What Do the Party Platforms Say About Science and Research?

As with every Canadian election, the primary issues are healthcare, the deficit, and the “scandal” de jour (Conservatives being in contempt of Parliament is this year’s scandal).

But what about science and research? This is an issue which gets lost in the fray of other issues, but is vital to Canadians maintaining a strong image around the world, as well as strengthening the economy.

So I went through all the party platforms in an effort to summarize their views on science, technology, and research. As a first step, I counted the number of times each of the words “science”, “technology”, and “research” each appear in the party platforms.

The results certainly jump out at you. The Green Party seems to be most interested in funding research and technology. This mainly stems from their wish to increase funding to “green” technologies, in an effort to save the environment.

The Conservatives and Liberals are pretty similar. In the Conservative Party platform, their promises regarding scientific endeavours are:

• Establish 10 additional Canada Excellence Research Chairs;
• Support the outstanding work of the Institut national d’Optique in the fields of optics and photonics;
• Invest in strengthening the Perimeter Institute’s position as a world-leading research centre for theoretical physics; and
• leverage funding to support Brain Canada’s efforts to support new diagnostics, treatments, and cures for brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s Disease.

In addition to these measures, the Conservatives discuss their “Digital Economy Strategy”, which includes (I’m summarizing here)

• Extend broadband coverage to 200,000 additional rural homes
• Increase competition in the wireless market
• Support projects between colleges and small businesses to accelerate the adoption of new technologies
• Promote enrollment in science, technology, engineering and math post-secondary programs

These points sound very well and good, but are very vague and I wonder how they would actually get implemented.

The Conservative Platform also states the Liberals and NDP “opposed” these measures when they forced this election. However I believe this is misleading, because rejecting a budget does not mean they reject every expenditure in the budget.

So what about the Liberals? What are they up to? Here are a few key points pulled from the Liberal Party platform:

–  A Liberal government will work with provinces, territories and the research community to bolster innovation in the health and bioscience field, improve the health of      Canadians, and help bring Canadian products to global markets.

– A Liberal government will make digital technologies one of its Canadian Champion Sectors, boosting incentives for investment in innovators seeking to conquer world markets.

– A new Innovation and Productivity Tax Credit (IPTC) that will grant Canadian investors a 15 percent tax credit for investments in small, early-stage start-ups that don’t yet have the track record to seek financing from more traditional sources such as banks and the stock market.

– An extension of the popular “Flow-Through Shares” tax model to start-ups in the three Canadian Champion Sectors. This tax incentive would allow venture companies with little or no revenue to pass on tax deductions to investors, creating a significant incentive to invest in Canadian entrepreneurs from promising sectors where Canada can become a world leader.

– A Liberal government will launch a new Innovation Gateway providing a “single window” approach that consolidates government support for innovation and entrepreneurship in emerging fields as well as long-standing areas of strength like aerospace, manufacturing and natural resources.

The Liberals also take advantage of the Conservative government’s poor record of investing in “green” technologies and taking action on climate change, which he once called a “socialist scheme”.

The Liberals discuss investing in cleaner technologies for processing the oil sands and reducing carbon emissions, though details on their plans are sketchy. Indeed, they state that investment in these fields will occur “as the economy improves”, which certainly allows plenty of room for interpretation on timelines for implementing these strategies.

Let’s take on the NDP next. As you can see from the above graph, the NDP does not talk about science to the extent of the Liberals and Conservatives. Part of this has to do with the fact that the NDP’s platform is quite a bit shorter than the other parties, but it also deals with the fact that the NDP’s primary concern is healthcare, job creation in all sectors, and social programs.

When they do discuss scientific issues, it deals with climate change and renewable energy. Some points from their platform (again, I’m summarizing):

• Reduce green-house gas emissions to 80 percent below that of 1990 by 2050.
• Introduce a carbon emissions cap-and-trade system
• Cut subsidies to non-renewable energy
• Federal financial incentives for “clean” energy, such as solar, wind, tidal and biomass
• Support for research of “made in Canada” green technologies
• Establish “Green Bonds” so Canadians can invest in green technologies and energy

The NDP chooses to spend their money directly helping Canadians. Which is all well and good, but I feel they don’t do enough to help bolster the economy, which is increasingly dominated by the technology industry.

Ok, now as for the Bloc. Well they hardly mention science at all, and I feel this political cartoon summarized not only their debate strategy, but their platform too, so let’s not waste any time on them.

Cartoon by Brian Gable - The Globe and Mail

Ok, so now we come to the dear Green Party. As I mentioned earlier, their platform discusses science and research more than any other party.

Of course to be fair, the Greens have exactly zero chance of winning this election (and a very slim chance of even winning a seat), so they are free to talk about how much money they want to throw at “green” technology research, without worrying about where this money is actually going to come from.

[Aside: I’ve been writing this post over about a week. It would appear that the Green Party platform I used to generate the graph at the top of the page is no longer the “official” platform. The document is now called their Vision Green and they describe it as “a comprehensive statement of our policies and programmes”. I’m not sure why they aren’t using it as their official platform anymore, but I just wanted to make that clear so you guys don’t think I’m making stuff up.]

So when the Greens talk about science and technology is pretty much always has to do with the environment and climate change. Some of the major points include:

• Retrofitting Canada’s buildings to a high level of energy efficiency by 2025
• Upgrade all low-income housing by 2025
• Provide grants to cover 50% of the cost of solar-powered roofs
• Rapid deployment of wind turbines to generate 17 GW of power (enough to power ~14 DeLorean time machines, FYI)
• All bikes and bicycle gear will be tax-deductible and GST free
• Massively increase funding to public transportation systems
• 85% reduction in vehicle emissions by 2040
• By 2017, no landfill will be able to operate without methane capture

And the list goes on. And on, and on…

All these changes will require a huge investment in researching of new technologies, assuming they ever got put in place.

