BC Hydro officials and members of Premier Christy Clark and Energy Minister Bill Bennett’s offices were all involved in a coordinated attempt to discredit DeSmog Canada’s reporting on the $8.8 billion Site C hydroelectric dam, according to documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests.

The documents detail a flurry of e-mails following a DeSmog Canada story that quoted former BC Hydro CEO Marc Eliesen saying that Site C was proceeding without due diligence, would lead to escalating hydro rate increases and was “scheduled to become a big white elephant,” a story later referenced by the New York Times.

BC Hydro officials were concerned that major B.C. media would pick up on the DeSmog Canada story, based largely on a BC Hydro progress report to the B.C. Utilities Commission. That report noted that Site C had fallen behind on four out of seven key milestones and outlined project risks and reasons why Site C had spent more money than anticipated by the end of last March, while saying that the project’s overall forecast still remained on track.

“This is expected to generate media interest,” Craig Fitzsimmons, BC Hydro’s manager of communications and issues management for Site C, flagged in e-mails to the Premier’s office and Bennett’s office, informing them that numbers in the article came from the Crown corporation’s own report.

The Premier’s office directed BC Hydro to respond to the article immediately even though it was the start of the Canada Day long weekend, a sign of the top priority Clark’s team has placed on controlling the story line on the Site C dam, the most expensive publicly funded project in B.C.’s history.

Two days later, internal Hydro e-mails show, BC Hydro CEO Jessica McDonald took aim at an opinion editorial that had been published more than one month earlier in the print and online editions of The Province newspaper.

The opinion piece was based entirely on a DeSmog Canada story published the previous day about BC Hydro’s ongoing civil law suit against some of the Peace Valley farmers and First Nations members involved in the Rocky Mountain Fort winter camp, which delayed Site C clear-cutting of a B.C. heritage site for two months. The piece quoted the head of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association who called the lawsuit, which seeks financial damages for BC Hydro from individuals, a matter of “grave concern” because of its potential to curtail freedom of expression.  

McDonald, saying erroneously that the opinion piece had changed a month after publication and now contained “commentary that is even more misleading than before” asked top staff if it were possible to “dust off” a one-month-old unpublished BC Hydro letter to the editor of The Province and “create a new piece that hits back.”

“I feel this is really important as we head into the Paddle for the Peace which is focused on the Boon’s property next weekend and will be very focused on stopping the federal authorizations based on our supposed unfairness,” wrote McDonald.

McDonald was referring to Ken and Arlene Boon, two of the Peace Valley farmers named in Hydro’s civil law suit, whose third-generation farmland and home were expropriated by BC Hydro in December for a Site C highway relocation. At the time the e-mail was written, BC Hydro was waiting for federal authorizations for Site C that were subsequently granted by the Trudeau government, even though First Nations leaders had requested that the permits be withheld.

According to the internal Hydro e-mails, McDonald said she wanted a statement drafted to say that information in the opinion piece was “inaccurate.” She also wanted her staff to make sure BC Hydro was “closely monitoring” some DeSmog Canada articles and to flag when there were updates.

McDonald wanted it to be made clear that BC Hydro supports freedom of expression and is taking legal action only to prevent people from physically blockading work on the project. But the documents also suggest that BC Hydro wanted to do more.

“I talked to Jessica and she would like to hit Sarah Cox hard for never contacting us for an interview on the issue, continuing to ignore our input, and then ramping up the rhetoric,” said an e-mail written by Danielle Van Huizen, a senior business advisor in McDonald’s office.

That prompted a quick reply from BC Hydro’s Site C spokesperson Dave Conway, who informed colleagues that Hydro had indeed been contacted for comment three times over a five-day period, by e-mail and phone.

Screenshots of documents obtained through Freedom of Information legislation indicating BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald would like to hit DeSmog Canada contributor Sarah Cox "hard" for her writing on Site C. 

“We will have to be careful what we write and be sure legal has a look at it,” advised Van Huizen in another email.

Two days later, BC Hydro issued a news release, approved by Bennett’s office and including text from a letter to the editor approved by the Premier’s office, saying there were “inaccuracies” in the five-week old Province opinion piece, and also saying that the piece had been “posted” more than one month later than its actual publication date.

That followed closely on the heels of a BC Hydro news release, approved by both the Premier’s office and Bennett’s office, which attempted to discredit DeSmog Canada’s story about Hydro’s progress report to the utilities commission, saying it contained “inaccurate statements.” 

BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald would like to hit DeSmog contributor Sarah Cox “hard” for her writing on #SiteC https://t.co/4GNzCYzNyG

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) January 17, 2017

At that point, DeSmog Canada sent a registered letter to Simi Heer, Hydro’s manager of media relations and issues management, asking BC Hydro to identify any factual inaccuracies so that they could be corrected. Heer, who later left BC Hydro, did not respond to the letter, or to e-mails and a phone call. BC Hydro has never contacted DeSmog Canada directly to request any story corrections.

Dozens of pages were redacted from BC Hydro’s 1,600-page FOI response on the grounds that they “were penned for the purpose of seeking or providing legal advice.” Other pages, including parts of e-mails written by McDonald about the opinion piece, were redacted on the grounds that releasing the full e-mails would constitute an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy.

The FOI documents also reveal how top officials in the Premier’s office and Bennet’s office control other media relations regarding the Site C dam, as reported by the Vancouver Sun last week based on a DeSmog Canada FOI to the Premier’s office that is now publicly available.

Construction of the Site C Dam on the Peace River. Photo: Garth Lenz/DeSmog Canada

The Premier’s office and Bennett’s office directed the timing of various Site C announcements, including an announcement about the completion of a temporary bridge across the Peace River, which Bennett did not want BC Hydro to make too close to an April increase in hydro rates.

Both offices were also involved in the timing for an announcement about the completion of the $470 million lodge for Site C construction workers, which cost BC Hydro customers almost as much as Clark’s pre-election pledge to spend $500 million on affordable housing projects to help alleviate the Lower Mainland’s housing crisis.

The offices also vetted a BC Hydro press release, which included quotes from Clark and Bennett, announcing that a $470 million contract had been awarded to Voith Hydro Inc. to supply turbines and generators for the Site C dam.

According to Luc Bernier, a Canadian expert in Crown corporations, BC Hydro should have more independence from the government to ensure that sound decisions are being made.

Bernier said it is not unusual for governments to be kept apprised of developments on large publicly funded projects like Site C, and to control and to supervise these projects to a certain extent, because they are highly visible.

But directing day-to-day communications can lead to decisions being made for political reasons and not because they are in the best interests of the Crown corporation, said Bernier, who holds the Jarislowsky Chair in Public Sector Management at the University of Ottawa and is the former head of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada. 

