Posts Tagged ‘Stephen Harper’

Gary Goodyear rouses passions: more on Canada’s National Research Council and its new commitment to business

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Gary Goodyear’s, Minister of State (Science and Technology), office in attempting to set the record straight has, inadvertently, roused even more passion in Phil Plait’s (Slate.com blogger) bosom and inspired me to examine more commentary about the situation regarding the NRC and its ‘new’ commitment to business.

Phil Plait in a May 22, 2013 followup to one 0f his recent postings (I have the details about Plait’s and other commentaries in my May 13, 2013 posting about the NRC’s recent declarations) responds to an email from Michele-Jamali Paquette, the director of communication for Goodyear (Note: A link has been removed),

I read the transcripts, and assuming they are accurate, let me be very clear: Yes, the literal word-for-word quotation I used was incorrect, and one point I made was technically and superficially in error. But the overall point—that this is a terrible move by the NRC and the conservative Canadian government, short-changing real science—still stands. And, in my opinion, Goodyear’s office is simply trying to spin what has become a PR problem.

…

I’ll note that in her email to me, Paquette quoted my own statement:

John MacDougal [sic], President of the NRC, literally said, “Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value”

Paquette took exception to my use of the word “literally,” emphasizing it in her email. (The link, in both her email and my original post, goes to the Toronto Sun story with the garbled quotation.) Apparently MacDougal did not literally say that. But the objection strikes me as political spin since the meaning of what MacDougal said at the press conference is just as I said it was in my original post.

As I pointed out in my first post: Science can and should be done for its own sake. It pays off in the end, but that’s not why we do it. To wit …

Paquette’s choice of what issues (the 2nd issue was Plait’s original description of the NRC as a funding agency) to dispute seem odd and picayune as they don’t have an impact on Plait’s main argument,

Unfortunately, despite these errors, the overall meaning remains the same: The NRC is moving away from basic science to support business better, and the statements by both Goodyear and MacDougal [sic] are cause for concern.

Plait goes on to restate his argument and provide a roundup of commentaries. It’s well worth reading for the roundup alone.  (One picayune comment from me, I wish Plait would notice that the head of Canada’s National Research Council’s name is spelled this way, John McDougall.)

Happily, Nassif Ghoussoub has also chimed in with a May 22, 2013 posting (on his Piece of Mind blog) regarding the online discussion (Note: Links have been removed),

The Canadian twitter world has been split in the last couple of days. … But then, you have the story of the Tories’ problem with science, be it defunding, muzzling, disbelieving, doubting, preventing, delegitimizing etc. The latter must have restarted with the incredible announcement about the National Research Council (NRC), presented as “Canada sells out science” in Slate, and as “Failure doesn’t come cheap” in Maclean’s. What went unnoticed was the fact that the restructuring turned out to be totally orthogonal to the recommendations of the Jenkins report about the NRC. Then came the latest Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) report, which showed that Canada’s expenditure on research and development has fallen from 16th out of 41 comparable countries in the year Stephen Harper became prime minister, to 23rd in 2011. Paul Wells seems to be racking up hits on his Maclean’s article,  “Stephen Harper and the knowledge economy: perfect strangers.”  But the story of the last 48 hours has been John Dupuis’s chronology of what he calls, “The Canadian war on science” and much more.

Yes, it’s another roundup but it’s complementary (albeit with one or two repetitions) since Plait does not seem all that familiar with the Canadian scene (I find it’s always valuable to have an outside perspective) and Nassif is a longtime insider.

John Dupuis’ May 20, 2013 posting (on his Confessions of a Science Librarian blog), mentioned by both Nassif and Plait, provides an extraordinary listing of stories ranging from 2006 through to 2013 whose headlines alone paint a very bleak picture of the practice of science in Canada,

As is occasionally my habit, I have pulled together a chronology of sorts. It is a chronology of all the various cuts, insults, muzzlings and cancellations that I’ve been able to dig up. Each of them represents a single shot in the Canadian Conservative war on science. It should be noted that not every item in this chronology, if taken in isolation, is necessarily the end of the world. It’s the accumulated evidence that is so damning.

As I’ve noted before, I am no friend of Stephen Harper and his Conservative government and many of their actions have been reprehensible and, at times, seem childishly spiteful but they do occasionally get something right. There was a serious infrastructure problem in Canada. Buildings dedicated to the pursuit of science were sadly aged and no longer appropriate for the use to which they were being put. Harper and his government have poured money into rebuilding infrastructure and for that they should be acknowledged.

