Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Conservative government destroys good science
On June 7, 2012, I maile the following letter to Mr. Ashfield with copies to the Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister Kent:
The Hon. Keith Ashfield, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Dear Mr. Ashfield:
Not being a fisheries or aquatic biologist, you might think my colleagues and I would have scant knowledge of or interest in the Experimental Lakes. Not so. In my career, as a biologist, section head and division manager with Environment Canada, I have had many times to hire biologists with fisheries, aquatic biology, or limnology training. The first thing I looked at on their applications was whether they had Experimental Lakes experience during university. That was the way to know that they had both superior training by Canada’s elite science faculty, and real-world experience. I could depend on these young scientists to recognize a Daphnia when they saw one, to know a hypo- from a hyperlimnion, and to fix an outboard motor when it konked on the way home from a survey. Even if their jobs had nothing to do with aquatic biology, I knew that these were the best people to serve Environment Canada, and the country.
The Experimental Lakes sites and program have produced generations of Canada’s top scientists and were the foundation for innumerable masters’ and PhD theses and scientific publications by scholars from all over the world. Students and scientists working there discovered the effects of phosphorus in detergents and acid rain, allowing my former Department to eliminate these scourges of lake ecosystems. It is the best and longest running lake biology experiment in the world—there is nothing else like it. It would be short-sighted indeed to cancel funding for it.
Sincerely,
Lee Harding, PhD
cc:
The Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister
The Hon. Peter Kent, Minister of the Environment
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Your comments are appreciated. When the goal of government policy makers is to maximize the ease with which our country's resources can be extracted or exploited for profit, one would first get rid of those who evaluate and regulate the process. Scientific inquiry is a concomitant casualty. The hubris of the Harper government's position is colossal.
ReplyDeleteI have been reading about Soviet biology czar Trofim Lysenko who believed the power of Soviet ideology could make plants grow in defiance of the theory of evolution. His repudiation of genetics and his arrogant faith based notions set Soviet biology back decades.
The Harper government's initiatives may come from stupidity as great as Lysenko's or they may be, as I suspect, spectacularly bloody-minded. Either way let's hope the Canadian public intervenes at the next election.