Faculty Affiliate, ISSP
Assistant Professor, Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, uOttawa
Despite its reputation as a more sustainable form of transport, long-distance passenger rail travel in Canada typically results in a higher carbon footprint per passenger than long-distance commercial air travel. This is what I discovered after diving into the emissions data (recently published in the journal Canadian Geographer). Here I explain why Canada’s long-distance rail services defy the ‘green’ reputation held by rail transportation globally, and offer some policy proposals for improving the situation.
Since the emergence of COVID-19, we have seen some clear and encouraging examples of how science and evidence-informed policy have shaped Canada's response to the pandemic. Public health officials have been given a platform, ensuring that scientists are actually delivering messages to the public and providing them with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. New tools are emerging to help governments find and use evidence more effectively.
When thinking about which trends will stick in an age of COVID-19, I see bad news and good news. Whether we should be more pessimistic or more optimistic remains deeply uncertain. But even if the pandemic can be brought under control (a mighty assumption), the knock-on effects are grim.
When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, everyone was saying that we are all in it together. Six months in, it is clear that we are not. We have seen huge disparities in terms of the impacts of this virus on the elderly, the unemployed and underemployed, women, Indigenous peoples and racialized minorities. In other words, the majority of our population.
On Wednesday, October 21, 2020, at 12:00 PM, the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue Project on AI for Healthy Humans and Environments at the AI + Society Initiative, in collaboration with the Centre for Law, Technology and Society, the ISSP and the Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics, presents a talk with Prof. David Christian Rose, Elizabeth Creak Associate Professor of Agricultural Innovation and Extension at the University of Reading, in the UK.
On Thursday, October 29, at 12:00 PM, the Institute for Science, Society and Policy will host Prof. Melike Erol-Kantarci, Faculty Affiliate, ISSP and Associate Professor, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, uOttawa, to discuss novel AI-based tools that will allow a peer-to-peer energy trading platform consisting of microgrids to become a part of the future transactive energy systems.
On Tuesday, November 17, 2020, at 4:30 PM, the ISSP will organise the panel Aligning Science, Society and Policy for the Grand Challenges of our Time, as a part of the Canadian Science Policy Conference 2020.
On Thursday, September 24, at 12:00 PM, the Institute for Science, Society and Policy hosted a diverse group of ISSP members from Canada and the United States to tackle COVID-19 issues.
On Tuesday, October 20, from 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM, the ISSP and the RCIS invited you to an expert panel discussion about the Mind-Brain Relationship and Addiction.
Created by a research team led by ISSP Core Members Prof. Kelly Bronson, Canada Research Chair in Science and Society and Prof. Jason Millar, Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in the Ethical Engineering of Robotics and AI and Prof. Teresa Scassa, Canada Research Chair in Information Law and Policy, uOttawa, the Global Pandemic App Watch (GPAW) will monitor the technical evolution of Exposure Notification and Contact Tracing (ENaCT) worldwide government apps to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.