As for what the Conservatives are attempting with this shift in direction for the National Research Council (NRC), which has been ongoing for at least two years as I noted in my May 13, 2013 posting, I believe they are attempting to rebalance the Canadian research enterprise.  It’s generally agreed that Canada historically has very poor levels of industrial research and development (R&D) and high levels of industrial R&D are considered, internationally, as key to a successful economy. (Richard Jones, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at the University of Sheffield, UK, discusses how a falling percentage of industrial R&D, taking place over decades,  is affecting the UK economy in a May 10, 2013 commentary on the University of  Sheffield SPERI [Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute] website.)

This NRC redirection when taken in conjunction with the recent StartUp visa programme (my May 20, 2013 posting discusses Minister of Immigration Jason Kenney’s recent recruitment tour in San Francisco [Silicon Valley]),  is designed to take Canada and Canadians into uncharted territory—the much desired place where we develop a viable industrial R&D sector and an innovative economy in action.

In having reviewed at least some of the commentary, there are a couple of questions left unasked about this international obsession with industrial R&D,

  • is a country’s economic health truly tied to industrial R&D or is this ‘received’ wisdom?
  • if industrial R&D is the key to economic health, what would be the best balance between it and the practice of basic science?

As for the Canadian situation, what might be some of the unintended consequences? It occurs to me that if scientists are rewarded for turning their research into commercially viable products they might be inclined to constrain access to materials. Understandable if the enterprise is purely private but the NRC redirection is aimed at bringing together academics and private enterprise in a scheme that seems a weird amalgam of both.

For example, cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) are not easily accessed if you’re a run-of-the-mill entrepreneur. I’ve had more than one back-channel request about how to purchase the material and it would seem that access is tightly controlled by the academics and publicly funded enterprise, in this case, a private business, who produce the material. (I’m speaking of the FPInnovations and Domtar comingling in CelluForce, a CNC production facility and much more. It would make a fascinating case study on how public monies are used to help finance private enterprises and their R&D efforts; the relationship between nongovernmental agencies (FPInnovations, which I believe was an NRC spinoff), various federal public funding agencies, and Domtar, a private enterprise; and the power dynamics between all the players including the lowly entrepreneur.

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Canadian federal government coughs up funds ($1.8M) for ecoEnergy project at the University of Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of  Canada, recently announced a series of 32 grants for Natural Resources Canada’s ecoENERGY Innovation Initiative. From the May 3, 2013 announcement,

To this end, on May 3, 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced support of more than $82 million through Natural Resources Canada’s ecoENERGY Innovation Initiative (ecoEII) for 55 innovative projects across Canada. Of these, 15 will be pre-commercialization demonstration projects to test the feasibility of various technologies, and 40 will be research and development projects to address knowledge gaps and bring technologies from the conceptual stage to the ready-to-be-tested stage of development.

For all projects, funding provided by NRCan will be allocated from the date of signature of contribution agreements until March 31, 2016, the project end date.

Since 2006, the Government of Canada has taken action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build a more sustainable environment through more than $10 billion in investments in green infrastructure, energy efficiency, clean energy technologies and the production of cleaner energy and cleaner fuels.

….

High Energy Density Energy Storage for Automotive Applications
Lead Proponent: University of Waterloo
Location: Waterloo, Ontario
Funding: $1,870,000

Today’s electric vehicles are limited by driving range and cost, both of which greatly depend on the electric vehicle’s battery pack. The objective of this project is to develop advanced energy materials based on nanotechnology concepts for high energy density storage.

There’s more about the announcement in a May 14, 2013 news item in the LabCanada.com Daily news,

Led by Professor Linda Nazar of the Faculty of Science and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Waterloo, the study will examine completely new approaches to materials and chemical components of batteries that could result in more powerful, and longer-lasting batteries for hybrid electric or electric cars.

“The funding from Natural Resources Canada allows us to expand our electrochemical energy storage laboratory here at Waterloo to explore beyond lithium-ion batteries using nanotechnology and completely different approaches to battery chemistry,” said Professor Nazar, a Canada Research Chair in Solid State Energy Materials. “This research is high-risk, but it has the potential to create batteries with much greater storage capacity and at lower costs.”

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) is providing $1.8 million over four years to Professor Nazar for her work titled High Energy Density Storage for Automotive Applications.  Partnerships on the project include Hydro-Québec, the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning, and BASF (SE).

…

For anyone who’s interested in Natural Resources Canada’s ecoENERGY Innovation Initiative (ecoEII), here’s the website.

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Canadian government withdraws from UN treaty, recycles old news, and undergoes a ‘muzzled’ science probe

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Every once in a while, there’s a slew of announcements that seem to reveal a pattern of sorts with regard to political doings. In this case, I’m looking at three announcements about recent moves by the  Canadian Conservative government and which seem, to me, curiously interlinked.

