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News Release

February 21, 2007

Former Federal Minister to Lecture on Science, Public Policy

The challenge of linking science and public policy is the topic of a Feb. 28 public lecture that will be presented by David Anderson, former federal environment minister and the new director of the Guelph Institute for the Environment.

Anderson will speak at 5:30 p.m. in Room 1714 of the Lifetime Learning Centre. The talk, which is free and open to the University community and general public, is part of the Ontario Agricultural College’s Public Lecture Series.

Anderson spent more than a decade in the federal cabinet, including seven years as minister of the science-based departments of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment. He also served as president of the Governing Council of the United Nations’ Environmental Program.

His lecture also marks the opening of Guelph’s new environment institute, which will link critical research on water, food, health and the environment, and connect University research with policy-makers at all three levels of government.

The institute will help launch discussions about environmental issues, establish ties with non-governmental organizations. It is also intended to help feed U of G environmental research into policy development at the provincial, national and international levels.

Working with an associate director and a manager, Anderson will spend one week each month on campus.

First elected to Ottawa in 1968, Anderson established Parliament’s first Environment Committee two years later. In 1972, he switched from federal to provincial politics, winning both a seat in the B.C. Legislature and the leadership of the B.C. Liberal Party.

After leaving politics in 1976, he taught at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Administration and spent 17 years as an environmental consultant. Re-elected as a Liberal MP in 1993, he served more than a decade as a cabinet minister in the Chrétien and Martin governments. During his years in office, Parliament passed the Species-at-Risk Act and Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol to the Rio Convention on Climate Change. Anderson chose not to run in the 2006 election.