“For the proper functioning of Crown corporations it should be more independent. We do put these organizations further away from politics to make sure the main reason to exist — in this case to produce electricity — is not done for political reasons.”

Public sector management expert David Zussman said the question of how independent Crown corporations should be from governments is a contentious issue right across the country.

“In recent years in particular there’s been a distancing of the Crowns from the government,” said Zussman, a former dean of the University of Ottawa’s School of Management and previous commissioner of the Public Service Commission of Canada.

“The trends today I would say are for greater independence of Crown corporations.” Hydro Quebec, for instance, is a far more independent entity than it was 30 years ago and Zussman said to the best of his knowledge it has “almost nothing to do with the government” today.

To achieve good governance, Zussman said Crown corporations “should operate independently from government on a day to day basis,” adding that what exactly that means is open to interpretation.

The FOI request to the Premier’s office also asked for e-mails and documents related to Site C’s most recent budget and timeline, but that information was not forthcoming. Fourteen pages of the response were redacted.

Screenshot of a consent order compelling BC Hydro to release documents requested by DeSmog Canada via Freedom of Information legislation.

One internal Hydro e-mail from Michael Savidant, BC Hydro’s Site C commercial manager, addressed Site C project risks outlined in Hydro’s progress report and referenced in DeSmog Canada’s story. But Savidant’s points were not included in Hydro’s news release about the story or in BC Hydro’s list of key messages, vetted by Bennett’s office, for any other media inquiries about the report.

“On the potential for cost overruns — yes if those things happen there will be cost increases,” Savidant wrote to Fitzsimmons and Chris Sandve, Bennett’s former chief of staff who is now BC Hydro’s director of policy and reporting.

“Those risks exist on any project. We disclosed them in the Business Case and at the JRP [Joint Review Panel hearings on Site C]. The key is to highlight that we have contingency to cover most items, and a project reserve to cover the rest.”

The internal e-mails also detail BC Hydro’s concerted efforts to craft messaging for any members of the media who expressed interest in following several DeSmog Canada stories about Site C, including a story about Hydro’s $175 million plan to truck at-risk bull trout upstream past the dam for 100 years when up to 40 percent of the fish are expected to perish in the dam’s turbines while migrating back downstream.

One internal Hydro document with a weekly Site C public affairs summary listed Freedom of Information requests as one of the “on-going risks” to the project. “The Project continues to get a lot of Freedom-of-Information Requests related to various issues. The FOIs can be expected to end up in the public realm, usually through media reports,” the document noted.

BC Hydro only responded to the FOI request, made last August, after a complaint was filed with the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (OIPC) when the Crown Corporation missed a legal deadline for delivering the documents.

The commissioner issued a consent order, compelling BC Hydro to release the information.

Image: Premier Christy Clark, flanked by BC Hydro President Jessica McDonald and Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, at a Site C contract announcement. Photo: Province of B.C. via Flickr  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is an excerpt from DeSmog founder Jim Hoggan’s latest book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse, published by New Society Publishers.

I first began reading the works of linguist and cognitive scientist George Lakoff about 15 years ago and I was struck by the Berkeley professor’s now famous ideas about what he calls frames. In public relations our stock in trade is messaging, because our role is to create understanding by combining maximum clarity with supreme brevity. We work in the world of sound bites and elevator pitches that are designed to be short and pithy, and we rarely have the time or budget to delve into frames or deeply moving narratives.

When I started writing I’m Right and You’re an Idiot I wanted to better understand the difference between messages and frames, so I would know how frames work and be able to explain how to manage them. I wanted to better understand how they relate to the mechanics of public debate, and especially how frames impact facts and scientific evidence in public discourse, or when shaping opinion.

When we met, Lakoff described frames as metaphors and conceptual frameworks that we use to interpret and understand the world. They give meaning to the words we hear more than the other way around, because words don’t have objective meanings independent of these metaphors. Frames are structures of thought that we all use every day to determine meaning in our lives; frames govern how we act. They are ultimately a blend of feelings, values and data related to how we see the world.

We can’t think without frames, Lakoff explained. “Every thought you have, every word is defined in terms of a frame. You can’t say any word that’s meaningful without it activating a frame.” Frames permeate everything we think and say, so the people who control language and set its frames have an inordinate amount of power.

Lakoff stressed that if you do a bad job of framing your story, someone else will likely do it for you and his comments reminded me of something my mentor in the PR business, Mike Sullivan, once said: “If you don’t tell them, someone else will—and it will be bad.” What Mike meant was if you are an unwilling or ineffective communicator, you leave yourself wide open to someone else doing serious damage.

A frame is a way of looking at the world that is value laden, and like a metaphor it conjures up all kinds of thoughts and emotions. Jackie Kennedy used a frame when she referred to her life as Camelot. “Ethical oil” and “tax relief ” are also frames. Such words evoke subconscious images and meanings, as opposed to factual statements such as “10 million scallops are dead,” a headline that appeared in February 2014 in a Vancouver Island newspaper.

What came to be called Climategate was an international campaign to discredit scientists on both sides of the Atlantic just before the 2009 Copenhagen summit on climate change. It took the momentum to set targets out of the conference. I was astonished to see how a group of legitimate climate scientists, with stacks of peer-reviewed evidence on their side, could lose debates to a group of people who had none — all because of a lens created by mischief-makers. Clearly, Climategate was a battle of frames versus facts, and the frames won.

The truth is, facts alone don’t change minds, said Lakoff, who wrote a book called Don’t Think of an Elephant, which explains how to frame political debates in terms of values not facts.

He believes that the progressive community contributes to confusion in the public square because of an outdated understanding of reason and consequent lack of persuasive communication. During our interview, he told me that progressives need a mental model that goes beyond cold, logical messaging that’s directly correlated to reality — a model which should embrace metaphors, a marriage of emotion and logic.

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Liberals have an unemotional view of reason that dates back to French philosopher Descartes. Lakoff explained that when conservatives want to go into politics they study business, marketing and what makes people tick, whereas progressives study political science, law and public policy. Progressives don’t study cognitive science, neurology or how the brain works. “They learn a false view of reason that goes back to the 1600s…that says reason is conscious, logical and unemotional.”

It wasn’t long ago that risk communications experts, who study the power of facts, also assumed that giving people more information and evidence would ensure they made better decisions. But research shows facts don’t change minds, at least not in the way we think they do.

Lakoff said cognitive and brain science research has shown that reason is not rational without emotion, without an over-lay of values to make sense of facts. Simply put: frames trump facts.

