This panel will discuss how large scale studies have shown that persons with lifelong intellectual/developmental disabilities such as, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder are more susceptible than the general population to develop COVID-19 infection and to suffer more severe outcomes including death from infection.

Social media is now a well-entrenched tool for both supporting and disrupting the circulation of credible information and analysis. Much of this is automated, through bots that add to or amplify intimidation, threats, and disinformation, and through social media company algorithms and mechanisms that seek to weed out such content. Is this sufficient to address intimidation and disinformation campaigns? What are the cultural, social, and political implications of corporate-managed social media becoming a major channel for public education and influencing even the tone of public debate?

Fundamental questions regarding the role of the university in contemporary society crystallize around what constitutes academic freedom. While this notion is arguably meant to protect a safe space of critique of or dissent from state or corporate control, the university is increasingly dependent on both sectors for the resources it needs to function, expected to produce economically productive citizens, and offer the central avenue for social mobility in a stratified society – all of which imbricate it in the very interests it is meant to be free to critique.

The notion of academic freedom is also meant to protect a safe space of knowledge production, understood as a process separable from immediate social, economic or political interests or conditions. This understanding has been destabilized as we increasingly see knowledge production as a situated, political, social construction – with the inevitable result of requiring debate over what should count as legitimate knowledge and why. To the extent to which the university did indeed democratize in the period following WWII, it has increased the diversity of stakeholders, and therefore of voices and positions and interests in defining legitimate knowledge.

The university is a participant in contemporary reckonings with the violences of colonialism and capitalism, past and present, especially as linked to a wide variety of patterns of domination, including systemic racism and patriarchy. This leads to questions about the university as a legitimate and privileged space of knowledge production, as a source indeed of authorization, or what we might call “expertise”.

Somewhere, then, the notion of a space safe for dissent encounters the notion of a space capable of exerting a violence of its own, as we try to hold in one frame the ideas of academic freedom, human dignity and equity of access to resources.

The RSC has constituted a Working Group on Academic Freedom and Responsibility to: 1) to articulate the core elements of what these debates have in common: what the core issues are; 2) to summarize key elements of major perspectives on these issues; 3) to provide a set of principles and goals which might be useful as a guide to thinking through specific cases.

Outcomes of the Working Group’s efforts will form the basis of discussion at the 2021 COEE.

Since its establishment in April 2020, the RSC Task Force on COVID-19 has commissioned a series of studies related to health and health care in Canada, including Policy Briefings on Long-Term Care, Homelessness, Epidemiology, and Excess Deaths due to COVID-19.

In the fall of 2021, the RSC will publish a series of Policy Briefings that will animate discussion on how to build a healthier Canada coming out of COVID-19, including Post-COVID Healthcare in Canada, Post-COVID Critical Care, and The Future of the Nursing Workforce.

With audience engagement throughout the symposium, the event will close with an exchange of views about next steps in each of these areas guided by the aspiration of emerging from the pandemic as a better society than we were going into it.

COVID-19 has shone a light on the adverse impact of Canada’s legislative approach to people who use drugs and the significant harms they suffer as a result. The pandemic has worsened an already devastating opioid epidemic. There has been an increased number of overdose deaths since March 2020. It is therefore imperative to ensure that, as Canadian society recovers from COVID-19, we make it a priority to address the human rights of people who use drugs.

It is well-documented that a number of significant harms result from the criminalization of drugs for personal use. Criminalization results in adverse health impacts because it increases harms associated with drug use such as increased risk of infectious disease and an increased risk of violence. Criminalization also interferes with the delivery of essential public health measures to people who use drugs. Importantly, criminalization has a disproportionate impact on racialized groups in Canada, leading to intergenerational incarceration cycles and trauma.

The RSC Working Group on Harm Reduction will include experts from multiple disciplines as well as input and narratives from people with lived experience. The Working Group will contextualize the criminal law regime for the control of drugs in Canada including the constitutional considerations relevant to the ongoing criminalization of personal possession and the likely impacts of Bill C-22, which proposes a series of reforms to Canada’s current criminal law framework.

Through an analysis of the adverse impacts associated with the Canadian legislative regime on people who use drugs, the Working Group will recommend elements of a Canadian framework for drug decriminalization in Canada.

The Policy Briefing is scheduled for publication in the late summer of 2021.

The Royal Society of Canada elects to its membership leading scholars in the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences, providing its “seal of excellence” to those who advance artistic and intellectual knowledge in Canada. The RSC’s membership has historically been overwhelmingly white and male. Duncan Campbell Scott, one of the architects of the notorious Indian residential school system, served as its President and dominated its activities for many years. Many other members played a significant role in shaping knowledge systems rooted in colonialism, that built and implemented policies that have proven catastrophic for Indigenous communities. This volume of essays begins to explore how Royal Society scholars helped to construct the intellectual foundations that shored up white-settler privilege and erased the knowledge contributions of Indigenous peoples.

The impetus for this book began when Cindy Blackstock, a well-known Indigenous member of the RSC, brought the Society’s linkages with Duncan Campbell Scott to our attention, and urged us to make further inquiries into our Society’s history and on-going responsibility for Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. The RSC created a Task Force on Truth and Reconciliation. Its members conceived the idea of a volume of interdisciplinary essays on this topic and discussed how a collaborative process might produce this. A call for papers brought the RSC authors together, and they produced the chapters that constitute this book.

