“Speak the truth, but not to punish.”

These are the words the famous Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh told DeSmogBlog and DeSmog Canada founder, president and contributor James Hoggan one afternoon in a conversation about environmental advocacy and the collapse of productive public discourse.

Over the course of three years James (Jim) Hoggan has engaged the minds of communications specialists, philosophers, leading public intellectuals and spiritual leaders while writing a book designed to address the bewildering question: “why, when we know so much about the global environmental crisis, are we doing so little?”

Hoggan recently recounted some of the insights he has gained into this question when he spoke at the Walrus Talks “The Art of Conversation.”

He begins with the basic axiom shared by cognitive scientist Dan Kahan, “just as you can pollute the natural environment, you can pollute public conversations.” From that the logic follows – if we’re serious about resolving our environmental problems, we are going to have to attend equally to the state of our public discourse.

In Canada, says Hoggan, we face particular challenges when it comes to polluted pubic conversations, especially with the heightened tenor of rhetoric regarding environmentalism and energy issues surrounding the oilsands and proposed pipelines.

"The ethical oil, foreign funded radicals campaign," he says, "has made Canadians less able to weigh facts honestly, disagree constructively, and think things through collectively."

You can watch a short video of Hoggan’s talk on The Walrus, or read the transcript below:

Good evening, I’m Jim Hoggan. I wanted to start by saying I’m not speaking here as the chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, but as the author of a book that I’m writing called The Polluted Public Square.

In this book I’m on a personal journey to learn from public intellectuals. I travel from Oxford, to Harvard, to Yale to MIT; I had tea with the expert on public trust in the House of Lords dining room; I spent a week with the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh; I traveled to the Himalayas to interview the Dalai Lama. So I’ve spent three years on this journey. Originally I thought I was writing a book for other people, but I realized as I was going through this that I was actually writing a book for myself.

The book is about this question of public conversations and the state of public discourse. And the specific question I asked all of these people, was “why is it, in spite of all this scientific evidence, from experts in atmospheric, marine and life sciences, are we doing so little to fix these big environmental problems that we’re creating? And why isn’t public discourse on the environment more data driven? Why are we listening to each other shout rather than listening to what the evidence is trying to tell us?"

One of the first interviews I did was with a Yale Law School cognitive scientist named Dr. Dan Kahan. He had part of the answer for me. He said, “just as you can pollute the natural environment, you can pollute public conversations.”

He said that healthy public discourse is a public good that is every bit as important as the natural environment; that we should be willing to protect, consciously protect, the state and the health of public discourse; and that we were in Canada and the United States suffering from he called a ‘social pathology.’

And this kind of healthy public discourse, or healthy attitude to public discourse, is certainly something that we’re not paying much attention to in Canada these days.

In 2012 – let me take you back to something the Conservative government would probably rather we all forgot about – in early 2012 some folks in the oil and gas industry launched a PR campaign with this message: ethical oil is like fair trade coffee. It’s like conflict-free diamonds. It’s morally superior.

In 2012 the oil and gas industry worked closely with the Conservative government to convince Canadians that British Columbians who opposed tankers on the coast of B.C. were extremists working for American business interests.

Now, environmental activists have been polluting the public square for a long time: they’ve called the oilsands heroin, they’ve called it blood oil, they’ve called oil companies environmental criminals engaged in crimes against humanity.

Now who would have thought that this level of rhetoric could be raised any higher? But it was.

Senator Mike Duffy called B.C. charities “un-Canadian.” The minister of environment accused them of money laundering. The PMO called them “foreign funded radicals.” Senator Don Plett said, where would environmentalists draw the line on who they receive money from? Would they take money from Al-Qaeda? The Taliban? Hamas?

So in 2012, as Terry Glavin put it, suddenly we had sleeper cells of Ducks Unlimited popping up across Canada.

Now I’m not suggesting equivalency here. These environmentalists have the evidence of climate change on their side. They’re arguing against the inaction from an industry that’s in a lot of trouble as the world realizes that their product is changing the climate. And they haven’t done a very good job of handing that trouble.

