committees are international in scope, and our peer review process is international. Last year we used the opinions of over 500 people from throughout the world to inform our decisions in Alberta.

We also look for appropriate peers, because peer review is an important activity, but only if it is done by peers. In our committees you will see a range of people from fundamental scientists through to citizens in our community who, during the deliberations, will turn around and say, “I don't care whether the methodology is difficult or not quite right. This is the most important question that faces the citizens of my community”. Therefore, there's a dialogue that develops, which makes for a better research vehicle and greater impact in our communities.

¿ (0910)

Finally, we subject ourselves to peer review because we believe if you're going to do science, you should be scientific in your approach. So the foundation has been subject to scrutiny throughout its existence.

This starts with our own measures of trying to measure the impact of our own research and seeking the best practice from around the world. So we try to network as much as we can.

We have hosted international conferences in Banff, because you can really attract people there. We had those international conferences look at the subject of how to best measure the impact of research, in terms of the health of your populations, economy, etc.

Finally, we subject ourselves to the same peer review by having an international board of review. It visits these foundations every six years and gives a report card to the trustees, through the trustees to the legislature, and finally to the people of Alberta.

It is not a perfect system and we continue to work on it, but we're very proud of it and anxious to share our learnings with the rest of the country, and indeed with the world. We are proud to be Canadians, and proud to be part of Alberta's and Canada's system.

Again, thank you very much for your support of this very important system.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you very much.

Mr. Holbrook.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook (Associate Director and Adjunct Professor, Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology (CPROST), Simon Fraser University): Mr. Chair, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for inviting me to appear before this committee to assist in your study of the issues surrounding the allocation of resources to granting councils.

My name is Adam Holbrook, and I'm not quite as shown here on the card. I'm associate director of the centre for policy research on science and technology at Simon Fraser University. I'm an adjunct professor in the school of communication at that university.

The mission of our centre is to engage in research on the relationship between public policy and technology. I'm speaking to you as a university researcher, who holds both SSHRC and NSERC grants, rather than as a representative of my university.

First, I firmly concur with the view expressed by Mr. Bergeron last year that the peer review system is similar to the democratic system of government. Sir Winston Churchill said that as a system of government, it is the worst, save for all others. It's the same thing with the peer review system. As other witnesses have told you, there are failures in the system, but these pale in comparison with its inherent strengths and the checks and balances it possesses. As a stakeholder in the system, I know we need to make the system better and make it more responsive to the priorities set by Parliament and ultimately the people of Canada.

We have an excellent system for judging incoming proposals. If it has flaws, it's because the pool of academic reviewers is too small, with the result that there is reviewer fatigue. This is particularly true for interdisciplinary panels. The problem is often compounded, since the individual who may be familiar with your work often has to withdraw simply because they are in some way part of your small community, with the result that the proposal does not receive the detailed review that it should.

It's also true that the grant application success rates are too low, resulting in both diversion of research time to application writing and in grantsmanship. I would suggest one of the causes of this problem is simply that we do not have a clear set of research priorities for our country. As a consequence, we try to fund all fields of research and thus cut a small pie into even smaller pieces.

To be fair, the government has tried to remedy this by setting up special funds, programs, and even institutions to focus scarce research funds in specific areas, but at the end of the day we still do not have these priorities. Rather, we have all-encompassing generalities such as economic development or social capital. These priorities cannot be set by the granting councils themselves. They are the executing agencies. These policies must come from the centre.

Many nations have S and T foresight projects, projects that situate the role of science and technology in their national policy framework, usually within a process of public consultation. Within these exercises they establish a number of S and T priorities, which service targets for their S and T institutions. We need a similar process. The 1994 public consultations on science and technology need to be updated and refined so as to provide concrete input to the public decision-making system.

We must also distinguish between the review of research programs and that of individual projects. Typically, grant proposals for basic research programs are heavily dependent on the reviewer's assessment of the competence of the researcher or researchers, since it is a process that is being proposed, not an end result. By contrast, applied research activities are usually project-based, with a specific outcome being specified by the proponent. Thus, assessors can judge the value of the research more effectively and are less dependent upon their assessment of the competence of the research performer.

There are a number of specifics that might be relevant. One of the interesting omissions I've noted in reviewing the testimony to date from these hearings is the relative lack of emphasis on the role of post-graduate students in the research process. Given that the researcher's time is often diverted to administrative or grant application functions as well as teaching duties, a competent research assistant is the most effective use of scarce resources.

By any standard, part-time graduate research assistants are cheap. They're usually about $15,000 a year. Assisting a researcher and being mentored by that researcher is a valuable part of their education. They are, after all, the researchers of the future. Funding for one student in a research grant is the starting point, the entry level, and there's not much difference in providing research funding for a student in the social sciences as opposed to funding a graduate student in engineering. The difference in grant requirements comes from the non-salary requirements, equipment and so on.

The granting councils do provide funding for research assistants as part of their grant awards. These are sometimes viewed as simply another cost of doing business. I submit that priorities for judging proposals should be first the research excellence of the proposal, followed by funding for students.

The granting councils do provide scholarship funding for students separate from their research grants program. These permit relatively few students with good marks to choose their own supervisors in sort of a free market, but as with any market, this market isn't perfect, in both its size and its outcome.

The peer review system examines inputs to the research system, the research proposal. It only indirectly measures outputs in the sense that an individual's reputation is based both on their refereed publications and on their previous success in attracting grants.

¿ (0915)

I would argue that, at the risk of increasing research administrative overhead time, there is merit in requiring completion reports summarizing the outcomes of funded research. SSHRC already requires this of grant recipients. At the very least it provides documentary evidence to the agency of the outcomes of its granting program. At best it can be used as input for future grant applications.

Good researchers are not necessarily good proposal writers, nor are they necessarily good promoters of their own work. In the case of the Innovations Systems Research Network,of which I am the western region network leader, SSHRC has put in place a mid-term progress review, part of which will be based on how the graduate students perceive their research experience.

This network addresses some of the regional concerns that have been expressed by committee members in that it is made up of a number of regionally based networks so that the researchers can and do interact more frequently than if they were members of a national research network.

In parentheses, I should add that for researchers outside of central Canada, one of the greatest underfunded costs is the cost of travel. With the emergence of Air Canada as the major carrier in Canada, our ability to travel has been reduced. We seem to spend more time on finding innovative ways to stay within our limited travel budgets than anything else.

In Canada we have a research system that has evolved into one that is as good as any in the developed world. In particular our networks of centres of excellence and our major collaborative research initiatives are models that have attracted the interest of researchers in other countries. Their peer review system is certainly part of this excellence.

As a final word, I would like to leave the committee with a quote from a paper by David Guston of Rutgers University, which appeared in Science and Public Policy in 1996. In describing the relationship between a researcher and a granting agency he said:

The two primary concerns of the patrons of research are: “Is the research conducted with integrity, and how can the patron tell?”; and “Is the research conducted with productivity, and how can the patron tell?”.

This is a problem faced by both the granting councils and the research community in Canada.

Thank you.

¿ (0920)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you very much.

We will now begin questioning with Mr. Penson.

Sorry, Mr. Godin.

Professor Benoît Godin (Institut national de recherche scientifique (INRS); Director, Observatoire des sciences et des technologies): Thank you for inviting me to speak here today.

I'm a professor at INRS, Institut national de recherche scientifique, at l'Université du Québec, and director of OST.

OST is a research-based infrastructure devoted to measuring output and impacts of science and technology. It is unique in Canada in that it is supported by 35 Canadian institutions. Councils usually contract with us to get some numbers on their performance and to assess the results of their funding.

OST believes there is only--

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Excuse me, we do have simultaneous translation. I forgot to advise you earlier that the units are at the side of the table . If you wish to speak in French, please do so.

Prof. Benoît Godin: I'm okay in English.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Whatever you wish. I want to make sure you are comfortable.

Prof. Benoît Godin: I believe there's only one way to evaluate the result of peer review objectively. This is what we call bibliometrics. Bibliometrics is the counting of papers published by researchers and the citations received. Bibliometrics is counting, of course, but also measuring the quality of scientific papers. I just want to take a few minutes to show you what bibliometrics tells us about Canadian research and its quality.

