As the U.S. moves forward, Canada risks losing its scientific edge

Fantastic news hit the wire this past Friday: the United States became the first country in the world to approve a clinical trial of embryonic stem cells in human patients. Less than one week into the Obama presidency and the country is already looking to overturn nearly a decade of regressive bioethical policies.

But what looks to be the USA's gain may turn out to be Canada's loss.

Now, I've written before about the recent parallels between Canada and the U.S. and their recent efforts to stall scientific advancement. With Obama entering the picture, however, the U.S. is looking to emerge from its Dark Age. Meanwhile, here in Canada, we continue to dawdle under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. While once a prime example of how the funding and organization of scientific research can and should be done, Canada is now drifting into a second class country in terms of its commitment to science, technology and the future. Unless Canada takes inspiration from the U.S., the negative repercussions could be disastrous and longstanding.

The problems in Canada are starting to mount and run deep. The Prime Minister, for example, has no official science adviser, nor does he plan on reinstating the position -- and this despite calls from the scientific community to implement an office of science and technology at the cabinet level.

Instead we get a patronage appointment of the Creationist Preston Manning to the toothless and stunningly useless scientific advisory board.

Obama, meanwhile, has appointed leading scientists as advisors in his inner circle, such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu as his secretary of energy, and Nobel laureate Harold Varmus and MIT genome biologist Eric Lander as chairs of the Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

And it gets worse: half of Canada's 500 biotech firms are expected to run out of cash within the year. This grim possibility has prompted calls for the commercialization its top-notch research by offering tax and investment incentives to spur industry. Research leaders want the feds to treat science as an industry that is as vital to economic recovery as propping up the auto sector and building roads.

Even worse yet is the threatening brain drain. Canada could lose its competitive edge owing to the Obama advantage -- not to mention the ethical implications of knowingly failing to develop lifesaving and life improving biotechnologies like regenerative medicine.

Under Harper's Tories, research funding to Canadian universities has declined appreciably. The reasons for this change are undeniably ideological; the Conservative Party has expressed skepticism on the science of climate change, while their religious sensibilities have crept their way into legislation (a number of Conservative Parliamentarians are evangelical Christians, including Harper). In addition, the Conservatives' overruling of the Nuclear Safety Commission, the firing of the commission's president and their decision to abolish the office of the independent national science advisor have brought international criticism.

Canadian scientists and researchers have been keeping a close eye on the election happenings in the U.S. and the kind of science policies that Obama will put into place. Knowing that Stephen Harper is unlikely to invoke similar changes, they are biding their time and waiting for an excuse to bail on Canada.

This kind of brain drain is exactly what Canada does not need right now. We are already losing physicians to the U.S. at an alarming rate. The number of Canadians without a doctor is currently at unacceptable levels.

The Conservative government should take pause over the possibility that our best research minds are poised to leave the country. Moreover, if Canada is going to compete in the global market and provide its citizens with the best medical technologies that science has to offer, it had better rekindle its commitment to medical research.

Jesse Brown: Canada risks becoming a 'digital ghetto'

The CBC's Jesse Brown points out that there are three things that suck about being Canadian right now:

1. Last week the CRTC sided with Bell against a group of small Internet Service Providers who want to offer their customers unthrottled connections where what they download is their own business and not subject to interference.
2. In last week’s throne speech the Conservative government renewed their intention to “modernize” Canadian copyright law. Their effort to do so last session was Bill C-61, a woefully unbalanced and retrograde piece of legislation that led to the greatest citizen backlash to any proposed bill in recent memory. Yet there has been no indication from new Industry Minister Tony Clement that a much-needed public consultation will take place. The best he has offered is the possibility of a “slightly different” version of the bill.
3. Twitter has just announced that they are killing outbound SMS messaging in Canada due to exorbitant and constant rate hikes from Canadian cell providers (former Industry Minister Jim Prentice vowed to get tough on SMS price gouging, then backpeddled). Cell phone rates in Canada are among the highest in the world, and the result is that mobile penetration is pathetically low and that emerging new cultural platforms like Twitter are being hobbled.

Brown makes the case that these backward policies are creating a sense of digital isolation in Canada. As he notes, "Canadians can’t stream the videos Americans stream, download the files Americans download, remix the media Americans remix, or tweet the way Americans tweet." His fear is that Canada is turning into a 'digital ghetto.'

Thank goodness the Conservative government is set to fall sometime next week.

Canada's poor effort in dealing with climate change

Ronald Bailey's recent article, "Climate Change Confabs," brought to my attention Canada's rather lackadaisical and irresponsible response to the global warming crisis. Bailey writes,

How are the Kyoto signatories—chiefly the European Union (EU), Japan and Canada—doing at meeting their emissions targets? Emissions from the EU-15 have dropped by 1.5 percent since 1990, which is still well above their agreed target reduction of 8 percent below what they emitted in 1990. A report last year from the European Environment Agency projected that the EU-15 would not likely reach their 2012 Kyoto Protocol emissions target unless they adopt more stringent policies. Nevertheless, the EU jauntily declared that it would cut its GHG emissions by 20 percent below its 1990 level by 2020.

Canada committed to reducing its GHG emissions by 6 percent below its 1990 level, but as of 2004, Canada emitted 27 percent more GHG than it did in 1990. Japan is supposed to cut its GHG emissions by 6 percent, but recent projections suggest that it may emit 2 percent more than it did in 1990. For comparison, U.S. GHG emissions are up over 16 percent of what they were in 1990.

At the U.N. meeting on Monday, the EU, Canada, and Japan all came out in favor of a binding target of cutting GHG emissions by 50 percent below their 1990 levels by 2050. The Bush Administration is against binding reductions targets, preferring to focus on research to develop clean energy technologies that do not emit GHGs—e.g., nuclear, wind, solar and carbon capture and sequestration technologies. Carbon sequestration means burying carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels by injecting it into underground reservoirs. At the U.N. climate confab, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice declared, "Ultimately, we must develop and bring to market new energy technologies that transcend the current system of fossil fuels, carbon emissions and economic activity. Put simply, the world needs a technological revolution."

Entire article.

Embarrassing. Canada has got to get its act together on this.

As for the U.S. "solution", they are hand-waving in order to justify inaction. Instead, we need to a) reduce emissions now and b) work towards the development of cleaner technology. It's not an either/or scenario.

Related article: "Canadian shame at the UN's conference on global warming (2006)."