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Harper controlling the science message

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The Conservatives had better not be relying on the scientist vote to take them to victory in 2015.

By training and disposition, people who wear lab coats to work are detached and introverted. But the Conservatives have managed to get them riled up, to the point that they will half-heartedly wave signs and issue scathing denunciations.

This week, Steve Campana, on his way out the door after 32 years at Fisheries, gave a blistering interview to CBC, warning that government science is in a “death spiral,” because good scientists are leaving in disgust.

Campana warns we are losing our science capacity, which will mean that if great white sharks invade our waters, “we won't have the qualified people in place” to answer questions.

There has always been tension between politicians and scientists.

The worst environmental catastrophe in modern Canadian history -- the destruction of the northern cod stocks -- happened because politicians ignored the scientists who told them to pull the nets out of the water.

But that kind of interference normally only happens when politicians are under huge pressure. Usually, scientists are more or less free to publish studies and talk to local papers. Or they were, until 2007, when the rules changed.

“Just as we have ‘one department, one website' we should have ‘one department, one voice,’“ Environment Department officials told scientists. No talking until officials in Ottawa could review requests and decide if a “program expert” should “respond with approved lines.”

Or not.

A year ago, when a train running through Banff National Park hit a grizzly bear, Parks Canada workers wanted to tell local media outlets. So they called Ottawa to seek permission.

On May 14, 2014, the park’s communications officer e-mailed her colleagues: “I just got off the phone with national office and was told that ( the minister’s office) would not grant approval to go forward with proactive communications regarding the grizzly strike.”

The local paper, the Rocky Mountain Outlook in Canmore, only learned about the incident when reporter Cathy Ellis did an access-to-information request.

The government routinely suppresses minor science news.

Campana, for example, was angry because his team wasn’t allowed to report on a method to determine the age of shrimp and lobsters. When a colleague spilled the beans in the United States, stories appeared in 127 media outlets in 25 countries.

In 2012, Ottawa Citizen reporter Tom Spears heard that Environment Canada and NASA were flying planes through Ontario snowstorms to learn why snow falls where it does.

Spears asked NASA and Environment Canada for interviews. NASA gave him one in 15 minutes. The Canadians refused. He wrote his story -- giving the Americans the credit -- and filed an access-to-info request. He got an e-mail trail that showed 11 Canadian officials sent dozens of e-mails back and forth over two days before rejecting his request.

This is all Stephen Harper’s doing. To avoid stories that contradict his message, he has created a centralized machine that makes it impossible for scientists to communicate without political approval.

It’s deeply creepy, the kind of system you might design to manage public relations for an oil company, but it is not a good model for scientists in a democracy.

Harper likely doesn’t want to keep these stories secret. They are just of no consequence to him, because they don’t advance his political goals. That seems to be the only metric that matters to the people in charge.

Harper has the right to control the message, but scientists have the right to complain, vote with their feet and to try to change the rules.

This week, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada -- the union that represents 15,000 federal scientists, engineers and technicians -- announced that at the bargaining table it will seek a clause guaranteeing scientists the “right to speak.”

They say Canada is the first country in the world where scientists have sought that kind of clause in a contract.

 

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