“We have thousands of metaphors structuring our brains,” he told me. “We think in terms of them all the time and they’re not random, they’re not mythical, they’re things that allow us to get around in the world. We have to use them. Words aren’t neutral.”

They are the structure we use to think.

We should all have a commitment to the truth, he continued, but not let an understanding of facts overwhelm our job, which is to change the brains of people out there. “Every time you argue, you change your brain. Every time you tell somebody something else, you’re changing brains, because everything you think is physical; it’s all in the circuitry of your brain.”

But just speaking the truth isn’t enough to convince people of new ideas. If facts are to make sense and be perceived as urgent, they must be framed in terms of deep, deep values.

George Lakoff ’s advice is short and sweet: To be an effective communicator get clear on your values and start using the language of values. Drop the language of policy. “People do not necessarily vote their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values.” He believes so-called inaction and apathy should warn progressives that the conservatives are winning the communications battle between moral imperatives: “It’s time to decide, either we are all in this together or it’s every man for himself.”

Progressive morality says citizens act responsibly to provide infrastructure, education, health care, transportation and basic research for one another. Progressives constrain stock markets and protect bank accounts. They believe that private profit depends upon public provision. Conservatism is all about personal responsibility. The importance of public services is minimal when compared with the benefits of private enterprise. Conservatives promote stock markets and regulate banks. They believe that human effort creates wealth.

Of course some people are conservative about some things and progressive about others. Lakoff calls this bi-conceptualism. It means you can have both moral systems operating in your brain at the same time, each inhibiting the other from time to time. The more active one is, the stronger it gets, and that’s where language and communication come in. It’s also why media in influences matter so much, as do the ways we communicate.

In politics and social issues, frames are hierarchically structured and at the top of that hierarchy are the moral frames. So the question often is: Is this a frame where citizens care about each other, act responsibly and where there is a robust sense of what’s good for all? Or is the frame telling us that someone believes they have the freedom to access their own self-interest but need not care about the interests of others?

When it comes to environmental issues, Lakoff explained that these conflicting moralities are tied to two very different ideas of our relationship with nature. For progressives: We are a part of nature and dependent on the environment. Nature has inherent value. For conservatives: We are separate from and dominant over nature. Nature’s value is determined by its direct utility to people. Lakoff was quick to note that this is a simplification because most people aren’t ideologues, and bi-conceptuals are generally open to persuasion in either direction. The moderate has no ideology.

Every word is defined by an individual frame. A frame is a neural circuit. A neural circuit is made up of connections of neurons joined together by synapses. When a circuit is activated the synapses get stronger. If that circuit inhibits another circuit, then that other circuit’s synapses get weaker. When the synapses are stronger, it is easier to activate an idea in someone’s mind and therefore easier for it to spread to other issues. “So, repetition is what strengthens synapses. And it doesn’t matter if it is accurate.”

Suppose you’re a conservative, he said, and you want to create a frame that fits your moral system, but let’s suppose it has nothing to do with truth. You may be saying, for example, that cutting corporate taxes will create jobs. We know that’s false. Corporations are making more profits than ever before, are not hiring people because they’re outsourcing work, reaping the benefits of cheap labor in other countries or using more technology. They’re not “creating jobs.” So this is a false statement. But if conservatives call themselves job creators and repeat it over and over, people will think that cutting corporate taxes will create more jobs. The words are like a recurring jingle, stimulating a synapse and creating a thought pattern. That frame is activated over and over, and every time it is reactivated it grows stronger.

I asked Lakoff if it’s possible to set the record straight. Every time we say, “those are not job creators,” do we step into the job creator frame and imprint it again? By outlining facts, even in a logical statement of contradiction, do we always help reinforce the other side’s point of view?

Yes, he said. You lose the persuasion battle when you consistently step into your opponent’s frame; it reinforces their morality and their argument in the minds of your audience. The way to respond is to not mention the other frame. Only mention yours. Always start with your frame and stay in it. Always be on the offensive; never act defensively.

Framing is a system that has evolved because it works for every-day life, said Lakoff. “Free will is not totally free. It is radically constrained by the frames and metaphors shaping your brain and limiting how you see the world. Those frames and metaphors get there, to a remarkable extent, through repetition in the media.”

Everything you have learned is stored physically in your brain, he stressed. Every frame is in a brain circuit, every metaphor is in a brain circuit, every image is in a brain circuit. Your whole moral system is in your brain. If you hear something that doesn’t fit with what’s in your brain, it will go in one ear and out the other unless you are the type of person who remembers things that don’t quite fit and worries about them. But most people don’t.

Progressives must realize that their old-fashioned view of reason is false — that Descartes and the information injection theory of communication have not panned out.

More information about Jim Hoggan on I’m Right and You’re an Idiot.

Image: George Lakoff/George Lakoff

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The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This article was originally published in "Canada's Map to Sustainability," a special issue of Alternatives Journal (AJ) in partnership with Sustainable Canada Dialogues (SCD). Comments on the AJ website will inform SCD's white paper on how Canada can achieve sustainability later this year.

Even though people pay attention to images of oil-soaked birds in the aftermath of oil spills, researchers know that another, less perceptible, issue is the death of algae from the use of chemical dispersants after these disasters. Although people focus on shifting to hybrid cars to reduce their carbon footprint, researchers show that we also need to think about methane emissions from the global livestock industry.

Though people promote the environmental benefits of digitization in our workplaces and media consumption, researchers remind us that this shift generates massive amounts of e-waste with its own ecological footprint. Despite nearly universal scientific consensus about the harmful impacts of climate change, government and the public keep ignoring it.

Three environmental communication dilemmas help to explain: The scale of environmental issues, difficulties portraying environmental problems and a tendency to individualize problems.

By recognizing how these factors structure media coverage of environmental issues, scientists and academics can strategically work with them as opportunities to play a greater role in public debates.

The first dilemma concerns the way environmental issues cross multiple geographic and conceptual scales, making them difficult for people to understand or act on. Take climate change as an example. Greenhouse gases are produced locally by individual households, drivers and factories, but carbon emissions quickly move from local sites into atmospheric systems and affect communities and ecosystems worldwide. Climate change impacts are most observable in the Arctic and Antarctic, which are out of sight to those producing the damage. Unfortunately, many people don’t pay attention to environmental problems until they are in their own backyards.

Recent examples of this include opposition to “dirty diesel” trains in Toronto, the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline in Burnaby, or the risks posed by the Energy East pipeline for beluga whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The second dilemma is the difficulty of portraying environmental problems to general audiences. Media privilege stories with dramatic visuals, moments of crisis and issues that appear to have clear causes and effects. However, many environmental issues are complex, difficult to represent and have diffuse causes and consequences. For instance, disasters like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico provide dramatic imagery of oiled birds and ruined coastlines.