First, what about quantity? It appears that over the ten-year period between 1990 and 2000, Canada's number of papers has increased steadily from 16,000 to 25,000. That is 6.6% growth per year. This is slightly over what we observe at the world level. Canadian publications over the period have increased 58%, whereas the world volume of publications has increased by 50%.

Canadians' overall share of world papers has remained constant over the period. Canadian science represents 4.4% of all papers published in the world. Twenty years ago it was 4.2%. It grew to 4.8% at the beginning of the nineties, then it slowed down to 4.4%.

But--and this is interesting--in 1999, for the first time, another country took over the Canadian place in science. Italy now surpasses Canada and has taken sixth place. This is the first year in which Canada has lost its sixth place as regards science. Italy now produces more papers than Canada.

The trend is constant, so there's no doubt about what will happen in the future. The slope is always increasing. It's just the beginning. It's not just, I would say, conjecture; it's really a trend.

What I've been told is that most of the papers came from two provinces--Ontario and Quebec. These two provinces produce nearly 75% of all Canadian papers.

What about the quality of those papers? There are three ways to assess this.

First, we now test a growing share of papers published through international collaboration. That is, Canadians can join international researchers worldwide and publish with them. Over the 20-year period, international collaborations have increased from 15% of papers to nearly 40%. That is, 40% of Canadian papers today are published in collaboration with foreign partners.

Another way to assess the quality of the Canadian researcher is to observe that university researchers are the driving force behind the science produced by other economic sectors--government laboratories, industrial laboratories, and hospitals. Over 50% of the science production of those sectors is published in collaboration with university researchers.

This has increased considerably. Twenty years ago, those sectors were publishing 30% of their papers with university researchers, whereas today, the majority of the papers published by those sectors are produced with university researchers. It looks as if universities are an essential component of science produced in sectors other than universities.

The last indicator I would suggest to assess the quality of Canadian papers is their overall impact. By impact, I mean the number of citations received by papers published by Canadian researchers. Once we regard this indicator, we notice that the overall impact of Canadian science is the same as world science.

¿ (0925)

Canada does not have quality under the world level and it is even over the world level in some fields like clinical medicine. Canadians publish research in papers that are of greater quality in certain fields like clinical medicine.

I'll conclude with some brief remarks about the use of bibliometrics for other uses, for other things than measuring science, as I have done here. Bibliometrics can be used for two other main purposes. One would be to evaluate the councils' programs. For example, NSERC has asked us in the last year to evaluate the result of their granting program in the last ten years.

So we're looking at the scientific production and the quality of the papers published by the researchers who have received grants, but these are exceptions. This is the first time NSERC has asked us to do such a study and the other councils do it I, would say, quite sporadically.

The other way bibliometrics can be useful is to aid peers in their decision to fund research. I would add that it does not replace peers' judgment, but it can be used as a tool to help researchers, because bibliometrics can aid researchers in telling them what is the quality of the journals they evaluate in which researchers publish.

This is very often a big problem, I would say. Researchers on committees cannot assess the quality of the journal in which their colleague has published because even if, as Adam has said, the committee is very small, each one has his own specialty and he does not necessarily know the journal in which his colleagues publish.

Bibliometrics would help people qualify the journals in which their colleagues, researchers to whom they're asked to give money, publish.

These are all the remarks I would like to offer the committee today. I'd be pleased to answer any questions.

¿ (0930)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): I appreciate that very much.

Mr. Rajotte, you may begin.

Mr. James Rajotte (Edmonton Southwest, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for coming this morning. I appreciated your presentations to us.

I wanted to start with Mr. Spence. I'm from Edmonton, and from what I've heard about the foundation, it's an excellent program, both in the way it's funded and in the way it distributes funds.

I'm wondering if you could provide more details for the committee about how it is funded and then perhaps provide more details about how the peer review process works within the foundation itself.

Dr. Matthew Spence: Thank you very much. First of all, thank you for the compliment. We're very proud of the foundation.

The foundation is funded by an endowment. It's an endowment that was put in place by the provincial government in 1980. We use a portion of the interest from that endowment to fund medical and health research in the province. We started out with $300 million. Along the way we have spent about $700 million in the support of research, and then finally, at the present time, the endowment is valued at slightly over $900 million.

There have been no further transfers of tranches of funding to the endowment since the original investment, but I think it's a demonstration of the power of endowment funding and the intelligent management thereof.

In terms of our peer review process, as we started out from the very beginning our challenge was to look internationally and to try to develop the best by international standards. So we bring to the province of Alberta international advisers to help choose the best areas to develop, but we pick the areas that we're going to develop research in, in consultation with the Alberta community generally. We do this sort of consultation fairly regularly in assessing the opinions of our Alberta colleagues and the international community, and we put that together to give us an overall idea of what we should be funding.

We fund people; we invest in the people themselves. We're basically providing salary, training support, etc., to get the best cadre of researchers possible, and those people then get their operating dollars from other sources. That's why the federal granting councils are so critical to us in terms of the overall health, in terms of international granting councils and private industry, because they attract these dollars to the province. So for every dollar we invest there are two to three dollars that come back into the province in research funding, which then helps to maintain this activity.

Of course, the knowledge doesn't stop in Alberta. It flows across the country. The students we've supported, the investigators we've supported, are throughout Canada and throughout the world, and it truly develops an international community, of which we reap part of the benefit, but it also goes worldwide.

Mr. James Rajotte: In terms of the federal granting agencies, obviously anyone who comes before the committee in terms of research wants their funding increased. But from the perspective of your particular foundation, have you identified an amount or an optimum level at which you would want to see the three federal granting agencies as well as CIHR funded?

Dr. Matthew Spence: First of alI, I should comment that this is an international competition for brains and people. Our biggest concern is the international area. I'm not as worried about Toronto--I'm sorry, I shouldn't mention a specific area--rather, a large city in central Canada attracting people to it. I'm worried about London, New York, Johns Hopkins, etc. This is an international competition, and so I would like to try to create in Canada the most attractive environment for these marvelous brains that we have in our Canadian people.

I think we're into a competition. I've watched Japan ramping up. I'm sure you've been advised Bush is committed, even with all of the problems in the U.S. at the present time with security and terrorism, to doubling the budget of the National Institutes of Health on a pretty rigorous time scale. That is a massive engine, which is going to benefit us all, but it's also going to compete.

I think the figure set by the previous Minister of Health, Allan Rock, for the CIHR, which is the one I can comment on most knowledgeably, of a billion is a reasonable figure to shoot for. I think it should be assessed along the way in terms of need, but that's an important figure.

I would maintain the strength in the other councils because, from my point of view, in health, the health of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and NSERC is critical. The advances in biology and human health tomorrow will come from fundamental understandings in physics, in social sciences, in philosophy, etc. Putting those together will provide the most important junctions where we'll really break through and Canada can truly lead. In our partnerships it will be critical.

It's of fundamental importance to develop this on a national basis. It's an area where the federal government has led, and I think continues to lead, and I would hope would continue to lead into the future.

¿ (0935)

Mr. James Rajotte: You did mention an international board of review for a peer review process. But by what other ways do you determine how effective the investments you make are in the community, both the research community and the community at large?

Dr. Matthew Spence: We track various things, obviously, in terms of looking at the productivity, the publications, the number of students trained, the international reputation of the individual. We're also very interested in what impact this is having on health. Is it getting applied? Is it having an effect in the health system, or is it having an effect generally?

We look at this by a variety of measures. We look at case studies, if you like, looking at tracing something out and following it through the system. I'll give you an example of one case study. We started investing in diabetes in 1980 with two people from Wainwright. One of those people from Wainwright now leads the diabetes islet cell transplantation group in Edmonton. That's the one that hit internationally. Now we have islet cell transplantation as an internationally acknowledged activity in the world, and that's a credit both to the support of Canada as a whole for that activity and also to the investment of the foundation. We can see that impact within our communities.

We've also seen the impact in technology commercialization, in taking some of the findings that have been developed and researched in our communities and seeing those applied in small companies and small developments.

