Friday, January 10, 2014

Harper's "Silence of the Labs"

Tonight on the Fifth Estate, Linden McIntyre looks at the Harper government's "war on knowledge."  The programme focuses on the suppression of scientific research and the dismissal of 2,000 government scientists in recent years.

In the past five years the federal government has dismissed more than 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs and world-renowned research facilities have lost their funding. Programs that monitored things such as smoke stack emissions, food inspections, oil spills, water quality and climate change have been drastically cut or shut down.  

The fifth estate requested interviews with two senior bureaucrats and four cabinet ministers with responsibility for resources, the environment and science. All of those requests were denied.

The Harper government responded predictably with a statement from the office of  Greg Rickford, Minister of State for Science and Technology, denying cutbacks and insisting, instead, that the con artists have an exemplary record of research investment.

"Our government has made record investments in science," it stated. "We are working to strengthen partnerships to get more ideas from the lab to the marketplace and increase our wealth of knowledge. Research is vibrant and flourishing right across the country."

Here on the west coast we know what this is all about - sweeping aside potentially meddlesome monitors who might blow the whistle on the bitumen supertanker initiative.

7 comments:

Owen Gray said...

They deny the facts without blushing. That's called psychosis.

Richard said...

"Our government has made record investments in science," it stated. "We are working to strengthen partnerships to get more ideas from the lab to the marketplace and increase our wealth of knowledge. Research is vibrant and flourishing right across the country."

From the lab to the marketplace. The Harper gov't is investing tons into science, it's just the wrong kind of science. Their dumping tons into carbon capture and storage, so they an continue their oilsands wetdream and continue using coal to power it. They are dumping tons into "arctic research", which basically means how to get at the oil in the ground.

The problem with the Harper Government™'s pursuit of science is that it revolves entirely on how to have our cake and eat it too and spends very little time asking what happens if we can't.

The Mound of Sound said...

It's certainly dysfunctional, Owen.

Richard, such are the ways of the corporatist state.

Purple library guy said...

Carbon capture isn't research, anyway. It's greenwashing. The only people that ever made me wonder if there might be something to it were the Norwegians. But I just learned that the Norwegians gave up on it in September.

The Mound of Sound said...

It is greenwashing,PLG. They're throwing just enough bucks at CCS to make a bare claim to doing something about the problem.

Anonymous said...

This is another reason the CBC should never, ever be disposed of. Harper is working to get rid of the CBC, make no mistake about that as well as Albertans. Mr. Harper, the truth is the truth. Learn to accept the fact that not all Canadians are as stupid as many politicians think. Anyong

crf said...

It was an excellent episode.

Linden Macintyre's probably only scratched the surface though. Hopefully more journalists will now actively try to seek out exactly what Harper's government is doing to federal science programs.

People probably still don't believe it, but He really has gagged federal scientists from speaking about their work to the media. So the media, (or the public) doesn't know what science is being done, until it is cut, and the damage done. Even close stake-holders are not told about policy decisions. And even after the fact, scientists may not always pro-actively talk about it: notice that the Fifth Estate only talked to scientists largely cut loose by the Harper government, not any that have seen their programs "merely" crippled, and, still being employed, therefore under standing gag-orders.