Thank you very much, and thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.
As those of you who've seen my brief will know, the recommendations I make in it are very few and modest. They centre around the recommendation that the committee consider making it a priority to establish institutional mechanisms for enhanced citizen engagement on issues of science and technology policy and development in Canada.
The argument is premised on the idea that the significance of science and technology and their development extend beyond the very important role they play in ensuring the competitiveness and growth of the Canadian economy, but that they extend into broader corners of social and political life, even beyond those very important implications.
Science and technology are political in many senses. The priorities around them emerge from political processes. People make decisions in particular institutional contexts, with particular interests in mind. And of course science and technological development also have very important political consequences: resources are distributed; practices are established; relationships are established; and some interests are served better than others through practices and processes of scientific investigation and development.
As such, I think there's a real need for scientific and technological development to be subjected to democratic deliberation by citizens, both to legitimize in a democratic sense the policy directions that governments take, the regulatory decisions that agencies take, and the funding decisions that funding bodies take, and also to optimize those decisions, to bring to the table a broader array of perspectives, views, and experiences that have been typically the case in the development of science and technology policy in Canada.
Currently, institutional frameworks for science and technology policy and decision-making in governments don't place a high priority on citizen engagement. That doesn't mean there is no citizen engagement, but I think, by and large, we've done a much better job of making sure we take into account the views of experts and stakeholders, which are very important and absolutely must have a place at the table when it comes to the development of science and technology policy. But citizens have had less attention paid to them--citizens who don't fall into those categories of experts and stakeholders. When it comes to citizen engagement, with some exceptions, efforts have been more sporadic, more ad hoc, and less well developed than our attention to stakeholder and expert engagement when it comes to science and technology advice to government.
So my brief outlines the case for greater attention to citizen engagement and in fact makes the recommendation that the committee consider the possibility of recommending the establishment of an institution whose primary focus is to engage Canadian citizens on issues of science and technology development, not as an extra, not as an add-on to its primary activity, but focused and dedicated specifically to fulfilling that role.
That's the substance of my brief, and I'd be happy to speak to it in regard to any questions you might have.