We have a neat one now. Our researchers have been able to humanize a mouse liver. That doesn't sound like anything that's very great, but at the moment one of our infectious disease scourges is hepatitis C. We have no model for hepatitis C--no way to measure vaccines or to measure treatments, short of going to people or primates, and primates are prohibitively expensive. Our researchers have been able to humanize a mouse liver. We now have a mouse model to go after this disease, which really is another scourge coming at us. These are the examples of the way we move out and track how the investment is impacting.

Mr. James Rajotte: Actually I should point out that the researcher from Wainwright is my cousin, so that's why I have such a good image of...

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): You're not biased or anything, are you?

Mr. James Rajotte: No, no.

I have a question for Mr. Holbrook. You talked about peer reviewer fatigue--

An hon. member: Another cousin?

Voices: Oh, oh!

Mr. James Rajotte: --and perhaps you can explain why this is. Is there a decreasing number of people who can do this? And then because the community is quite specialized, and the amount of people who have the knowledge to then review a proposal is obviously a small pool to begin with, is the pool decreasing in Canada? Is that one of the reasons for reviewer fatigue?

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: No, I don't think the pool is decreasing in terms of numbers. Probably the workload is increasing simply because of the amount of peer reviewing that goes on.

It's not just grant applications themselves. All the papers that are published in academic journals are of course themselves peer reviewed, and also on an international basis. So I get requests from journalists from the U.K. and from Europe to look at papers, and similarly, papers that I write are reviewed by people outside Canada. So there's an international exchange going on here as well.

But peer review of grant applications here in Canada is only part of that load. The trouble is, if you like, it's administrative overhead, in the sense that it's not productive research time as such, although it's often very interesting and I find it quite a valuable use of time. It's simply the quantity of this that has to be done, and perhaps this is the price we must pay.

Mr. James Rajotte: You talked about the grant application success rates being too low. Is that simply because the funding levels are too low?

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: In general, yes, but it varies from council to council and from program to program. So these remarks are perhaps more directed towards programs at SSHRCC rather than NSERC.

NSERC programs have a wide range of success rates, depending on whether it's the standard research grants program, which has a relatively high success rate but is a relatively generalized program, as opposed to some of the more specific programs.

The problem is, if you have a program with a success rate of say 25%, it means you have to write at least four proposals for every one that actually gets accepted, and that again is significant overhead. SSHRCC officials are probably better equipped to tell you this than I am, but the situation exists that they probably get two or three times as many proposals that are worthy of funding; it's just that they simply don't have the funding for them.

So it's very discouraging to sit down and turn out what you think is a very good proposal and have it come back saying, it was a great proposal, but we don't have enough money.

¿ (0940)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you very much.

Mr. Bagnell.

Mr. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): I have three questions. You could just answer whichever one you want, any of them.

First of all, my riding is the Yukon, and half the land mass of Canada is north of 60°, but there are no universities and not a lot of research. There's some research done on the north in the south, but of course I would like more research done in the north by northerners. If you have any comment on that...

Secondly, sometimes we're criticized in government when we put the taxpayers' money too far away from the say of the taxpayer, in the sense that we put huge amounts of money into these granting councils, so it's taxpayers' money, but how do we know that what's being selected by the peer review system, which isn't accountable to the taxpayers, is what the taxpayers want the money spent on, that it's something useful?

Lastly, one of our previous witnesses suggested that because peers are in a certain line of thinking and have discovered everything in that area, actually the real inventive things, ideas, would never have been selected by a peer review. The new thinkers and the new ideas would not be selected, because their peers have already discarded those ideas, so it's almost a counter-productive system.

You can answer any one of those three.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Who wants to begin?

Professor Holbrook.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: First of all, Mr. Bagnell, just as a quick comment about north of 60°, apparently the European Union is hosting a session in Vancouver on Arctic research, and I was asked about two months ago by the Science Council of British Columbia, why Arctic research in Vancouver; surely this is the last possible place to go looking for this?

In actual fact, there is a fair amount of research going on at the universities there, and I think a lot of it actually does take place physically in the north. The trouble is the statistics; when you find out where the researchers are located and where their home universities are, of course, they're in the south. So it would be interesting to do some statistical work simply to find out what amount of money is physically spent in the north rather than attached to the universities in the south.

To perhaps deal with the issue of peer review and not being responsive to Parliament, I think, as I pointed out in my remarks, part of this is that the peer reviewers are looking at it from within a fairly narrow discipline type of box in asking themselves, is this excellent research? They have basically their own discipline to go on.

We don't have an overall research framework in this country. We don't have a set of guidelines, if you like, that the peer reviewers could follow. I think each council gives its reviewers a fairly wide degree of latitude in the sense that it simply is asking for excellence. It's not asking for, necessarily, some kind of direction towards national goals, which I think is what you're looking for.

Prof. Benoît Godin: I will continue.

Peers do not have the tools to make decisions about anything else but the scientific quality of the proposals. In the last ten years the funding council has tried to add to that peer review system some criteria on the relevance of research, but they gave the choices and the decisions on these criteria to other members outside the scientific community. These are usually administrators or users who are asked to give a judgment on the relevance of the proposals as regards some socio-economic goals.

I would say that peers do not have the tools, do not have the expertise. Even if there were some broad goals, policy goals, indicating them, what they should fund, I'm not really quite sure that would be the best person to make those kinds of judgments.

¿ (0945)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Mr. Spence.

Dr. Matthew Spence: Well, Mr. Bagnell, I have a lot of sympathy with regard to the issue you raised because we are dealing with some large geographic areas with relatively small populations in Alberta. Particularly for the health system itself, if we look at health services research, research on the health system, that is best done where people live, right within their communities.

When Alberta regionalized its health systems, we were looking at a challenge of trying to develop a research agenda that truly encompassed our entire area. We went after capacity building in the regions themselves, and we've developed a program called SEARCH, which stands for swift and efficient application of research and community health. It identifies people of talent within those regions, up-skilling them and giving them the sorts of tools with which they can then carry out research in that region and use that information to inform the rest of the system.

It's a slow process because of course you don't have the density of colleges or universities that are perhaps already moving on this. But I think it's vitally important to get research as part of our culture from border to border in the province, because then we'll have something that no jurisdiction in the world has, perhaps short of Scandinavia.

On your peer review system, for the taxpayers I think that's very important. I think that Parliament and our elected representatives certainly listen to the people and bring a lot of knowledge forward. Agencies can do this by setting overall directions. I don't think it should be at the level of peer review itself. Peer review should be looking at whether this is excellence or not.

In terms of overall areas, you can pick areas. We were asked, for example, to look at health economics. That system is costing us more. We need health economists, so we have started to try to develop a capacity for health economics in the province. It started out small, it's growing rapidly, and now I'm using health economist jokes rather than lawyer jokes because we're getting a population.

The final thing was about originality. That comes up a lot. You'll hear that peer review doesn't take risks; it doesn't move. I would challenge that. I think some very innovative ideas have come through the peer review system and have been captured by the committees. But I think you have to state it. When it's innovative, when you're trying to sell something new, you really have to sell it, because otherwise, how do you understand it?

We're all semi-conservative. I would even point out that the Parliament of Canada is sometimes semi-conservative--small c.

I think there is a challenge. But I personally, in my observations of the peer review system at all levels, think it does step out and it does take some risk.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Monsieur Bergeron.

[Translation]

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron (Verchères--Les-Patriotes, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would first of all like to thank you for being here this morning. You have come at our invitation, and I believe you are bringing to our study observations that are most interesting and most enriching and that will most certainly contribute to our reflection on this issue.

I have a question for Mr. Godin. I would like to begin by giving you a little preamble. The government of Canada decided some years ago to pass the Official Languages Act so as to allow both francophones and anglophones to feel comfortable, at least in theory, in dealing with the federal government in their mother tongue.

Allow me, then, Mr. Godin, to address you in French, especially since the federal government has supplied us, to this effect, with all of the necessary infrastructure to allow us, at least theoretically, as I was saying, to feel comfortable dealing with it in both official languages.