First there was the announcement (CBC Mar. 27, 2013 news item) that Canada is withdrawing from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, in those Countries Experiencing Severe Drought and/or Desertification (to become the only country in the world not party to it) and its annual commitment of $350,000. The CBC Mar. 28, 2013 news item provided more detail,

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said less than one-fifth of the $350,000 Canada contributes to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification goes to programming.

“This particular organization spends less than 20 per cent — 18 per cent — of the funds that we send it are actually spent on programming, the rest goes to various bureaucratic measures.That’s not an effective way to spend taxpayers’ money,” Harper told MPs during question period Thursday.

…

The Canadian Press reported Wednesday [Mar. 27, 2013?] the UN secretariat that administers the program was unaware of Canada’s decision until contacted by its reporter.

A spokesperson for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) [emphasis mine] told CBC News the head of the secretariat was informed of the decision on Monday [Mar. 25, 2013?], and written confirmation was delivered to the UN Secretary General’s office in New York the same day.

But a UN official in Bonn told CBC News that Canada notified the UN about its withdrawal “informally last week by telephone” and “this is not considered proper notification… or protocol.”

The proper protocol is to formally write to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in New York and formally provide a notice that Canada is withdrawing from the treaty.

Paul Heinbecker, a former Canadian ambassador to the UN and chief foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, wrote an Apr. 1, 2013 essay for the Globe and Mail about some recent history between Canada and the UN, this latest withdrawal, and its implications (Note: A link has been removed),

Following the Harper government’s failure in 2010 to win a Canadian seat on the UN Security Council, its disregard of the UN gave way to disdain. Ottawa’s rare appearances at the UN have tended to stress what it regards as Canada’s uniquely “principled” foreign policy, bringing to mind U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s characterization of Canadian foreign policy in the fifties as “the stern voice of the daughter of God,” and cementing Canada’s long-standing reputation as global mother-in-law.

Because of the links between drought, land degradation, desertification and climate change, withdrawal from the Desertification Convention comes with potentially significant costs. …

Heinbecker develops this line of thought by noting that the withdrawal makes it seem that Canada does not care about climate change (let’s not forget the withdrawal from Kyoto protocol, the UN Convention on Climate Change, a UN initiative from which the Canadian Conservative government withdrew in 2011) and noting this,

Given that the government of Alberta as well as ministers and departments in Ottawa have been going to considerable effort and expense to argue in the U.S. that Canada does care, it is self-harming to hand America’s Keystone opponents a stick to beat the pipeline with.

Also, because the locus of most of the devastation arising from desertification is in Africa, walking away from a treaty whose creation was led by the Mulroney and Chrétien governments reinforces the impression that Ottawa no longer cares about Africa. It is an impression that this government also went to some trouble and expense to try to reverse. Further, because the worst destruction from desertification is happening in the Sahara region, abandoning the treaty sends a mixed signal about the security issues at stake in Mali and the Sahel, and about Canadian mining interests there as well.

Thankfully, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the conservative government are ensuring that our annual $350,000 contribution, after 2014, will no be longer wasted on what they termed a ‘talkfest’. To combat this negative impression being made on the rest of the world, there’s been an announcement (Azonano Apr. 6, 2013 news item) recycling some old government news about monies for the second phase of the Canadian International Food Security Research Fund (CIFSRF),

 ”The Harper Government is committed to increasing food security to those most in need as part of Canada’s effective international assistance through investing in scientific research and innovation,” said Parliamentary Secretary Brown [Lois Brown]. “Canadian universities, businesses, and NGOs [nongovernmental organizations]  have expertise that they can share with the world. Together, we can use innovation to put an end to global hunger.”

The Canadian International Food Security Research Fund is a joint initiative between the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). [emphases mine] It supports innovative research partnerships between Canadian and developing-country researchers to respond to immediate food needs while increasing access to quality, nutritious food over the long term. Phase 2 will focus on connecting promising research results to public and private sector organizations that can get them to end users on a larger scale.

“IDRC and CIDA have a long history of supporting Canada’s leadership in agricultural research and innovation for development,” said Jean Lebel, Acting President of IDRC. “CIFSRF demonstrates our mutual commitment to achieving sustainable results that put Canada’s considerable experience in agricultural and nutrition science to work globally to ensure farmers have access to new technologies and specialized expertise to keep pace with the growing demand for food.  Through CIFSRF, we are also expanding Canada’s scientific base and contributing to the country’s science and technology strategy.”

The Canadian International Food Security Research Fund, first launched in 2009, currently supports 19 projects, bringing together some of the best researchers from 11 Canadian and 26 developing-country organizations, as well as partners from scientific, private sector and civil society organizations, to develop innovative solutions to improve global food security.

