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May/31/22 12:14:58 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, people are putting words in my mouth again. That might be because my speech was so good. Eliminating these rules will not break down years of work. People want inclusion and integration, and I can attest to that based on my own career experience and my colleagues'. Every province, like Quebec, is responsible for funding and managing post-secondary education. Ottawa cannot tell the provinces what to do, period. If the member wants to get involved in that then she should move to provincial politics.

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Ms. Andréanne Larouche (Shefford, BQ)

May/31/22 12:15:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Mirabel for his speech. I remind members that this is yet another example of Ottawa's paternalistic approach with Quebec. That is not what my question is about, however, because my colleague did a great job explaining what the federal government is doing. This morning I explained that if we want to get more women in academia and in other fields, we should be proactive, as my colleague from La Prairie explained so well, and ask why women are less likely to go into certain sectors. I gave an example about how women reportedly had a harder time submitting their research because they were at home carrying a heavy mental load. How can the federal government be proactive and make life easier for women? It could implement work-life balance initiatives. Essentially, all of this should be set up beforehand. I do not think that university requirements explain why it is difficult to recruit women.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/31/22 12:16:29 p.m.
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We have one minute left for the response. The hon. member for Mirabel.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon

May/31/22 12:16:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we hear about all kinds of averages and the Canadian average. Research facilities do not reflect society perfectly. They have evolved with the times. We need to be very careful about all the statistics used to apply averages to this, that and the other thing. That does not work. My colleague is right. It has been harder for minorities and women for many years. Scholarships have been created and efforts have been made to increase inclusion awareness. This has been the case in Quebec and at Quebec universities. There is still progress to be made and work to be done to encourage more people like Marie Curie and Amartya Sen, magnificent Nobel Prize winners. Imposing conditions today and preventing Quebec universities from hiring professors will not improve the quality of research. It is the Liberals, not us, who are playing politics with inclusion. It is important to note that they are actually hurting inclusion in the long run with this, because they are directing their energy to the wrong place.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay (Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, BQ)