I met a guy in Harlem at a coffee shop. His name is Jason Stanley and he writes for the New York Times and teaches philosophy of language and a class in democracy and propaganda at Yale. And he said that when oil from Fort McMurray is called ‘ethical oil,’ or coal from West Virginia is called ‘clean coal,’ it’s difficult to have a real discussion about the pros and cons. He explained that these kinds of improbable assertions, where words are misappropriated and their meanings twisted, are not so much about making substantial claims, but they’re about silencing.

He called them linguistic strategies for stealing the voices of others.

He said Fox News engages in silencing when it describes itself ‘fair and balanced’ to an audience that is perfectly aware that it is neither. The effect is to suggest that there’s not such thing as fair and balanced. That there’s no possibility of balanced news, only propaganda.

Canada’s public square is polluted with a toxic form of rhetoric that insinuates that there are no facts, there is no objectivity, and that everyone is trying to manipulate you for their own interests. Our belief in sincerity and objectivity itself is under attack. So when everything is mislabeled and you can’t trust anything that anyone says, why bother with the public square?

The American linguist Deborah Tannen puts it this way: when you hear a ruckus outside your house at night, you open the window to see what’s going on. But if there’s a ruckus every night, you close the shutters and ignore it.

The ethical oil, foreign funded radicals campaign has made Canadians less able to weigh facts honestly, disagree constructively, and think things through collectively.

Now how you clean up the public square – my book is 120,000 words – that’s a big question for a seven-minute speech.

But let me say this: “I’m right, your wrong. Let me tell you what you should think” is not a great communications strategy.

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt told me that, and also said it doesn’t work because we all think we’re right. Haidt argues that people are divided by politics and religion, not because some people are good and others are evil, but because our minds were designed for ‘groupish righteousness.’ Morality binds and blinds us. Our righteousness minds were developed by evolution to unite us into teams, divide us against other teams, and blind us to the truth. Haidt suggests we step outside the self-righteousness of what he calls our moral matrix, and look to the Dalai Lama to see the power of moral humility and that we take the time to understand the values and worldviews of people we strongly disagree with.

I also interviewed Ted-prize winner Karen Armstrong who developed the charter for compassion. She put it this way: we must speak out against injustice, but not in a way that causes more hatred. She told me, remember what St. Paul said: charity takes no delight in the wrongdoing of others.

So my time’s up, but I just want to say one more thing. Since the 60s I’ve been reading Eastern philosophy and following particularly Zen Buddhism. So a little while ago David Suzuki and I were lucky enough to spend an afternoon with the famous Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. And he kept saying to David, people don’t need to know more about destroying the planet. They already know they’re destroying the planet. You need to deal with the despair. So I kept listening to him and it sounded to me like he was saying we should go meditated.

So I said to him, “in Canada, Canadians expect the David Suzuki Foundation to speak up on behalf of the environment. You’re not saying we shouldn’t be activists?”

It’s hard, I’ve been trying to think of how I could describe the way he looked at me. But it was with this kind of silence and deepness that I can’t remember having anyone look at me like that before. So he looked at me and he said, “speak the truth but not to punish.”

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It was more than a little convenient to hear right-wing commentator Ezra Levant recently deliver his latest public apology, just in time for the start today of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CTRC) hearings into his Sun News Network’s application for “mandatory carriage.”

A favorable ruling by the regulator would put Levant in every Canadian home with a basic cable package and $18 million a year in the pockets of Sun Media. That might be good news for Levant and Sun Media parent Quebecor Inc, but for Canadians looking for unpolluted public discourse, not so much. What’s more, in return for rescuing Sun media from the red ink, Canadian subscribers would get an increase in cable rates.

Levant likes to make headlines, even when most of them are unflattering. The last one in March was to Canada’s Roma community, following a racist rant he gave on his Sun News Network show The Source in September, during which he described the community as “gypsies, a culture synonymous with swindlers” that have come to Canada as “to gyp us again and rob us blind as they have done in Europe for centuries.”

The network apologized two weeks later but Levant’s took until mid-March, on the eve of the CRTC hearings. The network’s vice-president, Kory Teneycke, recently told CBC Radio he didn’t think Levant’s “intent was racist” and that the man he’s known for 20 years has “no hatred in his heart.”

