Dude has no fear of CSIS

You know, my feelings about our current PM, and his ideological associates are no secret around these parts, but my ability to rant certainly takes a back seat to that of Canadian SF author, and scientist, Peter WattsWatts has been mentioned here lots of times.. And more than being a better ranter, he appears to have no fear at all of getting visited by CSIS–at least judging from the photo on his latest post.

I like this bit of stage-setting at the beginning:

Then we had an election, and a significant number of Canadians — not a majority by any means, but enough to make the difference — did what people en masse have been doing the world over since history began: they proved to be a bunch of fucking morons. So it came to pass that a sweaty, pallid, insecure, and not-especially bright politician of the neocon variety ascended to the throne. His name was Stephen Harper, and holy shit did he ever change things in a hurry.

But then he gets into the meat of the matter, and it’s actually something that I had been somewhat ignorant of–Harper’s interfering with the communication between the public and the scientists in the public sector. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of the bullshit around it, but this particular example is egregious:

For some time now, federally-employed biologists have been given a script to read when approached by journalists in search of a story: “Thank you for your questions. I will be working with our media relations section and we will respond to you as soon as we can. Please direct any further inquiries to media@ec.gc.ca or call 819-934-8008/1-888-908-8008”. Journalists are then required to send their questions to the Ministry of Truth Media Relations, who forward those questions they deem admissible on to the actual scientific authority. Said authority’s written answers are then reviewed and edited by MR before being sent back to the journalist. On those rare occasions when the scientist is actually permitted to speak directly with his interviewer over the phone, Media Relations monitors the call, one restless finger on the kill switch lest their bitch stray from her assigned script.

Wow, is that upsetting. I mean it’s one thing (one bad thing) to relabel everything in the world as not coming from the “government of Canada”, but rather as from “Canada’s New Conservative government” or whatever, but it’s a whole other thing to actually get in the way of open, objective communication. Again, Harper taking a page from the Bush playbook–see any discussion in the last eight years of the role of EPA, for example.

You can read the rest of Watts’ rant at his post.