More On Harper's Censorship of Science

The other day I wrote a post about the Harper regime's ongoing efforts and measures designed to thwart government transparency; the Prime Minister's abuse of power is most flagrant in his suppression of the voice of science, thereby effectively denying information vital if citizens are to have any hope of evaluating government policy. Unfortunately, in a regime driven by ideology, as Harper's is, the end justifies the means, no matter how much those means might violate the basic underlying principles of democratic government.

I am taking the liberty of reproducing the editorial appearing in today's Star that rebukes the regime for this dangerous drift toward an autocratic rule that promotes and extols ignorance over knowledge and manipulation over meaningful deliberation. The bolded parts are mine, added for emphasis:

Apparently Stephen Harper is unmoved by the embarrassment of international reprobation.

It has been a year since Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals, chided the federal Conservatives for their antagonism to openness and declared, “It is time for the Canadian government to set its scientists free.”

Since then, other major international publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, have followed suit, calling on our government to take a more enlightened, democratic approach to scientific findings. Yet clearly not much has changed: the federal information commissioner is now considering a request to investigate the persistent and worsening problem of the government’s so-called muzzling of Canadian scientists.

Since the Conservatives took power in 2006, Canadian media have had little direct access to government scientists. In Friday’s Star, Kate Allen reported on the difficulty this paper has had working around the government’s unusual restrictions. Requests for information are usually routed through communications officials, yielding either perfunctory, inexpert responses, or circumscribed interviews with scientists often days past deadline. One way or another, scientists are kept from sharing their work with the public.

This silencing poses a significant democratic problem. How are Canadians supposed to evaluate energy or fisheries policies, for instance, when we aren’t exposed to even the most basic information about their environmental consequences? Moreover, the muzzling creates a problem for science itself, an endeavour that depends on the widespread dissemination, scrutiny and discussion of data. As Dalhousie University ecologist Jeffrey Hutchings wrote on thestar.com last week, “When you inhibit the communication of science, you inhibit science.”

That ought to be unacceptable. But as the thousands of scientists who gathered in protest on Parliament Hill last summer made clear, this government seems to regard evidence as worse than irrelevant. It regards it as a hindrance. Why else scrap the Experimental Lakes Area, the world’s leading freshwater research centre, despite the steep economic and scientific cost of that decision? Why else do away with the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, the national science adviser or the long-form census, among other integral parts of our scientific infrastructure lost in recent years?

Keeping Canadians in the dark is undemocratic; governing in the dark is reckless. Good government needs good science, and good science needs a level of openness this government may be incapable of.

The Quasi-Police State In Our Midst: UPDATED

He who controls the media controls the minds of the public. - Noam Chomsky

In some ways, it is very much reminiscent of what occurred during the time of the Soviet Union, when athletic or cultural figures would visit the West, always accompanied by 'escorts' whose ostensible purpose was to act as facilitators and translators, but whose real purpose was to keep a very close eye on their fellow citizens lest they bolt for freedom or say something 'unscripted', thereby causing the homeland some embarrassment. Control of information was paramount.

And ironclad control would seem to be both the guiding model and ethos governing the Harper regime. Already infamous for its war on transparency, about which I have written before, Canada is now ranked 55th in the world for upholding freedom of information, a designation Harper disputes (black is white, freedom is slavery, etc. etc.). Another ongoing international embarrassment and affront to democracy is the muzzling of our scientists. But perhaps a measure of relief from that oppression is possible.

A story appearing in today's Star reveals the following:

Federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is being asked to investigate the “muzzling” of Canadian government scientists in a request backed by a 128-page report detailing “systemic efforts” to obstruct access to researchers.

“She is uniquely positioned, and she has the resources and the legal mandate, to get to the bottom of this,” says Chris Tollefson. Tollefson is executive director of the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre, which issued the request with the non-partisan Democracy Watch.

And make no mistake about it. This regime is desperate to control the flow of information that is at odds with, among many other things, its current propaganda campaign to convince the world of how environmentally 'progressive' it is. Readers may recall, for example, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver's recent trip to Chicago on behalf of the Keystone XL pipeline in which he touted Canada’s unmatched environmental record. This was quickly followed up by Oliver's attempt to repudiate Thomas Mulcair's comments in the U.S. about Keystone and the tarsands.

The stakes are indeed high, which may explain the extraordinary lengths to which the 'Canadian Kremlin' is going to censor and control information. The piece in The Star goes on to describe the ease and with which an information request on how climate change is affecting the Arctic and Antarctic was answered by NASA scientists, usually the same day and with offers to talk in person or by phone.

However, the same request to scientists at Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada,

led to apologetic responses that the request would have to be routed through public relations officials. Public relations staff asked for a list of questions in advance, and then set boundaries for what subjects the interview could touch upon. Approval to interview the scientists was given days later. In all cases, a PR staffer asked to listen in on the interviews. (italics mine)

I wish Democracy Watch and the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre the best of luck in its attempts to break the embargo on unfiltered information through Information Commissioner Legault. Yet I can't help regret that Canada has sunk so low that now the efforts of non-governmental agents are so desperately needed in a country that was once a proud and open democracy.

UPDATE: For those who feel strongly about this government control over information, here is a petition worth considering.