May/31/22 12:17:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today, on this Bloc Québécois opposition day, to speak to our motion on federal funding for university research and the associated conditions. With this motion, which I will not read again, our objective is clear: we must ensure that grants are awarded without discrimination, based on skills and qualifications, essentially on merit, and not on identity-based criteria, in the interests of genuine equality of opportunity. This motion is particularly important to me, because universities have long been some of the institutions where I have been fortunate enough to spend some of my career. In Quebec, I studied political science at the Université de Montréal, and sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. I was fortunate to have been a lecturer at Laval University and at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi. I was also able to see what was happening across the ocean because I had the amazing fortune to complete my doctorate in the socio-economics of development at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. Those were probably the best years of my life. I have very fond memories of my university days, although they were unfortunately not without a few dark periods. During their careers, young students, researchers and teachers quickly learn about the hegemony of research chairs, which unfortunately too often comes at the expense of teaching, a role that is now mostly carried out by precarious staff. This hegemony of the chairs also lets Ottawa take control of research and impose its ideological terms and themes. This is especially true in the social sciences, where radical ideologies are often lifted directly from American campuses. Academic researchers who arrive in the middle of this have no choice but to conform, or else be pushed to the academic sidelines. The Canada research chairs program was created by Jean Chrétien's government 20 years ago, in a context where Ottawa was sucking the lifeblood out of Quebec's public finances and then using its surpluses, obtained on the backs of Quebeckers, to invade areas of provincial jurisdiction, with education being one such jurisdiction. At the time, Ottawa swore that they would not be intruding on education since research was not specifically under any jurisdiction. However, it is now clear that the creation of research chairs was a direct intrusion. The program is basically acting as a hiring program for professors. Ottawa is dictating to the universities the terms and conditions for hiring faculty. This situation is unacceptable and the program must be overhauled. Ottawa is using its spending power to occupy the field of research funding. It is taking advantage of the fact that money is key and thus changing the way our universities operate. That is what is happening with the excessive demands imposed by the Canada research chairs program, particularly its requirements for equity, diversity and inclusion, which we find unreasonable. By imposing its requirements under these research funding programs, Ottawa is not respecting the autonomy of universities. There is no reason for Ottawa to dictate conditions of employment for faculty. If Ottawa wants to take over spending power in the field of education, it should offer funding unconditionally, but that will never happen. As my colleague from Mirabel said earlier, Ottawa imposes conditions but does not offer funding, as always. It is unacceptable for Ottawa to impose targets on Quebec universities under threat of sanctions. These universities are educational institutions where independence of thought should be at the forefront. Why can they not be given free rein to set up their own diversity and inclusion programs, without being dictated to by Ottawa under the threat of losing some of their funding? The requirements imposed by Ottawa are unacceptable and illegitimate obstacles. It was no doubt to remedy this problem that the Pauline Marois government, with Pierre Duchesne as minister of higher education, sought to liberate Quebec's education system from Canadian ideological control by creating Quebec research chairs. That would have been a good idea. I am being critical of the research chairs, but I want to make it clear that we strongly support permanent, increased funding for scientific research. There is no denying that Canada is unfortunately not a leader in this area. I could even say that it is a real dinosaur, and I think the best example of that is the fact that one former minister of state for science and technology was openly creationist. This was in the 2000s, not 1950. That gives an idea of how scientific research was treated by that government, and the underfunding of scientific research has been a glaring issue. The Naylor report clearly showed that funding cuts in research and development over the past 20 years have had devastating consequences. We saw that at the beginning of the health crisis, which we are barely out of. We had no pharmaceutical industry. We had no drugs, no medical equipment, no vaccines. Worse yet, we had no adequately funded structure to begin working on developing everything I just listed. We had no capacity for rapid development. As for the scientific research institutions that used to be the pride of Quebec, such as the Centre Armand-Frappier, they were all simply abandoned by Ottawa. I think we can see that there are consequences to living in what the Prime Minister proudly called the first “post-national” country. We have more examples. Canada would do well to put its energy into evolving out of the Jurassic age instead of trying to dictate the nature of scientific research and who is authorized to conduct it. Of course we are in favour of including people from diverse backgrounds as much as possible. That goes without saying, because diversity is neither good nor bad. It is a reality. It is a reflection of contemporary society. Let us not forget that the Bloc Québécois once included in its ranks Osvaldo Nunez, the first Latin-American MP in the history of this parliamentary institution. The Bloc also had Bernard Cleary, an indigenous person, and Vivian Barbot, who is originally from Haiti. It also got my predecessor, Ève‑Mary Thaï Thi Lac, elected in Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot as the first Quebec woman of Vietnamese descent in the House. Today, I am the first member of the Huron-Wendat nation to become a member of the House, and I did it as a member of the Bloc Québécois. We have no lessons to learn on that score. Let us make that clear. I would hope that, in addition to representing a diverse population, all these people, myself excluded, were chosen to be lawmakers, elected to serve as members of this Parliament, because they were, first and foremost, skilled and qualified. When people have the same qualifications, of course, no problem. We have no problem with affirmative action to right some of the grave injustices of the past that, unfortunately, very much persist to this day, but restrictive criteria other than straight-up qualifications should never be imposed. Recently, Laval University put up a job posting that did not say an equally qualified person from a diverse background would get the job. The posting specifically said “reserved”. If that is not discrimination, what is it? My riding is home to an internationally renowned university-level institution, the faculty of veterinary medicine at Saint-Hyacinthe. Naturally, as the only French-language veterinary training institution in North America, it attracts talent from around the world. Recently, students and young researchers told me that the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council sent bursary applicants a survey asking them to disclose their sexual orientation. Can someone explain to me how sexual orientation has any bearing on one's ability to dissect a dead bird or on the quality of laboratory testing for avian flu? Why is that relevant? I am still wondering. As a final point, I would say that academic freedom is a fundamental struggle that comes down to the most basic independent thought, the need to reflect on things using reason. It has long been said that the purpose of education is to learn to think, not to learn what to think. The research chair system is a way to tell students what to think. It not only tells students what to think, it also tells their instructors what to think.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

May/31/22 12:27:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, a member of the House indicated earlier that it is unfortunate the Bloc has brought forward this particular motion, maybe even suggesting that it could have used a different motion today. I look at the motion a little bit differently. I see the motion as something that, at the end of the day, I do not believe is in the best interests of Canada, primarily because I see the true value of Canada's diversity. Often when we get the types of appointments that are necessary, they can be inspirational for younger generations. This allows us to build a healthier and richer society. I am wondering if the member could reflect on the province of Quebec in its entirety, whether it is the rural part or the city of Montreal. Does he believe that his attitudes toward ignoring women, minorities and other ethnic—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/31/22 12:28:51 p.m.
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I am sorry, but I have to get to other questions. I would ask individuals to mind the time. For questions and comments, about 45 seconds would be good. People have been extending them past one minute. The hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay

May/31/22 12:29:06 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have a lot to say in response to that. I am amazed by how concerned they get about the topics we choose to debate on our opposition days. It is the same argument every time. Why did we not move a motion on another topic? It makes no difference to the government what topic we want to debate. I often get the impression that people still think of Quebec as being just the city of Montreal surrounded by fields, an image that is pretty outdated. I represent an extremely rural riding that elected the very first Vietnamese woman in the history of this House, so enough with the stereotypes of rural folks. We can settle this right now. She was elected for her skills and her ability to be a good MP. Quebec has taken a number of positive steps, as I said. “Discrimination” is an ugly word. I am in favour of these positive steps, of course, but I also support equal qualifications. It is as simple as that. We can look at all kinds of models—

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/31/22 12:30:07 p.m.
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Order. We must move on to the next question. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

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Mr. Taylor Bachrach (Skeena—Bulkley Valley, NDP)

May/31/22 12:30:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I cannot imagine that my hon. colleague opposes the idea that Canada's research chairs should reflect the diversity of our country. However, I did not hear him spend any time in his remarks talking about the many barriers that indigenous people, people of colour, people living with disabilities and all of these groups face in Canadian society. I would like to give him the opportunity to elaborate on the many systemic barriers faced by those groups in institutions like our Canada research chairs.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay

May/31/22 12:30:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, if my colleague would like us to increase scholarships to encourage more first nations people to attend university, I would be his best ally. I support that. There are currently programs that pay first nations students' tuition for a certain number of years. That already exists. Some measures could still be improved. Racism is still far too present with respect to first nations, of which I am a member. As was mentioned earlier, let us be proactive. Universities should consider skills and not discriminate based on identity. That is quite simply our message.

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The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Carol Hughes)

May/31/22 12:31:46 p.m.
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We have time for a brief question. The hon. member for Mirabel.

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Mr. Jean-Denis Garon (Mirabel, BQ)

May/31/22 12:31:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, let us be clear. Education and the funding of universities and university research fall under provincial jurisdiction, and thus are Quebec's responsibility. Judging from the questions from the other side of the House, there would be no inclusion and diversity in Quebec unless Ottawa imposed conditions. It is as though they are saying that letting Quebec do its job results in racism and exclusion. I would like my colleague to comment on the government members' perception of Quebec.

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Mr. Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay

May/31/22 12:32:23 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to remind members of a historical fact. The first Jewish person to be elected to public office in the entire British Empire was elected in Trois‑Rivières, Quebec. He did not have the right to sit in this chamber because of his religion. We will not take any lessons about diversity from Canada.

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Mr. Kody Blois (Kings—Hants, Lib.)

May/31/22 12:32:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I have the privilege of rising today to speak to an opposition motion. I will be sharing my time with my hon. colleague from Vaughan—Woodbridge. I usually get the text of an opposition motion the night before the debate and take the time back at the hotel to read it over and review the principles. Two weeks ago, I got the text of the Bloc Québécois's opposition motion on the prayer in the House. When I shared my thoughts on that motion, I said that I thought it was weak. The issue was not very important compared to the war in Ukraine, climate change or affordability, which are all important issues worthy of debating in the House. I saw the same problem yesterday when I got the text of today's motion. The motion itself is not a problem, because the Bloc Québécois has the privilege of raising issues in the House, but, once again, this motion does not deal with issues of concern to Canadians and Quebeckers. With the war in Ukraine still raging, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food will be looking at the importance of food safety and the importance of supporting our allies and supporting Ukraine. Ukraine is very important for grains and various commodities. With the Russians targeting critical infrastructure, this is a very important issue. What is the best way for the Government of Canada and our allies, including NATO, Europe and the United States, to address this issue? Well, no, today we are talking about the Canada research chairs program. Of course, the research program is very important in terms of innovation, science and the various programs designed to improve our economy. I agree with that principle, it is very important. I will read the principles of the motion. That: (a) the House denounce all forms of discrimination; I agree with this principle. I think that most, if not all, members and all Canadians do too. The motion goes on to say: (b) in the opinion of the House, (i) research is necessary for the advancement of science and society in general, I just expressed my point of view on that so, of course, I completely agree. Research is very important for Canada's future. Next, the motion says: (ii) access to the Canada Research Chairs Program must be based on the candidates’ skills and qualifications; and I agree with this principle as well. In fact, I find the Bloc's position interesting. The text implies that some of Canada's research chairs have the required skills. I think the members of the Bloc Québécois need to stand up in the House and explain their position. Do people think that some research chairs in Canada and Quebec have the necessary skills? I have confidence in the skills and qualifications of those who are in those positions right now, but I think perhaps the Bloc has a problem with that. The motion concludes by stating: (c) the House call on the government to review the program's criteria to ensure that grants are awarded based on science and not based on identity criteria or unrelated to the purpose of the research. These criteria are primordial in order to assess the person's qualifications and understand the purpose and importance of their research for solving certain problems in society. However, I think that it is also crucial to encourage diversity and to make sure that some people have the same opportunities as others. For me, this is where the text of the motion is problematic. I think it is very important to outline the history of the program. Established in 2000, the Canada research chairs program, or CRCP, is a key component of a national strategy aimed at making Canada one of the best countries in the world for research and development. It invests approximately $311 million annually to attract and retain a diverse group of top researchers in order to strengthen research and training excellence at Canada's post-secondary institutions. In 2017, a court order required the Canada research chairs program to meet the mandatory equity, diversity and inclusion objectives of a 2006 Canadian human rights settlement agreement. The government naturally supported this equity, inclusion and diversity plan, but a court also ruled that the program was problematic and that the government needed to change the way it selected research chairs. The outcome of that decision is very important. From 2016 to 2021, the percentage of women who received CRCP funds rose from 28.9% to 40.9%, the percentage of visible minorities receiving funds rose from 13.4% to 22.8%, the percentage for people with disabilities rose from 0.3% to 5.8%, and the percentage of indigenous recipients rose from 1.3% to 3.4%. These numbers are statistics, but they represent much more: They are opportunities that have been offered to certain people. Therefore, they are not just statistics. This is important for diversity and for ensuring that everyone across the country has a chance at success. We need to make sure these jobs are open to all. It is important, and research shows that diversity can lead to better results. Yes, we can put a lens on diversity and inclusion and trying to be equitable, but we also want the best results from what we do. As I mentioned earlier in French, the Bloc Québécois motion reads as though individuals who are currently being appointed to these chairs are not qualified. I take issue with that. The parliamentary secretary before me said the same thing in that same vein. At the end of the day, as has been illustrated, diversity is important in leading to teamwork and driving better results.