But viewing oil through the lens of catastrophe means that the chronic and mundane impacts of oil extraction on air and water quality go unnoticed. Similarly, focusing on the catastrophic failures of oil extraction reinforces the disconnect between upstream criticisms of oil (e.g., protests against the Alberta oil sands and pipeline projects) and the end users — vehicle drivers and consumers — who depend on oil development.

The last dilemma is that causes and solutions to environmental problems are often framed in individual-level terms, rather than focusing on political and economic structures that promote unsustainable consumption, resource exploitation and waste. In line with an overarching media logic that promotes consumerism, this dilemma focuses on buying new products or individual actions a person can take, but ignores the role of governments and industries that also need to change.

Furthermore, the individualization of environmental issues is often linked to the use of celebrities to communicate environmental issues. When this happens, the environmental issue can become tied to the personality of the celebrity and his or her knowledgeability.

Gone are the days when one can say “environmental issues don’t affect me.”

Therefore, we increasingly need scientists who have done the research to help us successfully navigate these vital issues. We need scientists to communicate in a way that resonates with everyday people. The dilemmas of environmental communication outlined above are well-entrenched in media. However, it is possible to work with these dilemmas and treat them as opportunities, so that the boreal ecologist can go viral on YouTube, the geophysicist can be a regular contributor to the Huffington Post or the social scientist can create the trending podcast on iTunes.

Such translation of science for popular audiences is an important part of the solution to environmental and climate change.

If scientists and academics accept that environmental issues are difficult to portray visually and have complex causal narratives, they can play a major role in translating issues in meaningful ways and helping the general public and policy makers respond to environmental predicaments. 

Doing this means that environmental researchers need to move away from the technical language of their disciplines to more common language and analogies. They have to accept that appealing to non-specialists will require linking environmental problems to personal narratives. This will help translate large-scale data into relatable stories that can provoke personal as well as political responses. This will create a gateway to even more sophisticated understandings of the environment.

To succeed at such translation, environmental scientists and academics will have to engage in multiple communication strategies. They cannot assume their research is inherently newsworthy, that academic journals will be read or understood or that their primary audience is other researchers. Instead, environmental researchers can become prominent public intellectuals, embracing new media and opportunities to comment on environmental changes.

This means devoting grant money to non-academic communication; it means partnering with videographers, web designers or gamers. It means rewarding public engagement and not just articles in peer-reviewed journals.

If environmental scientists and academics embrace these dilemmas as strategies for communication, we could have a fuller understanding of environmental changes. By becoming more visible in public communication, environmental scientists and academics can help shift the tone of environmental debates that are currently led by media workers, politicians and activists.

If they did this, perhaps we would be clicking on YouTube videos of algae destroyed by oil spill dispersants, adopt carbon pricing for beef products to reflect their contribution to climate change or think of scientists as celebrities and not just nerds. By serving as public experts, environmental researchers can play an important role in communicating that tomorrow’s problems are sown today, and so are the solutions.

From Dilemmas to Opportunities

Our comparative research on environmental movements and outdoor recreation in British Columbia and Nova Scotia demonstrates how scale and locality affect media attention. In an ongoing conflict, environmentalists and First Nations groups oppose the development of the Jumbo Glacier ski resort in the Purcell Mountains of B.C., due to impacts on grizzly bear and other wildlife habitat, as well as claims about undemocratic decision-making over land-use development.

In another controversy, environmental groups in Nova Scotia opposed off-highway vehicle use in the Tobeatic Wilderness area due to issues of vegetation damage and noise pollution, and their demands were incorporated into the final management plan for the area.

In comparing these cases, we see that local and rural-based environmental groups were most successful in gaining media coverage when their claims were reinforced by urban environmental organizations closer to provincial levers of political power and media attention.

Research on the BP oil spill shows that actual environmental damage was not the main driver of media and political reaction to the disaster or its aftermath.

In an article published in the Canadian Review of Sociology, we find that media coverage primarily focused on how the government, the oil industry and environmentalists reacted to one another.

Over time, news narratives shifted to issues of economic impacts, compensation and recovery, leaving the ongoing environmental harms of the spill and its cleanup at the margins of the story. 

Singer Neil Young campaigned to raise awareness about the impacts of bitumen development and First Nations rights in Alberta. While he gained much attention, a lot of the media focus was on him and the appropriateness of his comparison of the oil sands to the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima, rather than on environmental issues.

As demonstrated by our research, national news media coverage of climate change in Canada (and in much of the world) peaked in 2007-2008. Much of this coverage was driven by the film An Inconvenient Truth, the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fourth assessment report, and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore and the IPCC.

The reason An Inconvenient Truth successfully got people talking about climate change was because it used the celebrity of Al Gore to translate climate science in ways that made it feel accessible and personal. Imagine if that celebrity were a scientist instead of a politician – perhaps we would see the environment differently.

Mark C.J. Stoddart is an associate professor of Sociology at Memorial University of Nfld. He received the 2014 Early Investigator Award from the Canadian Sociological Association.

Howard Ramos is a political sociologist at Dalhousie University who investigates the relationships among social movements and NGO advocacy and media coverage.  

Image Credit: DaveJDoe CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

“I’m mad as Hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”

That was how some journalists seemed to respond last week to an open letter I wrote about how government communications staff are helping to kill democracy.

But, if we want to save it, we’re going to need to do more than just throw open our windows, stick our heads out and yell about the non-answers we often get from those spin doctors.

In that letter, which was published in J-Source, The Tyee, DeSmog Canada and the Yukon News, I wrote about how those non-answers are actually a refusal to “provide the public with information. And if the public doesn’t know what their government is actually doing, it can continue doing things the public wouldn’t want it to do.”

Those words were shared on Facebook and retweeted hundreds of times, with one reporter in the Yukon stating, “I think it’s fair to say the frustration levels of journalists in this country are rising.”

That frustration has been well-earned.

Compared to the United States, Canadian governments release fewer public records that reporters can use to find stories that don’t come from a news release or news event.

Our governments also confound access to the records they don’t release by having weakfreedom of information laws.

And many public bodies have policies that restrict or prohibit their employees from speaking with reporters.

That means communications departments (the spin factories and propaganda shops of government) can be one of the only sources journalists have for timely information.

Opacity is winning the war against transparency. And if Canadian journalists want to turn the tide, they must do more in the fight against that secrecy – something some American news outlets expressly allow their reporters to do.

For example, in a recent statement to Politico, a New York Times spokesperson stated the newspaper is “not neutral on the issue of press freedom. We have vigorously opposed actions that inhibit legitimate reporting.”

