Freedom for Research Working Group

Concerns of this group are especially the restrictions on the scientific enterprise imposed by governments and employers, and the distortion of research effort and literature resulting from pressure of corporate sponsors and lobbies.

Ongoing work on these issues has been reported to the Group. A campaign was conducted to urge Canadian response to offset the new attack on science in the USA. An open letter was sent to the federal government from hundreds of scientists and supporters, mostly from the Toronto area. Note that this was billed as an activity of Our Right to Know (Margrit Eichler, President), the organization formed as an offshoot of this Working Group to conduct campaigns of advocacy, as Science for Peace is defined as primarily an educational organization. Following on this we hoped to get interviews with ministers, but so far only Catherine McKenna has responded with interest and even this has not led to an interview. However, the open letter got helpful mention in an article by Olivia Ward in the Star.

We are due for a spring meeting to lay out plans for the coming year. Unfortunately this has not yet been scheduled.

— Chandler Davis [Report to the 2017 SfP AGM]