Canada’s environment commissioner stood by the embattled scientists at Environment Canada in a report released Tuesday, praising their “long record of accomplishments” and highlighting concerns about how the government is treating them.Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan noted that Environment Canada is one of the few organizations with the capacity to carry out credible, long-term environmental research and monitoring at the national level, in the public interest. His audit concluded it produces high-quality work.
“We found that Environment Canada’s systems and practices to ensure the quality of its science activities are consistent with those generally used in the scientific community,” Vaughan said.
He praised the department’s environmental monitoring in particular, which provides Canadians with information about local weather, air and water quality and the ecology of national parks.
“Environmental monitoring is necessary to know whether the quality of our environment is getting better or worse,” Vaughan said. “The information the government collects serves many users, including municipal planners, resource managers, and Canadian families.”
That makes the looming departmental cutbacks, and reports of scientists being muzzled, serious concerns. Environment Canada employs 3,000 professionals, although hundreds are currently facing layoffs. Vaughan recommended the department better communicate the needs and conclusions of its scientists in this context.
“The current round of budget reductions … underscores how critical it is for Environment Canada to have a strategy that specifies exactly which scientific research and environmental monitoring activities are indispensable and irreplaceable for Canada’s public interest; which activities are duplicated, if any; and which can be performed by others.”
He suggested a good place to start is the science plan developed in 2007, which sets out long-term directions for its science activities, but has yet to be integrated into departmental planning.
“While individual programs have systems to set their own priorities, a department-wide strategic plan for science is more urgent than ever during this period of fiscal restraint.”
But Vaughan also recognized the difficulty of public communication in an era of scientific muzzling that has federal scientists restricted and banned from sharing their research with the media and the public. He turned to the government to clear up this issue.
“I encourage the government to clarify when and under what conditions federal scientists are able to communicate the results of their research externally,” Vaughan said. “The communication of scientific research to external stakeholders is an important part of transparency.”
The communications policy at Environment Canada is clear, assistant deputy minister Karen Dodds insisted Tuesday. It is the government-wide policy that no public servant is free to speak to the media at will. Interview requests must go through media relations officers, who determine who is in the best position to answer questions. If the questions aren’t strictly scientific, it won’t be the scientist. It will be redirected to a department spokesperson. That’s because scientists are not free to comment on government policy.
Dodds said the department received around 270 interview requests in 2011, and that over 90 per cent were granted. The reasons for turning down a request might be that the scientist did not have media training and did not feel comfortable giving an interview.
But Vaughan told iPolitics that, during the course of the audit, it became apparent that federal scientists are still not clear about the role they can play at public meetings and in the media.
“We heard some concerns about how the external communications were doing — how they were working, how they weren’t working, was there confusion, and therefore we’ve suggested the government may want to look at whether or not the current plan is working as expected.”
Vaughan added that there are also concerns about the delays the scientists face before being granted permission to talk.
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Source: iPolitico
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