Here then is my question. Please feel free to answer me in French, in the same way that I invite the other two speakers to feel perfectly comfortable answering me in English.

I was visiting your web site, and there was one point, relating to what you call the measurement of the impact of research, that caught my attention. You dealt briefly with this at the end of your statement. I must say that what you stated at the very beginning of your intervention was most worrisome as to the future of research in Canada and, more generally, the future of Canadian research internationally. In my view, this only adds to the relevance of parliamentarians' concern for research and development.

That being said, I come back now to the point I wished to underscore. We well know that the peer review system, as it now exists, emphasizes the identification of promising projects, without necessarily giving any or sufficient importance to the impact of the research. To a point, this is desirable, because interest for fundamental research must nevertheless be maintained, and one has no idea whatsoever of what the results of the research will be before it has been undertaken.

You however say in your statement:

The organizations that fund research must also submit themselves to this exercise and show how their activities contribute to the realization of the aims inherent to their mission. Granting agencies must, in this perspective, demonstrate how science contributes to socio-economic progress.

Your hope, therefore, is that granting agencies eventually distribute their financial assistance according to the impact of the research work.

¿ (0950)

Prof. Benoît Godin: I wish to state that the use of the word “must”, in the text that you have quoted, is not a position of the Observatoire but rather an observation. These organizations are at present called upon to give an accounting or information, and they must do so. It is therefore the Observatoire that is speaking, but it is simply a reading of the environment.

Rather, what we are saying is that the impact of science is to a certain extent measurable. The scientific community and researchers are working on these issues; social science researchers like us, who are interested in measuring science and technology, seem to...

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: Seem to...

Prof. Benoît Godin: Seem to have capitulated. Twenty years ago, there was an interest in impact measurement. But it seems as though what is being said is that it is too difficult to measure. The task requires instruments that do not exist and there certainly are major methodological challenges. It is certainly not easy to measure the social or cultural impact of scientific activities, but it is our belief that a community effort, probably supported by government programs, should be made with regard to this important issue of the measurement of non-scientific impacts, of the impacts I mentioned earlier. Efforts must be made in order to measure the impact of science and technology.

We are obviously not purporting that everything is measurable. Intangible effects, by definition, are never measurable, but there is a way to go beyond what we presently do, in other words, to measure, roughly, the impact of research. We have but a few economic measurements at our disposal, and even there, if I wanted to be critical of the information we have, I would say that the economists who study these things are far from having established a cause-effect relationship between investment in research and the economic results we see. Rather, they lump together two variables, namely an amount invested in research and economic performance: increased exports, creation of spinoffs and other such things, seeing in that some kind of correlation. When investment increases, there is an increase of spinoffs or exports on the part of those companies that are very active in research. But correlation does not mean causality, and one thing does not explain the other although, intuitively, we expect to see a link between the two.

¿ (0955)

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: I do not know if anyone else would like to speak to this question, but would you say that in determining what should be distributed by granting agencies, one portion should go to the traditional peer evaluation system for the identification of those projects that are most promising? As to repeat grants, in other words grants for those projects which should see their funding renewed, do you believe that we should devote more time to evaluating the impact of the research before granting any new monies? Should some portion of the grants given out by granting agencies be set aside for this so-called strategic research?

Prof. Benoît Godin: I would answer that this is a political question. It is a political choice that must be made and there are...

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: From a scientific interest point of view, how would you answer that question?

Prof. Benoît Godin: From a scientific interest point of view?

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: From a scientific interest point of view, meaning interest for science, how might we better direct a portion of these public monies directly towards so-called strategic research?

Prof. Benoît Godin: I was going to respond in three stages.

Firstly, I would say that it is a political decision. It is the government that must decide whether or not that is the way in which science should be funded and carried out. Because it first and foremost has an impact, socio-economic and otherwise, it is the government that must make that decision.

Secondly, scientists will always or at least for a long time yet be against such a system. It is not in their culture nor in their mentality, and I believe that they do not have the requisite qualifications to make these choices alone.

Thirdly, I would say that there are already embryos of such policies in place. The agencies, some 15 years ago at least, gave themselves various criteria, various user committees and strategic action programs. These are all mechanisms used to convey this culture to the scientific community. Attempts are also being made to target the funding granted by these agencies towards research funding that does not take into account only scientific merit or scientific quality, but also other considerations.

Do I myself believe that this is what should be done? That is a very personal matter.

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: But of course.

Benoît Godin: Very personal. It is absolutely impossible for me to make pronouncements based upon my numbers or my studies. As I have said, it is a normative issue. Personally, I would say that a researcher must absolutely and necessarily have two faces: a first one that is fundamental and a second one that must have a certain sensitivity so as to ensure that the work undertaken is of some usefulness or holds some social interest.

M. Stéphane Bergeron: Now, as to an eventual suggestion as to what we should be doing as far as funding research is concerned, beyond the fact that you would make an excellent politician because you quite handily skirted around the question, would you agree that we should set aside some portion of the grants for what we might call strategic research? In other words that research which would have some social, cultural and economic impact?

Prof. Benoît Godin: Well, I hope I will answer your question more fully, but that is already the case. Look at the agencies' budgets. I could give you a precise reference if you want to see the numbers by agency. There has been an evolution over the course of the last 20 years. Look at the budget of the agencies. They have all, without exception, followed this trend. Today, between 20 and 30% of the agencies' budgets, agencies which up until very recently only funded non-directed, non-strategic fundamental research, is already devoted to such programs. The networks of centres of excellence are one example. The strategic programs of NSERC and SSHRC are other examples. Therefore, overall, it is close to a third of the budgets, and this type of investment has only gone on for a relatively short period of time. The change of direction has come about over the course of the last 15 years.

That being said, more than two thirds of the money distributed by these agencies continues to fund research spawned by the interests of researchers, fundamental, spontaneous or free research.

À (1000)

Mr. Stéphane Bergeron: I thank you for having reminded...

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): We'll come back to you. I gave you an extra few minutes because of your excellent preamble.

I will now go to Mr. St. Denis.

Mr. Brent St. Denis (Algoma--Manitoulin, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here.

I was intrigued by comments you've all made, especially Mr. Godin, on some of the numbers that show Canada in relation to the rest of the world--as much as you can measure these things--and Canada's ability or inability to keep up with the rest of the world, when it comes to research.

I would like to just get away from the peer review issue for my series of questions and talk about the big picture: the culture of science in the country. If we were here talking about hockey, we'd be able to talk about kids from four and five years old all the way through to people achieving Olympic medals. But sadly, it seems--and it's nobody's fault--when we talk about science, too often we seem to be talking about a fairly narrow range in the continuum.

I had an experience with one of the high schools in my riding, where one of the teachers decided to take leadership of science in the high school, with a student population of about 700. I believe this anecdote relates to the country. They created a science olympiad team. The whole school was as excited about their science olympiad team as they ever would have been about their high school football or hockey teams. They went on to championship competitions in the U.S. and different parts of Canada and did very well. The teacher, sadly, moved on for personal reasons and everything was dropped.

So my questions relate to whether there is a place for the granting councils because there's an absence of involvement by others to create a culture of science, at least starting at the high school level. When young people get to university, they should have been thinking about science earlier in their lives and have a better understanding of what's involved in becoming a researcher, instead of going through the shock of going from high school to university.

To that end, maybe we need an overall research framework, as you suggest, Dr. Holbrook. Maybe we need a national science adviser at the top end, to use that term, but we need to engage the kids at the bottom end, so there is a continuum we can all relate to.

I wonder if there are comments on that, Dr. Spence, in the absence of the chair.

Dr. Matthew Spence: First of all, I would point out that I think you've hit an extremely important point: the roots of the tree of the sciences are young people coming up, and they are a marvelous Canadian resource. I think this has been recognized by a number of agencies.

We have a program we call the HYRS, which stands for heritage youth research summer program. What we've done with that is we're bringing high school students in and exposing them to a research environment to turn them on. By the end of the summer they make a presentation that is absolutely fantastic. When you watch them, they just scare the hell out of you, they're so bright and coming forward. I'm glad I don't have to compete with them, because by the time they come along I'll be long gone.

