Aslam Rana

I don't see your ring.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Chan, are you a mechanical engineer?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

You have several positions across the science and research landscape. Drawing on that experience, where do you see the biggest inconsistencies in how the three granting agencies handle governance and reporting? Would the capstone organization fix any of that?

Ms. Morin, do you think current accountability structures see college-based research and university-based research as being on a level playing field?

Many researchers push back strongly against anything that could interfere with academic freedom or investigator-driven research. You have flagged serious concerns about loss-of-control incidents and agents acting in a way nobody intended. Where is the line? How do we protect the freedom to do research without letting federally funded projects produce something that could be generally dangerous?

Do current accountability structures treat college-based research and university-based research as being at the same level, or is the system tilted in favour of one over the other one?

Mr. Tessari L'Allié, you have talked about how governments have almost no visibility into what AI agents are doing on our digital infrastructure. On the publicly funded side, who is keeping track of what's being built in Canadian labs, how it's being tested and whether there are real safety protocols in place? Is there an accountability gap we should be worried about?

You have appeared before several committees in warning about how fast AI is developing, and your organization has put out a plan calling on Canada to treat advanced AI as a crisis-level issue. With that in mind, do you think NSERC, CIHR and SSHRC are equipped to evaluate and oversee AI research at the pace that this technology moves?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Your research background is in operations research and optimization. You think about how to make systems work better. If you were advising this committee on designing an accountability framework for federal research funding, what would you change about how the system measures whether public money is producing results?