In March 2013, then-Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver advanced the view that U.S. President Barack Obama is — on the Keystone XL issue, at least — “driven by facts,” adding “and that’s what drives us as well.”
He reiterated this assertion several months later in response to a blistering New York Times editorial that accused the Harper government of muzzling government scientists in an “attempt to guarantee public ignorance.” Americans, said Oliver, are entitled to their opinions but he would find it “refreshing if they confined themselves to the facts and science.”
Early this past summer, Prime Minister Stephen Harper waded in on the issue of childhood vaccination. He believes it works because “we know, we scientifically know, what vaccinations and immunizations have done for us.”
He was equally unequivocal about whom the public should trust on scientific issues. Politicians? Pundits? The Internet? Nope, none of the above. Said Harper: “Don’t indulge your theories, think of your children and listen to the experts.”
What then are we to make of the recent comments from Department of Environment Parliamentary Secretary Colin Carrie? In an interview on Global’s West Block, he was asked to comment on the recent analysis by Environment Canada scientists predicting that Canada would miss its 2020 Copenhagen CO2 emission target by about 20 per cent (122 megatonnes). Carrie’s response? That “everybody’s entitled to their own opinion.”
A slip of the tongue? Possibly. But in the House, Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq avoided the question of whether she too believed that her department’s estimate was merely an opinion, preferring to use her air time to point out (again) that Canada contributes 2 per cent to annual global carbon emissions.
As Carrie noted, everybody is entitled to an opinion. But there is a wide gulf separating lay opinion from expert scientific opinion.
The common law is clear about this. In court, opinion evidence is generally inadmissible. Why? Because the law has legitimate concerns about the relevance or reliability (or both) of opinion evidence, and its potential to mislead judges and juries.
But expert scientific opinion — the kind Harper and Oliver apparently believe we should listen to — is admissible. Why? Because, subject to tests of relevance and reliability, such evidence often proves invaluable in assisting judges and juries in reaching informed decisions.
Of course, scientific opinions can differ — indeed, scientific disagreement fuels the engine of scientific progress. But at the roots of any such disagreement are the nature, quality and quantity of scientific evidence. That is the touchstone for all scientific debate.
One might think that parliamentary secretaries and ministers for science-based departments such as Environment Canada would understand the difference between lay opinion and expert scientific opinion. Not so, apparently.
Environment Canada’s projections were contained in an October 2013 report on carbon emission trends. They were also included in the government’s 2014 official report to the United Nations on Canada’s response to climate change.
Carrie’s response, and Aglukkaq’s signal failure to clarify it, conveys the distinct impression that they have doubts about the estimates. If so, why didn’t they voice them before the 2013 report was published? And how do they reconcile their doubts with Canada’s official report to the United Nations?
What are Canadians to make of a government that, on some issues, implores the public to stick to facts and listen to scientific experts, but on other issues appears content to dismiss scientific evidence as mere opinion?
Politicians cannot have it both ways. If one chooses to compete in the coliseum of science-informed decision-making, failure to observe the rules may fatally damage one’s credibility: as Roman gladiators knew only too well, those who live by the sword can also die by it.
If parliamentary secretaries or ministers have doubts about estimates produced by their own scientists, a commitment to science-informed decision-making demands that they provide us with their estimate as well as the scientific evidence on which it is based. We will then decide which estimate we find more plausible.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com/
Author: C. Scott Findlay
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