PERSPECTIVES (Volume I, number 5) (fwd)

[Anne Nothof]

THE FOLLOWING MIGHT BE OF INTEREST TO CANDRAMA SUBSCRIBERS AND ACTR/ARTC
MEMBERS.
ANNE NOTHOF
TREASURER, ACTR/ARTC


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 97 21:27:16 MDT
From: Alvin Finkel <alvinf at cs.athabascau.ca>
To: faculty at cs.athabascau.ca
Subject: PERSPECTIVES (Volume I, number 5) (fwd)

Forwarded message:
> From hssfc.ca!fedcan Mon Jul  7 14:36:02 1997
> Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 17:32:26 -0300 (ADT)
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>         easpevig at acs.ryerson.ca, badone at mcmaster.ca,
>         therese at bosshog.arts.uwo.ca, berkok-u. at rmc.ca,
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>         arpiham at alcor.concordia.ca, higginsms at aol.com, bryan.hillis at uregina.c
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>         nargess.kayhani at msvu.ca, elaine_keillor at carleton.ca,
>         kkrug at spartan.ac.brocku.ca, kubicek at arts.ubc.ca,
>         mlarsen at shark.stmarys.ca, jbmlmac at ns.sympatico.ca,
>         maclachlan at hg.uleth.ca, bmassam at yorku.ca, jmather at mach2.wlu.ca,
>         maticka at uwindsor.ca, mccormick at hg.uleth.ca, mckim at stthomasu.ca,
>         michelmann at skyway.usask.ca, miller at skyfox.usask.ca,
>         millgate at chass.utoronto.ca, mitchell at acs.ucalgary.ca,
>         stevem at einstein.unipissing.ca, owenm at duke.usask.ca,
>         janet at artsci.utoronto.ca, martha.piper at ualberta.ca, plou at unb.ca,
>         apowers at ace.acadiau.ca, gpuglies at credit.erin.utoronto.ca,
>         apurdy at julian.uwo.ca, draynor at acadvm1.uottawa.ca,
>         mrandall at bosshog.arts.uwo.ca, mratclif at bosshog.arts.uwo.ca,
>         reimer at vax2.concordia.ca, rosenber at post.queensu.ca,
>         georges_sioui at tansi.sifc.edu, jsivell at spartan.ac.brocku.ca,
>         rsmith at mach2.wlu.ca, dsmith at upei.ca, rspielma at nickel.laurentian.ca,
>         stevens at io.uwinnipeg.ca, thomas at cc.umanitoba.ca,
>         vorst2 at ccm.umanitoba.ca, brownep at comnet.ca, jwelsh at acs.ryerson.ca,


>         michael.welton at msvu.ca, wern at morgan.ucs.mun.ca, awesthue at mach1.wlu.ca
,
>         zeytino at mcmaster.ca
> From: HSSFC Secretariat <fedcan at hssfc.ca>
> Subject: PERSPECTIVES (Volume I, number 5)


I thought that some of you  might be interested in the change at the top
that has fortunately occurred at SSHRC 2.5 years before we had a right
to expect it would. HSSFC's role in this alone makes them worth the tiny
amount of money AU pays to be a member.
Alvin

