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Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague from Alberta does not understand how scientists communicate and what kind of communication is needed to convey and understand scientific research.

I want to read a letter I received from a scientist. It says:

Thank you for raising in the House the question of first-hand access to scientific findings. Our citizenry need to hear what is new in science, from the scientists who made the observations. Science...is not a catalogue of facts that can be passed on second-hand. It is a nuanced message that must be heard at its source, or it will be lost.

That is from Dr. John Polanyi, a Canadian winner of the Nobel Prize in 1986.

The idea is that even scientists do not learn about what other scientists did simply by reading journal articles. If they work in the same specialized field, they can learn a lot from journal articles, but most of the time, scientists have a phone call or a chat in the hallway during a conference to really understand what each other did. That is why there needs to be a two-way conversation between scientists and journalists. It is so the public can understand what government scientists have done, and participate in the democratic process of deciding government policy.

Can the member answer that?

Ted Hsu

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