This op-ed was published in The HIll Times on February 29, 2016

Jocelyn Downie is a professor in the faculties of law and medicine at Dalhousie University. She has advised several official committees on assisted dying, such as the Canadian Senate Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. Prof. Downie presented a lecture on assisted dying on Parliament Hill on Feb. 23 as a part of the Big Thinking lecture series hosted by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

The Supreme Court of Canada has made it clear that patients who meet the Carter criteria should have access to physician-assisted death. While we...

Since the kick-off to the 2013-2014 season, three of the Federation’s Big Thinking lectures have featured a top-flight researcher who continues to make airwaves with ideas and opinions on issues affecting current policy discussions. Let’s see what they have been up to since speaking to us in Ottawa...

In October, Richard Hawkins, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy at the University of Calgary, “proposed how policy makers can - and must - start thinking very differently about innovation. He argued that Canadian policies aimed at stimulating innovation are directly at odds with what we've learned about what...

Governments the world over have launched ambitious national innovation strategies, designed to use scientific and technological developments to produce economic growth and address social challenges. Canada has been one of the most aggressive on this front, supporting a wide range of measures designed to promote commercialization and job creation. Globally, these policies have strengthened urban economies, but have had much smaller impacts on rural and remote regions.  In Canada, northern, rural and Aboriginal communities have yet to feel the full benefit of scientific and technological initiatives. Our innovation outputs as a whole continue to lag internationally. 

How do we address this innovation deficit, while also encouraging creative regional development? Join Ken Coates, Canada Research Chair in Regional Innovation, as he explores how...

CHFSS kicked off the Winter 2012 Big Thinking series on January 31 with Professor Jeremy de Beer from the University of Ottawa. Held in partnership with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC), the event drew over 150 MPs, Senators and public servants, as well as many university presidents who were in town as part of AUCC’s Day on the Hill.

Prof. de Beer’s talk, Innovation? What innovation? Re-thinking progress and how we measure it, explored new options for considering intellectual property and how policies can best encourage new, creative research. He argued for a more holistic approach to innovation, one that values the contributions of the social sciences and humanities, while also challenging the ways we traditionally measure...