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Abstract

Since taking office in 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has transformed science in Canada, particularly for government scientists. The author describes and assesses these changes, from revised communication policies for government scientists, to the closure of scientific facilities and offices, to the altered landscape for science funding. In these changes, one can see an importation of a corporate model into governance, with government practices streamlined to ensure near-exclusive focus on the particular agenda of the government. But democracies should not be run like corporations; they require greater openness and acceptance of divergent interests within government science. In particular, government research is often crucial to the assessment of government actions and policies, and citizens require access to this information to be able to assess their government at times of election. The author articulates four implementable principles that can help maintain science’s important place in democratic governance.

Keywords

Canada corporate model Harper government media relations public interest science science funding science in democracies

Since Stephen Harper took over the prime minister’s office in Canada in 2006, his government has placed increasing pressure on science in Canada. Starting with rules about speaking to the media; expanding to budgetary cuts and publication restrictions; and culminating in lab closures, layoffs, and a focus on science that benefits industry, the Harper administration has reshaped science across Canada so scientists employed by the government now serve its interests first and foremost. It is difficult to overestimate the impact of these efforts to channel the work of scientists in a particular direction.

The changes in Canada fit roughly into three categories: the muzzling of scientists, the elimination of key facilities and organizations, and a shift in funding priorities. Together, these changes can be seen as a package of efforts to ensure that science does not produce unwelcome results; that scientists do not surprise elected officials in the morning news; and that science serves the interests of those in power, whether or not those interests are aligned with the public’s.

What is the problem with the Harper administration reshaping Canada’s science agenda in these ways? If a government is duly elected, then doesn’t it represent its citizens and have the right to ensure that the government apparatus, including the science apparatus, assists the government in its pursuit of its agenda in any way it can (particularly in the undivided government of the parliamentary system, and particularly with a majority government)? While this might seem acceptable at first glance, there are important roles government science must play in contemporary democracies. In particular, government science is an important source of information for the electorate on the impact of government policies—their successes and their failures. Citizens must have free access to such information if they are to be able to assess, and vote on, the direction their country is taking. A closer look at the Harper government shows that it has adopted a corporate-style model to reshape science in Canada. That model is not just inappropriate but also dangerous to democracy.

Muzzling scientists

In the nine years since Harper took office, his administration has wrought a number of major changes. The trouble with scientists speaking to the media began shortly after the Harper government first came to power in January 2006. In April of that year, Mark Tushingham, a climatologist working for Environment Canada (a key federal department), was forbidden to attend a press club luncheon organized to help launch his fictional book Hotter than Hell. Although Tushingham was not linked with Environment Canada in press releases about the book, and would not be speaking for the agency at the event, his boss ordered him to stay home and stay mum. Why? “Proper procedure was not carried out,” said a spokesman for Canada’s environment minister (Austen, 2006).

This was one of the earliest indications that the rules of the game were changing for scientists who worked for the Canadian federal government. By November 2007, Environment Canada had new official media policies in place. These rules spread to most other agencies and departments, with the Department of National Defence and inquiries related to weather forecasts inside Environment Canada as notable exceptions (Magnuson-Ford and Gibbs, 2014). Scientists now are generally required to seek approval from “media relations” or “communications” offices within their agencies prior to answering any media requests for interviews or information.

If these requests are approved in a timely manner (which often they are not), the scientists are sometimes told to repeat only specific talking points, and may be instructed to see the journalist as an untrustworthy adversary (Gatehouse, 2013; O’Hara, 2010).¹ In a 2012 case that would be comical if it weren’t so disturbing, Canadian scientists seeking to give a straightforward briefing regarding recently collected data on the state of sea ice in the Arctic failed to achieve the “nine levels of approval” required (Munro, 2014). A US center presented the information to the media instead.

Such policies are clearly having an impact. Aside from the frustrations of journalists seeking more in-depth information on a breaking science story, the scientists who work for the federal government also feel stymied. In 2013, the union representing public service employees in Canada, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, surveyed thousands of Canadian government scientists and found that 90 percent “do not feel that they can speak freely to the media about the work they do” (PIPSC, 2013). The government often claims that scientists give lots of interviews (for example, see CBC News, 2013), but the decline in interviews on topics such as climate change tells a different story (De Souza, 2010).

The restrictions in some departments go beyond talking to the media. Just one month after Conservative MP Kellie Leitch (herself a medical doctor) assured the public that government scientists were always free to publish their results (CBC News, 2013), the story broke that Fisheries and Oceans Canada was requiring pre-approval by ministry officials before scientists could send their work out for peer review and publication (Birchard and Lewington, 2013). The story appeared only because an oceanographer at the University of Delaware was asked as a collaborator to sign off on the process. The scientist balked and spoke out. The Canadian government justified the new policy as a tool to protect its intellectual property rights (Birchard and Lewington, 2013).

