All Posts Tagged With: "Gary Goodyear"
International doctoral students can now apply to stay in Canada
Up to 1,000 a year will be accepted
Canada is making it easier for international Ph.D. students—who make up one-quarter of the total—to stay permanantly, Minister of State (Science and Technology) Gary Goodyear announced today on behalf of Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Starting Nov. 5, international Ph.D. students can apply to be accepted as federal skilled workers, so long as they have at at least two years of study toward the doctoral degrees under their belt or have graduated in the past 12 months, and are in good academic standing.
Paul Davidson, President of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, said the announcement will give Canada a “competitive edge” in attracting international students.
Where you need to go in Ottawa for a good idea
How to attract human capital and find a place for science students in industry
Science and technology minister Gary Goodyear was at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto to fulfill a commitment the feds made in their most recent budget: he launched a review of Canada’s policies regarding business R&D. As David Akin points out in his Sun Media column today, the problem is simple enough: Canadian researchers are far better at producing new ideas than Canadian businesses are at implementing them. (Here’s a column I wrote in which John Manley expounds on similar themes.) Far too much effort has gone in recent years into fine-tuning (read “fiddling clumsily with”) the research that goes on in university laboratories. This review attempts to get things right: it looks at the very substantial federal aid on offer to businesses that want to engage in R&D, and asks why so little of that assistance is taken up and why it hasn’t produced a culture of constant innovation.
My very strong hunch is that Canadian industry doesn’t need more help so much as it needs to be made to worry, through a set of policies designed to expose Canada more directly to global competition. So I like this quote from John Manley in David’s column: “Quite frankly, if there is an innovation problem in Canada, that’s the responsibility of the management and boards of directors here in Canada.” I’m really pleased to see that UofT president David Naylor is on Goodyear’s panel; he’s good at the kind of blunt talk that will be needed.
There’s another guy on the panel who will not be familiar to just about anybody, but should be. His name is Arvind Gupta, he runs an organization called MITACS, and I’ve had a story about him ready to run for the past couple of weeks in one of our upcoming university issues. We’ve plucked that story out of our queue so you can read about Gupta now.
Here it is:
Much of the debate over innovation and productivity in Canada focusses on ideas: the search for a new research breakthrough that changes the way we see the world. Governments’ R&D policy concentrates on steering dollars toward types of research that might produce the kind of discovery that can pay off in the marketplace.
But what if the most valuable product from higher education isn’t the ideas but the people who generate them—the superbly educated graduates with advanced math and science degrees?
That question fascinates Arvind Gupta, a professor of computing science at Simon Fraser University. He is also CEO of MITACS, a federally funded Centre of Excellence in information technology.
MITACS (Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems) was one of more than a dozen Centres of Excellence set up by the Mulroney and Chrétien governments to encourage industry and academia to work closely together in specific areas. And it didn’t attract much attention outside computer-science circles until it launched a little internship program in 2003.
That year, 18 doctoral students in maths and science were placed for four-month internships at Canadian companies. The students’ mandate was to tackle a technical problem the company was facing. But science students are problem-solvers born and bred; as often as not, they found other ways to improve the work their host companies were doing. Both sides had to make a real investment: the company paid $7,500 for the extra help, and the students had to report back to their PhD advisors on the work they’d done.
The internship program, dubbed Accelerate, took off. From 18 internships in 2003 it grew to 608 in 2009 and doubled again to more than 1,200 this year. That growth is not artificial. It is demand-driven. As word spreads about how creative these young recruits could be, businesses lined up to get involved. “Our goal is to get this up to 10,000 projects a year,” Gupta says.
Science minister answers Globe question
Yes, he does believe in evolution. So what was that Globe story about, exactly?
There was something more than a bit weird about today’s front-page Globe and Mail story, in which the reporter for some reason asked Gary Goodyear, the federal minister of science, whether he believes in evolution.
I don’t know the context of the question, but let’s give the Globe the benefit of the doubt: maybe this was something worth asking. In any case, Goodyear gave a non-committal answer (albeit not a particularly politically astute one, since he for some reason chose to raise the fact that he’s a Christian). Now, remember that most answers given by most politicians most of the time are non-committal, precisely because they have become justifiably paranoid about falling prey to a gotcha moment. Anyhow, the Globe took Mr. Goodyear’s response and decided to run with the following headline: “Minister won’t confirm belief in evolution.”
In the first sentence of the story, the reporter suggests a link between federal cuts to science funding and the minister’s alleged uneasiness with evolution/science. The two are connected? Really? Based on what evidence? Has anyone ever credibly alleged that any of the various increases and decreases in research and post-secondary funding under the Tories have been caused by a minister’s or the Cabinet’s religiously-motivated antipathy to science? The lead of the story reads, “Canada’s science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won’t say if he believes in evolution.” And the story continues trying to mine the tories-cut-research-funding-because-they-are-religious-troglodytes vein: “A funding crunch, exacerbated by cuts in the January budget, has left many senior researchers across the county scrambling to find the money to continue their experiments. Some have expressed concern that Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor from Cambridge, Ont., is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist.”
Later in the story, two members of the academy go on to express their concerns about Goodyear’s alleged creationism. But unless I’m missing something, the “concern” that has been “expressed ” about Mr. Goodyear being “suspicious” of science was not expressed until yesterday, when the Globe speed dialed two people, told them the minister might not believe in evolution—and asked them if this discovery raised any “concern” that they might like to “express.” It’s like the old joke about journalism: reporter calls up subject, says “would you say this is an outrage?” Subject begins answering question. Reporter interrupts, says, “no, I mean, would you please say, ‘this is an outrage.’”
And what are we to make of this phrase from the Globe: “… Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor from Cambridge, Ont., is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist.” I’m not sure if the phrasing is sloppy or deliberate; read as written, The Globe is saying that Goodyear is a creationist. (Whatever exactly that means.) The “perhaps” is not hedging the possibility that he might not be a creationist, but is rather equivocating on the source of his alleged suspicion of science. Is he suspicious of science because he is a creationist—or could there be some other source of this man’s antipathy to the modern world, which incidentally is connected to his government’s cuts to science funding? Inquiring minds want to know.
Anyhow, today the minister told CTV that “of course” he believes in evolution.
And so the news cycle turns. Moving on.
Does Canada’s science minister believe in science?
Initially declines to answer question about whether he believes in evolution
From The Globe and Mail:
Canada’s science minister, the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won’t say if he believes in evolution.
“I’m not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate,” Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
A funding crunch, exacerbated by cuts in the January budget, has left many senior researchers across the county scrambling to find the money to continue their experiments.
Some have expressed concern that Mr. Goodyear, a chiropractor from Cambridge, Ont., is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist.
Minister’s chief of staff to professors: “Shut up!”
Details coming out regarding a recent meeting between representatives of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the federal minister responsible for science and technology, Gary Goodyear, paint a picture of a sort of one-sided screaming match. Some details of the raucous meeting have been noted by The Globe and Mail: The screaming erupted [...]
Details coming out regarding a recent meeting between representatives of the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) and the federal minister responsible for science and technology, Gary Goodyear, paint a picture of a sort of one-sided screaming match. Some details of the raucous meeting have been noted by The Globe and Mail:
The screaming erupted last Wednesday afternoon, just down the street from Parliament Hill, in the offices of a Conservative cabinet minister.
The CAUT’s follow-up letter to the minister below is not quite flattering for the minister or his staff:
