In early 2008, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper fired Linda Keen as head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. At the time, then-Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn refused to cite examples of Keen having failed to fulfill her duties, making it clear that the firing had nothing to do with fulfilling her role as head of an arm's-length watchdog agency and everything to do with embarrassing the government with her comments about the handling of the crisis with the Chalk River nuclear facility.
The Keen affair was one of the more high-profile examples of the Harper government muzzling input from public servants for political reasons. The matter involving Richard Colvin - the career diplomat who blew the whistle in the Afghan detainees affair - is another of at least a dozen examples that have been cited in the media.
This week we learned of yet another example: Kristi Miller, a fisheries biologist at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo, has been barred from speaking to the media about a $6 million study into salmon genetics that could help explain why West Coast salmon stocks have been crashing over the past couple of decades. The journal Science published Miller's work in January, but the Privy Council Office, which supports the Prime Minister's Office, has refused to let Miller speak to the media about it.
Government officials have said their refusal to let Miller speak was taken because they didn't want it to influence the work of the Cohen Commission, which is looking into the 2009 collapse of Fraser River sockeye stocks.
But critics say they don't see how allowing Miller to speak would significantly alter the commission's work. Instead, they say the move is more evidence of the way the government is muzzling scientists and other so-called "experts" - a pattern that's been repeated frequently since the Tories took power in 2006.
"An iron curtain has been draped over communication of science in the last five to six years," Jeffrey Hutchings, a senior fisheries scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, told Postmedia News this week.
To this writer, the move to muzzle Dr. Miller is yet another example of the Harperites' blatant disregard of the role that evidence can and should play in government decision-making. After the Keen firing, Liberal MP David McGuinty said, "These are the kinds of Republican tactics this town has never seen before."
Well, Canadians have now - repeatedly. And we recognize that there are often instances where science isn't the only factor to consider when making decisions. But scientists have a right to discuss their work and the public has a right to hear the message and debate its relevance. Don't muzzle the evidence, Bush-style, to save your government from having to explain the reasoning behind its decisions.
- David Burke
