Diversity

  • Our collaboration acknowledges that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), white women, and other visible and invisible minorities are under-represented in the field of physics.
  • Our collaboration affirms that diversity of experience, culture, and perspective is essential to achieving its scientific objective of producing and sharing relevant research that furthers our understanding of the physical world.
  • Our collaboration is welcoming to people regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity, and we are supportive of parental leave, alternative work schedules, accommodations for families, mental health issues, and disabilities.
  • Our lands are situated on traditional territories of First Nation, Inuit, and Metis peoples from coast to coast. We acknowledge, honour, and pay respect to the traditional owners and custodians (from all four directions).
  • Thus, our collaboration is committed to maintaining an inclusive and equitable working environment for all members.

Inclusion

  • We will come up with clear strategies to encourage participation by under-represented groups along with investing considerable time and effort in ensuring that our HQP succeed. Our plan will encompass everything from outreach to recruitment, hiring, our training environment, and finally mentorship.
  • We encourage members to attend workshops on racism, sexual and gender diversity, and implicit bias. All of our universities offer such training, and anyone serving in any sort of supervisory role or on a hiring committee shall be required to attend these workshops.

Equity

  • Ombudsperson: One EIC-Canada Investigator shall serve as Ombudsperson (with a term of two years), who will deal with complaints or issues in a confidential and impartial manner, especially those involving a power imbalance. The PIs of each group will hold an election for both this position along with an alternate, in case of conflicts of interest. The alternate must not come from the same institution as the primary. Once a year, by the end of June, the Ombudsperson will present an anonymized report of activities and issues to the collaboration, preferably in person at a collaboration meeting.
  • Junior Researcher Committee: The ombudsperson will contact the group leaders to suggest members for a small committee that shall be made up of a subset (initially 4-6) of summer/graduate students and a postdoc, to give the junior researchers a better way to voice their opinions on issues or problems they feel strongly about. In the short term, it is understood that this committee may have a smaller membership, but will grow as the collaboration grows. The junior researchers from each institution shall nominate/elect at least one member from their respective groups. For every five junior researchers the group can elect one member, and the composition should be a mixture of graduate and undergraduate students along with a postdoctoral fellow, keeping in mind considerations of length of degree. Efforts will be made to ensure the committee membership is as diverse as possible. Each member will serve a one-year term with the possibility for it to be extended once. The committee will meet remotely on a semester basis, with possible additional meetings taking place in person at collaboration meetings. This committee will also report to the Ombudsperson on a semester basis, with more pressing issues passed along immediately.

Professional Conduct Commitments

As members of the EIC Canada Collaboration, we commit to the following:

  1. All collaboration members will conduct themselves in a professional and considerate manner at all times while at work or otherwise representing the collaboration.
  2. All collaboration members will actively encourage a healthy, safe, supportive, and welcoming environment in which the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge is our shared mission.
  3. We have both a professional and an ethical obligation to report violations of safety and harassment policies and to use institutional reporting mechanisms responsibly.
  4. Research is to be conducted in an open and transparent manner and to be performed in such a way as to allow for outside review and reproduction, while respecting intellectual property and priority of discovery.
  5. The work and contributions of collaboration members (in particular students and junior researchers) will be evaluated impartially, without consideration of irrelevant characteristics. All criticism and praise should be kept professional and constructive.
  6. Collaboration members should be careful to avoid conflicts of interest, or the appearance thereof, to disclose them when they arise, and to recuse themselves when possible from situations where these could undermine the culture of trust.

Violations of this code of conduct will be reported to both the Ombudsperson and the board of the EIC Canada Collaboration. In more serious cases, the Ombudsperson may first consult directly with the relevant office at the appropriate member institution.