These policies are well-meaning, and many of them have been implemented in other countries. But to try and get them to work in Canada, and so many of them at once, seems unfeasible.

In addition “science”, “research” and “technology”, I also made a chart searching all the party platforms for the word “homeopath”,

Indeed, as Skeptic North pointed out, the Green party would put a greater emphasis on homeopathy and other alternative medicine in our health care plans.

It makes me wonder how a party that talks a big game about using science and research to better our planet, can so greatly miss the mark on science and research in healthcare. Something to consider.

Be sure to vote on May 2. Check Elections Canada for all pertinent information.

The Science of Your Political Views

While Canadian politics could never match the emotional idiocy of American politics, I’ve seen some pretty heated discussions in the past few weeks.

The Canadian federal election is a couple of weeks away, and with the debates over and done, we are in the home stretch of campaigning.

But how much do attack-ads and party platforms really affect our decision of whom to vote for? Is it possible that our political leanings are more influenced by ‘nature’ than ‘nurture’?

An article in The Globe today discusses the neuroscience behind political viewpoints. As it turns out, the brain of a conservative works differently than that of a liberal.

Dr. David Amodio, Assistant Professor of Psychology at New York University, discussed what these differences were, and how they affect what political party we support.

According to a 2007 paper Dr. Amodio published in Nature Neuroscience:

on average, conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty.

So conservatives tend to be more, shall we say, stubborn in their political viewpoints than liberals, who tend to gather more information and can be more flexible with their views.

While this may conjure up a stereotypical image of the crotchety old man, so set in his ways that he refuses to vote for anyone but the Conservatives, you should take these studies with a grain of salt.

It is only fair to point out that most of these studies are designed by liberals and may have some bias, and there are certainly many exceptions to these “rules”.

One very interesting study discussed in The Globe conducted at Princeton University:

people were shown black-and-white photographs of the faces of rival political candidates. After viewing each pair of photos for a mere half a second, they were asked which candidate looked more competent. In fact, the candidates they judged to be more competent had won their races two-thirds of the time.

This indicates that, regardless of political leanings, people tend to vote with their emotions as much, if not more, than with their brains. As much as I hate attack ads and staged photo-ops, it would seem the strategists are using science to their advantage.

So whether you identify yourself as a Liberal or a Conservative, NDP or Green, it couldn’t hurt any of us to be aware that the way our brains work can influence how we vote, and we should make an extra effort to stay informed on all the issues; instead of voting for the same party every time just out of habit.

Ontario Opposition Parties Resort to Radiation Fear Mongering

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty was criticized for not releasing details of increased radiation levels in Ontario. - Photo: Joshua Sherurcij

It keeps happening, and it keeps blowing my mind.

However, this time it is not the media that is the culprit of radiation fear-mongering, but the opposition parties in the Ontario provincial government.

A story today from The Globe and Mail details how Premier Dalton McGuinty and the provincial Liberal party have come

under fire from opposition members on Wednesday for failing to tell the public about elevated levels of radiation detected in the province following Japan’s nuclear disaster.

The problem with this though, is that the increased radiation levels in Ontario are negligible.

I wrote a post a few weeks ago about increased radiation levels being detected in British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada. The media, of course, jumped all over the story, even though the increase in radiation detected was less than the increase seen when it rains.

And it rains A LOT in BC.

The increase seen in Ontario is even smaller. In fact, as Leslie Meerburg, spokeswoman for Health Canada, pointed out:

A five-hour airplane flight from Montreal to Vancouver exposes an individual to 50,000 times more radiation than the level detected in Canada as a result of the earthquake in Japan

Let me give you some more numbers to show you just how ridiculous this complaint by the opposition parties really is.

Radiation dose absorbed in a biological system is calculated in units of Sieverts (Sv). This unit takes into account the radiation type, amount of radiation absorbed by your body, as well as the sensitivity of various organs to radiation exposure.

On average, you get about 10 micro-Sieverts (1.0 x 10^-5 Sv) of radiation dose per day. That five-hour flight from Montreal to Vancouver gives you about 40 micro-Sieverts (4.0 x 10^-5 Sv).

The increased amount of radiation in Ontario is roughly 0.00008 micro-Sieverts (8.0 x 10^-10 Sv).

This is an increase of about 0.0008 %.

Need a visual? Here is a bar graph comparing a normal day’s worth of radiation dose in Ontario, compared to a day with the “increased levels” of radiation dose.

In other words, there is absolutely no danger associated with this increased level of radiation.

So why did the NDP give the Liberals a hard time?

New Democrats questioned government ministers for the second straight day on why they have not been more transparent with the public by publishing information on radiation levels in the air, water and food supply.

“This government totally dropped the ball,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said in Question Period.

I generally support the NDP, but it was the NDP in this case that dropped the ball. I’m very disappointed by this.

Turns out, the Ontario government had already increased testing all food, milk and water in the wake of the Japan nuclear crisis. The NDP was upset that they didn’t tell anybody.

But I feel this was the right call. Why cause undo fear and panic  when there is absolutely no danger? I’m glad the government increased their testing rates, just to be on the safe side, but telling the public would have been a mistake.

Refusing to understand the science behind an issue and using fear to further a political agenda is distasteful and shows a lack of judgment. Frankly, it is something more akin to American politics.