I’ll never pretend to be an expert in all the decisions I would have to make as an elected representative. When it comes to decision making, I’ll look to evidence-based research to shape policy and decision making.
Research is the backbone of good decision making. Every day your elected representatives have to make decisions on what policies to advance, which to stand against, and how to address them. If you’re like me, you don’t want smug, entitled, know-it-alls to make uninformed decisions driven by misinformation. We only have to look as far as our Provincial government to see how disastrous that can be.
Everyday people want their elected representatives to make good decisions. And good decision makers need good research.
Here’s what I will commit to:
- Advocating for money and resources to solidify Canada and Toronto as a hub for science and research.
- Working to establish national strategies for enhancing the knowledge-based economy at the core of job creation and driver of economic growth.
- Committing to the recommendations of the Fundamental Science Review (The Naylor Report).
- Supporting and enhancing the valuable inclusion of Indigenous and traditional knowledge in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research.
- Acknowledging and diminishing the systemic gender and racial barriers that prevent non-binary, trans- and female- identified and/or racialized researchers from accessing and participating in research.
- Supporting worker enhancements and protections under the Canadian Labour Code and other federal legislation that helps establish intellectual property rights of all researchers associated with projects, reducing precarious work associated with research, and protecting the independence of federal scientists from political interference.
- Advocating for stable and consistent public funding of research through expansion, growth, and coordination of the public funding agencies under a National Advisory Council on Research and Innovation (NACRI).
- Advocating that all publicly funded research in the public interest enters public domain. If public money is used in the research, then it must be available for public use.
- Bringing a watershed approach to policy and decision making: rivers and water sources don’t end at borders, neither does research, so let’s get rid of artificial barriers in our policy and decisions.
- Working across party-lines to ensure that all decision making is informed by evidence-based research.
- Investing in domestic vaccine and biomedical research and product manufacturing in Canada.
- Supporting global vaccine equity by supporting the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Waiver (TRIPS) to ensure vaccination isn't a privilege of the rich
- Working with the provinces and territories on tuition-free post-secondary education.