44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2022 10:00AM
- May/31/22 10:39:38 a.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his question. However, to be honest, I do not really understand it.
Let us talk about job postings for research chairs. When hiring researchers, nothing is more important than qualifications. That is what universities should focus on. I do not even want to know who discovered the coronavirus vaccine. I got my shot, and those people have my gratitude. That is science.
73 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 11:43:40 a.m.
- Watch
I apologize, Madam Speaker.
We need to do some collective soul-searching. Why is it that women make up only 20% of corporate boards and only 25% of senior management in Canada?
According to an Osler report, a university professor looked at 2,000 senior management positions in Canada. Of the 2,000, he found seven indigenous people and six people with disabilities. That is it. Among senior managers, women's salaries are 56% lower than men's. Visible minority women earn 32% less than white women. That is huge. The gaps are enormous.
It makes perfect sense to try to do something to fix this and ensure that women, indigenous people, members of visible minorities and people with disabilities take their rightful place within our institutions, including universities.
129 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 12:17:47 p.m.
- Watch
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.
1433 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 12:30:53 p.m.
- Watch
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.
95 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 12:31:53 p.m.
- Watch
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.
81 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 12:45:14 p.m.
- Watch
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.
177 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 1:25:33 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, those are two different things. My colleague talked about systemic racism, and I think that is an issue that can be dealt with separately. However, my colleague raised a very important point in her question. We should let universities manage the hiring of professors.
Targets can be set. Universities can be asked to ensure that they achieve a certain representation and make room for under‑represented groups. They can be told to favour candidates from these under‑represented groups, in the event of equally qualified candidates. However, imposing criteria is a very slippery slope and very dangerous.
102 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 1:26:17 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, setting aside the selection criteria imposed by the Liberal government, the whole identity aspect that appears in these criteria, and the interference, once again, by the Liberals, is there not a major risk that the government may in some way undermine the autonomy that is so important to universities?
52 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 1:26:49 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, indeed, my colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles is raising a very important point. The independence of institutions of higher learning is fundamental and essential. Any institution where knowledge is developed and shared, where the leaders of tomorrow hone their critical thinking skills, must not be influenced by any external factors, and certainly not by any government.
These criteria must be applied, enforced and fulfilled, or else funding will be pulled. This is very serious. These are not just objectives for reaching a certain ideal. These objectives are being imposed with serious financial consequences attached for universities. My colleague's question is therefore very relevant. The government, regardless of its political stripes, is playing an extremely dangerous game when it imposes criteria and objectives with financial penalties attached. This is highly problematic.
137 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 3:05:44 p.m.
- Watch
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.
We, on this side of the House, do indeed trust our universities. That is why we are making massive investments in science, research and innovation because those things are important.
My colleagues in the House want the scientific community to reflect Canada's diversity. That is why we asked the research councils to implement the right policies to ensure that scientific research represents all Canadians.
74 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 4:25:24 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the problem is that science cannot be beholden to an ideology, no matter how noble that ideology may be. While I see the worth of the ideology of diversity, which I adhere to myself in many aspects of society, what we are seeing here is an attempt to dictate how university research should be conducted. That is not how this works, and if we allow it to happen, knowledge will become inaccessible, which is not how universities should be seen.
82 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 4:37:25 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I believe that those criteria already exist. However, one thing is certain: We must promote access for members of groups, such as women, but I do not believe that we need go so far as to ban and exclude people, because that is not the case.
As I stated in my speech, there are certain groups that, for reasons of their own, are simply not present in an area of activity. We must be careful when we push for something.
However, I agree with the member. We must foster access, but I believe that universities do a good job in that regard. Having experience with universities and research chairs, I believe that people are making a real effort.
120 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 4:56:26 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, I have really been impressed with the University of Winnipeg in recent years. We have seen a very progressive move toward indigenous studies, from right at the top with the president of the university to the way in which it is opening to the entire student body. There is so much our universities can do to support the diversity of Canada.
63 words
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 5:12:08 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, the member for Kitchener Centre and I come from the same region, and it has been impressive to see that we have post-secondary institutions that are recognizing that the best natural renewable resource we have in our community is our people; it is the talent. That is why it is important that we continue to invest in them. Both the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University have continued to push themselves. To an earlier comment in regard to having a challenging time finding qualified talent, what the universities in Waterloo demonstrate is that the talent does exist and we can find it if we work hard enough to try to secure it.
116 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- May/31/22 5:55:06 p.m.
- Watch
Madam Speaker, speaking from my own university experience, especially on the research side, it is an extremely competitive environment.
Never—or hardly ever—would a university turn down a candidate with high research potential who will publish and make the university look good regardless of that candidate's skin colour or ethnic origin.
My sense is that the Liberals and the NDP think our motion presupposes that, in the absence of federal criteria, universities would engage in discriminatory hiring practices.
I think that is deeply insulting to the research community in Quebec and Canada, a community made up of highly educated people who are very much in favour of diversity.
I would like to know what my colleague thinks of that. Is that kind of thinking across the way an insult to our institutes of higher learning?
139 words
All Topics
- Hear!
- Rabble!
- add
- star_border
- share
- menumenu
- notificationsnotifications
- home
- mailmail
- searchsearch
