One can almost read the headline: Ontario science table advises against dissolving the Ontario science table.

Much has been made of the recent decision to fold the Ontario Science Advisory Table into an advisory body within Public Health Ontario, a move that has been widely denounced in the media as “undermining of scientific independence” or heralding the demise of “rigorous research” and compromising “scientific autonomy.” Both contentions are misinformed.

For starters, one must remember that Ontario and Canada have produced rigorous research for years in publicly funded, world-class research universities. In addition, academics, such as most of the scientists sitting at the science table, already have public platforms as tenured university professors to speak openly about their work as experts in their specific fields. The overreaction is, however, understandable.

The COVID-19 crisis in the context of 24-hour news and social media has made the work of certain scientists, including many on the science table, highly visible. Politicians have, arguably, made policies based on their recommendations while journalists amplified these experts’ views in the media, and the general public relied on their expertise to guide their own decisions. So before we get too upset about the disbanding of the science table, let’s pause to remember a few important things about “science.”

First, the Ontario Science Advisory Table does not equal science. The science table is made up of a number of scientists who have volunteered their time and experience for understanding and providing potential solutions to the COVID-19 crisis. They have done so on a volunteer basis because undoubtedly they are concerned citizens. They are committed social actors and deserve credit and recognition for their efforts. But, despite the products of these volunteer experts being informed by scientific methodologies and theories, what the science table produced cannot be understood as science in the strictest sense.

Science is a complex and protracted social process to understand a specific problem. “Science” depends on ongoing and transparent vigourous and rigourous debates and critiques via peer-review processes in the context of numerous studies developed by multiple actors, which over time, may yield similar or contradicting results.

This time-bound process, so often plagued with doubt, uncertainty, and humility, that builds a more complete picture of the object of study, is what we call science. During the pandemic, pressures from journalists, politicians, and the general public, forced rapid decision-making made under a climate of panic and fear.

Scientists responded by pushing their work out faster and directly to policymakers and the public, often bypassing the traditional checks and balances of peer review to publish provisional analyses. It is this provisional work that powerful media actors have transformed, perhaps inadvertently into “scientific truth.”

The project of building scientific understanding still requires time, patience, and above all, open debate. Essentially—and this may be hard to hear—the scientific process doesn’t care about a crisis. Science takes its own time, but the fruits of genuine science including debate and discussion are worth the investment.

Second, despite their claims, the science table was not transparent. Yes, the science table was transparent in its reports and about its conclusions. However, it is not clear how experts were chosen to shape the scope of their questions, methods, analyses, and conclusions. We do not know who determined what expertise was deemed important and relevant to produce policy recommendations with wide-ranging societal and multi-generational consequences.

There was a noticeable scarcity of nurses and allied health professions on the science table. The most acute absence was social scientists in fields such as sociology, anthropology, human geography, education, economics, and law. Representation was also weak in terms of what is broadly conceptualized as “marginalized” or “vulnerable communities,” groups so often invoked during the pandemic yet rarely present in their own voices. 

As a result, the broader perspectives of many relevant academic fields were excluded from the science-informed recommendations produced by the science table. To the best of our knowledge, there were no open postings or recruitments, or reviews of qualifications; thus, one may question whether membership was largely determined by pre-existing networks in academia.

If this was the case, it needs to be asked how this may have affected internal criticisms of their ongoing work. Because of this, it is possible that what reached the public was an expression of traditional biomedical science exerting its scientific and social authority by publicly asserting conclusions that had not been validated by any of the standard processes of scientific knowledge. This is a problem, because the recommendations produced by the science table may neither be bias—nor value—free, though journalists and the general public may believe them so.

As a result, the science table should not be seen as a scientific entity, but as part of a political process. One of the more naïve assumptions or “wishful thinking” about COVID-19 is that we only needed to “follow the science” and the pandemic would be over, as New York Times columnist David Leonhardt pointed out. 

Science can inform policy, but it cannot, or at least should not, dictate it; to assume science “speaks” in a monolithic and uniform voice is dangerous and recalls the follies of “scientific socialism” of the past. 