These interdisciplinary essays, authored primarily by current RSC members, explore the historical contribution of the RSC and of Canadian scholars to the production of ideas and policies that underpin the disastrous interaction of settlers with Indigenous peoples. The historical essays focus upon the RSC’s founding in 1882 to the mid-twentieth century. The later chapters bring the discussion forward to the present, documenting some of the first steps taken to change these damaging patterns, and challenging the Society and Canadian scholars more generally to make substantial changes for the future.

Since 2005, the national science academies of the G7 have prepared statements for the G7 governments.

In 2018, the RSC began organizing annual G7 Research Summits in order to amplify the findings and next steps outlined in one or more of the “S7” statements.

On November 17, 2021, on the heels of COP 26, the RSC G7 Research Summit will focus on Climate Change Implications and Mitigation Options for Canada, using the S7 statement on Net Zero as the catalyst for discussions.

Health data are essential. This is not a new insight, but discussions about health data are now much more widespread as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Case counts, hospitalization rates, and epidemic curves are common currency in everyday discussions. Equally, there have been conversations about the data that were missing, such as data about race, occupation and socioeconomic status, and how that lack harmed our understanding of the individual and community consequences of the pandemic. 

In Canada, these conversations are happening in the context of a constitutional federation that is in a process of reconciliation with Indigenous nations, and in which it is sub-national jurisdictions that are responsible for health care delivery. The result is a complex mix of data we do not have, data we do have but do not share, and data that even if they were shared are not comparable because they are collected in different formats using different systems, definitions and rules. 

There are a number of initiatives to try and address all of these issues. Some initiatives are community-driven, such the creation of principles to guide the collection and use of data, particularly about identifiable populations or communities. Other initiatives are driven by governments, including the development of a Pan-Canadian health data strategy. All are focused on a desire to ensure that health data are available to tell the stories and provide the evidence we need to understand and ultimately improve services and outcomes for everyone in Canada. 

This session will talk about some of these initiatives, why they have been so long in coming, why previous attempts at organizing health data have failed, and why there is some hope that this time will be different. 

The subject of the symposium is the biological, medical and other knowledge that has been obtained through the unprecedented response from the scientific community to COVID-19, and the lessons for future science policy. COVID-19 has led to an unparalleled engagement from the scientific, medical, public health and pharmaceutical industries to combat the pandemic. The many successes include the development of new therapies and vaccines in record time, but the complicated and severe sequelae of the disease are likely to remain as significant health problems for many years to come. Important scientific questions, such as the degree and duration of protection after vaccination in the face of new virus mutation, remain to be addressed. The pandemic has also revealed important issues about public policy, scientific preparedness and need for on-going investment in science to meet future needs. These and other issues will be examined during the symposium.

Join us for an engaging panel discussion with three McGill RSC Fellows and Members of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, who participated in the University’s landmark Bicentennial Digital Time Capsule Project.

As McGill approached its 200th anniversary, over 50 top researchers each addressed the question: What will be the biggest change or discovery in your field over the next 25 years? Their responses are featured in this one-of-a-kind legacy collection of short videos. Panelists will once again cast their eye into the future, this time to envisage the future of research in a post-COVID world. Don’t miss this fun and forward-looking evening!

RSC presents a series of awards and medals to honour individuals selected for their exceptional contributions.

This ceremony welcomes new Members of the College in a format that showcases the interdisciplinary character of the College.

Election to the Royal Society of Canada is the highest honour a scholar, scientist or artist can achieve in Canada as it recognizes the outstanding contributions to Canadian intellectual life and to knowledge. 

The RSC is delighted to recognise this year’s exceptional cohort of Fellows who have significantly impacted their respective disciplines at both national and international levels.

At the 2021 Celebration of Excellence and Engagement, the inaugural cohort of the RSC College – elected in 2014 – will complete their term as members. In honor of their ongoing achievements, and to celebrate this momentous occasion in the history of the RSC and of Canada, members of The Class of 2014 will convene to update Canadians on their continued journey in research, performance and scholarship.

At the Annual General Meeting (AGM), the membership formally reviews the RSC’s finances, considers proposed changes to bylaws, and elects RSC Board of Directors.

Clean Sustainable Energy Production for Pollution Abatement Using Bioprocessing Technologies

Biofuels, which are gaining attention as renewable energy sources, can be produced from a wide variety of renewable feedstocks and biogenic wastes through thermochemical, biological and hybrid conversion technologies. This presentation will highlight the current Canadian and global scenario and strategy on pollution control, and candidacy of a variety of bioprocessing technologies for a wide range of waste feedstocks such as lignocellulosic biomass to produce clean sustainable energy production. This with will focus on some notable research studies conducted in the Catalysis and Chemical Reaction Engineering Laboratories (CCREL) over the past 25+ years at the University of Saskatchewan on biomass-to-liquid (BTL) conversion technologies to produce synthetic transportation fuels and carbon-rich solid products and on pollution control strategies from conventional thermal power plants. The current progress, challenges and knowledge gaps in the R&D of these technologies for the production of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from waste resources as well as their global opportunities for bio-economy will be presented.

Lightning talks aim to share deep insights within six minutes each. They are opportunities for new and current Members to introduce their work and to share areas of ongoing and emerging focus.