The part where it got really interesting for me was the April 4, 2013 article by Rick Westhead for  star.com about the funds some of which are bound for the University of Guelph as per its Apr. 5, 2013 news release about the matter. Not to be too confusing but the following excerpt is from the April 4, 2013 Westhead article,

Manish Raizada, a University of Guelph agriculture professor, is changing lives in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka by showing farmers how to boost crop yields with weeding and planting techniques and by adding new crops.

Other Canadian researchers are bolstering Ethiopia’s agriculture sector, introducing farmers to rhizobia, a bacteria that naturally adds nitrogen to the soil and helped Saskatchewan, nearly a century ago, become a leading soybean exporter.

Then there are Canadian-led efforts in India that use nanotechnology to improve the lifespan of mangoes, efforts that should help improve livelihoods in a country where half of children under five are malnourished. [In fact, this an India, Sri Lanka, and Canada effort which I mentioned in a June 21, 2012 posting and again in a Nov. 1, 2012 posting.]

…

For instance, McGurk [Dr. Stephen McGurk, IDRC director of agriculture programmes] said one government-funded project is helping lengthen the shelf life of mangoes by as much as two weeks by introducing a nanoparticle-based coating that prevents them from ripening as fast.

“That way they’re attractive when they get to market, not looking like pulp,” McGurk said. “That science, once it has been tried in India can be equally applied to fruits here like plums or raspberries.”

Interestingly, McGurk gives this quote to Westhead,

“In no way would Canadian scientists in the agriculture sector say they are muzzled,” said Stephen McGurk, director of IDRC’s agriculture programs. [emphasis mine] “We’re engaged outside our borders and doing research now that’s valuable to Canadians but has to prove its salt somewhere else first.”

What makes McGurk an interesting spokesperson regarding ‘muzzles and Canadian scientists’ is that he  is an economist and a sinologist who prior to his latest appointment as IDRC director of agriculture programmes seems to have lived in Asia for the last 12 years and given this career description is likely from the US originally (from the Oct. 9, 2012 IDRC announcement of McGurk’s appointment),

Stephen McGurk is a Sinologist and economist who has spent more than two decades studying Asia’s rural development.Since 2006, he has been Director of IDRC’s Regional Office for South Asia and China in New Delhi (now the Asia Regional Office). From 2000 to 2006, he led IDRC’s office in Singapore.

Before joining IDRC, McGurk worked with the Ford Foundation in Beijing, where he was responsible for its economic security program in China. He has also taught at the University of California and worked with the World Bank on investments in China’s rural development. McGurk has a PhD from Stanford University’s [California] Food Research Institute.

I am curious as to how Dr. McGurk comes by his information about Canadian government agricultural scientists and their views on muzzles or lack thereof.

In looking at all of these bits of information, the desertification treaty withdrawal seems odd, almost as if it were designed to divert attention from something else the Conservative government is doing. Or, perhaps it’s an example of meanspirited shortsightedness something this government has been accused of before.

The recycled news item seems like it might not be as helpful as one would hope, although governments of all stripes are known to announce monies for projects that have been previously announced making it seem that a great deal more money is being dispersed than is the case. These announcements are always excellent for distraction but one would think the government would be eager to emphasize funding for projects in African countries rather than Asian countries given the conservatives’ current public relations problems in that region, as noted by Heinbecker.

As for McGurk’s quote about muzzles and agricultural scientists, while it does seem a bit ‘facey’ of him, he, at least, is not afraid to say something (although it’s not clear why he was asked about the muzzle since the news release was strictly about funding). For more about the ‘muzzles’,  there’s this excerpt from the Apr. 2, 2013 Canadian Press news item found at macleans.ca on campus,

Federal policies that restrict what government scientists can say publicly about their work are about to be put under the microscope.

Federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault has agreed to investigate how government communications rules on taxpayer-funded science impact public access to information.

Legault is responding to a detailed complaint lodged by the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria and the ethics advocacy group Democracy Watch.

Their lengthy report — “Muzzling Civil Servants: A Threat to Democracy?” — laid out repeated examples of taxpayer-funded science being suppressed or limited to pre-packaged media lines across six different government departments and agencies.

…

Chris Tollefson, the executive director of UVic’s law centre, said their research into suppressed science revealed both the wide scope of the practice and that it “represents a significant departure” in government practice over the last five to seven years.

…Gary Goodyear, the minister of state for science and technology, was not available Monday to defend Conservative practices. His office provided an email stating government scientists “are readily available to share their research with the media and the public.”

“Last year, Environment Canada participated in more than 1,300 media interviews, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada issued nearly 1,000 scientific publications, and Natural Resources Canada published nearly 500 studies,” said the statement.

