Article Type: Opinion Leader

Opinion Leader: Federal government must provide predictable funding for health research

The federal government needs to make it an urgent priority to provide increased and predictable funding for health and biosciences research, or risk losing the nation’s health research workforce to competing countries like the U.S., the U.K. and Australia, says Paul-Émile Cloutier, president and CEO of HealthCareCAN, in an op-ed.

Policy change and more innovation needed to reap the benefits of industrial cannabis

Policy change and more innovation are needed for Canada to realize the many benefits of industrial cannabis, including its nutritious food value, its ability to reduce carbon emissions and its potential for energy storage, says Carl Martel, an independent scientist and founder of the Ottawa-based Advanced Botanical and Biomass Research Institute, in an op-ed.

Today’s energy infrastructure can provide tomorrow’s clean energy

Western Canada’s oil and gas industry is ideally positioned with the knowledge, assets and personnel to develop clean geothermal energy as part of the global transition to low-carbon energy, writes David Yager, an entrepreneur who has been a founder, executive and director of three oilfield service companies.

Opinion Leader: Federal funding for energy efficiency must tackle impact on low-income Canadians

The federal government’s upcoming budget needs to address the problem of “energy poverty” as an urgent priority, Kirsten Pulles, Community Organizer for Efficiency Canada, says in an op-ed. This includes funding low-income energy efficiency programs, making meaningful reductions in energy use, and training and hiring lower-income, rural and racialized Canadians to do the energy efficiency upgrades and outreach work, she says.

Performance-based funding for universities is an unsound policy that sounds good

Performance-based funding proposed by some provinces for post-secondary institutions uses flawed indicators and hasn’t worked in other jurisdictions, Dr. Marc Spooner, PhD, professor of educational psychology at the University of Regina, says in an op-ed. “How governments can, in good conscience, ignore the damage these models have caused in other jurisdictions where they have been unsuccessfully implemented is difficult to understand.”