Q4, 2019

The Harper government waged a war against science which was particularly aimed at environmentalism and human rights.

They used multiple means to repress public science - by committing a  knowledge massacre: closing libraries, dumping their books into dumpsters or sending them into landfills. Some government scientists had to borrow students’ library cards to access necessary information after their primary library was closed.

Environmentalism in Canada was officially considered a “domestic terrorist threat”. The Census, one of the most important ways in which we as Canadians know ourselves, was converted from a mandatory survey into a voluntary one, increasing its cost while hugely diminishing its value.

Many research organizations were shut down, others had their budgets slashed.

Government scientists were forbidden to talk with the media about their work. It would have been laughable had it not been tragic: a science fiction author who was an employee of Environment Canada was prohibited by a call from the Office of the Environment Minister to attend a lunch that had been organized in his honour. His novel was about climate change.

Overall, government scientists were no longer able to communicate freely with the public, or with their national and international colleagues via conferences, uncensored publications, and in other ways.

Protests abounded: by Canadian professional and scientific groups, advocacy groups, international science organizations, editorials in national and international magazines, and open letters by scientists. All to no avail. Evidence for all of this and much more can be found here.

It was in this context that I started a Working Group on the Muzzling of Science at Science for Peace. We started to meet, and soon decided that what we needed to do was to bring our concerns to the general public rather than to people who were already committed to some form of knowledge generation. That meant finding other tactics than holding meetings at a university. Science for Peace is a charity, and had a President anxious not to endanger its charitable status because of political activities. We therefore decided to incorporate as a separate advocacy group without charitable status, leaving us free to organize different types of events, including the first science march in Toronto, and creating a series of YouTube videos. It was a steep learning curve!

We called ourselves Scientists for the Right to Know. Our aim was to make public science an issue for the 2015 election. And for the first time, parties did include public science on their election platforms.

After the Liberals were elected, they reversed many of the destructive policies of the previous Conservative government – they reinstated the mandatory census, appointed a Minister as well as an Advisor of Science, bumped up funding for basic research, and more. See the evidence here. However, much of the damage is irreparable. The contents of libraries that were destroyed cannot be recreated. And although the top policy makers and bureaucrats took the muzzle off government scientists, there continue to be problems not at the top but at the middle management level – bureaucrats who were socialized during the Harper years, who still think that scientists require permission and oversight to talk with the public.

We decided to change our use name from Scientists for the Right to Know to Our Right to Know – because so many people told me “yes, I believe in what you are doing, but I am not a scientist ….” We are a small organization, staffed by volunteers, and we continue to document what is happening to public science in Canada, as well as across the world, to the degree that it comes to our attention.

Margrit Eichler, President, Our Right to Know
reprinted from the TAN Newsletter, December 2019.