While the CRTC considers the mandatory coverage request, we at DeSmog Canada think it’s a good time to discuss the social value of such reckless commentary on Canada’s airwaves. While some may argue the right to free speech, any good lawyer will tell you that free speech does not entitle you to libel people or to fabricate information, even if it’s your on-air shtick is to shake things up.

Levant has a history of being censured or sanctioned for defamatory statements and falsehoods. He is also guilty of distorting and inventing facts, defaming people and failing to exercise the diligence required of a responsible “journalist.”

In 2010, he was forced to apologize and retract comments he made in a Sun Media column accusing American billionaire George Soros of collaborating with Nazis as a child in Hungary. Sun Media later issued a retraction and apology. In 2011, Levant accused Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi of “anti-Christian bigotry” for calling an end to a preacher-led protest. That same year, Levant violated the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council’s ethical guidelines with an on-air diatribe leveled at Chiquita Bananas, after the company announced it would avoid using fuel derived from Alberta’s oil sands. Addressing an executive of Chiquita Brands International, Levant said, “Hey, you. Yeah you . . .Chinga tu madre [Fuck your mother].”

His pro-oil industry lobby group, the Ethical Oil Institute, was also behind a pro-Keystone XL pipeline publicity stunt in front of the White House in 2011, where two women wearing burkas stood holding a hand-lettered sign that read "Stop tar sands, Stop Canada, Americans4OPEC.com." The Americans4OPEC.com website states that it’s a satire created by EthicalOil.org to highlight “the choice Americans now have: A choice between several more decades of dependency on OPEC’s conflict oil or a future built on reliable, secure, and peaceful ethical oil from neighbouring Canada."

Despite the apologies and public backlash, Levant hasn’t slowed down his attempts to stir up controversy, and spew misleading information. His strategy, as we’ve noted in the past on DeSmog Canada, is to use brazen PR stunts and disinformation to confuse the debate around whatever issue he is tackling at the time. Levant is particularly focused these days on promoting the oil sands, with a campaign that tries to vilify his opponents through the use of lies and deception.

Consider Levant’s recent attack against well-known environmentalist David Suzuki, who he falsely accused of having requested female “escorts” to act as bodyguards during an October 2012 visit to John Abbott College in Montreal. As part of his illogical attempt to portray Dr. Suzuki as a dirty old man and sully his reputation, Levant further twisted the truth by taking some of Suzuki’s past writings and quoting them out of context to fit his manufactured story.

The college responded to the accusations with a statement saying Dr. Suzuki had both male and female students accompanying him throughout the day, and calling Levant’s assessment a misinterpretation of the facts. “There was no rider in Dr. Suzuki’s contract specifying the gender or dress code of those assisting him throughout the day. The negative comments and innuendos made are demeaning to those students and to the College … .”

Levant’s disregard for facts was also recently highlighted on his TV show when he accused “white billionaires from New York” of using “First Nation puppets” to try to stop pipeline developments in North America.

Most Canadians understand Levant’s purpose is political entertainment. Few take it seriously. Still, Canadians should ask themselves: Is this really the kind of dialogue we want filling the public square?

Wouldn’t it be more productive, not to mention more Canadian, if our debates around critical issues such as environment and resource development were based on facts, not a slew of misinformation and personal attacks?

Of course, creating and maintaining an open dialogue is hard work. It’s also not as entertaining as watching people take cheap shots and fire off false statements about their opponents. Yet, it’s the boring work that must be done if we are to come to decisions that reflect the values of most Canadians.

Let’s start by turning the volume down on shock seekers like Levant. Removing this pollution-filled type of communication is the first step to cleaning up Canada’s polluted public square.

Jim Hoggan is president and owner of award-winning strategic communication firm Hoggan & Associates, founder of DeSmogBlog, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation.

Image Credit: University of Saskatchewan via flickr.

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"Like any other tool, language can be abused, used not to build but to destroy, not to communicate but to confuse, not to clarify but to obscure, not to lead but to mislead." 
- William Lutz⁠

Retired American linguist Dr. William Lutz spent much of his career at Rutgers University studying how language is abused in public conversations. He pointed to government and industry as the worst offenders in a practice known as Doublespeak, which Lutz described as “language designed to evade responsibility, to make the unpleasant appear pleasant … language that pretends to communicate but really doesn’t. Language designed to mislead while pretending it doesn’t.” 