Meanwhile, National Public Radio’s ethics handbook, which prohibits political activities, makes an exception for “issues directly related to our journalistic mission (e.g. First Amendment rights, the Freedom of Information Act, a federal ‘shield law’).”*

Here in Canada, I simply recommended in my open letter that journalists should let our audiences know when spin doctors don’t respond to our questions, provide non-answers or interfere with attempts to interview public officials.

Perhaps journalists should even include that protocol in the emails we send to government spokespeople, letting them know that we also won’t be using their non-answers for the sake of false balance?

In some way ways, that would be similar to David Carr‘s approach to reporting. Speaking to National Public Radio’s Terry Gross, the late New York Times media critic explained:

If it’s going to be a hard story, one of the things I always say is, ‘This is going to be a really serious story and I’m asking very serious questions and it behoves you to think it through and really work on answering and defending yourself…And if they don’t engage, I just tell them, ‘Well you know what, you better put the nut cup on because this isn’t going to be pleasant for anyone.’

If we did the same thing with government communications staff and their tactics, they won’t surprised when a reporter such as the Georgia Straight’s Travis Lupick thinks about writing a sentence such as this: “A [Canadian Border Services Agency] spokesperson repeatedly ignored questions and read unrelated bullet points written by an anonymous spin doctor.”

And that way, maybe we won’t hear those unrelated bullet points at all.

Postscript: Last week, CBC Daybreak South succeeded in getting Andrew Wilkinson, the minister responsible for British Columbia’s spin doctors, to address complaints about the state of government communications (including my open letter).

Provincial flacks “initially declined” to respond to those complaints. But Wilkinson made an appearance on Daybreak South after the program tried contacting “each and every MLA” in its listening area about that issue.

You can listen to the interview for yourself on Soundcloud. But suffice it say Wilkinson, somewhat appropriately, appeared to have his own talking points for that conversation. So, just as appropriately, I’ve filed freedom of information requests to obtain them.

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• The Canadian Press reports a new government policy requires all possible breaches of cabinet confidentiality – “however slight” – to be “immediately reported to the Prime Minister’s Office or officials in the Privy Council Office, the government’s bureaucratic nerve centre.”

• In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Parliamentary Budget Officer Jean-Denis Fréchette said he wants a “coercive baseball bat” that will force government departments to provide him with economic and legislative data “on a timely and free basis.”

• CBC News reports, “A former top adviser to then-Employment Minister Jason Kenney has had his knuckles rapped by the federal ethics watchdog for accepting gala tickets from companies and interest groups registered to lobby his own department.” During that investigation, Ethics and Conflict of Interest Commissioner Mary Dawson also found the adviser, Michael Bonner, “could not provide me with any emails related to my examination because he had deleted them, as his usual practice was to delete emails every two weeks. He added that deleted emails of ministerial staff remain on the server for about four weeks, but are then lost forever as they are not ‘archived.'” (hat tip: Mike de Souza)

• Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaign Keith Stewart has two suggestions for the bureaucrats running the system that allows Canadians to file access to information requests online. First: “Why not let us set up accounts so we don’t have to re-enter all my deets each time?” Second: “It’d be awesome if the receipt for the $5 fee included the text of our ATIP request.”

• The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin writes that even though Stephen Harper “may well hold some sort of record for prime ministerial secrecy and attempts to stifle access,” many of his predecessors have also “held the fourth estate in low regard.” (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• Harper isn’t known for “being terribly accessible to journalists,” reports the Huffington Post. Nevertheless, he sat down for an interview with Costco Connection, the “lifestyle magazine for Costco members” – something that “raised some eyebrows on Twitter.”

• Vice Canada reports the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has denied an access request for the amount of money it paid to cellphone and Internet providers to informally obtain customers’ personal information. Such informal requests were deemed unconstitutional following a June 2014 Supreme Court of Canada ruling. (hat tip: CJ Ciaramella)

• The Canadian Press’s Steve Rennie tweets that a recent access to information requests yielded 15 pages from the Privy Council Office. But the only page that wasn’t exempted was the one with the Government of Canada’s logo.

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• The Toronto Star reports Ontario still lacks a “standard notification system” to alert journalists when court-ordered publication bans are being considered.

• The Vancouver Sun reports, “Poultry marketing boards are refusing to release biosecurity audits of farms after the avian flu outbreak in the Fraser Valley citing, in part, the potential for farmers to be targeted by animal rights activists.”

• The BC NDP has introduced a Whistleblowers Protection Act that would safeguard “people reporting government mismanagement, negligence or wrong-doing. It also calls for more routine public disclosure of government operations.” As an opposition private member’s bill, the Act has almost no chance of passing the province’s legislature.

• CBC News reports New Brunswick’s access commissioner Anne Bertrand has launched one of two investigations into “controversial trips to Larry’s Gulch, the government-owned fishing lodge…The controversy started when a newspaper editor accepted a free trip to Larry’s Gulch in 2013 with Daniel Allain, the chief executive officer of NB Liquor.” Bertrand is looking into whether documents related to that trip were “deliberately altered before being released.”

• “Ontario’s independent budget watchdog is finally being unleashed – 21 months after the New Democrats forced the Liberals to create the post,” according to the Toronto Star.

• In response to a freedom of information request by freelancer Bob Mackin, the British Columbia government writes there were no briefing notes or issue notes prepared for the province’s transportation minister when he announced the delay of a major transit project.

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• The City of Winnipeg’s administration is refusing to “make public any of the reports” that justify the need to “expropriate 20 acres of land it sold to a developer four years ago,” according to the Winnipeg Free Press.

Have a news tip about about the state of democracy, openness and accountability in Canada? You can email me at this address.

* = I am indebted to an article by The Atlantic’s David Graham which cites NPR’s impartiality policy, as well as the New York Times spokesperson’s quote. All the credit for finding that article goes to my department’s librarian Margy MacMillan.

This article originally appeared on Sean Holman's Unknowable Country.

Image Credit: Eric via Flickr

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Dear government spin doctor,

I am working on a story about how the job you’re doing is helping to kill Canada’s democracy.

I know that your role, as a so-called communications professional, is to put the best spin on what the government is or isn’t doing.

That means you often don’t respond the questions I ask, you help elected officials do the same thing and you won’t let me talk to those who actually have the answers.

While this may work out very well for you, it doesn’t work out so well for my audience who, by the way, are taxpayers, voters and citizens.

So your refusal to provide me with information is actually a refusal to provide the public with information.

And if the public doesn’t know what their government is actually doing, it can continue doing things the public wouldn’t want it to do.

That just doesn’t seem very democratic to me. Does it seem democratic to you?

