Stephen Harper’s Greatest Hits now includes a new single – and who knows, the Conservatives may even make a few bucks off it.Canadian scientist Diane Orihel has joined a list of enemies of the state that includes, if you believe the regime, subversives like Linda Keen, Kevin Page, Munir Sheikh, Richard Colvin, Theresa Spence, and everyone who has ever led a union.
Orihel’s crime is that she co-authored a piece in the Toronto Star critical of the appointment of Greg Rickford as Canada’s new Minister of State for Science and Technology. Her co-authors, Britt Hall, Carol Kelly, and John Rudd are all accomplished scientists.
The scientific community has long had Rickford’s number; he is a man of spandex principle and boundless ambition – the usual compliant foot-soldier who catches Stephen Harper’s eye.
The Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) Canada’s former world-class facility for whole ecosystem freshwater research, was in Rickford’s Kenora riding. After appearing to be a champion of the 58-lake outdoor lab, Rickford manfully genuflected to his government’s dunderheaded decision to close the facility.
Why stupid? Well, the work done there by federal scientists led to many impressive international outcomes – including the acid rain treaty with the United States. More importantly, issues around freshwater – from the expanding tarsands to new pipelines and toxic algal blooms, will only become more, not less, important.
At $2 million a year, it cost less than half as much as the Office of Religious Freedom, which has a budget of $5 million. It is interesting to note that before the ELA was shuttered by the feds, Rickford refused to debate Orihel on the issue, and even warned her not to contact him on his confidential government number.
After working for 10 years at the ELA, and understanding the importance of the work being done there better than Ottawa politicians, Orihel put her PHD on hold (she recently got it) and fought valiantly to save the ELA. Her colleagues also stepped up to the plate. They lost. Now the facility is in a kind of no man’s land – no longer the creature of a memorandum of understanding between Ottawa and Ontario. Premier Kathleen Wynn’s eleventh hour intervention is mostly a wing and a prayer exercise: the ELA is still without a new operator.
For expressing the view that Harper could have come up with a better appointment as science minister than Rickford, Orihel and the others found themselves vilified in a mail-out from the Tory MP’s riding association.
Here, in part, is what they said about the scientists: “The article “Greg Rickford, Canada’s new science minister, has poor track record” was written by the same group of radical ideologues who have led a campaign of misinformation about Greg’s work to protect the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA).”
(The word “misinformation” in CPC lexicon means anything that conflicts with the World According to Steve. The word “protect” means dump in someone else’s lap, naturally without funding.)
Unless you count doing a very obedient 180 on the ELA as “work”, Rickford has not protected much except his own political hide. Voters may well remember that the MP extolled the installation’s virtues, then threw his lot in with its executioners – the old suck and blow. Now he is trying to take credit for finding the ELA a new home. That is like patting yourself on the back for driving the unwanted cat to the animal shelter for a trip to the big litter box in the sky.
In a way, though, you have to feel sorry for Canada’s new Minister of State for Science.
For one thing, Greg Rickford was trained as a nurse and a lawyer. So health or justice maybe. But a science portfolio? That is an especially bad choice when you keep in mind an observation by Linda Keen, former head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, made about the kind of public servants who run federal departments these days:
“Now the process has been politicized…There is no science department in the federal government run by a scientist, not Health, Environment, Natural Resources, Agriculture or Fisheries and Oceans. That says a lot. A good public service is top-drawer people with good ideas. You risk all that when the new role is to give the minister what he wants.”
On the other hand, Stephen Harper delights in making perverse, even mischievous appointments. From top advisor – whether felons or cop-diplomats, spy-overseers behind bars and double-dipping shilling senators — it is a laugh a minute up there in the PMO.
I, for one, can’t wait for Dear Leader’s new Senate appointments. My advice: just be sure to check for parole violations before signing them up to jammy contracts.
Back to Diane Orihel, her colleagues, and Greg Rickford. The people in Rickford’s riding association were not just channelling Vic Toews and Joe Oliver in referring to the scientists as radical ideologues. They were also monetizing their spite and malice.
In order to fight off the folks in white coats, Rickford needed a little help. The televangelist moment had arrived: “We can’t let these attacks go unanswered. Can you make a small contribution today? Even as little as $5 can have a large impact in helping Greg.”
Greg Rickford needs all the help he can get. Harper has already had some fun with the post he now occupies. Before Rickford, there was the coy creationist, Gary Goodyear. I guess a guy trained as a nurse and a lawyer is by that measure a step up.
But what a cabinet post for anyone to cut their teeth on! Being made Harper’s science minister is like getting picked as Rush Limbaugh’s research assistant.
How can Greg Rickford be treated seriously?
Here’s what the prime minister who elevated him is remembered for by the scientific community – muzzling scientists like Kristi Miller and Mark Tushingham; forcing Scott Dallimore to get ministerial approval before speaking about an ice-age flood in Manitoba; turning federal scientists into R & D robots for the private sector; and an ever-crowded Boot Hill of dead science programs from the Genome Project to high arctic research. In 2009 alone, Rickford’s predecessor cut $147 million from science programs.
Even Stephen Harper’s enablers in the press must be blushing a little at the lengths to which this government will go to traduce its critics and make a little money off them at the same time.
Last week, the Harper government beat up on heroin addicts, and then sent off fundraising letters to the base. Nothing like the prospects of a junkie getting publicly-supplied dope to get the people in cloth coats and sensible shoes running for their cheque books.
Never mind that Tony Clement pulled the same stunt with the Canadian Medical Association at their General Council when he was Minister of Health. He gave Canada’s doctors a tongue-lashing over safe-injection sites for drug addicts. Seditious, what? Tony wanted them closed, dismissed the documented evidence that 20 per cent of those addicts who used the safe injection sites “voluntarily sought treatment” later, and that death rates had been “substantially reduced”.
He told desperate CMA officials that he would not change his speech to the convention and that this was an “existential” issue for Ottawa: the Harper Government existed to address issues of law and order, including putting addicts in prison.
The doctors shook their heads when Clement delivered the speech. Law and order is not a health issue. Safe injection sites are both a public health issue and a question of medical ethics.
The criticisms of Orihel, Britt, Kelly and Rudd of the Harper Government’s disdain of science are not a matter of radical dogma – they’re the government’s specialty.
What she and her colleagues wrote in The Star is a matter of public record, of free speech, and of concern for country.
Plus the scientists aren’t asking for your five bucks to fend off the government’s bull – just your critical attention.
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