Dr. Lutz worried that doublespeak has invaded public discourse about important issues. When killing innocent men, women and children is called 'collateral damage', torture becomes 'enhanced interrogation' and the dirtiest fossil fuel becomes 'Clean Coal', public conversations lose meaning. We struggle to make sense of things. These euphemisms sanitize language and steer important issues below the public’s radar. 

It would be rash to regard doublespeak as mere PR spin. The purpose of doublespeak isn’t to persuade but to silence and confuse. It is far more cunning than PR. Along with euphemisms, doublespeak campaigns use propaganda techniques such as demonizing dissenting views and concocting fake debates to magnify their impact.

There came a point when the tobacco industry realized they could no longer rely on PR to challenge the link between cigarettes and cancer. They turned to doublespeak to nudge the public away from a real debate about public health to a fake debate about sound science and free choice.

Those concerned about public health were labeled as zealots using junk science to promote a nanny state. In the end, the tobacco industry failed to persuade the public, but their tactics protected revenue and blocked health regulations for decades.

The U.S. has been overwhelmed with doublespeak campaigns for too long. From gun control to health care and climate change, industry front groups have confused and polarized American discourse, resulting in a state of bitter gridlock.

While its a relatively new phenomenon north of the border, the oil and gas industry and the Harper Government launched a ‘made in Canada’ doublespeak campaign early in 2012.

The campaign’s euphemism, Ethical Oil. Its message: Canada’s oil sands industry produces ‘Ethical Oil’. The world needs our ethical oil so we will crack down on these foreign-funded radical environmentalists who oppose the expansion of the oils sands via the Northern Gateway pipeline.

Within a very short timeframe, our national debate about environmental protection and the rights of First Nations shifted to a manufactured debate about protecting Canada’s national sovereignty and economic security against foreign interests and extremists.

Government and Industry Doublespeak

Here are a few of the statements made by government and industry just as the Northern Gateway pipeline public review hearings were getting under way early last year.

From the Prime Minister’s Office in January 2012:

Foreign radicals threaten further delays Today, Ecojustice attacked the independence of the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel. ForestEthics, Living Oceans Society and Raincoast Conservation Foundation joined them in their attack on the Joint Review Panel. Here are the facts: The Northern Gateway is currently going through a careful and comprehensive review process to ensure the proposal is safe and environmentally sound.  Radical groups are trying to clog and hijack the process, rather than letting the panel do its job independently, expeditiously, and efficiently.



Then on January 8th, 2012, an oil industry front group called the Ethical Oil Institute launched a national publicity blitz targeting news outlets across Canada. Here is what their spokesperson Kathryn Marshall said on CTV's Question Period national political program:  



“The reason why the Northern Gateway Pipeline is a good project for Canada is that it will allow Canada to export more of our ethically produced oil to different countries that can reduce their dependency on conflict oil from nations like Nigeria and Saudi Arabia and Iran that have atrocious human rights records and really don’t care about the environment at all.”

“So, we have to make sure that foreign interests and their foreign-funded front groups and lobby groups … are not hijacking the hearing process and taking over or interfering with a Canadian decision.”

"If you care about ethics then support jurisdictions like Canada that have environmental laws, have human rights protections, have workers rights protections," Marshall said. 

Then came an open letter to Canadians from Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver:




"Canada is on the edge of an historic choice [the Gateway pipeline approval]: Unfortunately, there are environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade. Their goal is to stop any major project no matter what the cost to Canadian families in lost jobs and economic growth. No forestry. No mining. No oil. No gas. No more hydroelectric dams."

"These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda … they use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national economic interest."



The campaign took on a 1984 tone when Public Safety Minister Vic Toews released a report on terrorism that warned Canadians of "domestic issue-based extremism" by environmentalists. The report stated:

"Although not of the same scope and scale faced by other countries, low-level violence by domestic issue-based groups remains a reality in Canada. Such extremism tends to be based on grievances—real or perceived—revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism."

Doubling Down

Astonishingly, the federal government didn’t draw the line with this unhinged political rhetoric.