It came the same day that the Globe and Mail reported that the National Research Council declined to make available its lead engineer for a front page story on research into truck safety. [emphases mine]

“Great spin — but missing the point,” Democracy Watch’s Duff Conacher said of the government response.

“It’s not the number of documents, it’s what percentage of documents are being released.”

Truck safety? That seems an odd topic for which to suppress or restrict any discussion with the lead engineer. But then, why withdraw from a treaty to save $350,000? As for the recycled announcement about funding for food and agriculture projects in Asia when you have substantive perception issues regarding  Africa and having someone who hasn’t lived in the country for 12 years defending your policies, the whole thing seems rather inept.

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Canada’s York University and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

York University (Ontario, Canada) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation according to a Nov. 10, 2012 article in The Hindu Business Line,

The agreement will facilitate the two partners to pursue collaborative defence research in the areas of advanced materials, nanotechnology, life sciences, bio-informatics, chemical and biological defence, sensors, and others. Both sides have planned a number of joint projects in the time to come.

The Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and Chief of the Defence Organisation, V.K. Saraswat, and Robert Haché, Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, signed the pact during the visit of the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in New Delhi.

Elsewhere in the article, York University is described as a research centre for Canada’s Dept. of National Defence specializing in chemical and biological defence, counter-terrorism, and something called ‘soldier as a system’ (I believe it has something to do with wearable computing).  Interestingly, I haven’t found any information about this MOU on the York University website or a federal government website. As well, I wasn’t able to find any information about York University’s DRDC research centre status and/or its defence research specialties. All of the information I’ve found has been on Indian news websites.

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Ottawa science protest (Death of Evidence rally) inspired by UK Science for the Future funeral

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

9 am PST (12 noon EST) today (July 10, 2012), scientists in Ottawa are staging a mock funeral for a ‘Death of Evidence’ protest. (ETA July 10, 2012 10:4e am PST, here’s a link to the CBC [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation] liveblog of the rally.) Natalie Stechyson wrote a July 8, 2012 article for the Ottawa Citizen describing the proposed event,

A funeral procession — complete with a coffin, black-clad mourners and a scythe-wielding grim reaper — will make its way to Parliament Hill Tuesday as hundreds of scientists from across Canada rally in protest of federal science cuts.

Members of Canada’s scientific community are staging the rally to mourn the “death of evidence” in what the rally’s organizers say is the federal government’s war on science.

…

The cuts, according to the organizers’ media release, are being imposed on critical research programs in Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the National Research Council of Canada, Statistics Canada, through the closure of Experimental Lakes Area, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory and the First Nations Statistical Institute, and through the elimination of the National Science Adviser and National Round Table on Environment and Economy.

It would be easy to say that scientists are upset because the cuts are resulting job losses, but the issues are much more fundamental than that, Findlay [co-organizer Scott Findlay, associate professor of biology and former director the University of Ottawa's Institute of the Environment]  said.

US environment correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg wrote a July 9, 2012 blog posting in the UK’s Guardian newspaper noting (Note: I have removed some links),

Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, faces a widening revolt by the country’s leading scientists against sweeping cuts to government research labs and broadly pro-industry policies.

The scientists plan to march through Ottawa in white lab coats on Tuesday in the second big protest in a month against the Harper government’s science and environmental agenda.

Harper is accused of pushing through a slew of policies weakening or abolishing environmental protections – with an aim of expanding development of natural resources such as the Alberta tar sands.

His government is also accused of jeopardising Canada’s scientific reputation by shutting down the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA), a research station that produced critical evidence to help stop acid rain.

…

The prime minister’s office refused to comment on the protests or the budget cuts. The environment minister, Peter Kent, also declined to respond.

…

… the cuts that seem to have galvanised the protests on Tuesday was the government’s decision to shut down the Experimental Lakes Area in March 2013.

…

Since the decision first trickled out – as a government leak – the Harper government has faced widening criticism in Canadian media.

Scientists say the closure, due in March 2013, would rob researchers of a rare chance to conduct science on a real-life scale – not just in a laboratory flask, said Smol [Prof John Smol, a freshwater lake biologist at Queen's University in Kingston].

Over the years, it has provided critical evidence on the causes of acid rain, and the effects on fish and their habitats of dumping fertilisers, detergents, or mercury.

“Any water quality problem we have on the planet, the research started out there,” Smol said. “I think we need that information to get solid policy to deal with our environmental problems.”

(I have mentioned the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) previously in a June 12, 2012 posting and in a May 3, 2012 posting.)