Fair Game - The Things Politicians Do While We Sleep

I rarely watch films today, preferring some of the edgier fare offered by cable television series such as Justified, Nurse Jackie, Trueblood and Breaking Bad. Nonetheless, with my son visiting last evening, we sat down to watch Fair Game, a 2010 film starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn playing Valierie Plame and Joe Wilson respectively.

Many will recall that Joe Wilson is the former U.S. diplomat who, after being sent to Niger to determine whether it was selling 'yellowcake' uranium to Iraq as part of the latter's development of alleged weapons of mass destruction, definitively concluded that this wasn't occurring. He wrote a report to that effect, one that was promptly ignored by the Bush administration in its inexorable march toward war with Iraq.

When Wilson learned that the Bush administration was using the fictitious yellowcake sale as one of the major pretexts for invading Iraq, he wrote a piece for the New York Times entitled “What I Didn't Find in Africa”, concluding “that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat. “

It was at this point that the administration turned its full fury against Wilson by 'outing' his wife as a CIA operative, an illegal act for which the former adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney, 'Scooter' Libbby, took the fall. (He was later quickly pardoned by George Bush.) However, the revelation about Plame's CIA employment was just the beginning of a campaign to discredit both of them.

The film relays the various stresses and strains their marriage suffered, almost to the point of dissolution thanks to the barrage of harassing calls, death threats, the destruction of Plame's CIA career, etc. As well, Wilson's consulting business suffered deep losses.

For me, Fair Game's greatest strength lies in its unromanticized celebration of the passionate pursuit of truth and justice embodied in Sean Penn's portrayal of Wilson, and the vindication that ultimately accrues to both Wilson and his wife. As well, there is a line in the film that resonated with me; Wilson is talking to a a group of young people, and he observes something to the effect that democracy isn't free; it requires hard work, vigilance, and citizen engagement.

If only we could take that lesson to heart.

A Refresher Course in Harper's Disdain for Democracy

I am currently reading Lawrence Martin's book Harperland, which anecdotally confirms some of our worst fears and suspicions about Stephen Harper and the Harper Government (see, even I've taken to referring to our government that way), and even though I no longer subscribe to The Globe and Mail, I do check it regularly for columns by Martin.

Today's piece, entitled On the road to the Harper government's tipping point, is a reminder of the myriad abuses of democracy that the Prime Minister is responsible for. At a time when many of us despair of the possibility of any change in the next federal election, it is useful to remember that the fate of our democratic traditions and institutions ultimately does reside in our hands, no matter how much the government seeks to undermine those traditions and institutions.

Dalton McGuinty and The Smoking Gun

I have written extensively about my long-standing suspicions of Premier McGuinty's weak explanations for his failure to reveal the truth about the 'secret law' (the regulatory change under the Public Works Protection Act) which permitted police to violate the Charter Rights of thousands of peaceful protesters during the G20 Summit in Toronto. Today, the Toronto Star reports that the Marin Investigation uncovered emails revealing a concious decision not to inform the public that the '5-meter rule' did not, in fact, exist:

On June 25 — the day before the weekend summit of world leaders at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre — the Starreported ministers had quietly designated areas within the G20 security zone a “public work.”

Blair led people to believe that his officers had been granted the authority to arrest anyone who failed to provide identification or agree to be searched within five metres of the secure conference site.

Later on June 25, Bartolucci’s ministry drafted a press release outlining the changes under the Public Works Protection Act that specifically said “it does not authorize police officers to require individuals to submit to searches on roads and sidewalks outside the zone.”

But the news release was never distributed because, according to Marin, “by the end of the day, the ministry had decided to scrap the idea of going public altogether” since there was only one media call on the five-metre rule.

Now more than ever, it is imperative that a full and independent inquiry into the entire sad episode be held. For the government to do anything less is to demonstrate complete disdain for the sanctity of our Charter Rights as Canadians.

The Ombudsman's Report on the G20

I just read the newspaper account of Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin's report on the 'secret security law' that was passed by the McGuinty Liberals before the G20 Summit in Toronto, a report that calls the law illegal and likely unconstitutional, and "almost certainly beyond the authority of the government to enact.”

While his report is described as scorching, condemning the law's lack of transparency and its anti-democratic nature, one glaring omission seems to be any criticism of the fact that both Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair and Premier McGuinty lied to the public. Neither did anything to correct the erroneous assertion both had made about the extent of the law, waiting until after the G20 was over before revealing that the law allowing authorities to search, question, and even arrest those who came within five metres of the perimeter fence did not, in fact, exist.

It is wholly inadequate for the provincial government to simply admit that it could have done a better job in communicating the truth. Such a stance reveals a deep contempt, not only for the citizens of Ontario, but also for their Charter Rights.

Nothing short of a full and complete inquiry into the provincially-sanctioned totalitarian tactics of the police is acceptable.

What Do Big Brother and the Harper Conservative Government Have In Common?

The simple answer is, "They both know what is best for us."

In so many ways, it is such a relief to know that we Canadians no longer have to think for ourselves, as the Harper Government has assumed that burden for us. The latest evidence of their benevolence comes from a story by Richard Brennan in today's Toronto Star about the long-delayed release of a report on the effectiveness of the long gun registry.