I understand you’re just doing your job.

I did that job before myself before I became a journalist, working as a communications officer for the British Columbia government.

So I don’t think you’re a bad person.

But you should know a few things about me.

My job isn’t to help you put the best spin on what the government is or isn’t doing.

My job is to tell the truth.

And, because that’s my job, you should know a few other things about how I’m going to report this story.

First, if you don’t respond to my questions, I’m going to let my audience know that.

Second, if you respond to my questions with non-answers, I’m going to let my audience know that too.

Third, I’m not going to put those non-answers in my story for the sake of false balance.

That’s because me asking questions about what the government is doing wrong isn’t an opportunity for you to simply tell the public about what government is doing right.

You have a big advertising budget for that.

Instead, it’s an opportunity to explain to the public why the government is or isn’t doing that thing I asked you about.

And, finally, if you refuse, ignore or interfere with my requests to interview public officials, my audience will also find out about that.

This may sound like hardball at best and blackmail at worst. But it’s actually the last and only defense I have against you and your colleagues.

Public relations professionals outnumber journalists more than four to one in this country – and for good reason.

It pays to promote and protect the powerful but it doesn’t pay to hold them to account.

My hope is that more journalists will also start routinely telling their audiences about the strategies and tactics you use to frustrate the public’s right to know.

If that happens then the public might start caring about the damage that’s doing to our democracy.

And, maybe, just maybe you might start rethinking what you are doing.

After all, there was a time when journalists could actually talk to public officials without having someone like you always watching over their shoulder and telling them exactly what to say.

I know it’s a long shot.

But it’s the only shot I can take against the tyranny of your talking points.

Sincerely,

Sean Holman, Journalist

SQUIBS (FEDERAL)

• Maclean’s magazine reports the Department of National Defence is withholding information from the Parliamentary Budget Officer about Operation IMPAC – Canada’s mission in Iraq – on the grounds of cabinet confidentiality. (hat tip: BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association)

• The National Post reports a Federal Court judge has ruled “media fighting for access to Omar Khadr have failed to show a prison-interview ban was politically motivated and violated their constitutional rights.”

SQUIBS (PROVINCIAL)

• CBC News reports, “Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has personally ordered that documents from all general freedom of information requests be publicly posted, despite serious concerns from the civil servants responsible for implementing the new policy. Critics say the plan – if implemented – represents a major policy change that will seriously undermine the ability of opposition parties and the media to hold the government accountable.”

• “The province is not tracking how many inmates are overdosing in jails across Ontario,” according to the Hamilton Spectator.

• The Vancouver Sun reports, “Soon-to-be mandatory ‘independent’ review boards for tailings dams at B.C. mines may not be answerable to government or open to scrutiny by the public.” The boards were recommended by a government-appointed panel that was struck following the breach of a tailings pond at the Mount Polley Mine.

• The Telegram hopes a committee reviewing Newfoundland and Labrador’s controversial right to know law will recommend a “much needed laissez-faire approach to the release of information.” That committee, led by former premier Clyde Wells, “has missed a couple of promised deadlines. At last check, it was supposed to release its report by the end of January.”

• Kinder Morgan Inc., the company that is looking to expand a pipeline that carries crude oil to the West coast, “has engaged in a protracted fight with the province of British Columbia in an effort to keep its oil spill response plans a secret.” But, according to DeSmog Canada, Kinder Morgan has “willingly disclosed” such plans “south of the border for portions of the pipeline that extend to Washington State.”

• The Globe and Mail reports, “B.C.’s Ministry of Health is withholding the results of scientific research on how oil and gas operations in the province’s northeast communities are affecting human health.” Independent MLA Vicki Huntington’s freedom of information request for that research was denied because its release could be harmful to the financial interests of a public body.

• CBC News reports Saskatchewan’s information commissioner has ruled a 15-page proposal to create a premier’s library in that province can stay secret because it would disclose a cabinet confidence.

• Saksatchewan NDP MLA Warren McCall has told the Regina Leader-Post that the creation of lobbyists registry in that province as proceeding “slower than molasses, uphill, in February.”

• Manitoba’s “Opposition Progressive Conservatives say they’re getting the runaround in finding how much taxpayers have paid to put up at-risk youth in hotels,” according to the Winnipeg Free Press. (hat tip: Ian Bron)

• CBC News reports DemocracyWatch founder Duff Conacher’s concerns that “New Brunswick’s right to information law is weak and the fines for breaking the laws are so low, they are meaningless”

SQUIBS (LOCAL)

• Winnipeg’s interim chief administrative officer has resigned after the mayor claimed he had lost confidence in the bureaucrat. But, according to the Winnipeg Free Press’s Dan Lett, no further details have been provided because the resignation is a personnel matter – a “trump card” that is “played way too often in situations in which government doesn’t want people to know what happened.”

• 24 hours Vancouver’s Kathyrn Marshall writes that White Rock, B.C.’s city council has “voted to scrap question period. Just like that, White Rock has obliterated a hallmark of liberal democracy. White Rock residents will no longer have the opportunity to pose public questions to their elected representatives following council meetings.”

• In October, TransLink – Vancouver’s regional transportation authority – began “re-examining current [freedom of information] practices and exploring options for easing the burden on staff.” That review, which was expected to take three months, was announced in a memo signed by the authority’s then-chief executive officer Ian Jarvis and obtained by freelance journalist Bob Mackin.

• The Vancouver Courier reports, “When the provincial government set the rules for the non-binding plebiscite on a sales tax hike for TransLink expansion, it didn’t include any campaign fundraising or reporting regulations.”

• “Toronto police met the mandated [freedom of information] response deadline of 30 days in 52 per cent of requests last year,” according to the Toronto Star. “That’s nearly a 30 per cent drop from 2005 – when 80 per cent of FOI requests were completed within the 30-day timeframe – and down almost 15 per cent from 2013, which saw a compliance rate of 65 per cent.”

• Alberta’s information commissioner has ruled Cold Lake, Alta. was right to release records that disclosed unit prices and hourly wage rates for the companies responsible for a highway twinning project. According to the Cold Lake Sun, a third party had argued that disclosure was harmful to business interests.

This article originally appeared on Sean Holman's Unknowable Country.

Image Credit: Wikipedia

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Instead of consulting with the Canadian public before cutting millions in green spending at Environment Canada, the Harper government consulted with communications strategists who helped gauge potential public reactions to the budget cuts.

Mike De Souza writes for Postmedia News, that according to "internal briefing documents" released through access to information legislation, the "Harper government included communications strategists in closed-door discussions that led to an estimated $60 million in cuts at Environment Canada in the 2012 federal budget."