If you are moved to join this protest but can’t attend the Ottawa event, you can participate virtually at the Death of Evidence website by joining in a Virtual Candlelight Vigil,

Use your cell phone or a digital camera to take photo of you holding a candle. If possible, incorporate a science-related tool or symbol in your photo (calculator, test tube, graduated cylinder, periodic table, magnifying glass, compass, goggles, etc).

You can upload that photo to the Candlelight Vigil: Death of Evidence group on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/solidaritydoe/ or email it to vigil@deathofevidence.ca. We will post those photos on the website at www.deathofevidence.ca and will send a message with all of these photos to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The theatrical elements of the Death of Evidence rally seem to have been inspired by a May 15, 2012 protest held in London, England (from the May 15, 2012 posting by Adam Smith for the UK Guardian newspaper),

More than 100 scientists took part in a mock Victorian funeral procession in Westminster on Tuesday morning to protest against a science funding policy they claim “puts the future of British science in mortal danger”.

The scientists staged a rally outside parliament before delivering a petition in a coffin to Downing Street. Around 25 scientists also met their MPs to ask them to sign an early day motion about their concerns.

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Mark your calendar for Oct. 2, 2011 and the WAVE Conference

Friday, October 15th, 2010

Shortly after Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s announcement of $2M in funding (noted in my Oct. 11, 2010 posting) for ACAMP, or the Alberta Centre for Advanced Microsystems and Nanotechnology Products as it’s known more formally,  the organization announced a conference for 2011. From the Oct. 12, 2010 news item on Nanowerk,

Products incoporating micro and nano technology, play a powerful role in reducing cost and integrating new functionality for the world market. On Oct 2nd 2011, a three day global gathering of stakeholders bent on taking state of the art products incorporating MNT (Micro & Nano Technology) to market will be converge on Lake Louise.

This business to business event, the WAVE2011 conference and exhibition theme is bringing products to market incorporating MNT. Over 125 exhibitors will demonstrate and present new technologies to an international audience.

“This three day event brings together the stakeholders involved in the value chain from materials supply through end product, including distributors and sales representatives, manufacturers, materials producers, equipment suppliers and investors.” explained Ken Brizel, CEO of ACAMP, “The event will focus on five primary market area’s Cleantech, Health & Medical, Agriculture & Forestry, Conventional Energy, Consumer & Commercial, with a global perspective.”

I realize it’s early days yet but if ACAMP’s upcoming WAVE conference interests you, the website can be found here.

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University of Alberta, research money, nanotechnology, and those recent Chairs of Excellence

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

While I’m well aware of their work in nanotechnology research, I did not realize that the University of Alberta was becoming “one of Canada’s powerhouse  research centres.” Here’s more from the Globe & Mail article by Josh Wingrove,

It started last week, with Industry Minister Tony Clement flying in, making a joke about football, announcing $500,000 in funding for nanotechnology research, and promptly leaving. [mentioned in my Aug. 17, 2010 posting]

A week later, a prestigious gathering of 50 delegates from leading Chinese and Canadian research institutions arrived, as well as an announcement Thursday of $200-million in federal research money.

It would be a busy two weeks for any school. But the delegates didn’t attend McGill University, the University of Toronto or the University of British Columbia, typically regarded as Canada’s top-ranked institutions.

Instead, they came to Edmonton’s University of Alberta, which has quickly become one of Canada’s powerhouse research centres. The U of A ranks second in total research funding, behind only U of T and up from fifth in 2006. This year, the U of A will spend $514-million on research, more than double its total from a decade ago.

The university has decided to spend more on research at a time when other departments on campus are experiencing budget cutbacks.

“From a societal point of view of course, research is increasingly conducted as applied research. It’s meant to solve problems,” she [Britta Baron, vice-provost] said. “The more selfish answer from the point of view of the individual university is your prestige, your ranking, depends mostly on the quality of your research. If you want to push yourself up, you need to invest in your research.”

The U of A is home to four of the nation’s 19 Canada Excellence Chairs announced three months ago, more than any other university. [emphasis mine]

I did post about the Canada Excellence Chairs May 20, 2010 when they were first announced and was recently alerted (thanks to Joel Burford of Alberta Innovates Technology Futures) to a youtube interview with one of the new U of A Canada Excellence Chairs, Thomas Thundat. His area of interest is  oil sands molecular engineering,

I’m not really sure what to make of all this other than the fact that competition amongst the universities in Canada seems to be heating up. I recall there was some outcry after a 2009 article by Paul Wells for MacLean’s where representatives from the ‘big five’ Canadian universities claimed they should get the lion’s share of funding for science research and postgraduates while Canada’s other universities should focus on undergraduate education. About 10 days later the other universities replied in an article by Cathy Gulli for MacLean’s. (Rob Annan at Don’t leave Canada behind commented on the controversy here and here.)

