Current Issues

CFBS Fourth Annual Strategic Planning Meeting
Saturday, November 16th, 2002
10:00 AM - 1:00 PM
Quebec Room, Lord Elgin Hotel

Executives or representatives of the life sciences research community, granting councils, CIHR Institute Directors, CFBS societies have in the past been involved in the Strategic Planning Meeting and have again been invited to attend the 4th Strategic Planning Meeting.

AGENDA

1. Partnership Group for Science & Engineering (PAGSE)
2. Canadian Consortium for Research (CCR) (Paul Ledwell, Chair)

1. Organize Society annual meetings
2. Website organization
3. Other services?? (Questions and Answers)

1. Sharing space/office equipment and personnel with other life sciences groups. (Current status)

1. Job postings
2. Advertising

1. Registrations
2. Exhibits
3. Sponsorships
4. Employment Fair

INTRODUCTION

This meeting focused on partnerships in both our "advocacy" activities and in the organization and promotion of the Life Sciences through Scientific Conferences.

This year's session saw the participation of 22 individuals with representation from CFBS societies, other life sciences societies and granting councils. The chair of the Canadian Consortium for Research (CCR) and an advocacy group was also present. CFBS serves as CCR's steering committee. Also present was Dr. Hamid Jorjani (National Research Council).

With regards to the advocacy issues, our belief, which is shared by other similar groups, is that there is strength in numbers. If you wish to present an issue to a decision-maker and this decision-maker realizes that you represent a large population of members a great deal more credence will be given to that issue than if you represent a smaller group.

Advocacy Issues

The issues that we highlighted during the past year have included the following:

1. Reminding the Federal government of their goal of moving Canada from 14th place to amongst the top 5 nations in their investment in R & D. This action alone should result in increased funding for Granting Councils.
   
2. Encouraging Federal /Provincial Governments to develop a joint vision regarding post-secondary education. We believe that this is essential to ensure the production of highly qualified personnel (HQP) to satisfy the needs of the academic, governmental and industrial communities.
   
3. Canada's need for HQP.
   
4. Increase significantly training stipends for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Given the need for HQP and the increased debt load being born by undergraduates, many are opting-out of advanced degrees since the low stipends and another 5-7 years of debt are becoming a deterrent.
   
5. Advising the federal government that the support of "indirect costs" of research be a high priority.
   
6. Encourage the federal government to develop an allocation formula for the granting councils that would result in more uniform budgets from one year to the next. We have suggested a type of 3-year rolling average. This would permit greater opportunity for granting councils to plan ahead. And would insure investigators of a level playing field no matter the year in which they apply for a research grant.
   
7. Reminding Government of their commitment to increase the funding to CIHR over 5 years to $1 billion. This commitment was made since CIHR's mandate had been expanded to include research in area beyond the Biomedical Sciences.
   
8. Making representation to decision-makers regarding Species at Risk Legislation.
   
9. Developing scientific arguments in support of the Kyoto Protocol.

CFBS and Partners Activities

1. CFBS Executive Director prepared a brief for the Innovation Strategy "Capacity for Innovation".
   
2. CFBS May Lobby: a) Biomedical Group and b) CCUBC & Zoology. visited 14 decision-makers.
   
3. October 22: CFBS lobbied with the Health Research Advocacy Network (HRAN), 5 of CFBS members took part with another 45 individuals from 8 other organizations.
   
4. November 3 & 4: CFBS in concert with the Chemistry Institute of Canada and the Canadian Physicists (Tri-Council Lobby) took part in visits to parliamentarians.
   
5. CFBS became a founding member of the Health Research Advocacy Network (HRAN) in the summer of 2002.
   
6. HRAN commissioned the preparation of a brief for Government defining the benefits of investing in Health Research.
   
7. The Canadian Consortium for Research (CCR) - the CFBS Executive Director serving as a member of the steering committee- sent a letter to Provincial Premiers requesting that they with the federal government develop a joint strategy regarding post secondary education.
   
8. The CFBS Executive Director served on the program committee of the Partnership Group in Science and Engineering (PAGSE). This organization develops a symposium each year to make parliamentarians aware of various areas of science that are evolving in Canada.
   
9. A series of CFBS Alerts were sent to the CFBS membership concerning issues of interest to the Life Sciences Community.
   
10. In all these activities we have tried to lever additional support for the issues important to the life sciences community. This has been accomplished by developing partnerships with other groups with similar mandates. These partnerships resulted in increased numbers and greater impact when speaking with "decision-makers".

Where is the greatest weakness in our ability to deliver comment of issues related to the life sciences community? In the biomedical area we have enhanced our ability to deliver our message through linkage with HRAN. The broad areas of research in academe, industry and government are helped by our contact with PAGSE. These same areas are also enhanced by our membership in CCR. Two areas, however, are insufficiently covered. One is Government laboratories and the vision that is needed to clearly state their role in Canadian Science. The second involves the environmental/ecological areas of the life sciences. Currently, we have the constructive advice of both the Canadian Society for Zoologists (CSZ)- joined CFBS this year- and the Canadian Council for University Biology Chairs (CCUBC). It would provide CFBS with an additional dimension and at the same time enhance our credibility with decision makers to have additional representation by Plant Science and Ecology Groups.

The International Dimension

Given that international partnerships are becoming ever more important, a number of our members have suggested that we explore ways that Life Sciences in Canada could be represented within the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). Hamid Jorjani (NRC) joined our meeting to indicate how we might become part of the IUBS and the financial requirements that we, as a Life Sciences Community, would have to meet. As a follow-up we have been in contact with Dr. Marvalee Wake, President, IUBS and have been encouraged to pursue membership in IUBS.

