Parliamentarians were right to pass law against genetic discrimination
One consequence of the Human Genome Project was a vast increase in the variety and availability of genetic tests. In response, governments in most Western countries passed laws to protect their citizens from genetic discrimination. On May 4, Canada caught up, when the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act (Bill S-201) received royal assent. Your genetic information has […]
Liberals must prioritize growing research and development sector
As the Conservative shadow minister for science, I think it’s important to recognize that we have some of the best and brightest minds in research labs across Canada. To support our researchers, the federal government must continue to foster an environment where their ideas can be used to improve the lives of Canadians, and exported […]
Biotechnology
To diffuse technology or not to diffuse: that’s the question
Let me give you a choice between two compelling narratives on the topic of diffusion—efforts to make technologies available by means of government policies. The first is an argument for the broad diffusion of biotechnologies, including synthetic biology and CRISPR (a genome editing tool). The other is an argument for a slow-down or clamp-down. You be […]
Bains overpromises on superclusters
TORONTO—One of the best examples of the Trudeau government’s practice of overpromising is the superclusters project of Industry, Science and Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains. With $950-million to be spread out over five years and to be matched by industry, the plan is to fund about half a dozen so-called superclusters which, in the space […]
Public-sector expert recommends government technological overhauls be done in smaller increments
Governments should not waver from pushing ahead with technological changes to improve the way they operate despite several examples—such as the Phoenix pay system for federal employees—turning into disasters, says a U.S. public-sector expert who was in Ottawa last week. The Phoenix pay system, turned on last year, was supposed to bring efficiencies to the […]
Help bring Canadian research into the marketplace
It is a Canadian economic truism that we have been the proverbial hewers of wood and drawers of water. For 150 years, we have largely relied on the extraordinary abundance of our natural resources to build our economy, but only to the extent that we export those resources in a raw form for others to […]
Women in business: let’s go beyond tokenism and the status quo
In 1996, my first formal speech on women in business described the “female model of leadership,” and here we are still debating the same topic in 2017. Canada was one of the first signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in the early 1980s, and gender equality is […]
Globalization can be a force for good, if we make it so
Globalization is not the problem. How we have failed to manage it—including our failure to deal with inequality and improve opportunity for all—is the problem. The future of globalization depends on how well we can make it fairer and better. It’s hard to imagine a world in which trade does not occur, where ideas cease […]
Bite-sized health investments a worthy use of innovation dollars
As the president of a non-profit association working hard to improve the quality of cardiovascular patient care, the Trudeau government’s recent launch of its $950-million supercluster initiative has me feeling a bit conflicted. On the one hand, major federal investments with the potential to channel significant funding into the area of health and biosciences are […]
