Prime Minister Stephen Harper wasn't kidding when he said Canada would be unrecognizable when he was done with it.
Since its beginnings in 2006, the Harper administration has not only systematically transformed the legal framework of the country to benefit industrial interests, but has also undermined Canada's public reputation for excellence and openness in science around the world. Its actions have made international headlines.
The prestigious scientific journal, Nature, has criticized the government for its media communications protocol, describing it as a "cumbersome approval process that stalls or prevents meaningful contact with Canada's publicly funded scientists."
The international community has also taken notice of the country's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, designed to fight global warming at the international level, as well as Canada's obstructionist role in international climate talks in Rio, Cancun, and most recently Durban.
This turn of the tide has environmental leader David Suzuki wondering if Canada is entering a new Dark Age. Internationally acclaimed climate scientist Andrew Weaver told the BBC that Canada's scientific information is "so tightly controlled that the public is left in the dark."
When DeSmog asked Weaver what he thought of the steady erosion of Canada's environmental standing, he replied: "I would not use the word erosion…I would use the word elimination. Erosion implies slow and steady. This is fast. We're cutting down institutions that have been around for decades. And we're eliminating them overnight."
Here is a partial list of recent funding cuts to Canadian scientific institutions and research programs:
• In July 2012, Canadian scientists organized a rally in Ottawa to mourn the “Death of Evidence” brought about by severe budget cuts to science programs issued by the Harper government.
• In June 2012, the federal government announced it would cut $3 million in funding to the Experimental Lakes Area, effectively shutting down the unique natural laboratory where researchers study the effects of industrial chemicals and pollutants on waterways, fish and other aquatic life.
• In June 2012, Omnibus Budget Bill C-38 was infamously passed in Parliament. The Bill effectively cut funding to, dismantled or weakened these pre-existing environmental bodies or pieces of legislation: The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act; The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency; Canadian Environmental Protection Act; Kyoto Protocol Implementation Action; Fisheries Act; Navigable Waters Protection Act; Energy Board Act; Species at Risk Act; Parks Canada Agency Act; Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act (made more industry-friendly); Coasting Trade Act (made offshore-drilling-friendly); Nuclear Safety Control Act; Canada Seeds Act (privatized). In addition money was granted to investigate environmental groups and their charitable status, water programs were cut, wastewater surveys were cut, and emissions monitoring for mines and mills was cut.
• In May 2012, the Harper government announced funding will be cut in 2013 for the National Roundtable for the Environment and Economy (NRTEE), a body seeking to regulate Canada's carbon emissions.
• Also in May, the Harper government informed Vancouver Island's Institute of Ocean Sciences that it would no longer receive funding. Peter Ross, the country's only marine mammal toxicologist, lost his research position along with an additional 1,074 Department of Fisheries and Ocean employees.
• On March 31, 2012, the Harper government cut its funding to The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Science, an agency that delegated $118 million of the government's funds to specific climate research endeavours between 2000 and 2011.
• In February 2012, the Harper government announced a forced closure of the Polar Environment Atmosphere Research Laboratory (PEARL) in Nunavut. PEARL participated in groundbreaking research on climate and played a pivotal role in discovering an enormous hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic.
• By February 2012, only 5 of Canada's 10 LiDAR (light detection and ranging) observation stations, part of the Global Atmosphere Watch Aerosol Lidar Observation Network, were still in operation. These 10 observation stations had been conducting weekly ozone and fossil fuel pollution measurements since 1966. The closure of the research stations followed the removal of Canada's CORALnet website which distributed crucial ozone and pollution data to research laboratories and scientific organizations across the globe.
• In August 2011, the government announced 700 Environment Canada positions would be removed in order to pursue "government-wide fiscal restraint."
• The closure of PEARL was in large part due to the end of federal funds for the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Studies in November 2010.
• In 2010, the Harper government cut the mandatory long-form census, the country’s most robust and consistent point of data collection on everything from language to household purchases. Without good data, like that collected by Statistics Canada, there is no reliable and transparent way to monitor government, or to demand democratic accountability or argue for evidence-based decision-making, says former chief statician Munir A. Sheikh.
Here is a list of publicized instances of muzzling by the government since 2006:
• In April 2012, the Harper government sent media relations chaperones to shadow Environment Canada scientists at the International Polar Year Conference in Montreal. Conference participants were ordered to ensure media liaison personnel were present to record all interactions between federal scientists and the media.
• In November 2011, scientists from Environment Canada were restricted from talking to media about the results of a study that confirmed snowfall in the tar sands area was contaminated. These scientists were directed to refer media inquiries to a government spokesperson and were provided with a list of scripted statements saying a 2010 government study found no toxins in the Athabasca River and that no definitive link had been made between tar sands contaminants and the region’s mutated and cancerous fish.
• In October 2011, Environment Canada scientist David Tarasick was denied the opportunity to speak with the media about his research showing an “unprecedented” loss of ozone over the Arctic. He told Postmedia News: “I’m available when media relations say I’m available.”
• In April 2011, a group of scientists from Environment Canada were prevented from speaking with the media about their paper recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. The paper concluded that a two degrees Celsius increase in temperatures worldwide might be unavoidable in the next century.
• In the aftermath of the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Postmedia journalist Margaret Munro was denied access to information regarding Canada’s radiation detectors and was prevented from speaking with experts working with those detectors. The information was eventually made public by an Austrian research team working with data from global radiation monitors – including Canada’s.
• In early 2011, Kristi Miller, a scientist with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, was prevented from responding to media inquiries regarding her important research into declining salmon stocks. Orders to keep Miller from speaking with journalists came from the Privy Council Office in Ottawa.
• In 2010, Scott Dallimore, a scientist with Natural Resources Canada, was not allowed to comment on his research into a northern Canadian flood that occurred 13,000 year ago without permission from then Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis. Approval was delayed until after journalists’ deadlines had passed.
• In 2007, the Harper government assigned new rules to control Environment Canada scientists required to engage with the media. Under the new design senior scientists are required to obtain written permission from senior ministerial staff before they can speak to the media. In 2010, a leaked internal Environment Canada document revealed the new policy had reduced the department's engagement with media on climate change topics by 80 per cent and that employees felt the intended design of the new procedure was to silence climate scientists.
• In 2006, an Environment Canada scientist, Mark Tushingham, was ordered not to attend his own book launch, for a science fiction novel that explored a future catastrophically altered by global warming.
This list, while not comprehensive, might in part explain why scientists took to the streets in Ottawa this past summer to decry the "Death of Evidence" in Canada. The logic of their concern was simple: no science, no evidence, no truth, no democracy, as their signs read.
Image Credit: detsang via Flickr.