>
> PERSPECTIVES
> An electronic newsletter on research and science policy.  A pilot project of
> the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada.
>
> PERSPECTIVES will appear at regular intervals throughout the year and will
> be posted on the Federation web site:
> http://www.hssfc.ca/Pub/PublicationsEng.html.  Please address your comments
> and suggestions to Marcel Lauzi=E8re, Executive Director of the Federation=
>  at:
> lauziere at hssfc.ca.
>
> PERSPECTIVES (Volume I, Number 5)
>
> Editor: Wayne Kondro
>
> Contents: =20
>
> i) SSHRC Presidency
> ii)     Granting Council Budgets
> iii)    The Crossroads Project
> iv)     Canada Foundation for Innovation=09
> v) Other priorities
>
> i) UNIVERSITY OF MONTREAL SOCIOLOGIST TO BE APPOINTED TO SSHRC PRESIDENCY
> Renaud to be asked to broaden Council links to society
>
> Universit=E9 de Montr=E9al sociologist Dr. Marc Renaud will be appointed
> president of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council early this
> week, government sources say.
>
> In assuming the reins, Renaud may have the luxury of overseeing a Council
> with brighter financial prospects as Industry Minister John Manley, in an
> interview with "Perspectives", says his "personal priority" in the Liberal's
> new four-year mandate is to bolster granting council budgets.
>
> Renaud emerged from the selection procedure as the "hands-down" choice to
> succeed Dr. Lynn Penrod and scaled the final hurdle of formal cabinet
> approval late last week.  He'll be formally announced as the president this
> week and is expected to assume the post in early August.
>
> "He was easily the best choice, the only choice," says one official. "His
> knowledge of the issues, his ideas, his imagination, his drive ...all shone
> through. ..."=20
>
> "He's a crackerjack," adds a senior Liberal. =20
>
> Renaud, whose accomplishments include the authorship of seven books and over
> 50 articles on the social dimensions of health, fills a vacancy created
> earlier this year when Penrod stepped aside midway through her five-year=
>  term.
>
> Until recently, Renaud was also president of the Conseil qu=E9b=E9cois de la
> recherche sociale and vice president of the Canadian Institute for Advanced
> Research (CIAR). He also serves as president of the International Health
> Policy Association and was a founding director of the Groupe de recherche
> sur les aspects sociaux de la pr=E9vention. A fellow of the Royal Society of
> Canada, Renaud was recently a member of the Liberal's blue-ribbon National
> Forum on Health, whose February/1997 report included a call for the
> expansion of medicare to encompass pharmaceuticals and home care.=20
>
> ii) GRANTING COUNCIL BUDGETS
>
> In sketching Liberal priorities for the forthcoming term of office, Manley
> also noted he and newly-appointed Secretary of State (Science, R&D) Dr. Ron
> Duhamel --who's unavailable for interviews until after being fully briefed
> on the science file, "sometime towards the end of July"-- are hopeful
> Ottawa's financial condition will allow for the restoration of granting
> council budgets to at least the levels they were at before being subjected
> to an average 14%/three-year cut in the 1995 federal budget exercise.
>
> Restoration of council budgets is "my personal priority in terms of where I
> think additional funds need to be allocated," Manley said. "Good projects
> are simply not making the cut, not because of the quality, but simply
> because there are inadequate resources."
>
> But Manley cautioned it won't be possible to determine whether the councils
> can expect actual relief in the next federal budget until after Finance
> minister Paul Martin launches the budget exercise this October.
>
> Manley also noted Ottawa has no plans to re-assess the relative share of the
> overall council pie that's allocated to SSHRC, NSERC and MRC respectively.
> "First of all, they are separated among portfolios. Only two of them are in
> mine, MRC being in health. So that's an immediate difficulty in the way our
> system works, to allocate across that threshold. Secondly, between NSERC and
> SSHRC, I think both of them are in need of additional funds."
>
> iii) THE CROSSROADS PROJECT
>
> With government spending on new initiatives constrained to re-allocations
> from existing envelopes of money, Manley was also careful to note that the
> Humanities & Social Sciences Federation of Canada (HSSFC) proposal to
> establish Community Research and Information Crossroads (CRICs) innovation
> centres must overcome the barrier of =91displacing' an existing government
> program before it can be supported.
>
> The first phase of the $27-million/five-year CRICs proposal would establish
> 15 collaborative social science & humanities shops across the nation in
> hopes of promoting more knowledge transfer between universities and
> communities. Some $22-million would be required from Ottawa. Each centre
> would link faculty and student teams with local community-based
> organizations to address such issues as health, poverty and literacy.
>
> Asked if there's any room within Industry Canada's budget to directly fund
> the CRICs=20
> initiative, Manley noted the venture involves a "not insignificant" amount
> of money. The proposal will have to be more carefully scrutinized and a
> determination made as to "what it could displace."
>
> iv) CANADA FOUNDATION FOR INNOVATION
>
> Another major hurdle faced by the social sciences & humanities community
> lies in ongoing developments surrounding the newly-minted $800-million
> research infrastructure program. The initiative appears to be evolving
> towards ever more restrictive, rather than inclusive, parameters as federal
> officials have made clear their intention to preclude human infrastructure
> and in-kind contributions as eligible matching funds under the program.
>
> Equally problematic are ambiguities surrounding the definition of =91science=
