EDITOR'S COMMENTARY:
This piece was originally published February 21. As you'll see below, readers had comments to make, including some who took issue with my characterization of Canada as 'undemocratic' under Prime Minister Stephen Harper (known to some as 'Crime Minister').
Since February 21, a lot has happened to suggest that I might have got this right after all. Consider these matters:
There is a very loud scandal currently underway in Canada that suggests the national election held May 2, 2011 was rife with fraud. Although none of this is proven, all the fingers are pointing at Harper's party. As of this writing, it appears there are questions of fraud in at least 45 voting districts - all of which were won by Harper's crowd. And there have been at least 31,000 complaints made by individuals to Elections Canada about dirty tricks - again, all pointing at Harper's party. That does not make them guilty - either the party or Harper - but it appears I am not alone in complaining about a suppression of democracy in Canada.
[See this article already published on Axis of Logic for more about voter fraud in Canada.]
One of the examples I used to point out the suppression of public information in Canada was the stifling of free scientific inquiry and a refusal of the government to allow its own scientists to speak without a script prepared by bureaucrats who, naturally, don't understand science. Again, I'm not the only one to complain. See this article from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation referencing an editorial carried in the universally admired magazine, Nature. The magazine complains about the Canadian government 'muzzling' its scientists. Nature also points out that the U.S. has adopted more open practices since the end of George W. Bush's presidency, while Canada has gone in the opposite direction.
This morning I learned Harper's government has rejected a charitable donation ($8.3 million) that it had accepted a year ago. This is because, according to the government, the organization that provided the funding has become a vocal opponent of Canada's intended 'dirty oil' pipeline (see below). Harper accuses pipeline opponents of stacking public meetings, apparently oblivious to the fact that the other half of the room is usually stacked by those in favour. He refers to 'foreign' agitators sticking their noses into Canada's business and says he won't tolerate it. Well, that ignores that the biggest of the pipelines in question would actually go through a foreign country (the US) and - maybe I'm going out on a limb here - it is their business too.
Ironically, the group who received the charitable grant, Tides Canada, is a local environmental group that doesn't actually have a public position on the tar sands oil which is at the heart of this debate. They are the local administrators of money donated by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a US-based environmental trust. And it seems the money was not earmarked to protest or try to block approval of any oil project in Canada - it was donated to fund scientific research. And, you know, that research might actually find evidence to support Harper's side of the argument. But he probably suspects the science is against him, so it is better to shut it up in the first place.
As for the tongue-in-cheek reference in my article to Harper as Canada's equivalent of North Korea's 'Dear Leader' - maybe I wasn't so far off the mark.
-prh, editor
Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada – our equivalent to North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader’. And Stephen Harper is a control freak. He is legendary for preventing other elected officials from his own Conservative Party from speaking independently, from sharing their own opinions outside of closed doors, and from speaking to the press without scripted messaging. Since the lowliest Member of Parliament is paid $157,731 per year (plus extra for added duties), you have to wonder why Canadians need these people at all if they aren’t allowed to think or speak for themselves.
Some admire the tenacious way Harper has kept his government on message, ignoring the fact that in a democracy (or an alleged one) it isn’t just the will of one person that drives the boat. There are 308 members of Parliament, and he is just one of them. The fact that he is leader of the Conservative Party makes him Prime Minister by default, since his party has the greatest number of seats in Parliament – in this case, an actual numeric majority. [For the record, the caucus of the ruling party chooses the Prime Minister, and it is only tradition that says the leader of the party gets the nod – there is no legal requirement for it.]
But Harper has tightened the reins on who may speak, and what they may say. Votes in Parliament are mostly ‘free’ votes, but woe to the Conservative who fails to vote exactly the way His Lordship directs. The punishment is swift and decisive. And the imposed silence is not applied just to members of Harper’s political party – it is also foisted upon the supposedly neutral civil service.
Many Canadians might laugh at the idea, but it is a reality that we actually have a pretty good civil service. Oh sure, there are the usual stupid things they do and it often seems there are more than a fair share of overpaid numbskulls. But all in all, they are a pretty professional bunch.
So it is disturbing to see Harper’s crowd silencing civil servants who know what they are talking about when the elected tools clearly don’t. For instance, Statistics Canada is an extremely sophisticated data gathering service that has for many years ferreted out the most arcane details about Canada and Canadians, primarily to allow government to have access to useful and accurate information.
Naturally, if you’re in charge of planning for government services, you would want the best information you could get. Not Harper’s crew. They gutted the most recent census of Canadians to the point that StatsCan (as we call it) believes the information they have gathered is of dubious value and, in many cases, of no use at all. The head of StatsCan even resigned in protest. Harper tried to sell this truncation of the census as a protection of privacy issue – this from a government that is currently preparing legislation to strip away most of the privacy rights of Canadians.
The real
reason for abbreviating the census was to be in a position to make policy
without pesky facts getting in the way. It’s much easier to institute policy
for ideological reasons if you don’t have to face up to social realisms.
The StatsCan fiasco was one of the earliest signs that Harper intends to remake Canada in his own image before he is done.
The latest buzz has both the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), criticizing Harper’s government for silencing its scientists. But it isn’t new for the scientific community, which has been complaining about muzzling since about 2008 (Harper was first elected in 2006) when the government introduced a media protocol.
According to this protocol, all interview requests for government scientists must be cleared by government officials first. And those government officials all take their marching orders from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), an all-powerful and all-controlling group that surrounds Harper. Decisions about these requests are often delayed beyond the point where the interview would have any value, or simply refused altogether. Even when interviews are granted, government officials usually demand written questions to be submitted in advance and choose to sit in on the interviews.
Andrew Weaver, an environmental scientist at British Columbia’s University of Victoria, called the protocol ‘Orwellian’.
The media protocol states:
Just as we have one department we should have one voice. Interviews sometimes present surprises to ministers and senior management. Media relations will work with staff on how best to deal with the call (an interview request from a journalist). This should include asking the programme expert to respond with approved lines.
According to Professor Weaver, information is so tightly controlled that the public is ‘left in the dark’.
So government departments like Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Health Canada, Agriculture Canada, Canada Food Inspection Agency, Northern Development Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada and others I probably don’t even realize are dependent on solid scientific advice, aren’t getting it. Or if they are getting it, they are preventing the scientists from communicating with the folks who pay their salaries – Canadian citizens. Harper’s government gets to control the message and take whatever ideological steps it wants, secure in the knowledge that it has shut down the only viable source of knowledge that could challenge its position.
It’s that control that allows Canada to say that global climate change isn’t a real problem, or that selling Canadian asbestos to Third World countries is perfectly okay even though it’s illegal in Canada, that the Alberta Tar Sands aren’t really as filthy as everyone knows they are, that Pacific salmon aren’t dying from cancer due to industrial effluent, that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions are no big deal, and so on.
The good news, though, is that Stephen Harper is looking out for the health and well being of all Canadians. So sleep tight, citizens; heed no nightly noises and know that that the PMO is on duty, and everything is going to be okay.
Paul Richard Harris is an Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada. He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com.
Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist, Paul Richard Harris