On February 28, 2012, Senator Nicole Eaton launched an inquiry into the funding of environmental charities by foreign foundations, alleging what she considered a threat to the Canadian economy.

To Eaton, the inquiry was about so-called "master manipulators who are operating under the guise of charitable organizations in an effort to manipulate our policies for their own gain." She used phrases such as "political manipulation" and "influence peddling" to describe the money being raised by charitable organizations. "This inquiry is about how billionaire foreign foundations have quietly moved into Canada and, under the guise of charitable deeds, are trying to define our domestic policies," Eaton said. "Cleverly masked as grassroots movements, these interests are audaciously treading on our domestic affairs and on Canadian sovereignty, all under the radar."

Eaton has publicly echoed the Ethical Oil jargon ever since she launched a senate inquiry into the benefits of the oil sands back in 2010 stating, "In an industry dominated by OPEC, the world needs more fair trade, conflict-free, ethical Canadian oil."

As the campaign heated up, the House Finance Committee launched a hearing into the foreign funding of environmental charities in response to complaints lodged by Ethical Oil Institute against the David Suzuki Foundation, Tides Canada and other charitable groups. At the end of April, in the midst of the Senate inquiry and Finance Committee hearings, Environment Minister Peter Kent upped the ante by accusing environmental groups of money laundering, a charge that other Ethical Oil advocates were quick to repeat.

Kent’s accusations were as follows:

"There has also been concern that some Canadian charitable agencies have been used to launder offshore foreign funds. Whether you call it money laundering, or a financial shell game or three card Monte, it's inappropriate under those organizations' charitable status."

  Clearing Doublespeak From the Public Square

Now if you think this campaign was ill conceived and not very convincing you would be right. From water cooler chats in British Columbia to kitchen table debates in the Maritimes, most Canadians didn’t buy it. Even business leaders in the boardrooms of Bay Street and Calgary shook their heads. It was a harebrained attempt at persuasion and Canadians saw right through it. On most fronts, it backfired.

Nevertheless, we should remain concerned about the ongoing Ethical Oil campaign. Not just because it paved the way for a wholesale dismantling of environmental regulations that provided protection for communities across Canada – or because it was an inexcusable attempt to demonize conservation groups – but because doublespeak campaigns like Ethical Oil undermine confidence in constructive public discourse.

Doublespeak feeds the false notions that there are no facts, just spin, and that you can’t trust anyone, so why bother. Why bother to demand that industry and government clean up their act and admit what all of us already know – that there are some things that money shouldn’t be able to buy?

Doublespeak creates public cynicism, that’s really its purpose and that’s why it is so dangerous. Recall Dr. Lutz’s description of doublespeak as "language designed to evade responsibility."

If we want to stop doublespeak pollution from clouding the public square, the public must demand better from industry and government leaders. The lack of accountability for deceptive doublespeak poses a genuine threat to Canada’s future.

Image credit: Kris Krug

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.

The most urgent environmental threat to Canadians isn’t climate change, the declining health of our oceans, or the extinction of species. It’s the pollution filling our nation’s public square.

The public square – the forum for free debate that we depend on in a democracy – is being choked by misinformation, denial and bitter adversarial rhetoric. It is causing the Canadian public to turn away in despair, creating an epidemic of mistrust and what’s worse, disinterest.

Instead of open and healthy debate, dysfunctional public conversations have become the norm, preventing us from confronting the reality of our destructive impact on the planet. We seem unable or unwilling to weigh facts honestly, disagree constructively and deliberate collectively.

DeSmog Canada will wade through the PR pollution that is preventing us from having sensible public conversations about critical issues around the environment, social justice and the economy.

Here, we will work to clear the air and explore solutions for cleaning up Canada's polluted public square. We will examine why Canadians often feel powerless to demand that government and industry focus on what’s really important: developing more effective public policies and transitioning to a healthier, more sustainable economy.

To begin, we need to call out some of the biggest polluters of the public square. These are the harmful PR strategies employed by government and industry aimed to dissuade the public from discussing legitimate concerns.

One of the most blatant examples is the “Ethical Oil” campaign being used by the oil and gas industry to justify unfettered expansion of Alberta’s oil sands. It’s a deceptive campaign that intentionally aims to subvert public awareness and confuse debate by blurring the issues.

