2021 Canadian federal election and science

#VoteScience is back on the job *(for the 2021 election which runs from August 15 – September *20*)* after springing into existence on August 8, 2019, in time for the 2019 Canadian federal election. (For more about #VoteScience, see the ‘Science policy’ subhead in my April 21, 2020 posting, scroll down to the ‘Science policy’ subhead where I trace the evolution of science policy initiatives and organizations in Canada from 2009 -2019.)

Since 2019, there seems to have been a subtle name change to Vote Science, keeping #VoteScience for Twitter.

The Vote Science home page has a handy diagram outlining the actions you can take such as, sending an email to your local candidate, taking a #VoteScience selfie and posting it, along with more options for actions.

I’m not sure how I stumbled across this but it’s a PDF of an August 24, 2021 Vote for Science announcement,

For a second time, a coalition of Canadian science organizations has launched a national #VoteScience campaign to send the message to political candidates and their parties that Canadians care about science. Originally launched in the 2019 federal election, #VoteScience is non-partisan and bilingual, and helps Canadians engage with their local candidates to support science and evidence-informed decision-making in Ottawa.

“Science doesn’t usually register on the political agenda, but the pandemic has put science in a unique spotlight. Canadians know more than they did 18 months ago about critical aspects of science, like epidemiology and vaccines,” said Rachael Maxwell, Executive Director of Evidence for Democracy. “Science has brought us solutions at a remarkable pace throughout the public health crisis, which is the kind of problem-solving we should be demanding more of from our government in tackling everything from economic recovery to climate action.”

Co-founder of Elect STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics], Monika Stolar [emphasis mine] (PhD) remarked that “while science and scientific data are inherently non-partisan, we need science discussions to be cross-partisan by encouraging more scientists to get involved in politics. Having scientific experts at the decision-making table can help steer discussions towards effective actions and policies that can better the lives of Canadians.”

As part of the 2019 campaign, Canadians sent more than 600 emails to candidates to ask where they stood on science. Importantly, support for #VoteScience didn’t only come from scientists. ….

You can also find the August 24, 2021 announcement on this webpage on the Evidence for Democracy website,

Monika Stolar was mentioned here in an August 16, 2021 posting about Elect STEM’s Periodically Political podcast series.

*Dates of 2021 Canadian federal election added August 30, 2021 at 0900 PDT.

*Election date changed from Sept. 22, 2021 to Sept. 20, 2021 on August 31, 2021.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *