A message from CAN President Freda Miller
Dear members,
The Honourable Kirsty Duncan, Minister of Science, announced on June 13th the launch of a review of federal support for fundamental science. It is very important that the voice of scientists be heard during this review, and I therefore strongly encourage you to participate. You can do so by visiting the review website, here: http://sciencereview.ca/
I had a chance to meet Minister Duncan a few days before the launch as she gave an address at the SickKids Center for Brain and Mental Health Advocacy Day, and toured my lab. We had a very interesting and positive conversation – As you know Minister Duncan is a scientist herself, and her government is keen to stabilize the research funding infrastructure so we can build again, and bring Canada back to its leadership role in University research and development.
During our conversation, Minister Duncan emphasized that she wanted as much input as possible from individual scientists about how we could better manage science in this country. Now is the best time to give our input, and to galvanize our community to provide our own stories and thoughts, with as much evidence-based data and/or real science stories as we can put together, so please take the time to participate.
Visit the Science Review website and contribute here: http://sciencereview.ca/
We will also be surveying CAN members this summer about Science funding in Canada, and sending the results of this survey to the Minister, so we encourage you to send us a copy of your letters, if you would like us to include them in our report. Please send a copy to the chair of the CAN Advocacy Committee, Katalin Toth, at advocacy@can-acn.org.
Finally, I would also encourage every one of you to renew your membership in the Association today, if you have not done so yet this year. We are working hard to have the voice of neuroscientists in Canada heard, and having a large membership base will ensure our survey is representative and will increase the strength of our voice, as there is strength in numbers.
Best regards
Freda Miller
President of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience
More info:
Read an interesting article about the review and the panel by the Globe and Mail’s Ivan Semeniuk: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/panel-to-review-federal-funding-for-university-based-scientific-research/article30410407/,
Official press release by the government of Canada announcing the launch: http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=1083789