I would imagine these latest developments are a matter of some satisfaction for the folks at the U of A. It’ll be interesting to see how this all shakes out especially if there should be a federal election. Let’s not forget that Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper is from Alberta.

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New nano job board; Canadian science and technology strategy inferred by climate debate and 2010 federal budget?

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Happy job hunting! Nanowerk has announced a new initiative (from the announcement),

Nanowerk, the leading information provider for all areas of nanotechnologies, today added to its nanotechnology information portal a new free job posting service.

The new application, called nanoJOBS, is available immediately on the Nanowerk website.

By posting their job openings on Nanowerk’s new nanoJOBS service, employers will reach a large audience in the areas of nanotechnologies, chemistry, physics, material sciences & engineering, medical technologies & pharmaceuticals, electronics, laboratory equipment, and all sectors involving state-of-the-art process technologies.

Like all other Nanowerk databases and directories, the nanoJOBS job postings are freely accessible. Employers need to register once and, in order to assure a high level of quality, their postings will be validated and approved by a Nanowerk administrator.

On other fronts, I mentioned climate science yesterday (March 22, 2010) in the context of public perception and how slow they can be to change.  Today I noticed a posting by Dave at The Black Hole blog which comes at the issue from a different angle. In the context of discussing science outreach in the UK, Dave describes two different lectures (pro and con) on climate change held at Cambridge. With some reluctance, Dave admits that the speaker (Nigel Lawson) on the ‘con’ side gave a better presentation and the ‘pro’ questioners at Lawson’s session were shrill and ill-considered (my words for the behaviour). As for Dave’s advice on how to ask politicians questions,

If you’re asking a politician a question, make it a yes or no question – people like Nigel Lawson are experts at saying what they want to say no matter what you ask, try boxing them in with logic and simplicity.

At the end of his post, Dave points to a March 18, 2010 article on Canadian climate science, the government’s attitude to it, and the 2010 federal budget in the Guardian newspaper. Titled Canadian government ‘hiding truth about climate change’, report claims by Stephen Leahy, the article notes that the Canadian federal 2010 budget did not allocate a single cent to climate change science with the consequence that the programmes will run out of money in early 2011. The Climate Action Network had obviously realized which way the wind was blowing as this nongovernmental organization released a report titled Troubling Evidence: The Harper Government’s Approach to Climate Science Research in Canada a few days after the budget was announced. From the Guardian article,

Climate change is not an abstract concept. It already results in the deaths of 300,000 people a year, virtually all in the world’s poorest countries. Some 325 million people are being seriously affected, with economic losses averaging 125 billion dollars a year, according to “The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis”, the first detailed look at climate change and the human impacts.

…

Canadians are unlikely to know any of this. [emphasis mine]

“Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 percent,” says internal government documents obtained by Climate Action Network.

The dramatic decline results from a 2007 Harper government-imposed prohibition on government scientists speaking to reporters. Canadian scientists have told IPS they required permission from the prime minister’s communications office to comment on their own studies made public in scientific journals and reports.

If permission is granted, it requires written questions submitted in advance and often replies by scientists have to go through a vetting process. Within six months, reporters stopped calling and media coverage declined, the leaked report noted.

While climate experts were being muzzled, known climate change deniers were put in key positions on scientific funding bodies says Saul. The report documents three appointments and their public statements that climate change is a myth or exaggerated.

(One brief aside: the suggestion elsewhere  in the article that Maxime Bernier, former External Affairs minister, might one day step into the Prime Minister’s Office suggests that the reporter is not very familiar with Canadian politics. Also, he fails to note Harper’s roots in Alberta.) I’ve written previously about the 2007 muzzle which I believe sent a chill throughout the entire federal science community not just the scientists working for Environment Canada.

Before making some inferences about science and technology strategy/policy in Canada I need to offer some context. There is a stunning indifference to science policy amongst Canada’s political parties (I have more about that and links here). The only party which evinces an official strategy is the Conservative Party currently in office. The strategy occupies four bullet points in a very tightly written party platform. None of the other federal parties offers any science policy information on their websites. (Note: Marc Garneau of the Liberals has written up a document on his own initiative. You can find the links here.)

The Conservative government has consistently sent out messages about its attitude to science. If it makes money, it is good;  not unusual, as it is part of an international shift towards monetizing science research as quickly as possible. The Canadian difference is that there is no clear direction, i.e. no national science policy. (The prestigious international science journal, Nature,  published an editorial about the situation, which I mentioned here.)

