All for one: Canada's parliament stands to benefit from scientific advice given by the proposed body. Credit: PAUL A. SOUDERS/CORBIS

Canada is planning to establish a single national science organization, designed to generate and coordinate scientific advice to the federal government and to provide a voice for Canadian science in national and international debates.

Draft proposals for such a body — to be known as the Canadian Academies, and based on models such as the US National Academies complex — are now being published on the Internet by a working party set up by the federal government last year.

The working party describes the establishment, which would be run as a non-profit charitable organization with its own president and full-time staff, as an “imperative” for the country, given the growing social and political importance of scientific issues.

Its members would include the country's three main existing organizations for science, engineering and health: the Canadian Academy of the Sciences and Humanities (otherwise known as the Royal Society of Canada), the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, which is to be established later this year.

One enthusiastic proponent is the chair of the working party, Gilbert Normand, Secretary of State for Science Research and Development. “The Canadian government has a large number of separate advisory committees, but it does not have an independent, national organization that has the confidence both of the Canadian people and of the international scientific community,” he says.

According to Normand, one of the main tasks of the new body will be to provide a source of “credible, independent expert assessments on the sciences underlying important issues and matters of public interest”. To carry out these assessments, the body will use either its own money or funding from the government or other sources.

The working group, which includes Michel Chrétien, director of the Regional Protein Chemistry Centre at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and brother of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, has planned in detail how the new body might operate.

One suggestion is that, as well as members selected by each of the participating organizations, its board of governors would include six members appointed from the public.

Normand says that, providing that there is general public support for the plans — which have met no opposition so far — he intends to propose the creation of the Canadian Academies to the cabinet “sometime in the autumn”, and that “perhaps there will be some money allocated in the next budget”.

Running costs are estimated to be Can$3 million a year. Normand says that, although the government might decide to provide this money on an annual basis, his preferred option would be to set up the organization with an initial capital allocation from the government of Can$30 million, which would allow it to be stable for ten years of operation and would help to nurture its independence.

Another keen supporter of the project is Tom Brzustowski, president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, who says that the idea first came to him after the World Conference on Science in Budapest in June–July 1999.

Shortly after the conference, Brzustowski wrote in the research council's newsletter that he felt that Canada lacked the institutional capacity to deal with the “big issues” involving science and society.

→ http://www.nrc.ca/indcan/nso