"Strategists from the communication branch were involved in Environment Canada's deliberations on its contribution to the deficit action reduction plan from the beginning," said the records, which were labelled "secret advice to the minister." The briefing documents, containing up to 500 pages, were prepared for Environment Canada Deputy Minister Bob Hamilton, after he replaced Paul Boothe in summer 2012.

Hamilton was also warned in a communications strategy that "Media and public alike have been highly critical of the government of Canada, expressing concern over its cuts to science-based activities." The strategy listed "Reassuring Canadians that their health and safety have not been put at risk as a result of recent cuts" and convincing them that the "government of Canada takes the environment portfolio seriously" as among their "communications challenges."  

The released documents explain that bringing the communications branch in on the closed-door discussions preceding the budget cuts "allowed an analysis of communication issues, stakeholder reactions and public perception to be weighed during the consideration of each and every proposal." It also kept communications staff primed and "ready to hit the ground running once the decisions were announced."

In a follow-up piece, De Souza reports Environment Canada spokesman Mark Johnson as confirming that the communications specialists' analysis "consisted of identifying stakeholders who may have an interest in any particular proposal, studying the positions they have taken on related issues, and extrapolating from that, what their reactions might be to the proposal at hand."

Johnson added that the "confidential nature" of the deliberations prevented "actual formal consultation on any particular proposal with stakeholders."

NDP environment critic Megan Leslie told De Souza she was disappointed to see the Harper government's "backwards" method of reaching decisions, saying she feels "their guiding principle in making these decisions is: 'Let's see what we can get away with.'"  

Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, also found the approach "a bit backwards," saying it's "wrong for communications people to be involved in deciding what decisions to make. Communications people are there to communicate the decisions after they're made. It seems the government is just being political rather than (doing) what's in the best interests of Canadians."

Leslie advised the Harper government to "hire and consult scientists on how to manage the department, not communications experts to give us spin about these ideological cuts."

Environment Canada said that "senior science managers, knowledgeable in the relevant areas, were involved as appropriate in order to provide context."

De Souza observes that the documents didn't elaborate on "what sort of consultations might have taken place with Environment Minister Peter Kent or deliberations with government scientists, who worked in the field, on spending reductions in areas such as federal response capacity to environmental disasters or quality control in enforcing industrial air pollution regulations."

Kent's office responded by saying that they "led in arriving at the final decisions regarding the measures across the department and were therefore, obviously regularly informed and briefed accordingly."

De Souza notes that the records "estimated that Environment Canada's 2015-16 budget would be $949 million, down from a peak of $1.3 billion in 2007-08."

Image Credit: The Prime Minister's Office / Flickr

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What a difference a decade makes – especially when it comes to government-directed communications policies regarding science, and especially when you're in Canada. 

In 2003 a Canadian-American research collaboration, involving scientists from US universities and Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), began in the Eastern Arctic to track oceanic conditions and ice flow in the Nares Strait.

During its early stages, government rules regarding communication and publication about the project were meant to encourage scientific and academic freedom: "Data and any other project-related information shall be freely available to all Parties to this Agreement and may be used, disseminated or published, at any time," the agreement reads.

Now, under new restrictions imposed by DFO officials, scientists are prevented from sharing any information with a third party without the explicit consent of a high-ranking bureaucrat. According to the 2013 agreement, all technology and information related to DFO research, even if conducted in collaboration with outside parties, is "deemed to be confidential and neither party may release such information to others in any way whatsoever without prior written authorization of the other party."

For one American academic currently collaborating with DFO in the Arctic, this type of policy suppresses the free flow of scientific information and is a "potential muzzle." Andreas Muenchow of the University of Delaware is the avid blogger behind "Icy Seas: Scientific Musings of a Sailor in a Changing Climate" and fears the strict new policy will prevent him and other scientists from publishing about their project.

Under the new guidelines DFO managers decide how scientists like Muenchow use the scientific information they gather in their work, leaving the fate of scientific communication regarding the project in the hands of bureaucrats and not scientists.

After the January 29 memo outlining the new communications protocol was highlighted yesterday by Postmedia's Margaret Munro scientists like Muenchow were informed their work – if conducted in partnership with DFO scientists – is also subject to the new guidelines.

Any material prepared for publication must be approved by a DFO Division Manager before being submitted to an external source like a journal.

This document, released by an anonymous DFO insider on the blog Unmuzzled Science, details the new publication procedure:

DFO Communications Advisor Melanie Carkner originally denied any changes had been made to the department's publication policy after journalist Michael Harris originally reported on the story. Yesterday Postmedia's Munro reported Frank Stanek, manager of media relations for DFO, said the department was not prepared to comment on the rules.

Muenchow, in the meantime told Postmedia's Munro he will not be signing the new agreement that threatens his "freedom to speak, publish, educate, learn and share." He is currently working with the University of Delaware and DFO to renegotiate the agreement and today gave this statement to DeSmog Canada: 

"This is a very delicate situation for me to be in at the moment, because the proposed Confidentiality Rules as reported by Margaret Munro in the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun, and other Canadian papers are being negotiated between the University of Delaware and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans as part of a Collaborative Agreement.

As such, for now, I would not want to inject myself any further into a public debate over policy, even if these policies have the potential to impact my work. I think it is in my best (scientific) interest to let the negotiations process play itself out."

Muenchow, like so many other scientists in his shoes will have to be extra cautious from now on in, to ensure his academic freedom escapes Canada intact. 

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This article was written by Michael Harris and originally published on iPolitics.

“The iPolitics story by Michael Harris published on February 7th, 2013 is untrue. There have been no changes to the Department’s publication policy.”

These words landed on my computer screen like a mortar shell after I wrote a piece outlining disturbing changes to DFO’s publication policy.

The statement, issued by DFO communications staffer Melanie Carkner, went on to list all the ways the department disseminates information — none of which were at issue in my column.

Why would they be? I was writing about how DFO muzzles its scientists, not its herculean public relations effort, which I do not dispute. To me, public relations is the opposite of both journalism and science; it’s what someone wants you to believe, rather than what is shown to be believable by the facts.

One of the people I interviewed for the February 7 article was Jeff Hutchings, former head of the Royal Society of Canada, and Killam professor in the faculty of science at Dalhousie University in Halifax. He is an internationally known fish biologist — a hero in his profession. Hutchings eventually gave me an extensive comment for attribution about the dangers presented by the change in DFO publication policy.

During the catastrophic cod collapse off Newfoundland, while DFO was providing credible evidence that it could not manage an aquarium, Hutchings was standing up for good science. He was one of the only scientists, along with the late Ransom Myers, courageous enough to raise the issue at the heart of the matter: the deadly role that politics played in the cod collapse by suppressing science that collided with policy. I chronicled that process in my book Lament for an Ocean.