The main point is that what we've done with it is to enlist the science teachers, because we see them as being the critical role models within the school itself to turn the kids on to the joys of scientific discovery and moving forward. We think that's a very important investment.

We also invest a fair amount of money in summer students. The Howard Hughes... in the U.S. has a major program that runs in schools and in universities trying to stimulate this intake, if you like, of people into research. In Canada we have the science fairs across the country, which a lot of agencies and organizations contribute to. But I think it's something that needs a lot of attention. Perhaps it's something that needs to be done both at a provincial and a federal level in concert, since we have two jurisdictions here. But I think they are our resource and we need to pay very close attention to it.

À (1005)

Mr. Brent St. Denis: I don't want to get political here, but I want to point out that in Ontario, because of what's happened, the whole science fair network has collapsed.

A voice: I'm sorry to hear that.

Mr. Brent St. Denis : I'd appreciate hearing from Professor Godin and Professor Holbrook too.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: Thank you. I have two quick comments.

First of all, we're actually taking a look at this old 1994 science and technology review, which had a very extensive public consultation process. One of the big messages that kept coming out of that review from all levels of this consultation was that people wanted some sort of top-down science and technology framework. They wanted some sort of leadership on where the country was supposed to be going.

I'm not sure that I would want to get into the issue of whether or not the granting council should be supporting people at the secondary level, but I would make the observation that it's always been my limited experience in universities that the undergraduate students would really like to be part of the research community, even simply going and fetching coffee and making photocopies and so on. Again, it's always a question of funding. We do try to hive off very small slivers of money to hire third- and fourth-year students in the summertime just to get them exposed to the process. I think that is part of the emphasis that there ought to be as much a training component as there is an actual excellence component to the research funding

Prof. Benoît Godin: I think you're right: interest in science and technology starts at school. But I think we have to go back to facts, and it's not true that there is a lack of interest in science and technology among young people.

lf you look at numbers, Canada follows the same trends as any other OECD country in the world. In fact, yes, people seem to be graduating less in science and technology than a few years ago, but this is not due to a lack of interest in science and technology, this is due mainly to demography. Fewer people are enrolling in school, so there are fewer people in science, but there are also fewer people in social sciences and humanities. So we have to look to the numbers carefully. There is no lack of interest in science and technology among young people.

In terms of whether the funding councils should get involved in that, of course we have a model for this. The NSF in the United States invests hundreds of millions in supporting education and linking university researchers with teachers in high schools. But this needs a lot of money, and in that field I think the committee would have to deal with the jurisdiction problem. To date it is a provincial jurisdiction.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: You mentioned the National Science Foundation in the U.S. We don't have a counterpart here in Canada, do we?

Mr. Brent St. Denis: The three funding councils, sir.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Does the NSF put all that under one roof?

Prof. Benoît Godin: Yes.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: But in effect we are able to achieve the same organic interaction with several councils working together. Is that correct?

Prof. Benoît Godin: Yes. When I said it would need a lot of money to get a real impact on the question, that would need a large investment just for the U.S., for example. NSF is a small player. Anything over $400 million just in education at the high school level...

Mr. Brent St. Denis: The U.S. president has a national science advisor. We don't have a counterpart to that?

À (1010)

Prof. Benoît Godin: No.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: Is there merit to having such a person, office, or secretariat in our country? Maybe a quick yes or no.... Should we look at that? The new federal innovation agenda should be out soon. Of course we don't know what's in it, but I'm just wondering if that's something we should look at.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: This is an issue that has been around for a long time. I think it sort of comes and goes. I think there is some merit to having some sort of centralized body for scientific advice in the country. Whether it's headed by an individual or whether it's more properly an arm's length body, such as the old science council was, is open for discussion. I think this is where this issue of overall science culture, science policy, comes from.

To tie this back to your original question, a lot of students make the initial decisions about their university careers while they're still in high school. Is there an attraction to taking up law as opposed to taking up research, biotechnology, or something like that? There is certainly room for some sort of overall direction, some sort of overall policy influence. Whether it's direct or indirect is another matter.

I would hope that in the case of something like an innovation policy, there would be some room for ongoing management of that policy. It's not simply something that appears; it's written down and then it passes on.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you, Mr. St. Denis.

We'll now go to Ms. Desjarlais.

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais (Churchill, NDP): Just to show that we're all pretty much on the same wavelength here, I'd like to first follow up Mr. Bergeron's questioning in regard to what ideas come into play when doing the peer review.

Mr. Godin, as peer review is happening, in your opinion, would any one aspect have priority over the other? Would it be the economic aspect, the benefit of the research, the health benefit, or just general knowledge awareness in a particular area? I imagine there are some things we all just want to know. You know, enquiring minds want to know whether or not it's worth anything. It's questionable sometimes, but it's a matter of just knowing what's happening or whether or not the social and cultural aspect is there. Do you see any one aspect being of higher priority?

Answer in whatever language you so choose.

Prof. Benoît Godin: Okay. You'll probably reply like Mr. Bergeron. That is, you'll probably think I am not answering your question. The answer I will give you is that it depends on these changes according to the field in question.

For science and clinical medicine, the main impact or the main criteria to look at is the effect or the potential impact of those results on health.

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Well, you've actually answered the question. You're saying if it was health research, you think it would be health. But if we look at the case with the physician in Toronto, Nancy Olivieri, I got the impression that it might have been more an economic aspect. So I guess that's what I'm looking for. Generally you think the scientist in the individual would overtake the economic aspect if it was related to health? I guess what I'm saying is that you think the integrity of the scientist would overcome the economic benefit in the research.

Prof. Benoît Godin: I'm not sure I really understand the question.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): I think the question... Ms. Desjarlais, are you asking along the lines of when there's a sponsor and research, whether the influence...

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Exactly. What's going to influence the scientist more? You initially were saying if it was in health research, you think it would be the outcome as far as health is related. But sometimes we question whether or not, when we're giving dollars to research, and maybe the outcome that's wanted is a money-making potential of the research rather than the health benefit... I use health as an example. It could happen in other areas as well.

I think you've answered the question, fair enough. Does anybody else want to comment?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Dr. Spence.

Dr. Matthew Spence: The comment I would like to make is that investigators are like everybody else. They move forward and sometimes unwittingly get themselves into situations where there is a conflict of interest. I think that's what we're really talking about--the conflict of the various interests.

That really requires a public debate in which everybody is engaged, so that we understand the rules of engagement. The changing scene with respect to economic interest, now with respect to issues of the power that genetic technologies are placing in our hands--GMOs, all of these sorts of things--requires the broadest possible public debate.

In the health area, health ethics is really a public concern generally. We need to bring that together so that the research community and those who fund it and those who take part in it understand where the grey areas are, where you are going to have to be careful, and where you continue to talk. I don't think any of these are really sins of commission; they're really sins of omission. We don't quite understand the boundaries.

The other thing I would point out is that a lot of research is extremely applied. Everybody wants to see their research used in some fashion. It's so gratifying. The citations Monsieur Godin refers to, for example, are evidence that other researchers are using that. But for a health researcher to see that applied, to see a child walk out of a hospital or something like that, is the biggest kick you're ever going to get--way beyond any sort of recognition from your peers. That, to me, is what keeps us in it and keeps us moving forward on it. But they have to be reminded sometimes that this is the end goal.

À (1015)

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Did you have any comment, Mr. Holbrook?

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: I'll just make the observation that on the one hand you're talking about research that is sponsored by corporations and by specific interest groups, as opposed to research sponsored by the granting councils. I can easily see that if research is sponsored by any interest group, be it a corporation or a non-governmental organization, say the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, they might be looking for specific outcomes. But I'm not sure that this is the sort of thing you want to apply to a federal granting council.

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Are you suggesting that there are never any dollars from the federal granting councils that end up in any way, shape, or form being involved in private funding of research?

I guess what I want you to answer is yes or no.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: Well, the simple answer is going to have to be yes, if for no other reason than the granting councils, again because of the business of shortfalls in funding, do ask the specific applicants who their research partners are: Do you have alternate funding? Do you have levered funding? And that's precisely the sort of thing that happens, that they will get funding levered from other organizations who may have specific interests.

