Welcome to The Advance, the newsletter of the CCA. If you haven’t subscribed yet, you can sign up here.

IN THIS EDITION:

• Closing Canada’s connectivity gap?
• Coming together for evidence
• Readings on AI’s place in the peer review process, incentivizing corporate research publication, new data on misinformation concerns, and the late quantum computing pioneer Ray Laflamme
• Towards a more resilient future

Closing Canada’s connectivity gap?

In 2018, nearly 60% of rural households in Canada lacked access to internet that met the Government of Canada’s modest targets for speed. In First Nations Reserves, almost 70% of households lacked access; in the territories, access was nonexistent. Since then, federal programs have expanded broadband internet connections in some rural and remote regions throughout the country. As of 2023, 20% of households in rural areas still lacked access, as did just over 40% of households in First Nations Reserves and the Territories. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) expects every household in Canada will have access to internet that meets their speed targets by 2031.

Recently, the CRTC announced $17 million to connect an additional 2,200 households to broadband internet that meets federal speed targets. “The projects announced today will connect 18 communities across Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario,” Vicky Eatrides, Chairperson and CEO of CRTC, says. “This will have a significant impact by helping create new opportunities for local businesses and improve access to health care and education services.”

In Waiting to Connect, the CCA examines the non-technical issues that are driving the connectivity gap, as well as the practices and principles that can guide the journey to equitable connectivity. “Canada’s population is divided between those with digital privilege and those without,” the CCA’s expert panel wrote. “The implications of this connectivity gap are severe; they are also growing as society is increasingly built around the assumption that everyone has access to high-quality connectivity and the devices and digital literacy needed to take advantage of it.” Waiting to Connect remains a critical vision for equitable access to high-quality networks.

The CCA recently welcomed members of the Expert Panel on the State of Science, Technology, and Innovation in Canada (left) and the Expert Panel on Enhancing Canada’s National Research Infrastructure (right) to Ottawa for a few days of dynamic discussions. Learn more about their forthcoming reports at the links above.

Readings and Events

• Maydianne Andrade, chair of our Scientific Advisory Committee, has been appointed Dean of the Faculty of Science at York University. In an announcement, York University President Rhonda Lenton praised Andrade for her research excellence, science communication expertise, and “her focus on systemic increase of inclusive practice in academia.”
  
• W. Ford Doolittle, a member of the CCA’s Expert Panel on Biodiversity Science, and Adel Sedra, a member of our Expert Panel on the State of Science and Technology in Canada (2012), were appointed to the Order of Canada.
  
• Recently, Juliet Daniel, a member of the CCA’s Expert Panel on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Practices in the Post-secondary Research System, was named Distinguished University Professor by McMaster University, where she is a professor of biology. Daniel “has played a crucial role in mentoring emerging scholars, particularly women and Black scientists” and “has worked to address systemic health disparities and promote cancer awareness among marginalized groups.”
  
• For Nature, evolutionary biologist Carl T. Bergstrom and computational social scientist Joe Bak-Coleman write that automating the peer review process may ultimately work against scientific judgment: “If we cede this process to large language models, we relinquish our agency to improve the scientific literature.”
  
• “Unlike in academia, where publishing is central to progress, corporate research tends to prioritize secrecy—protecting discoveries to maintain a competitive edge,” Brian Owens writes, in a new story about what incentives might propel corporate researchers to publish more.
  
• For UofTMed Magazine’s summer issue, Betty Zou details research into non-opioid alternatives for pain management. “We use a fairly broad-stroke approach to treating pain,” a pharmacology and toxicology professor tells Zou. “But not all pain is the same.”
  
• Drawing on our Vulnerable Connections report, researchers at the University of Melbourne reviewed nearly 5,000 recommendations concerning social media use and the mental health of young people before paring them down and synthesizing them into five distinct themes.
  
• Researchers with StatCan report that nearly 60% of Canadians “were very or extremely concerned about the presence of misinformation online.” Greater levels of concern were found among Canadians with higher levels of education and higher personal income; the StatCan report also examines sociodemographic trends among their findings, and notes that “people who reported higher levels of concern over misinformation were also more likely to report that they regularly fact-check.” The StatCan report draws on Fault Lines, from the CCA’s Expert Panel on the Socioeconomic Costs of Health and Science Misinformation.
  
• And Ray Laflamme, the theoretical physicist and Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information, died on June 19 following a lengthy battle with cancer. Laflamme, founding director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, served as chair of our Expert Panel on the Responsible Adoption of Quantum Technologies. Read more about Laflamme’s life and career.