The Canadian government does not have a chief science advisor (that office was cancelled in 2006 2008 [Corrected Mar.24.10 as per Wikipedia entry thanks to Shewonk for the date and do read her blog for another take on what she calls the anti-science attitude in Canada]) and replaced the position with a new advisory board reporting to the Minister of Industry called the  Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC ).

In the 2010 budget, the government announced that 245 positions on various boards would be cut for a saving of approximately $1M with no mention made in the news report as to which boards would suffer cuts or how the decisions would be made as to which positions would be lost due to attrition. (Given that STIC has 17 members on its board, I would imagine that there is some fat to be lost. However, it’s been my experience that the fat gets retained while the meat is discarded.)

In the 2009 budget, Genome Canada was ignored and the tri-council funding agencies suffered cuts. This year some money has been restored to the tri-council and Genome Canada and some science agencies such as TRIUMF (nuclear research facility at the University of British Columbia) have enjoyed substantive new funding while climate scientists have been thoroughly ignored.

The consistent messages to be derived are (1) that science will be somewhat supported for a time and (2) science that we (Conservatives) don’t approve of will be strangled (not unusual and not confined to the Canadian situation). Other than a few distinct areas such as climate change, drug addiction (Insite facility in Vancouver), and, apparently, Genomic research, there is no clear understanding as to which research is acceptable. Presumably there is interest in research where investments will show profit but if that were the case, why no clear focus on emerging technologies such as (I use this example only because I’m somewhat familiar with the subject area) nanotechnology? In fact, I’d like a clear focus, let’s call it a policy, on anything scientific.

If one is of Machiavellian inclinations, one might suspect a strategy of deliberate confusion as the government keeps the science community off-balance (it’s a guessing game as to which agency/group(s) will lose in the 2011 budget), confused (no science policy/direction) and from banding together (some groups did very well in the 2010 budget and have no incentive to complain as they have funding for the next 5 years).

It’s easy to blame the Conservative government currently in power but I think that Canadian scientists should bear some of the burden. There is very little substantive outreach or attempt to communicate to politicians or the public in an attempt to put science policy forward in any kind of national debate. Where is the Canadian equivalent to a Royal Society in the UK or the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the US?

In the meantime, I just got a notice that Carl Weiman (currently a professor at the University of British Columbia) has been nominated for an appointment as Associate Director of Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Weiman has accepted the nomination. From the news release,

Wieman, a 2001 Nobel Laureate joined UBC’s Faculty of Science in 2007 as professor of Physics and Director of the $12 million Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) to transform the teaching of science at UBC and elsewhere. He will take an unpaid leave of absence from the university upon confirmation of his appointment by the US Senate.

Wieman came to UBC from the University of Colorado, where he won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics and where he maintains a part-time appointment to head up an education project similar to the CWSEI.

Interesting, non?

Before I sign off, do read Rob Annan’s latest, scathingly funny/sad roundup and analysis of responses to the federal 2010 budget now that the dust is starting to settle.

Tomorrow: my interview with Peter Julian, the NDP member of Parliament who has tabled Canada’s first nanotechnology bill.

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Posted in nanotechnology, regulation, science communication, science policy | 2 Comments »

Other responses to the nanotechnologies and food report by UK House of Lords Committee; The Economist weighs in on Canada’s prorogued parliament; Typographic amusement

Friday, January 8th, 2010

After posting my responses to the report (House of Lords Committee on Science, Technology and Industry: Nanotechnologies and food) late yesterday, it’s interesting to see what other people are saying. As per the headlines, most of the focus has been on the food industry’s secrecy about its nanotechnology research. Here are a couple samples at BBC News and at Nanowerk. I was a little surprised to see that Andrew Maynard extolled the two sections (regulation and communication) that I thought were the weakest.  Andrew’s review is here. He also deconstructs a ‘tabloid science’ article about the report in the UK’s Daily Mail here to discover that there’s some good reporting hidden after the headlines.

I don’t usually comment on the doings of the Canadian Parliament and I’m not breaking with my own tradition since Stephen Harper, for no apparent reason, has prorogued parliament until March 2010. I gather I’m not the only one who’s somewhat upset, The Econ0mist has been scathing in its criticism of the move as per this article at CBC News and at least one poll indicates that the Canadian populace is not amused.

For a complete change of pace (and thanks to an article by Fast Company’s Cliff Kuang), I’m going to direct you to a website where you can discover which typeface best expresses your personality,

What Type are You? (Password: Character)

Typefaces are fascinating to me and this sit is a lot of fun if you share the interest. You might want to read Cliff Kuang’s article first so the analyst doesn’t surprise you. Also, I must confess it took me a few too many minutes to figure out what to do and the analyst made sure I was aware of it in a most amusing fashion.

Happy weekend!

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Posted in nanotechnology | 2 Comments »