It is worth noting that since the 1992 moratorium, the large-scale commercial cod fishery has remained closed at a cost of billions of dollars to the taxpayers of Canada. That outcome flowed from a DFO tainted with politics and corporate priorities — and a minister’s office given far, far too much discretionary power to overrule inconvenient science. The moral of the story? Good science is what saves us from disastrous policy and the astronomical costs associated with getting it wrong.

Good science is what saves us from disastrous policy and the astronomical costs associated with getting it wrong.

After DFO denied that there had been any change in publication policy, I contacted Professor Hutchings again. Having independently confirmed the information I had before he spoke for the record in my original column, he was not circumspect. “What a load of crap,” he said.

That was also the opinion of several scientists I contacted.

Then I was treated to a surprise. Under the headline He Said, she said…who is lying?, I came across a story about my column and DFO’s denial that was posted on the Internet on February 10, 2013. The author of the anonymous posting began with DFO’s statement that “there have been no changes to the Department’s publication policy.”

The very next line, from a person who was obviously a DFO scientist, was this:

“Here is the e-mail I got from my division manager on January 29th, 2013: ‘Subject: New Publication Review Committee (PRC) Procedures for C&A Science …’

“This message is regarding the new Publication Review Committee procedures for C&A Science…”

The email noted that the new policy was to take effect on February 1, 2013.

The author included in his Internet post departmental documents outlining the new policy and a detailed administrative chart showing the publication procedures that came into force after February 1. After laying out his information, the author concluded, “You decide who’s being untruthful.”

I second that opinion. If you wish to read for yourself what he had to say, his comments and documents are posted on unmuzzledscience.wordpress.com.

Here, precisely, are the changes that the new policy denied by DFO usher in. Review procedures now apply to any paper with a DFO scientist as an author, instead of just those papers where a DFO scientist was first author.

Secondly, the author of a paper no longer signs off on the copyright on behalf of the Crown. That means that a bureaucrat who did not contribute to the work in question, and did not have a hand in the science undertaken for the paper, now has the power to stop publication by refusing to sign off on the copyright.

Here’s how a university scientist explained his experience with the old system, where he co-produced a paper with a DFO scientist: “We’ve had a manuscript ‘in review’ with DFO waiting for sign-off for almost one year now due to the DFO co-author. I’m about ready to stick the manuscript up on the web and abandon the publication, try to start over with new funding and without DFO involvement.”

Under the new system, DFO can prevent publication by withholding copyright sign-off even if a DFO scientist played only the slightest role in the production of the paper. In other words, the system has gone from bad to worse for scientists and given bureaucrats greater killing power.

Meanwhile, someone in Fisheries and Oceans Canada is channeling their inner dominatrix.

On the heels of DFO’s new publication approval policy, written about in this space last Friday, another new policy landed in the in-boxes of government scientists on February 7.

This new policy, which comes into effect immediately, requires DFO scientists to seek approval from the Regional Director of Science in order to even apply for any researching funding. In concert with the new publication policy, the restraints on Canadian scientists are tightening.

“This change in funding policy is a big deal…the Experimental Lakes Area would not have been able to do much of the acid rain research we did, all of the reservoir research we did, and the ongoing METALLICUS experiment. On the other hand, isn’t this what Harper wants? When I was at the Freshwater Institute, DFO was giving me awards for getting this outside funding,” one non-DFO scientist told me.

The big worry among scientists is that the new policies could be used to make it impossible for government scientists to do any “unmanaged” research in the future. That’s because whatever they do now will be tightly controlled from the onset – from funding applications through to the final step of communicating research findings to the scientific community and the general public.

With the rapid development of the Alberta oilsands a key priority of the Harper government, the need for independent science has never been greater. Under the new DFO policies, government could stop publication of studies like the one recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in the United States. That federally-funded study linked oilsands activity to the deposit of toxic hydrocarbons in Alberta wilderness lakes, closing the door on the claim by industry and government that the pollution could be coming from natural sources.

Question: if scientists wanted to pursue the unfinished business of the oilsands research just published by the National Academy of Science, going beyond hydrocarbons to look at the levels of other contaminants such as heavy metals, mercury or soot, would they get the green light from DFO under the new funding policy?

The Harper record on the science file provides no reassurance that it would. The prime minister has retooled the mission of science institutions like the National Research Council, where pure science has been replaced by applied science of direct benefit to industry.

The PM has said that not everything can be a park. Agreed. But his government has gutted environmental legislation and engaged in particularly destructive meddling in fisheries legislation. Even Conservative cousins like former fisheries ministers John Fraser and Tom Siddon have told the Harper government that the new policies are dangerously ill-considered. They were shunned, their advice was ignored.

Tom Flanagan inadvertently suggested a possible explanation for that cold shoulder in a December 2, 2012 speech at the Salt Spring Forum: “Stephen sees through an economic lens, not an environmental one.”

You may have noticed that there are very few names attached to the quotes in this column. That may have to do with something else Tom Flanagan had to say about his old friend in that speech at the Salt Spring Forum.

After praising the PM’s intelligence, he said of Stephen Harper that he was “morose, secretive, suspicious and vindictive. These may not be traits you want in your next-door neighbour, but they are very useful in politics.”

No one in the scientific community has any reason to doubt the PM’s power to punish. Science budgets have been savaged. Everything has been slashed and corseted with little regard for the unique contribution that science makes to protecting society.

During the uproar caused by the Harper government’s closure of the ELA, some of Canada’s top scientists exchanged e-mails, opining that the shuttering was not about saving a measly $2 million a year. It was about making sure that one of the world’s leading freshwater research facilities didn’t come up with any inconvenient science that might get in the way of the Bitumen Express currently roaring down the tracks.

It’s a very bad sign when the best of us become anonymous.

Image Credit: DFO report, Canada's Policy for Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon.

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“If people don’t speak out there will never be any change,” says the University of Victoria’s award-winning climate scientist Andrew Weaver. 

And the need for change in Canada, says Weaver, has never been more pressing.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When it comes to climate change, Yale's Anthony Leiserowitz says, "you almost couldn't design a problem that is a worse fit with our underlying psychology"; an insight that is all too apparent. 

In spite of the dramatic increase in extreme weather events and growing scientific concern, climate change is seldom mentioned by politicians, business leaders or the news media in Canada and the US. While public concern is on the rise, public pressure to fix the problem is flagging. 

In this recent interview, Bill Moyers asks Leiserowitz to explain the state of public opinion surrounding climate change and what might be done to improve climate change communications.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.