Consider the phrase Ethical Oil – a presumptuous and oversimplified pairing of words that leaves little room for the many ethical questions and concerns of Canadians. The Ethical Oil Institute goes so far as to call its cause the “fair trade choice in oil”. The suggestion is that Canadians and the developing world need to support production in the oil sands to squeeze out the markets of “politically oppressive and environmentally reckless regimes” in places such as the Middle East. Unfortunately, not everyone recognizes this type of deceptive messaging, or the damage it can cause.

It is a nasty PR tactic designed not to persuade, but to distract the public through misdirection and misinformation. In fact, Ethical Oil’s strategy is more cynical than most. It mislabels itself to deliberately confuse people about their interests. Ethical Oil then demonizes its opponents to create a culture of mistrust. Citizens become so confused by the cacophony of conflicting information and rhetoric that their reaction is to simply tune out.

In the past, this style of propaganda has been resorted to by industries desperate to escape accountability for their irresponsible business practices. Recall the tobacco industry’s extensive campaign to cast doubt on the health threats of its products, or the oxymoron that is the American coal industry’s “clean coal” marketing campaign. Instead of making claims with substance, the goal of this type of PR spin is to polarize public opinion and discourage critical thinking.

Similar tactics have been used by the Harper Government to stifle debate around the expansion of the oil sands and risky projects such as the Northern Gateway Pipeline. Consider Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver’s now infamous statement about “environmental and other radical groups” that questioned the social and environmental impact of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. Environment Minister Peter Kent even suggested charitable groups in Canada are “laundering” foreign funds, yet admitted later he had no evidence to back up his accusations.

The government continues to suggest that Canadian groups that speak out against the environmental impacts of resource development are trying to undermine Canada’s sovereignty and economic growth. Again, it’s an attempt to force the public to take sides on an issue where there is no black and white.

If all of this sounds melodramatic, that’s the point. Canadians who hear elected officials talking about money laundering and environmental radicals are likely to treat the information as yet another form of entertainment, then promptly ignore it. This serves to silence Canadians who already mistrust business and government, believing the system is rigged and that there is little they can do to make a difference. This attitude fuels public apathy, playing into the PR strategy to drown out dissent and smother public discourse.

Our goal is to put an end to this practice by exposing it for what it really is: a PR bullying campaign. At the same time, we want to encourage and build the kind of healthy public discourse that is needed to foster a true democracy. After all, democracy is dependent on a citizenry that is engaged and capable of sorting some approximate version of the truth amidst a sea of opinion in the public square.

We invite you to be part of this conversation. Share your thoughts here and feel free to share this and other DeSmog Canada content on social media and other channels. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Together, we can clean up the public square and encourage all citizens to pursue their right to take part in decision-making processes that will have a lasting impact on their health, community and the economy for decades to come.

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“We are not muzzling scientists.” – Peter Kent, Canada’s Environment Minister.

I shook my head reading Margaret Munro’s Weekend Vancouver Sun article on freedom of information documents that caught Canada’s Minister of the Environment lying about muzzling scientists.

Kent has repeatedly denied that the government is muzzling scientists. But according to the documents, Kent’s office clearly muzzled Environment Canada researcher David Tarasick, preventing him from speaking to a number of media outlets about an unprecedented hole that appeared in the ozone layer above the Arctic in 2011.

According to Munro, “the documents also say Kent’s office and the Privy Council Office, which reports to the prime minister, decide when and if Environment Canada scientists are allowed to brief the media about anything from wildlife to water quality."

Why would the Minister of the Environment block public discussion of scientific work that may be important for the health and safety of Canadians and their environment?

Shouldn’t a minister of the environment be working to inform the public about environmental threats, encouraging the free flow of scientific knowledge and inviting informed citizens to participate in the decision-making process?

OK, it may be a bit naïve expecting politicians to tell the truth. Most Canadians have an idea who benefits when scientists are muzzled and the free exchange of scientific knowledge about environmental threats is constrained.

The real question, then, is why Minister Kent seems so comfortable lying to Canadians about muzzling scientists when he knows that we know what he is doing?

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