Standing Up for Science in Harperland - 2013-04-07
Standing Up for Science in Harperland April 7, 2013,
Standing up for science has been a losing battle under this prime minister. Scientific facilities have been closed, grants reduced and, in many cases, funding completely removed.
Federal scientists who still have a job have been muzzled by their political masters. Stephen Harper's favourite finger-puppet, John Baird, famously declared that the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, for example, was vaporized not because it got things wrong, but because the Party didn't like the advice it was giving. It preferred mutable facts.
In Harperland, there is no weed as noxious as independent facts. If possible, they are pulled up by the roots. Science is just another corporate enabler as far as the PM is concerned; if it's not that, then it's a potentially dangerous source of independent public information. But David Schindler is not as easy to silence or ignore.