Canadian government science is under siege. The administration of Prime Minister Stephen Harper—first under the guise of creating a uniform message across the government, and more recently with the stated intent of controlling intellectual property and cost-saving—is dismantling the Canadian governmental science apparatus and its role in providing a source of accountability in Canadian democracy.

This erosion began in 2007 with the imposition of rules requiring that all public servants (including government scientists) get approval before speaking in public or to a journalist on any topic. These rules were rolled back for routine queries about the weather, but other than that, scientists were to check with media relations or communications officers before any public contact.

Of course, this in isolation is not a problem, except that the government made sure that such requests, particularly for potentially sensitive research (e.g. about the impacts of climate change), were met with slow bureaucracy, responses taking days or weeks, by which time the news cycle would have moved on.

Even more insidious, some approvals came with pre-determined talking points, boring bullets beyond which scientists were not to stray. With so much red tape over their mouths, it was unclear what the point of talking to government scientists was. 

Journalists certainly weren’t able to ask what might have motivated research, what the implications of the research might be, or where research might be headed in the future. Without journalists talking directly and openly to scientists, all the subtle details, the judgments or interesting extras that don’t make it into scientific papers, remain obscured.

http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/34958/title/Opinion--Canadian-Science-Under-Attack/

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