The Future of Canadian Science

SF writer, Robert J. Sawyer, spoke at a workshop hosted by the Canada Foundation for Innovation in Ottawa in November 2018. The article has both the audio of the talk and a transcript if you want to give it a quick browse. He's optimistic about the state of Canadian science.

I think we’re at the best we’ve ever been, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to be the best we’ll ever be, in terms of Canadian science research. I think we’ve got real momentum moving forward, here. We had a Nobel Laureate in physics in 2018. We had a Nobel Laureate in physics three years prior to that. I suspect we’re going to see more and more Nobel medals coming to Canada in the sciences, and we’re also going to see more and more generations in Canadian science students staying here because there’s nowhere better to go.

Because the best place in the world to do fundamental particle research is SNOLAB. The best place in the world to do all the variety of things that you can do with a synchrotron is the Canadian Light Source. The best place in the world to do Arctic research is aboard our icebreaker Amundsen. We have, not only now the best trained minds, but also the best facilities. And what we’re going

I think he's right, and he could have cited more. We have the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo for theoretical physics and cosmology, new radio telescopes in British Columbia, the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies which is a world leader in cube sats, and the MARS Discovery District in Toronto for world-leading medical and biochemical research. And a government that thinks that science and scientists matter.