The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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74th BC/Yukon-RC - Report from the Science Advisory Committee

Pacific Region Representatives:  Karen Hall and Richard Winder (Friend)

The Science Advisory Committee has had another exciting and productive year since the Regional Council last met.  With support from our Board Liaison, Robert MacDonald and PIPSC Staff, the committee continued on with year two of their three year Strategic and Operation Plan.  The group continued to focus on 6 activity areas:

The following lists some of our accomplishments and ongoing goals based on the key activity areas:

  • Science Survey – Based on results from the 2017 science surveys, two reports on the findings were published.  Defrosting Public Science gave an overall snapshot on how far we have come (or not) from the previous survey.  The second report released on International Women’s Day, Women In Public Sector Science: From Analysis To Action.
  • Women in Science – An action plan has been put forward within PIPSC to influence change for women in science in four ways: 1) conducting advocacy and activism campaigns aimed at new or better workplace legislation; 2) collective bargaining for new and better workplace rights; 3) supporting consultation presidents at union-management consultation for new and improved human resources policies; and 4) developing and conducting awareness and education campaigns for PIPSC members.
  • Science Lobby – Significant work has been done behind the scenes to ensure that the new Chief Science Adviser is fully aware of our priority around Scientific Integrity. We will continue to lobby appropriate levels of government and work with outside government agencies like Evidence for Democracy to ensure public science continues to be a part of the conversation.  We will also send a delegation to the Canadian Science Policy Conference in 2018 for the purpose of networking and lobbying.
  • Scientific Integrity – a common model policy has been developed by PIPSC, TBS and the Office of the Chief Science Adviser and presented to the Science Integration Board.  We will all now support our Consultation Presidents as this moves to their consultation tables in order to meet the needs of each department
  • State of Government Science Monitoring – through the hard work and efforts of our staff, we are monitoring actual investments into science resources and infrastructure at multiple key science based departments
  • Conference attendance – Further work is being completed to track conference attendance and conference denial for our members.  We are looking at tools to support members if and when they are denied, as per the collective agreement.

I would like to give a shout out to Richard who went above and beyond during his last months on the Committee prior to his term ending and wrote a “Owner’s Manual” for new and returning members of the Science Advisory Committee.  It is an amazing legacy tool that demonstrates is absolute commitment to the Committee and public science. 

I am pleased to represent our region and our science members on this national committee and are happy to answer any questions. 

Karen