Partnerships in Scientific Meetings

Developments over the past several years have witnessed a change in the CFBS Annual Meeting format. The new format involves choosing a theme and having a number of symposia organized around this theme. This means that each year the scientific meeting will appeal only to a portion of the CFBS membership. Those individuals attending, however, should feel they are receiving an in-depth treatment of the subject in which they are interested.

To compensate the other members in the Federation we have begun to provide support for annual meetings hosted by the individual societies. In the past two years we have provided the Physiologists, the Exercise Physiologists and the Biophysicists with financial help by sponsoring a speaker. This sort of partnership assists the societies and hopefully helps to cement the relationship between the Societies and the CFBS office. More recently, we have agreed to provide support for the International Meeting in Toronto being hosted by the Canadian Society of Biochemistry, Cell & Molecular Biology. In addition, when asked we have advertised various meetings of the Life Sciences Societies on our website.

To provide a greater service to the Life Sciences Community CFBS has, on a annual basis, partnered with various CIHR Institutes. Over the past two years the CFBS AGM has included cooperation of three of the CIHR Institutes. The 2003 Meeting in Ottawa will involve a 4th Institute. This action on the part of CFBS should help in displaying the strength in those areas of the Life Sciences and assist in providing some of the glue to make these Institutes act as a community of investigators. In its effort to highlight the activities of Government laboratories we have welcomed the involvement of researchers fro the Health Canada laboratories, the NRC Institute of Biological Sciences and Agri-Food Canada.

Public Awareness

Over the past three years we have presented a Public Forum at each of the CFBS Meetings:
1. Future of Health Research (Year 2000)
2. Genetically Modified Foods (Year 2001)
3. Bio-terrorism (Year 2002)

We continue to welcome suggestions for issues that would be of current interest to both the public and scientific communities.

Future Scientific Themes

Each year we solicit suggestions for scientific themes to be held at future CFBS Meetings. The theme for 2003 will be Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease; this theme is being organized in cooperation with the Pharmacological Society of Canada (PSC). In addition, the Canadian Physiological Society (CPS) has arranged a symposium "The Aging Skeleton". The Canadian Society for Nutritional Sciences, the Ottawa Heart Institute, Health Canada, and the NRC Institute for Biological Sciences will also organize symposia related to the major theme of the conference. The theme of the conference is being sponsored, in part, by the CIHR Institute for Circulatory and Respiratory Health.

Plans are taking place for the 2004 CFBS Meeting that we expect to hold in Vancouver. The theme suggested for this conference is "Cancer & Cell Biology". An organizer for the scientific program of this conference has been identified and has agreed to take on this role. Discussions have begun related to the 2005 Annual Meeting but no firm decision has yet been taken regarding theme and/or location.

Discussions were initiated to determine whether CFBS could perform a service to its member societies in assisting them in organizing their annual scientific meetings. Many of the societies that belong to the Federation have traditionally held their own (often winter) meetings. These meetings, in the past, have been organized by members within each society. Given the disappearance of support staff in universities, hosting the organization of such meetings is becoming increasingly more onerous for each society. Since CFBS has successfully organized scientific meetings, it believes it could provide this service should the individuals societies wish us to do so.

During the meeting CFBS reported on the success of its website. Several of the sources expressed interest in the possibility that CFBS act more as a secretariat and serve to assist societies maintain their websites. In addition, CFBS could function to update society membership lists and other functions related to online services.

Can CFBS provide other services? At its meeting in Montreal the Internet Café was introduced to allow scientists to keep in contact with their labs and/or others. In the previous year the Employment Fair was initiated. CFBS is constantly on the lookout for suggestions that will make its annual meeting more useful, to the community it serves.

Finally, for the past 3 years we have organized our scientific meetings using what we have termed "the thematic approach" with a number of symposia devoted to the theme chosen. Is this the best way for us to organize our annual meeting? Are the others types of meeting format that would hold greater appeal to our membership? Partnering with societies to help them with their more specialized meetings would appear currently to provide Canada with the most logical spectrum of meetings.

Financial Issues

Currently, CFBS appears to be in good health financially. It is clear, however, that in order to be more aggressive in our role in advocacy (ie. develop the data on which to base our writing of briefs) we need to develop ways of reducing our overhead. Our office is also embarrassed that it has for financial reasons been unable to translate our briefs into Francais.

Our recent membership in HRAN should help us accomplish one of these goals. HRAN has recently commissioned the preparation of a brief documenting the benefits of investing in health research. We have also begun discussions with a number of organizations, similar to our own, with the aim of sharing space and equipment to reduce overhead costs.

Our income, from sources other than societies continues to grow. Contributing to this are fees for job postings, advertising on our website (see website chart). Our website income will help reduce our dependence on society fees. The membership of 3 new societies in CFBS over the past 3 years has also helped CFBS' bottom line.

The CFBS Annual Meeting, revenue from sponsorships, registrations, exhibitors, and "employment fair" participants all have contributed to our improved financial health (see chart).

During the last several years, CFBS has been pleased with the growing support, by the Life Sciences Research community, of the efforts of the Ottawa office. Enlarging our membership will be key, however, to making CFBS more effective in pursuing the issues that are important to the continued vitality of research in the life sciences in Canada. Constructive suggestions and involvement by members of our community are key to CFBS' being effective in promoting the issues important to our researches.

Dr. Bruce H. Sells, FRS(C)
Executive Director