Science at its best is about transparency, rigour, and open debate with a slow evolution of evidence in the aim of unveiling “scientific truths.” Quotations are used here because these “truths” are always provisional and in the process of being fine-tuned, reworked, or even debunked. Politics, at its best, is a social process that attempts to negotiate different and competing value positions, while weighing the direct and indirect costs and benefits of different policy options for different social groups. Although advocacy on the part of scientists is a legitimate and essential endeavour, pretending the science table represented objective science rather than particular and invested positions is misguided.  

Admirable as its work may be, the science table was essentially a group of self-selected scientists engaging in science-based advocacy work during a period of social upheaval — not just a health crisis. 

In The Crisis of Expertise, sociologist Gil Eyal argues how our current moment of hostility and skepticism towards expertise is paradoxically a product of the “reign of experts.” In other words, the “scienticization of politics” (dressing up politics as science) runs hand in hand with the politicization of science. 

This has unintentionally provoked a widespread mistrust of scientific expertise. In that sense, rather than further erode trust in public health, as the Toronto Star argues, acknowledging scientific advisory boards as partial and political may be a good way to restore trust in the inherent uncertainty and messiness of the scientific endeavour. 

In the end, absorbing the science table into Ontario Public Health may be a positive development. This is so because, on the one hand, the science table can be understood as a response to an expertise gap.

On the other, the social visibility of the work of the science table has underscored the essential social role that academics and scientists play in moments of crisis and in everyday life. This understanding can revitalize the role that universities play in the exercise of the intellectual autonomy of scientists and scholars vis-à-vis the state and market forces.

Every election cycle in Quebec tends to bring about debates about linguistic laws and their necessity. Given that francophones comprise less than two percent of North America, fear of cultural assimilation helps drive these debates. However, Quebec history suggests that the economic vitality of the francophone community—not legislation and regulation—is the key to cultural persistence. 

Advocates for language legislation often point to the strong linguistic laws (mandatory French schooling, for example) introduced in the late-1970s^{1Quebec Language Policy https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quebec-language-policy#:~:text=(courtesy%20CP)-,Official%20Language%20Act%20(1974),both%20remain%20the%20national%20languages.} yet ignore the rising vitality of the French language in the mid-20^th century when rates of French-English bilingualism among allophones (those who have neither French nor English as their first language) and anglophones substantially increased. Specifically, in 1951, among allophones and anglophones, 28 percent of women and 36 percent of men could speak French compared to 37 percent and 43 percent in 1971. There were even modest signs of a rising propensity among immigrants to send their children to French schools before the strict linguistic laws of the 1970s. 

This is not to say that the laws had no effect. But the improvements were not due solely to legislation in the ’70s but also to prior factors—including economic growth. 

Back in the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries, French-speaking Quebecers had wages well below those of English speakers.^{2Québec Since Confederation https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quebec-since-confederation} This disparity started to dissipate in the 1940s as the linguistic wage gap began disappearing. In 1941, wages for French speakers were 27 percent below those for English speakers compared to 15 percent in 1971. And by 2001, no significant differences in wages existed. In fact, among younger workers (those born after 1940), the wage gap had nearly disappeared by the 1970s. In other words, during the latter half of the 20^th century, economic growth was simply faster for francophones than for anglophones. 

Why?

One reason is that an increased proportion of francophones finished high school and went on to college and university. The gap in educational achievements between anglophones and francophones fell considerably, which helped close the wage gap. 

In the same vein, language is like an extra year of schooling. We expect schooling to increase income because of the skills and knowledge acquired. Language is also a skill and form of acquired knowledge, which is why economists find that the effect on the income of learning another language is roughly the same as an extra year of formal schooling.^{3Speaking more than one language can boost economic growth https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/speaking-more-languages-boost-economic-growth/#:~:text=Several%20studies%20show%20that%20languages,than%20their%20English%2Donly%20peers.} 

Immigrants who arrived in Quebec after the 1940s had to pick one of the official languages to speak and the choice of language to learn would have been in great part dictated by the extra income they expected to earn. As the incomes of francophones were increasing relative to anglophones, the profitability of learning and speaking French was increasing as well. This explains the rising proportion post-1940 (but pre-1970s) of immigrants who knew and spoke French.

The rising vitality of the French language was due in large part to the rising economic vitality of francophones. French-language advocates and policymakers should learn this lesson from the past, as it’s key to any future improvements in the vitality of French in Quebec. Policies that improve economic growth among francophones in Quebec will likely invite non-francophones to converse in Molière’s language.