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Room 728,
Blackburn Building
85 Sparks Street
Interested
Stakeholders:
I
would like to express my appreciation to all of those in the scientific
community who took the time and effort to provide feedback on the draft
discussion paper entitled, “A Framework for the Evaluation, Funding and
Oversight of Canadian Major Science Investments.” My office received over 70 responses from
major stakeholder institutions and organizations as well as from individual
researchers and other interested parties. I have attached a short synopsis of the
responses which illustrates the breadth of comments.
We
will be developing a second draft of the document over the summer that will
incorporate many of your suggestions on the earlier paper. As outlined in the attached backgrounder,
comments fall into five main categories:
- The definition and scope
of major science investments
- The need for national
science and technology priorities
- Governance and management
of the framework
- Funding model; and
- Project selection.
In
writing the second iteration we will need to adopt a broader, more inclusive
context for Major Science Investments to reflect the new reality that “big
science” is no longer restricted to large facilities in the physical sciences. Many of the major scientific challenges of
the 21st century such as climate change, population health studies,
exploring the ocean floor or the origins of the universe involve distributed
networks of facilities, people and resources which by their very magnitude
would be defined as major science investments.
The second draft will aim to illustrate the roles of both large
facilities and distributed networks in the domestic and international
scientific environment.
We will be
releasing the second draft of this paper in September and I will be convening a
meeting of senior officials from the university and government S&T
communities in early October for final consultation. The subsequent draft will be revised by the
Science Deputy Ministers’ Committee and the Committee of Presidents of Research
Councils and Agencies before being submitted to the Minister of Industry and
the Prime Minister for consideration.
The second draft of this paper will be posted on Office of the National
Science Advisor’s website science.pco-bcp.gc.ca which will also contain regular
updates on this process. Please contact scienceinfo@pco-bcp.gc.ca if you
have any questions or comments.
Once
again, I would like to thank you for your comments regarding this important
topic and look forward to continuing this dialogue with the scientific
community.
Sincerely,
Arthur
J. Carty
National
Science Advisor
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