海角社区官网

Debates over statistics are nothing new in politics nor, indeed, central banking, Mr. Carney’s previous role. Yet at a time where factuality itself is under siege and the era of “evidence-based decision-making” seems like a quaint memory, the integrity of government data and science has taken on a new urgency聽鈥� a public good no one should take for granted.

What’s more, politicians of all stripes are tempted to leverage periods of surround-sound confusion to press ahead with transformative or ideological agendas that run roughshod over the empirical evidence needed to support defensible policy-making.

There is, to put it mildly, plenty of this brazenness on offer in President Donald Trump’s administration, which has fired thousands of government scientists working in disciplines ranging from climate change to infectious disease and all manner of bio-medical research.聽

Canadians are watching these developments with a combination of horror and smugness: it couldn’t happen here, right?

But it has happened here, and could yet again.

During Stephen Harper’s tenure as prime minister (2006 to 2015), his Conservative government muzzled public sector scholars, halted the long-form census, shuttered government research libraries, and imposed restrictions on federal scientists speaking with reporters. 鈥淲e were all under a clear understanding that we could be dismissed for talking directly to the press,鈥� Max Bothwell, a former federal biologist, told in 2017.聽聽聽

Nor did Harper’s assault on government information end there. “The climax in what some have called Canada鈥檚聽聽was Bill C-38, a 2012 budget bill that stealthily stripped away environmental protections and cut funding at research institutes around the country,” noted another account published that year in . “Government scientists lost their jobs, and monitoring stations shut down.”

Justin Trudeau’s first act as prime minister was to re-instate the long-form census, and Ottawa has since enacted upholding the independence of scientists and ensuring the disclosure of federally funded research. These duties to Ottawa’s chief science advisor, a position established by the Liberals in 2016.

While such reforms aligned with the Liberal brand, Ottawa never fully insulated federal research funding agencies from political meddling. They remain beholden to the government of the day for their in annual budgetary allocations and report to a cabinet minister.

(Trump has injected a toxic dose of coercion into government-funded research, threatening federal agencies universities that don’t kiss the ring, with the result that scientific institutions around the world聽鈥� including in Canada聽鈥� are racing to recruit scholars who’ve had their funding slashed.)

As Carney empanels his cabinet and launches a government that intends to move quickly and perhaps break a few things along the way, the importance of independent government science and data analysis is paramount. After all, significant parts of Carney’s agenda involve energy and mineral extraction, east-west pipelines, and other measures meant to buttress Canada’s economy against the ravages of Trumpian chaos.

These goals are certainly popular, and necessary from an economic perspective. But they will raise tough questions about climate, habitat preservation, Indigenous land and resource rights, and watershed safety.

It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee a clash between the Liberals’ political objectives and the effect of those policies on the environment. Government and university scientists are tasked with documenting these impacts and then reporting their findings, not just to their bureaucratic sponsors but in public, also to Canadians, who provide the funding for such research through their tax dollars.

Scientists don’t support agendas; they are all about advancing knowledge. So as we enter the Carney era, they’ll need to know they can safely speak scientific truth to power, even if those truths prove politically inconvenient to a government intent on making big changes.聽聽