Cutting facilities

In addition to keeping scientists from talking to the media about their work, and in some cases from publishing their work, the federal government has campaigned to close down institutions and facilities that generate potentially unwelcome scientific knowledge, including many scientific libraries—summarily throwing out records going back decades (Wells, 2013). The list of outright closures is long. Highlights include:

Office of the National Science Advisor

This office was created in 2004 to channel science advice to the prime minister more effectively. It was reassigned to the industry minister in 2006, then cut altogether in 2008 (Hoag, 2008). The Science, Technology and Innovation Council (STIC) supposedly replaced the office. Made up of eminent public experts from academia and business, STIC provides confidential advice to the ministers of industry and state. There is no science advisor or advisory body for the prime minister at this time in Canada.

National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE)

This group worked to develop policies that would encourage sustainable development in Canada, and reported on how well Canada was doing on its greenhouse gas emission goals. When it was closed in 2013, the government initially attempted to maintain control over NRTEE’s body of work and keep it from being easily accessible (Canadian Press, 2013; McCarthy, 2013).

Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences

From 2000 to 2012, this foundation was the primary source for climate research funding in Canada. Its closing eliminated funding for many environmental monitoring and research programs and facilities across Canada (Voices-Voix, 2014). Its replacement, the Climate Change and Atmospheric Research initiative, is now shuttered as well (NSERC, 2014).

Additional closures include the Ocean Contaminants and Marine Toxicology Program (Harnett, 2012), the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL, 2012; Mason, 2010), the Drought Research Initiative (DRI, 2011), the Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN, 2009; Voices-Voix, 2011), the National Council of Welfare (Goar, 2012), and the Mersey Biodiversity Centre. This final example was particularly egregious, as the government refused to turn the facility (which was used to breed endangered fish stocks) over to others and demolished its structures (Moase, 2014).

Other facilities have been targeted and almost closed, but saved in reduced form at the last minute, including: the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory, which makes key Arctic measurements of the atmosphere, ozone layer, and the impacts of climate change (Mancini, 2013a); the Experimental Lakes Area, a premier ecological research station that allows scientists to conduct large-scale studies of freshwater lakes, including controlled assessments of the impacts of contaminants (Raj, 2013); and the Kluane Lake Research Station, which sits next to “the largest non-polar icefield in the world” (Zada, 2012).

This is, at best, a partial list. But a clear trend emerges from it. Labs and facilities that worked to discover unwelcome things (like levels of pollution in wildlife or the impacts of climate change) were cut. Research networks that worked on topics no longer a priority were dismantled. Some of the best research facilities in Canada were threatened. Research was lost. That some of the facilities were not completely demolished has more to do with people outside government scrambling to save them than with any rethinking by the government of its agenda—which is to generate a radical shift in the nature of the science (both natural and social) the government produces. Sources of undesired knowledge have been cut dramatically.

Redirecting funding

Canada has also seen a sharp change in funding for science in the academic sector. While absolute levels of total funding have not fallen, they have not kept pace with inflation, and the percentage of GDP that is spent on science and technology slipped from 2.09 percent in 2001 to 1.74 percent in 2012 (O’Hara and Dufour, 2014).

Shifts within the funding agencies regarding how, and on what basis, science is to be funded have exacerbated this slow decline in funding levels. Prior to Harper’s election, the National Research Council was a large agency that supported basic research in government labs, as well as commercialization of that research. Under Harper, the National Research Council has been remade into a “concierge service” for industry (in the words of the agency), jettisoning its basic research mission (NRC, 2013, 2014). Its purpose is now solely to provide links to, and to bolster support for, scientists doing work in the private interest.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the national science granting agency of Canada, has historically been predominantly a funder of basic academic research in universities. Under Harper, NSERC budgets have declined overall. But more telling, the majority of funds are being redirected toward “target areas … that are in the national interest from a social and economic perspective” (Mancini, 2013b). Many NSERC grants now require matching funds from the private sector. These changes were made, NSERC says, to “streamline operations and ensure maximum efficiencies” (Mancini, 2013b).

This past fall, similar policies requiring matching funds from the private sector were rolled out at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Crowe, 2014). How Canadian scientists will be able to pursue public health research, or research that cannot be readily commercialized, is not yet clear.

Scientists have viewed these shifts in funding with alarm. These days, I am regularly told that an academic scientist requires an industry or private sector partner to have sufficient access to government funds to keep a lab adequately funded.

