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Canadian Research Data Centre Network

Opening doors to data – CRDCN connection 2025

The strength of the research data ecosystem and the ability of research to inform policy are becoming increasingly important. This year, the Canadian Research Data Centre Network (CRDCN) received SSHRC Connection Grant funding for the “Opening doors to data” project. CRDCN’s Research, Training and Knowledge Mobilization team (Johanne Provençal, Grant Gibson and Tess Hudson) organized sessions and visited each of the 10 provincial capital cities to bring researchers and government together for a half-day of free programming.  

To close this journey, the CRDCN community, including leading experts and researchers, gathered at McMaster University’s Toronto campus on October 28, 2025, to discuss current issues in labour, employment, health, education, and social development.

Indigenous data  

Presenter: Aaron Franks (Data Sovereignty Research Collaborative, First Nations Information Governance Centre) 

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Panel: Labour and employment

Presenters: Gaëlle Simard-Duplain (Carleton University), Mike Haan (Western University), Ted McDonald (University of New Brunswick) 

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Panel: Health

Presenters: Sylvana Côté (Université de Montréal), Kim McGrail (HDRN), Laura Duncan (McMaster University) 

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Panel: Education and social development

Presenters: Beth Dhuey (University of Toronto Scarborough), David Zarifa (Nipissing University), Mandeep Flora (Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement) 

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Research data management training 

Presenters: Anneliese Eber (University of Waterloo), Alyssa Roussy (University of Waterloo) 

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Thank you to the Academic Directors and university librarians at each of the 11 host universities for their warm welcome and support. Special thanks to Magali Girard and the team at the Quebec Inter-University Centre for Social Statistics (QICSS) for their assistance with the Quebec session. We also extend our gratitude to the panelists and speakers who contributed to the launch event at our annual conference in May and the closing session in Toronto in October. 

Many thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding this pan-Canadian series of training, networking and research-to-policy events through a Connection Grant.