June 12, 1998

Government seeks advice

If you think federal bureaucrats have their fingers nowhere near the pulse of change, now's your chance to give them a piece of your mind. Government policy makers are asking academics and independent researchers to help them chart the course into the next century.

The Joint Project on Trends (a partnership between The Policy Research Secretariat and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) is trying to identify social, cultural, and economic knowledge "gaps" of crucial importance to the country's growth, with a view to making more informed policy decisions.

Just how the government ultimately makes these decisions is always somewhat mysterious, says University of Alberta economist Dr. Ken Norrie. But this initiative at least demonstrates a clear intention to take seriously what academics have to say about Canada's future.

"It's as good a chance as any academic will ever have to have an influence," says Norrie. "They've certainly set up the institutions to do it. Normally if you're an academic, you do good policy work and you publish it somewhere, and it may or may not get noticed, and it may or may not get fed in. There's a process none of us really understand as to why some ideas catch on and some don't."

"What they've done (now) is set up a process where if the work is any good, it will necessarily get noticed. They're going to set up these policy conferences, so the stuff will be fed right in."

SSHRC has set aside $225,000 for the project, offering individual researchers $5,000 each for critical essays of 30 to 75 pages targeting one of eight "trends" in relation to four themes: society, economy, culture and governance. The eight trends include globalization, North American integration, technological change and the information revolution, the environment, demographics -- aging, value change, multiple centres of power and social differentiation. Drafts of the selected papers will be delivered next year at conferences across Canada and then collected for publication.

Norrie will lead the North American integration team, organizing a conference on that theme next year at the University of Alberta. Aside from a good chance results will actually make a difference in steering policy, what excites Norrie most about Project on Trends is its sweeping interdisciplinary approach, especially "the opportunity to force this thinking across sociology and across some of the humanities."

According to SSHRC's outline of the project, the aim is not to present new research, but to "review and synthesize current knowledge." It also allows for "unconventional methods of synthesis and presentation, as well as the development of provocative/speculative arguments."

Norrie expects his own team will look at Canada's changing relationship to the U.S. under pressures from such forces as NAFTA and the technological revolution. "In other words, is this a different relationship than it has been historically?" Because there are huge cultural issues at stake in this transformation, he hopes to include disciplines as seemingly unrelated to the economy as English, fine arts, and communications.

Proposals from all Canadian researchers, including non-academics, are eligible for funding, except those that address the mandate of the researcher's regular employer. Candidates must submit to SSHRC a proposal and resume, each no longer than two pages, by June 15. The documents may be submitted electronically to Collaborative@sshrc.ca. Results will be announced July 10.

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