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Fair enough.

Mr. Godin, with regard to some of the numbers that you were using at the beginning about the 75% coming out of Ontario and Quebec, what would be the per capita ratio of numbers of researchers in Ontario and Quebec as compared to the other areas? As well, what would be the number of grants that are given in those areas in relationship to those numbers?

Prof. Benoît Godin: I don't have those numbers here, but they could be produced quite rapidly.

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Mr. Spence, would you know what would come out of your area as far as the number of grants, the number of papers?

Dr. Matthew Spence: Well, we use the metric that our population is 10% of the Canadian population. In the health area I would say that the numbers are slightly above that 10%. In some other areas we're not quite as strong. We need to develop them. My sense is, though, we do have areas in this country that require attention for a variety of reasons--historical, population, etc. These are areas that perhaps in the research area are not quite as strong. I think that's a Canadian responsibility, generally, to be looking at this.

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Dr. Spence, which areas? Do you know offhand, are there particular areas you're aware of where you think there needs to be more attention paid?

Dr. Matthew Spence: Well, my background is, and I mentioned it at the beginning, that I spent a lot of my professional career in a children's hospital in Halifax. I am sympathetic to what happens in the Atlantic provinces. I tried to work within that environment. There are areas in Quebec, for example... and there are certainly areas in the west, my sister province to the east, where I think that some... Don't get me wrong; it's not that they don't have excellent research. They do; they have absolutely superb, first-rank research. But the fundamental frame, the economic frame of the province, etc., has difficulty in supporting this, and I think we need to look at this, because we want to raise everything in this country. That's the way we will be strong.

À (1020)

Mrs. Bev Desjarlais: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Mr. Savoy.

Mr. Andy Savoy (Tobique--Mactaquac, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I think, Dr. Spence, that's an excellent area to start in. I come from New Brunswick. In fact, Atlantic Canada has, I believe, 17 small universities. My riding doesn't have a university, but it has two community colleges.

The three granting agencies have had a bit of an abysmal record--I guess that might not be too severe a word--of providing grants to Atlantic Canada...smaller universities, I should say, not Atlantic Canada. Actually, we see the same phenomenon in other areas of Canada. Does the AHFMR have that problem, and if so, what do you do about it in Alberta?

Dr. Matthew Spence: Our universities differ widely in size. The University of Alberta has an approximate enrollment of 35,000, and the University of Lethbridge about 6,000. That's an interesting model because we have funding in all three universities. At the University of Lethbridge they have developed a couple of what I call pinnacles, areas of real international research excellence, and they've concentrated in those areas. They've not tried to be wide across the bar.

Those areas have been developed around people, absolutely first-class people, who have been attracted by the environment, by the opportunity to live there, and by the things they could do from the resources around those from the institution, from the province, and from the federal government in order to build this. So I think the challenge for smaller institutions frequently lies in the area of specialization. In other words, you develop a few things, do them extremely well, and be a little--if you'll pardon the expression--bloody minded about it and push very hard.

The second thing, though, is the sensitivity on the part of organizations at all levels--and that's not just federal, that's obviously provincial, local, community, municipal, etc.--to the strengths you have in these small institutions and to how you develop those. They're much closer to the people, so from my point of view when I look at it in terms of health, I look at things like the delivery of services in a small community and how you can do it better, etc.

I would not cite, for example, a major... Let me use the example of one CFI has recently funded, a synchrotron in a small community college, because there just wouldn't be the infrastructure support to do this, the density of chemists, physicists, etc., to use it. But on the other hand, there are many areas in social health services research and other research that can be carried out at these levels, and of course as we diffuse this through our population the application becomes much greater.

One of the things Mr. Godin has quite rightly pointed out is that we do extremely well in publications, as do most countries, but publication is a surrogate measure for application. You know that it's being applied within the community itself, and certainly health services research is a very important part of the thing. Is the research actually being applied, picked up, taken up, and used?

There is some excellent research going on in Quebec--looking at the mechanisms for that--in Alberta and elsewhere in the country at the present time.

[Translation]

Mr. Andy Savoy: Mr. Godin, on the matter of publications, you mention an increase in the number of publications, from 16,000 to 25,000. That was from 1990 until today.

Benoît Godin: From 1980 until today.

Mr. Andy Savoy: From 1980 until now. Do you have similar statistics for the small universities or are these things done differently?

Prof. Benoît Godin: Yes, that would be possible. The numbers I gave pertained to the whole of Canada. But they are available by university and it would be possible to look at the situation in each case.

Mr. Andy Savoy: That is an increase of approximately 55%.

Prof. Benoît Godin: Indeed.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Have the increases been the same for the small universities?

Prof. Benoît Godin: No. Obviously, the numbers will vary depending upon where the university is and its size. The same question still arises: What is the cause of what? Is it that these universities do not publish in proportion to a given variable, such as the economic weight of the province or their size because they do not receive sufficient funding, or on the contrary, do they not receive sufficient funding because they do not publish enough?

[English]

Mr. Andy Savoy: Merci beaucoup.

Mr. Holbrook, in speaking of community colleges, the Association of Canadian Community Colleges came in front of us to speak about the community colleges becoming more involved with the federal research initiatives or innovation agenda. What are your suggestions on ACCC's setting up initiatives to give greater support to community colleges? Is that feasible?

À (1025)

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: I would make the observation that at least in a couple of provinces, both Quebec and to a certain extent British Columbia, the community colleges are in effect part of the post-secondary system. I think they're a very valuable part of the post-secondary system, and they really do provide strong input into the third and fourth year of university.

That being so, there has to be some kind linkage between the two. We've spoken earlier about the need to get students interested in research, and that clearly has to start earlier on. Also, the community colleges, certainly in British Columbia, have some very, very good faculty, some of whom should be given the opportunity to do research.

Again, you get the question of concentration or dispersion of resources, so I'm not... there would have to be some way of ensuring that a researcher working at a community college was part of a larger community. In a place like the lower mainland of British Columbia, that's not terribly difficult, because there are several such colleges within relatively easy driving distances of the universities. It might be more difficult in Alberta, for example, or in the northern part of British Columbia.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Okay. Do I have time for one more?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Yes.

Mr. Andy Savoy: There's also been some concern about the strategic nature of our research and development in Canada, that oftentimes we pick the best proposals, but they may not necessarily have the most impact on the quality of life for Canadians. I guess it's the curiosity-driven research versus the pragmatic, market-driven research. The argument is that we do not always allocate our research dollars in a strategic manner to impact the bottom line or quality of life for Canadians.

To all three of you, how should we correct this problem, if you perceive it as a problem, and who should decide on where these research dollars should be directed--should it be industry, government, universities...

Prof. Benoît Godin: I have a short one. I think there has to be research that is not directed or strategic. You have financed researchers, excellent researchers, in basic research who today can work on new topics like AIDS or other things. This is because those researchers have such broad expertise that they can apply that expertise to new and specific problems. If you focus or insist that every researcher be financed to work on specific and strategic areas, you could limit what they can do in the future. So I think there has to be a volume or a share of research that is purely fundamental.

The question is--and we've been asking this question for fifty years now, since government started investing in science and technology--what is the balance between fundamental research and applied research? There's no magic formula to answer this. There are no statistics that can answer this.

What I see is that if you look at the funding councils, a third of their funding is actually devoted to a kind of strategic research--university-industry relationships and that kind of funding. Is that too much? Scientists say so. Government thinks not. So I think we should not go too far in that direction. Whether we have gone too far already, with a 30% level, I don't know. But obviously, once we reach 40% or 50%, we'll have choices to make and we'll ask ourselves, is that really the direction we want to go?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Mr. Holbrook.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: First of all, I'd just like to draw a slight distinction. We talk about looking at the impact of research as opposed to the output of research, which are two quite different things. Benoît and his team frequently measure the outputs of research, and that of course includes basic research. But the impact of basic research may not be known for decades. So for things such as strategic research, one is perhaps looking for impact more than output.

