Mr. Speaker, the need to base public policy on reliable evidence and for the public to have access to that evidence and to understand it is an issue that I have advocated for passionately during my entire political career. I am proud to speak today in support of the Liberal motion before the House.
The thrust of the motion is simple: scientists should be able to discuss their research findings publicly, in a timely manner, and without political interference. Unfortunately, that is not the current reality for scientists working for, or sometimes even with, the federal public service in Canada.
As the motion states, the government has constrained the ability of federal scientists to share their research and to collaborate with their peers, and federal scientists have been muzzled and prevented from speaking to the media about their work.
François Giroux, head of the information and communication program at Université de Moncton, eloquently explained the danger of this approach when he spoke to the media today:
The danger of this practice is that by controlling the message, you kill it. The health of our democratic society requires transparency on the part of our governments. The very existence of governments is funded by taxpayers.
...Free access to government information requires a transparent government, freedom of the press, as well as freedom of speech in the case of a subsidized organization, a scientist or an elected representative.
According to the shocking findings of a 2013 Professional Institute of Public Service of Canada survey, hundreds of federal scientists have been asked to alter or exclude technical information from documents, and hundreds more have been prevented from responding to inquiries from media and/or the public.
The Conservative government has demonstrated a clear pattern of cutting off the flow of information when it does not support its rigidly ideological agenda. In fact, within months of coming to power, the Conservative government introduced new, strict procedures to constrain how government scientists are allowed to speak about their research to the media.
Unmuzzling science does not mean that federal scientists should be free to speak without any restrictions. They know very well that their work often deals with sensitive security issues or is protected by property rights.
However, scientists are now micromanaged by their minister's offices regarding how, or even if, they can discuss their work with the public. The tragic consequence of the government's disturbing pattern of constraining federal scientists' ability to share their research and to collaborate with their peers is that Canada's global leadership role in basic research and in environmental, health, and other public science is being put in jeopardy.
This is not just the opinion of the Liberal Party. It is also the opinion of hundreds of scientists and engineers from around the world, who signed an open letter last fall urging the Prime Minister to end “...burdensome restrictions and barriers to scientific communication and collaboration faced by Canadian government scientists.”
The Liberal Party understands that researchers are central to how policy is made, and that is why Liberals are standing firmly behind scientists and their research.
Decision-makers and Canadians generally count on the crucial expertise and research of federal scientists to protect the safety of their food, water, air and environment.
Freedom to communicate their findings will benefit the integrity of scientific research, will help the Canadian public and policy-makers to make informed decisions, and will help repair our nation's international reputation.
I remember being very angered and embarrassed in 2010 at Women Deliver, a large public health conference held in Washington, at what the government had done to our international reputation. At the conference, Susan Cohen, then director of government affairs at the Guttmacher Institute, a U.S. non-profit organization that promotes reproductive health, referred to Canada as an “evidence-free zone”.
In the wake of the SARS crisis, the Naylor report made it clear that Canada needed a public health agency headed by a chief public health officer who could speak directly to Canadians. Buried in last year's omnibus bill is the demotion and muzzling of the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada. He has been stripped of his abilities to set priorities, to determine appropriate resources, and to speak directly to Canadians without political interference. He has been reduced to being an adviser to the minister on the things that the minister chooses to be advised upon, instead of actually speaking up for the public health of all Canadians whenever he sees fit.
The Conservative government's obsession with political control and suppression of science is damaging our reputation around the world and is truly appalling. This decision, and those like it, must be reversed in the interest of all Canadians.
One need look no further than the government's misguided decision to replace the long form census with the national household survey for proof of its ongoing war on evidence. The government spent $22 million more on the 2011 national household survey than it would have on the long form census to collect data that was seriously compromised. As a result, it has essentially ended our ability to compare the data with earlier census statistics. We can no longer see trends over time.
This means we are flying blind when it comes to a whole host of policy decisions. Chief statistician Munir Sheikh resigned from his post over this misguided decision and explained that a critical issue was the fact that StatsCan was subject to significant interference from the Conservative government. He has gone on to say “...in my mind the most serious consequence of canceling the census is the loss of trust in Statistics Canada to be independent of government interference.”
The government's misguided approach to the long form census is unfortunately not the exception but the rule in terms of the government's ongoing approach to science and scientists. Ongoing cuts by the Conservatives to scientific research programs and continual muzzling of federal scientists represent clear attacks on evidence-based policy-making in an attempt to silence opposition to their ideologically based policies. I remember that very early on in this regime, the government side continued to refer to Liberal-funded social science research as though it was a swear word. We know that good social science research never proves what this government is intending to do, so it has to be silenced and de-funded.
The Conservative government understands that if problems are not measured, they are not noticed, and therefore the government does not have to act to fix them. The government is cynically and systematically undermining the public and not-for-profit sectors' ability to research areas it fears will prompt action on issues counter to its very narrow agenda.
Unfortunately, my allotted time does not permit me to provide an exhaustive review of all of the government's actions in support of this disturbing pattern, but here are a few highlights.
The world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area was de-funded by the federal government in budget 2012.
Since 2013, DFO scientists must now get departmental approval to submit research to scientific journals.
In 2013 the government shut down the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, formerly an arm's-length organization, and even prevented it from posting a final report.
In 2014, the government de-funded the Canadian Health Council. Also in 2014, the government closed seven out of nine Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries. The library closures are nothing less than an erosion of Canada's collective memory.
As my Liberal colleague, the member for Kingston and the Islands, himself a scientist, so eloquently said of the library closures:
The Harper government may not like science...but it does not have the right to literally trash the products of decades worth of research just because it doesn’t suit the ideology of the Harper Conservatives.