A science job for the options czar

By Peter Calamai

There is restrained weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Canadian science community nowadays about the perceived diminution of the office of the National Science Advisor. Not a little bit of this concern is engendered by the sight of the 67-year-old Dr Arthur Carty — an accomplished research scientist (synthetic chemistry and metallic clusters), gifted university administrator and highly effective former president of the National Research Council —- as the Harper government's version of Dead Man Walking.

Many observers who are viewing with alarm are also concerned that the science community has lost its reserved portal to the inner circles of power with the banishment of the science advisor's office to the unfriendly corridors of Industry Canada. This was part of the Aegean Stables cleansing carried out by Kevin Lynch when he became Clerk of the Privy Council. (Lynch is now the de facto science advisor to the prime minister, rendering both the bureaucracy and the polity singularities.)

The concern for the shabby treatment of Carty is laudable. But the belief that he ever enjoyed privileged access to the Prime Minister is mistaken. And that misreading of events could cause the scientific community to once again fail to exert sway in Ottawa commensurate with its innate importance.

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin is partly to blame for this mass self-delusion by the science community. Before taking office, Martin gave several interviews (including one to this reporter) emphasizing the vital role he foresaw in his government for scientific advice in almost all major policy fields. He painted science and technology as the obvious engines of Canada's continued prosperity and of our ability to compete with the emerging might of India and China. He even mused that he himself was a frustrated bench researcher, happiest when curled up with a heavy-duty popular science tome.

Carty's appointment as the grandiosely named "National Science Advisor to the Prime Minister" was included in the Martin government's first round of senior public servant appointments on December 12, 2003, although the effective date for starting as advisor was April 1, 2004 to allow for an orderly transition at NRC.

But Carty was not long in the job before the gap became apparent between Martin's earlier rhetoric and the reality of governing. The National Science Advisor was given a smidgen of money and forced to staff his office with professionals on loan from bodies like the International Development Research Centre and the NRC.

The Partnership Group for Science and Engineering drew attention to this problem as early as September 2004. In a pre-budget submission to the Commons finance committee PAGSE's first recommendation was that "the Government ensure adequate resourcing of the NSA's office to enable it to fulfill its mandate."

Worse than the shoestring budget, however, was the dawning realization that Martin was drowning in his vat of "very, very important" issues and that science advice, while sometimes requested, was getting lost in the policy miasma or simply being ignored. The advisor's initial limited access to the PM rapidly dwindled to none at all and important documents, like relevant memoranda to cabinet, stopped circulating through the science advisor's office.

The evidence of death by neglect can be seen today on the website of the National Science Advisor. As of November 25, the most recent public presentation by Carty dates from a year ago. The What's New page is empty.

Officially the Industry minister has assigned three priorities to the National Science Advisor:

* support international R&D activities and advise on relevant global science and technology issues;

* consider how to promote a strong domestic culture of science, technology and innovation; and,

* advise how the government can better support and benefit from intramural science.

All that with just two-and-a-half professionals and two support staff! No wonder groups which participated in a science culture workshop organized by NSERC and the National Advisor's office this spring complain they have heard little since.

However, Canada's only previous national science advisor had no more staff than that, and likely fewer. Yet he enjoyed regular access to the prime minister of the day, was asked for input on major government decisions and was said at the time to have influenced government policy.

From 1969 to 1971, Robert Uffen served as Science Advisor to the Cabinet and was housed in the Privy Council Office. A geophysicist from Queen's University, Uffen had chaired the Defence Research Board (then a scientific powerhouse) the two previous years and was also a member of the Science Council of Canada (then a high-profile body under Patrick McTaggart-Cowan and Omand Solandt.)

As a reporter in the Parliamentary Press Gallery at the time, I had several conversations about the place of science in the federal government with Uffen and, perhaps more importantly, with Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Later, as a London-based correspondent, I enjoyed a couple of further such discussions with Trudeau.

My purpose of retailing such old correspondent's tales is to underline a simple truth — there has to be receptor capacity for science advice to succeed in the top levels of government. Right now there appears to be none, with the Harper government displaying little or no serious interest in S&T. Instead, its attention seems focused on maximizing the profit from selling off Canada's natural resources. (The much-ballyhooed S&T strategy is a Potemkin Village.)

This same point about the unique and idiosyncratic nature of science advice is made more comprehensively in the November 15 issue of Nature in a commentary reviewing 50 years of White House science advisors, entitled "Who has the ear of the president?" Author Roger Pielke Jr argues that probably the most useful role for a science advisor (and for advisory bodies like the new Science, Technology and Innovation Council) is to present leaders with options.

"Presenting options would help preserve the public credibility of the science advisor by clearly delineating the differences between advice, advocacy and decision-making," Pielke writes. The weeping and wailing science community in Canada would do well to learn that lesson by heart.

Peter Calamai is national science writer for the Toronto Star.