On the other hand, we're not discussing--but perhaps we should bring into this mix--the whole issue of industrial research. Industry in Canada does invest in research, looking for specific impacts as well as outputs. So I think one cannot just simply look at the granting councils' funding of research in a vacuum. You have to look at that large body of applied research that goes on in industry, which is funded by industry and universities as well.

À (1030)

Mr. Andy Savoy: Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Mr. Spence, do you want to add to that? Go right ahead.

Dr. Matthew Spence: I would agree with my colleagues. I think a balanced portfolio is the answer. There are a number of classical examples of activity that looked totally unapplied. It's total curiosity that you can see 10, 15, 20 years down the line for the basis of fundamental discovery. The institution, organization, or country does extremely well because of the development and application. Our colleagues to the south have shown that in spades in a number of areas. So I think it's a fundamental balance. Where it should be will always be argued, I think. It's always the question.

I should point out that what starts out very fundamental does drift, and vice versa. You can see them go both ways. We have investigators who started out with very pure, fundamental science, and they're now heads of small companies.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Savoy.

Mr. Rajotte, do you have any more questions? You have three or four minutes.

Mr. James Rajotte: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I do want to follow up on the issue of the small university versus the large university. That has been an issue of contention on this committee for quite some time, with most members saying that the small universities do not get enough funding.

We can look at the situation in my own province. If you're going to fund research in Alberta, particularly medical research, it seems to me that it would be concentrated at the University of Alberta or the University of Calgary, because you have medical schools, researchers, and large hospitals right there. So you have the infrastructure.

We all think that small universities should get more research funding proportionately, but is it realistic for us to implement that? In reality, is the research funding going to continue to be concentrated in areas such as Calgary and Edmonton versus the rest of Alberta?

Dr. Matthew Spence: I see the light's on in front of me, so I'll start this one.

There's no question that concentration of activity begets excellence, and it's no accident that places such as Harvard and the London School of Economics lead the world in their areas. You do see that concentration that moves forward. So I think that our large institutions in Canada will continue to be flagships in many areas. But I do think there are areas of research that are assuming increasing importance, particularly in the nexus, if you like, of our populations and our social sciences. We know that these are enormously important determinants of health. How you feel, your socio-economic status, education, etc, all have a major role. That type of activity and the research that takes place within the system itself can be spread and moved through community colleges.

My own sense is that all organizations need to specialize. If you're big, you can specialize in more areas. If you're small, you may have to pick out one or two. I think it's unreasonable to expect them to excel across the board. They should excel, clearly, but to be at the top everywhere is not a reasonable expectation. I think it's not unreasonable, at least in my experience, to expect one or two areas to develop. But across the board you would expect a large medical school to do that sort of thing.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: Yes. I think there are areas, and I think this is probably very much discipline-related. Certainly in the areas of some of the social sciences, and some of the natural sciences, particularly those that are geography-related, whether it's agricultural studies or environmental studies, there is a real role to invest in programs in a smaller university or college that is in the appropriate location.

To give a specific example, at this network I'm part of, the Innovations Systems Research Network, we're looking at innovation in specific industrial clusters. It's a network, and this is where we would like in fact to recruit one or two people from university colleges outside the main metropolitan areas. They would become part of a research network, so they would have the benefit of being involved with a larger group of people. But they would still of course be attached as teaching faculty at their university or college.

That's perhaps the biggest downside to this problem, in that at the university-college level, they are primarily teaching staff. They get very little time, if any, given to them for research activities, so what research they can do has to be carved out of an already crowded time budget.

I think the key there, and with all universities, is that they need to be attached to a larger network, and the networks of centres of excellence do that already. I'm part of a research network, the Canadian Water Network, and one of the team leaders is from Acadia University.

À (1035)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): One more.

Mr. James Rajotte: I wanted to follow up with Mr. Holbrook on a question Mr. St. Denis was talking about in terms of an advisory council for science and technology. The Prime Minister has one; it's actually under the Department of Industry. But some people, including myself, favour what they have in Britain, which is a parliamentary office of science and technology, or a chief scientist. As you said, it could be one person, it could be an advisory body, some neutral body, or some body that does report to Parliament as a whole, advise Parliament on science and technology, and really does set an agenda. Because I think that, for me, is what's missing, an overarching framework for planning science and technology and for funding science and technology.

When we had the secretary of state here last year, when I asked about criteria for funding big science projects, I didn't get an answer as to how specifically they did that. How do you decide between funding the synchrotron, versus funding the neutron facility in Chalk River, versus the long-range plan for astronomy? I have no idea how the government decides between one or the other. So I'd like to put you on the spot and ask you whether you think it would be helpful here in Canada to have something similar to what they have in Britain.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: I'm not sure I'm an expert on how the system operates in Britain. All I can say is that in Canada I think we've tried a number of different models over the past three or four decades, and it always seems to be a process of evolution rather than... We may yet evolve to a new system even now. I think the issue you're trying to get at, though, is a planning issue, and that is the need for some sort of foresight about where do we want to be at some point in the future, and this is something that in my opinion does involve some fairly widespread consultation, not just of the stakeholders themselves, but also of people across Canada.

I think some of the foresight exercises that have been carried on in other countries have taken this into account. They have set up some type of body that has travelled across the country, listened to people in various centres, large and small, and then reported back to the centre on what they have found.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you very much.

Mr. Bagnell, did you have a follow-up?

Mr. St. Denis, and then Mr. Savoy.

Mr. Brent St. Denis: One of the witnesses, and it might have been Dr. Holbrook, made what I thought was a very interesting point: that when it comes to some kinds of research, let's say pure or basic research, you look at the process, because the outcomes aren't guaranteed. You have a general direction, but you don't know what the outcomes are. But when it comes to maybe industrial research or technology, there is a specific goal, so you're able to measure--this is how I understood you, anyway--the result of different applications, one against the other, as opposed to the process.

I thought this was an interesting point that you had these diversities, two different things to measure when it comes to basic research, and when it comes to technology. Does the system account for that, or is it just throw them in the air? How do you deal with those two different needs?

À (1040)

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: I'll confine my remarks now just to the peer review system as we have it now, since this is what's on the table. I'll just say that of course in an industrial research lab the research directors usually do have a fairly clear idea of what outcomes they want. Indeed, they can often measure those outcomes in terms of cost and the potential contribution to their corporation.

The simple thing is that in the peer review system one is looking at the outcome rather than necessarily the impact. If somebody does a good piece of research, that is reflected in their reputation, and that benefits them in the next round of grant applications, when their application is reviewed by their peers. The impact of that research may not be known for many years, so it's not usually actually taken into account, nor should it be.

I think part of your question is how could you bring impact into the review process. That's probably easier when you get into some of the more applied sciences or into the health sciences, and perhaps Dr. Spence would answer about that. It's very much a question of how does the impact of something then reflect back on the individual's reputation, or again, what is the impact of the number of publications, reports, or whatever? I think that's a comment...again, you may want to speak to Professor Godin about this as well. When he's talking about research publications, he's talking about publications in peer-reviewed journals, where there is a specific standard. Notice I used the term “peer-reviewed” again, and this is another part of that system. One of the complaints of a lot of engineering researchers--and perhaps this is true in the health sciences as well--is that they don't publish, often citing commercial confidentiality or intellectual property reasons. Therefore, they don't appear in the peer-reviewed literature.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Dr. Spence, did you want to answer?

Dr. Matthew Spence: What I would say is that the fundamental principle in peer review is that people who are knowledgeable about that particular part of the research spectrum, be it basic or applied, are the ones who are looking at it. When we're looking at technology commercialization, for example, we have the presidents of small companies sitting on that, looking at it and asking, what's the product, what's the bottom line, and what's the market strategy in terms of moving this out? They're very much on the applied side, and they're using those metrics. It may be the best science idea in the world, but if it's not commercially feasible, they're going to knock it down. That's what that peer review is all about, whereas on the basic research side they'll be looking at the fundamental methodology, if you like. Again, they don't know where the idea is going to go, but there's a track record there to say that this person is likely to be able to carry it forward.

