Dr. Lawrence Goodridge knows firsthand the kind of progress that can be made when scientists and government work together.
Dr. Lawrence Goodridge
A professor in the Department of Food Science and the director of the Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety at the University of Guelph, Goodridge's lab was part of the Ontario Wastewater Surveillance Initiative, a program developed to detect COVID-19 in community wastewater.
The initiative enabled researchers like Goodridge to create infrastructure that identified public health threats ahead of time, unlike the pandemic which took responsive measures.
"It is imperative for politicians to understand that this is precisely the time to prevent public health emergencies - before they happen," says Goodridge, who will travel to Ottawa this month to attend Science Meets Parliament 2025 (SMP).
Since 2018, SMP has convened five times, bringing together Canada's scientific and political communities to enable a two-way dialogue. The goal is for each sector to learn about the other, while attending House and Senate committee meetings, with the goal of better informing policymaking.
"Increasingly, there appears to be a disconnect between scientists and politicians," Goodridge says, noting each are trained differently and view how to impart change on different timelines.
Politicians think in election cycles, he says, whereas scientists have the ability to think and develop programs over much longer terms.
Public health a shared challenge
Goodridge is a food microbiologist in the Ontario Agricultural College, a Canada Research Chair in Foodborne Pathogen Dynamics and globally recognized expert in food safety and public health - all areas that affect Canada's population daily.
His work integrates molecular biology, genomics, bioinformatics and microbiome science to innovate approaches to identify and track bacterial contaminants across the food production chain.
Through the wastewater surveillance program, and the research initiative Food from Thought, Goodridge and his colleagues work on understanding how pathogens such as E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria that can cause illnesses that burden public health care systems and can, in some cases, be fatal.
"Public health challenges are an existential threat to the survival of this country, or any country," Goodridge says. "It is one area that requires foresight, to be prioritized consistently, beyond election cycles."
The voting public, who put these politicians into power, must be able to understand academic research and its applications, Goodridge says, and in turn, politicians must be clear on the importance of research to constituents.
SMP is an opportunity for face time with policy makers, but it also connects Canada's scientists with one another, each from their own diverse background. There are common overarching issues that affect all of us, Goodridge says.
"This is an opportunity to effect policy change and to really solve some of these challenges and improve the already excellent science taking place in Canada," he says. "It's time for Canada to invest in our own programs."
Science Meets Parliament takes place Nov. 17-18 in Ottawa, Ont. and is presented by the Canadian Science Policy Centre and the Office of the Chief Science Advisor.
Following Science Meets Parliament, the University of Guelph has partnered with the CSPC Conference taking place Nov. 19-21. Under this partnership, U of G will host a panel session titled, A National Agri-Food Research Strategy: Empowering Cross-Sectoral Partnerships for Greater Impact.
