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Meeting Minutes
PIPSC Science Advisory Committee (SAC)
Date: November 7, 2025
Place: Hybrid
Meeting time: 9:00 AM—12:00 PM ET
Meeting minutes taken by: Marielle Nadon
| Present: | Regret: |
Matthew (Matt) MacLeod – RE – NCR – Chair Terri D’Souza – CFIA-S&A – B.C. – Yukon – Member Caroline Levasseur – SP – QC – Member Foster Scott – CFIA-VM – ONT – Member Anna-Belle Filion – SP – Quebec – Friend of the CommitteeLionel Siniyunguruza – PIPSC – Staff Resource Marielle Nadon – PIPSC – Staff Resource | Ira Hill – SP – Prairies, NWT – MemberTimothy McKay – CP – Board Liaison Robert Lambert (Rob) – SP – ATL – Member M. Rokib Hassan – NCR-RO/RCO – NCR – Member |
| Guests: | |
| 1.Call to Order & Agenda |
| Matt welcomes all the SAC members and informs them that he will have a Treasury Board meeting in the afternoon. Matt presents and moves the agenda, seconded by Terri. The agenda is approved by all without changes. |
| 2. Previous Meeting Minutes & Business Arising |
| Matt presents the meeting minutes and everyone reviews them. Matt answers questions that Marielle left on the documents and corrects a few things. Minutes accepted by everyone. Marielle to send them to the PIPSC translation team. Lionel updates the Committee on members’ stories: the decision has not yet been made. There was a lot going on with the budget and new government. He is hoping to have more news at the end of November. They may need to adjust a few things following the budget. Matt had a schedule conflict for the presentation for the Working Group on Consultation meeting. Michael’s draft has been reviewed. Lionel will share the final draft with the SAC. Lionel and Matt have been asked to present on this at the SP group bargaining team meeting. Visibility items for PIPSC AGM have been ordered, with funding from the SP and RE Groups. Matt sent the business case to John Purdie in early October to allow the SAC to contribute directly, but he did not receive an answer yet. |
| 3. Update on Scientific Integrity online training |
A third education officer, Patricia Chong, has taken the file. Matt has met with her multiple times – they agreed on a way forward to address scenarios. Patricia will try to finalize the storyboard for next week and hopes to launch in January 2026. |
| 4.CFIA Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (Terri) |
Terri brought this topic to the SAC back in June, but the issue has evolved since then. Terri was wondering if PIPSC should show support for our members involved in this type of work. PSAC has put out a statement in support of their members. The group discussed and decided to leave the decision with the CFIA-S&A and CFIA-VM executives and the PIPSC President’s Office. |
| 5. Meteorological Service of Canada (Anna-Belle) |
Some changes are happening at Meteorological Service Canada as they realign branches and sections. They also want to create new positions and desks. What worries Anna-Belle is the revision of the tasks they spoke about. This type of reorganization has already been undertaken in the past, and several tasks performed by higher levels have been distributed to lower levels. She is also uncomfortable with having multiple new employees to train while themselves are already not trained on the new technologies that they have imposed.Matt will reach out to Robert(absent to this meeting) and Bryan to see if PIPSC should put out a statement regarding this issue. |
| 6. Federal budget situation |
There are some DND pools being set up for various classifications for people that are affected in other departments. Matt suspects that it’s not good news for science and research elsewhere. Terri states that there is going to be cuts to what they consider non-essential testing in laboratories and programs taken away in CFIA. |
| 7. AGM Planning |
Terri took care of ordering the discussed visibility items for the AGM. She shows the final results to the rest of the group: pencils and hot/cold packs. They have been holding off on the lab coats for the moment as it’s more organization and money – more to follow on this later next year. The slogan has been changed to: English: Strong Science. Strong Economy. Stronger Canada.French: Une science innovante. Une économie résilientes. Des communautés florissantes. Two screens will be available for their booth. The group is brainstorming on how to use them. Terri to circulate a schedule by email for the SAC AGM booth. She also proposed to design a sign to be hung on the wall or booth. Matt to reach out to some scientific members and see if they want to help with the schedule of the booth. Lionel to modify last year’s quiz to be reused. |
| 8. Model Scientific Integrity Policy (Matt) |
They don’t have an update on the tri-party meeting for the moment unfortunately. One of the main people that they dealt with at the Office of the Chief Science Advisor is currently on leave. Matt had an interesting conversation with someone from NRCan: apparently it has been decided that their traditional approach with posting scientific papers and reports is no longer acceptable. The abstract or executive summaries were available in both languages and if someone needed the full paper translated, it would be. Now everything needs to be translated. Given that we have reports in our public databases going back to the 40s or 50s, this is a lot of papers to be translated and verified for accuracy. While the bilingualism of every document is important, they have not put anything in place to finance or resource this project. |
| 9. Annual Report (Matt) |
| Science Advisory Committee Annual Report 2025 |
| 10. Regional Roundtable |
Caroline: Nothing to add. Terri: She isn’t receiving a lot of feedback from sub group presidents, branch presidents, etc via emails – she is looking for a better way to reach out or receive feedback. B.C./Yukon had their stewards council on October 17 and 18. They invited all group presidents to attend, most did. They received a walkthrough of the new PIPSC website. The awards that were given out were all attributed to science members. She ran for the CFIA S&A Executive member-at-large position and won. Foster: No update for him as he is still on parental leave. Anna-Belle: She had to step out of the meeting before the end. The SAC is still allowed to hold another virtual meeting for this year. Matt proposed December 5. Everyone accepts this date. |
| 11. Meeting Adjourned |