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Mr. Yves Perron (Berthier—Maskinongé, BQ)

May/31/22 12:42:34 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech. I congratulate him again on his excellent French, which just keeps getting better. My colleague seems to wonder what the problem is in our motion today. There is always this argument that we could have chosen another topic. We hear this every time that we bring an issue forward. I will identify the problems and ask my colleague to respond. The first problem that we are raising today is that the federal government imposes funding conditions in an area under Quebec's jurisdiction. As this House is aware, this is something that the Bloc Québécois condemns all the time. It is in our DNA. I would like my colleague to tell me what he thinks. The second problem that we are raising is exclusion. We are all for diversity and positive discrimination. What we condemn is the fact that certain applicants are excluded out of hand. Is this not a problem?

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Mr. Kody Blois

May/31/22 12:43:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question. I am a bit confused, because when I read the text of the motion, I did not see anything about provincial jurisdiction. I think that Quebec probably respects the principles of diversity and inclusion. If the goal is for the federal government to work with Quebec to incorporate the principles of inclusion and diversity into the field of research, then I think that this is another matter. However, that is not in the text of the motion. I thank the hon. member for his explanation, but that is not in the text of this opposition day motion.

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Ms. Lisa Marie Barron (Nanaimo—Ladysmith, NDP)

May/31/22 12:44:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, some groups experience multiple discriminations at the same time, such as, for example, women from indigenous communities who are under-represented in academic settings. That is just one example. Therefore, an intersectional approach is essential to understanding and addressing the barriers and biases that exclude under-represented groups. Does the member believe that removing affirmative action may reinforce these biases and further exclude under-represented groups?

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Mr. Kody Blois

May/31/22 12:45:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will respond to that with a couple of things. Obviously, as I mentioned, the tribunal had suggested the government had to do a better job of trying to drive diversity and inclusion. The hon. member mentioned that some people, such as women in indigenous groups, have a double challenge. At the end of the day, what I take notice of in this Bloc Québécois motion is that it almost reads as though it is a type of discrimination to encourage individuals who are under-represented to have more status in these chairs. I disagree with that principle. I think it is also extremely important for universities and that culture to play an important role there. I would like to commend Acadia University. They are doing really important work in this domain. They have great research chairs, some of whom are supported by us, some of whom are being driven by themselves. To answer her question, institutionally it is important, and to her point, these types of principles need to stay.

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Mr. Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.)

May/31/22 12:46:16 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, one of the issues that I have been raising is the issue about young people and how young people look to important positions that are in society, such as university chairs or research chairs, and how they can be very inspiring for youths who are of a minority. I wonder if my colleague could provide his thoughts as to why it is so important that, as we diversify, young people see that these important positions are reflective of Canadian society.

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