“...Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” by Margaret Mead


To view links in sidebar, you may have to be logged into a GOOGLE account.

Tuesday 15 April 2014

The Dangerous Business of Silencing the Scientists

Sackville Tribune-Post
17 January 2014

The Conservative Government in Ottawa is probably more closely associated, in the mind's of Canadians, with the Athabasca tar sands than anything else.  This monumental economic bonanza (1.6 million barrels of oil a day as of 2010) has led to the passing of a series of bills creating huge economic benefits for government and big oil at the expense of human and environmental health.

Some of the most recent legal precedents have allowed the government to silence scientists and discredit their research through a series of so called budget cuts.  

The Conservatives are closing fisheries and oceans libraries, cutting back on funding for environmental research and consequently experiencing much scrutiny as the reported emptying of library shelves comes to light.   They plan to close 7 of 11 Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries across the country purportedly to save money.  A statement from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans claimed; "the decision to consolidate our network of libraries was based on value for taxpayers." According to the Department the savings will be in the neighborhood of $430,000.  

Postmedia News obtained a document designated "secret" indicating that these research materials had not been digitized as reported, but were culled from many of the libraries in question.  Library staff reported seeing books that had been tossed on storage room floors and put in dumpsters.

Commenting on the disregard for scientists and their research, David Schindler a retired water ecologist said; "paranoid ideologues have burned books and records throughout human history to try to squelch dissenting visions that they view as heretical, and to anyone who worships the great God Economy, environmental science is heresy." 

This valuable research accumulated over decades could have been donated to local university libraries, which would have saved costs and books at the same time.

CBC News reported on January 9th;  "in the past 5 years the Federal Government has dismissed more than 2000 scientists and hundreds of programs and world renowned  research facilities have lost their funding.  Programs that monitored such things as smoke stack emissions, food inspections, oil spills, water quality and climate change have been drastically cut or shut down."

The government says this is all being done to save money, but there are other more important issues at stake here, most notably another assault on democratic rights and freedoms. Postmedia News also notes that these cuts follow a new mandate for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that eliminates a number of environmental laws, having the effect of reducing Federal oversight on industrial development.

Future plans to triple production in the tar sands (if land claim lawsuits are not able to stop this expansion) will continue to turn the region's boreal forests into an uninhabited wasteland. And if that's not bad enough, the Alberta Government recently turned over regulatory responsibility for the tar sands to an organization entirely funded by Canada's oil and gas industry.

On the Fifth Estate documentary "Silence of the Labs" scientists expressed their concerns about the lack of climate change research and monitoring in the High Arctic.  Tom Duck, a professor of Atmospheric Science at Dalhousie University said; " We know climate change is an enormous problem, so if you want to get out your oil, you have to get it out now.  If you want to get it out now, you make sure scientists aren't causing
any problems.  If you want to make sure scientists aren't causing any problems you take away all their funding." 

 Donna Mclellan for the 

Tantramar Alliance Against Hydrofracking

No comments:

Post a Comment