The thing is that we sometimes hold up peer review as being something different, yet we all do it. It's part of every system I know. There's peer review in law and in everything we do because we're always subjecting... We call it due diligence in the private sector, we call it a parliamentary committee, or we call it an investigation, but there is a peer review. It's ensuring that the peer review is appropriate to the activity and to the goals you have and that the appropriate people are there. You will not ask somebody in a certain discipline to look at a totally different discipline or at a totally different activity within the spectrum of that discipline. They are part of a continuum, but it's the expertise that comes to bear that becomes quite different and that ensures the fairness of the system as you move it forward.

If you have some S and T strategy you're looking at that is going to be superimposed on this, it's not the function of the scientist to look at that. It's the function of somebody at a managerial or political level to look at it, but they should be informed by the same due diligence you would have at any other stage.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you very much.

Mr. Savoy.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

[Translation]

Let us come back once again to the 25 000 publications, Mr. Godin. What is, roughly, the percentage of publications flowing from community colleges? Is it not very high, is it?

[English]

Prof. Benoît Godin: It's very negligible.

À (1045)

Mr. Andy Savoy: I'll follow up Mr. Rajotte's question.

If you look at research and the quest for research dollars in Canada, Dr. Spence made a good point about establishing a niche: as a small university you can establish a niche in a specific area. This is similar to what we do in marketing or in business, establishing a niche and being the best at it. In establishing that niche you go, I assume, from getting the people, getting the dollars for research, getting the equipment, moving up, and developing your expertise and your niche, I guess you would call it. If you don't have the research dollars, the federal grants from the three agencies, wouldn't it be very difficult to establish that niche as the centre of excellence or the institution, organization, college, or university? Wouldn't it be very difficult to have that expertise if you don't initially have some type of federal research grant, Dr. Spence?

Dr. Matthew Spence: Sure it's difficult to kick-start, but I think this is a responsibility at all levels. If I were a small college starting out, first of all I'd take into account my core business in the region. What am I doing in that region? Let's say apple orchards or let's say agriculture is the main issue there. Then I would be inclined to go after that as a niche and I would want to engage my local communities in terms of getting this started.

I think where a higher-level agency or organization--be it provincial or federal--can become involved is in matching or providing a seed or something like that to move it up. When I talk about establishing an area of expertise, I think you have to be extremely conscious of what is in your environment, what's in your neighbourhood, that will provide sustaining support as you move forward, because clearly, if you're delivering things that are of interest to your communities they will continue to help you and help invest. But I see it as a partnership.

My guess is that a federal structure--and having been on some of the councils and so on, I've watched the thinking--is not going to be very responsive to something that doesn't have the support of the community as well and is being pushed very hard. So I see it as a combination of the two, but I do think there has to be some local resource.

We can't simply sit back and say we need help to get research started in our community, feds come and help us. I don't think that's what the feds should be investing in. But if, on the other hand, they come to you with a plan, a development, with local money in it, etc., I think you should be investing, because it's the one that's going to move. But I see it as a combination.

I think our trouble is we all try to emulate Harvard, and we're not in the business of building Harvard in small communities. We're in the business of showing Harvard this is where Canada will lead.

Mr. Andy Savoy: On that topic, there is much talk now about clusters, networking clusters, and the opportunity for clusters to work--for instance, in Atlantic Canada, if you had Acadia University, the University of Prince Edward Island, and University of New Brunswick with particular expertise in a specific area coming together as a cluster. This being the information age, of course, people are saying we can work in clusters, but is that practical? I would ask all of you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Who wants to respond?

Dr. Matthew Spence: I would say it's not only practical, it's imperative. To me, that's the way the world is going.

I think our big universities are into a major competitive role. We have education offerings coming at us on the Internet from around the world, so our educational bastions are in competition worldwide. We have research institutions worldwide. I think you need to come together to share the experience, etc. I think it takes advantage of all the tools that are available now.

In Atlantic Canada, because you have such a richness of small colleges and universities, I think the encouragement of their coming together would--and they do, obviously--create clusters or centres of excellence. The NCE program, after all, has shown this can work. There have been some of the NCEs that have worked extremely well in terms of their networking and what they bring together across the country. It's easier to work with the guy in the next room. It's tougher to work at a distance, but our kids are doing it on the Internet all the time. So as our culture shifts, changes, and moves forward, I think this is the way of the future.

À (1050)

Mr. Andy Savoy: Mr. Godin, are you seeing this trend in the publications, that there's more collaborative work among smaller universities?

Prof. Benoît Godin: Yes, definitely it shows up in numbers. Not only are our researchers working more and more internationally, they're also working more and more among themselves throughout Canada, that is, not only between sectors--a university with industry, a university with a hospital or government laboratories--but also between themselves, between provinces.

The same trends I showed regarding international collaboration also revealed themselves in regard to other kinds of collaboration--between provinces, between regions, between universities, between big and small.

In fact, the smaller a unit is--be it a university, a region, or a province--the greater its tendency to collaborate with others. Look, for example, to the U.S.A. The rate of international collaboration in the U.S.A. is about 11%. You have four times that number in Canada.

It's the same pattern for universities. The smaller a university is, the more it collaborates with others in order to get what it doesn't have in its own institution.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Mr. Holbrook.

Mr. J.A.D. Holbrook: Yes. I'll just make two quick observations and echo the comment that we shouldn't try to compete with Harvard and we can't compete with Harvard. We need to sort of focus on our competitive advantages. That's probably true as much for large and medium-sized universities as it is for small ones. The issue of looking at specific poles of research is not unique to the small universities; it's just more acute, obviously, in the small universities.

Second, I will also echo the comment that Canada is probably one of the leaders in the networking business, so to speak, networks of research. We have a good track record in that area, and will probably do better in that as we go along, since we have already worked out, as researchers, some of the protocols or methodologies of how one has to work in a research network.

We're also finding it's much easier to work in a regional network than in a national network because there are regional differences in the way science and technology operate across the country. For example, your maritime network of universities is probably quite a strong network, in and of itself, even if they are all relatively small universities.

Mr. Andy Savoy: Thank you very much, Mr. Holbrook.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): I have one question to ask Dr. Spence from the foundation. Maybe others could also chip in.

When you're doing your review and reject a candidate, what kind of feedback system do you have for that candidate?

Dr. Matthew Spence: We do reject people; there's no question about it. This is a competition. Having been on the rejection end, I can tell you your ego is bruised and you're understandably very angry.

We feed back everything we possibly can. For example, on some of our larger senior awards, we may have six to eight different opinions from scientists around the world. We make all that information available to the candidates, plus the committee deliberations that went on.

The only things that are removed are anything that would attribute it to a single individual; in other words, a personal identifier would be missing. But we make all that information available. We tell our peer reviewers that's going to happen. Even if they make a comment that something is a dumb idea, we don't take that out. It comes out raw--bang.

We have found it's helpful in the system if people incorporate that into their thinking. It helps raise the votes. Because we're investing a lot of dollars in that peer review system, it should return value-added.

I should point out that because we work outside the province, in other words we're pulling in our reviewers from around the world, there's really no reason for them to help Alberta, other than altruism, and altruism only goes so far. So we actually pay for this, which adds to the cost of our peer review system, but I think it increases the quality, because we are pulling in an international opinion.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Walt Lastewka): Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses for being with us today. It was very valuable for us, as we slowly draw our study to a conclusion.

Before the members leave, I have one announcement. As you know, next week is recess week. Hopefully, between now and when we return on the Tuesday, the drafters can do some summarizing for us on the work we've done on the Competition Bureau, and try to get us to a conclusion. So we'll spend about 40 minutes on any of their information on issues that will go into the report.

Hopefully, we'll also have some summaries for the peer review, in the same manner. Then we'll use the balance of 40 minutes for items going forward. So that will take up between nine and eleven. At eleven o'clock, visitors from Hong Kong will be with us for an hour, so we can have some exchange with them.

We'll put this in an e-mail for you and notify you, but I just wanted to put that in advance, so you will know exactly where we're going in the first week back after the break.

Have a good recess. Thank you very much.