> '
> to be used in the program. Foundation chairman Dr. John Evans recently
> informed a meeting with the HSSFC that the notion of science currently under
> consideration is one which is limited to the natural sciences, rather than
> the more broadly-defined and inclusive one which Minister of Finance Paul
> Martin outlined in his original briefing to the community when the program
> was announced during last February's budget.
>
> Yet, despite the unresolved definitional issues, as well as increasing signs
> of polarization within the academic community regarding the scope of the
> Foundation, and the ongoing concerns that large universities with deep
> endowment pockets and strong corporate links will eat up the bulk of
> matching monies to be made available under the scheme, Manley insisted it's
> too early to say the Foundation's operations are in any way writ in stone.
>
> Although Ottawa is proposing to issue a green paper this summer elucidating
> its position on unresolved infrastructure issues, Manley noted many of the
> final determinations will fall squarely within the purview of the
> Foundation's board of the directors, who haven't yet been appointed. (The
> government is expected to appoint its six representatives to the 15-member
> board later this month. Manley noted "consideration" is being given to the
> inclusion of the three granting council presidents as government
> representatives.)
>
> But while the board's latitude may hold out some promise for the social
> sciences & humanities, the overall signs aren't particularly encouraging.
> Manley stressed Ottawa's intention in establishing the foundation was
> strictly to provide support for hard physical infrastructure. "It was not
> intended to be used to build libraries."
>
> Manley added he would be "hard-pressed" to imagine a single example of a
> social sciences & humanities project that might be eligible for Foundation
> support. "Maybe I haven't thought of it. But clearly, libraries were not
> expected to be eligible ...surely to goodness, that's a provincial
> responsibility within post-secondary education."
>
> Should the Foundation's final parameters be broadly written to include
> eligibility for all the sciences, Manley says it will be entirely up to
> Foundation's board to determine whether specified percentages of annually
> available funds should be set aside for the social, biomedical or natural
> sciences, respectively.
>
> v) OTHER PRIORITIES
>
> -In a measure stemming from the recommendations of the federal S&T review,
> and flowing directly from the Liberal's campaign platform --Securing Our
> Future Together (SOFT)-- commitment to "provide expert and independent
> advice to ministers of science-based departments", Manley said he expects
> Ottawa will soon move to formally establish a network of science advisors.
> The positions will likely be modelled on the Department of Finance's
> two-year Clifford Clark Visiting Economist post. "I think we're going to
> have to look at that and see exactly how we do it, and what kind of people
> we recruit for those positions. I think they could be really important or
> they could be irrelevant depending on how they fit into the bureaucratic
> relationship between the minister's offices and the departments."
>
> -Also on the advisory front, Manley noted he's eager to arrange the first
> meeting of the Advisory Council on S&T with cabinet's economic development
> committee. Although regular contact between the pair had been promised when
> ACST was first formed, those plans were waylaid by the election campaign.=20
>
> -With regard to the SOFT plan commitment to wring more commercialization out
> of federally-funded labs --which included a vow that every federal
> laboratory will be required to produce and annually file with Parliament a
> "business plan for technology diffusion, with measures of success"-- Manley
> noted it's far too premature to forecast what diffusion models will
> ultimately be adopted, although it's reasonable to assume Ottawa will take
> an equity stake in new commercialization ventures in hopes of recovering
> some of its investment.
>
> While the SOFT plan did not make specific commitments regarding
> commercialization of university-sponsored research, Industry Canada has
> recently floated a $250-million trial balloon in the form of a proposed
> program to promote technology diffusion within university labs. But Manley
> noted the Liberals have neither made a specific commitment to such a scheme
> nor considered a specific amount of money that might conceivably be=
>  available.
>
> Asked if the government is considering a requirement that universities
> radically improve their intellectual property policies and processes for
> transferring scientific discoveries to industry or lose eligibility for
> government research grants (as recommended by a 1995 Industry study
> commissioned from a CIAR project team headed by former Technology Ontario
> director Dr. Martin Walmsley), Manley said he'll seek the advice of NSERC
> president Dr. Thomas Brusztowski as to "whether we need to add a stick" to
> prod those universities which have been slower than others in developing
> commercialization regimes.
>
> Next issue: PERSPECTIVES will seek an interview with the new President of=
>  SSHRC.
>
> Editor:
> Wayne Kondro is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.  The former Editor of
> the "Science Bulletin", an independent newsletter on national S&T policy, he
> is currently a regular contributor to such publications as "Science" and
> "The Lancet".
> Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada
> Federation canadienne des sciences humaines et sociales
> 151 Slater Street, Suite 415, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5H3
> Tel:  (613) 238-6112; Fax:  (613) 238-6114
> Email/Courrier electronique:  fedcan at hssfc.ca
>