In a world where work and research are increasingly unfettered by national borders, Canadian policy needs to shift to accommodate this new reality, says Public Policy Forum president Edward Greenspon. The Public Policy Forum (PPF) was founded three decades ago in Ottawa by federal civil servants to raise the level of policy-making and governance. An...
Read More >>The wild swings that affect research funding in Canada are well known to Gilles Patry. In 1993, when he became the new dean of engineering at the University of Ottawa, his first task was to announce salary cuts of three percent. Then, as uOttawa’s vice-rector (academic) starting in 1997 and its president from 2001 to...
Read More >>World-renowned neuropsychologist Maryse Lassonde, the Royal Society of Canada’s new president, is determined to promote the culture of science.
Read More >>University of Calgary president and vice-chancellor Elizabeth Cannon, who also chairs Universities Canada, is helping nurture closer ties between the scientific community and Ottawa’s elected MPs. When Elizabeth Cannon joined the engineering faculty at the University of Calgary in 1991 she doubled the number of women professors — from one to two. Her gender trail-blazing...
Read More >>Ron Freedman contemplates reform of the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program, which hands out $4 billion in tax credits annually to companies undertaking R&D. In the research and development community of Canada, Ron Freedman is known as the numbers guru. In 1999 Freedman and a partner began tracking research and development in the corporate...
Read More >>NSERC president Mario Pinto presents a new vision for innovation and R&D in Canada. The president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (NSERC), Mario Pinto, notes proudly that he is a “fourth-generation chemist.” In 1896 his great-grandfather emigrated to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from the Portuguese colony of Goa and established the country’s first...
Read More >>David Strangway has been a prominent and influential voice in science policy Canada for more than four decades. A former president of three universities: Toronto, UBC and Quest in Squamish, BC, 81-year-old Strangway was also founding president of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and played a major role in designing the Canada Research Chairs...
Read More >>Wendy Cukier, vice-president research and innovation at Ryerson University, says that universities need to focus on the employability of their graduates. Ryerson University in Toronto is different from many Canadian universities. Founded in 1948 as the Ryerson Institute of Technology, it draws upon a two-century-old history of European polytechnics — schools that emphasized practical studies....
Read More >>In Alberta, ATB Financial is a household name and so is Todd Hirsch, its chief economist. What makes ATB Financial well known in the province is the wide range of services provided through almost 200 branches and more than 100 agencies, telephone and Internet banking and automated banking machines. With more than $37 billion in...
Read More >>Alan Bernstein, head of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, calls for greater involvement from the private sector to ensure our nation stays abreast of rapid advances in the technology revolution sweeping the globe. The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is widely considered the jewel in the crown of Canadian research bodies. Not because...
Read More >>Members of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) are demanding changes to how the government deals with “public science,” including reinstating government scientists’ right to speak freely about their research. Despite a genteel name and image, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) is actually a union representing...
Read More >>World-renowned mathematician and physicist Neil Turok, director of the Perimeter Institute for TheoreticalPhysics in Waterloo, Ont., discusses Canada’ s place in the emerging quantum age and the need for scientists to aspire to greatness. In October 2004 the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics opened its doors in Waterloo, Ont. When Research in Motion (now Blackberry)...
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