Running a country like a corporation

To understand the full suite of changes in how science is conducted in Canada, one must look through the lens of a corporate business model. Like a corporation, the Harper government has imposed strict communication guidelines on all employees and made it clear that the primary spokesperson for any department or agency is the minister appointed to run it. As with a corporation, the preferred route for communications is through the official spokesperson. Employees (including scientists in the public service) are to refer any requests to the media relations office. There is to be no communication to the media without clearing the full content with this office. The government, like a corporation, is to speak with one voice. Indeed, when Environment Canada adopted its new media relations protocol, which required that scientists in its employment gain approval from the media relations office before any response to a journalist, the policy was justified on the grounds that “just as we have ‘one department, one website’ we should have ‘one department, one voice’” (Greenwood and Sandborn, 2013: 29).

Although the protocol was ostensibly intended to protect vulnerable scientists from being abused by the media, it soon became clear that clearance to speak to the media would often take weeks—and if it arrived (not necessarily in time for journalists’ deadlines) it often came with a restricted list of talking points, a set of information beyond which the scientist was not to stray. According to material justifying the new requirements, the former freedoms to speak to the media had resulted in problems such as: “interviews sometimes result in surprises to Minister and Senior Management” and “limited coordination of messages across the country” (Greenwood and Sandborn, 2013: 29). The new protocol was intended to unify the agency’s message, as if it were an advertising campaign, and to avoid surprises to ministers, as if they were running companies.

Like a corporation, the Harper government is also ensuring that the efforts of scientists in the public service serve the particular interests of the Harper government. Unlike past cuts to science during times of austerity, in which government scientists were asked to decide how to cut budgets while protecting crucial research, this time government scientists were given no leeway in where the cuts were directed. Instead, ministers decided what should be cut specifically, and cuts were targeted at whole programs pursuing research that could reveal problems with the government’s agenda.

For example, it is common knowledge that the Harper administration has been a major supporter of the fossil fuel industry in Canada. Concomitantly, the government has not been a supporter of science facilities that detect the impacts of industrial activity on the environment. Programs such as the (now closed) Ocean Contaminants and Marine Toxicology Program, which could detect industrial pollutants in marine mammal populations, have suffered as a result. Austerity serves as the excuse to cut science that produces undesirable results.

The Harper government has ensured that areas of science that do assist its agenda, particularly in attempting to cultivate private business activity, have been bolstered. Funding for science of interest to private companies has gone up; funding for basic science has been reduced. To the Harper government, spending on science for the sake of discovery looks like budgetary fat, to be cut. It has been replaced with research funding requiring matching funds from industry partners. If there is no industry interested in your results, you will be hard-pressed to find funding for your research, whether you work for the government, at a university, or in a private lab.

Why the corporate model fails

Why should the citizens of Canada be concerned that Harper is running their country like a private company, shaping the efforts of the entire federal bureaucracy to serve his agenda? After all, Harper is a democratically elected leader. If his management style were truly a problem, surely voters would elect someone different.

This take on the situation misses a crucial point. While democratic control at the ballot box remains essential, it is just as essential that citizens have a clear understanding of what their government is doing, so that they can decide how to vote in the next election. By controlling the information produced and promulgated by scientists across the country, the Harper government is eviscerating a source of debate about what the government should be doing.

Indeed, the Harper government has conflated two very different sets of interests: its own interests (in promoting the particular agenda it prefers and in getting re-elected) and the interests of the public. The public service of Canada (the federal bureaucracy) is supposed to serve the interests of the public. The interests of the public are not in perfect alignment with the interests of the Harper government, even when the public fully agrees with Harper’s agenda. One function of government science is to assess the impact of policies to see whose interests they serve. If government scientists cannot speak freely about what they find (even if the results blemish the government’s policies), they are not serving the public’s interest. They are instead serving the interests of those in power. That these two interests diverge, particularly at the moment of evaluation of one’s government, is crucial to democratic principles. Citizens need to be able to evaluate the policies of their government. In the 21st century, this requires open scientific study of the impacts—failures as well as successes—of policies.

The principles that drive corporate governance—maximizing profits, pursuing only knowledge that enables that goal, and speaking with one voice throughout the company—are toxic to democratic systems. Citizens are not shareholders who can simply divest themselves of stock if profits slide or if they disagree with the direction of a company. Citizens are tied to their countries in a far more fundamental way. They need ready access to the information required to assess the impacts of their government’s decisions.

Democracy depends not just on the ballot box but also on the ability to make informed choices at the ballot box. Making informed choices requires a robust culture of debate and discussion, of freely available knowledge produced by the public service (excepting state secrets, which should be as narrow as possible), and of journalism that reports on issues of public interest.

A principled approach

The Harper administration has found a potent recipe for short-circuiting this robust democratic culture, through controlling the production and dissemination of scientific information. Its ability to centralize power and neutralize debate has been remarkable. I am concerned that future leaders, both within and outside Canada, might learn from Harper’s example, and use similar tactics to control the conduct and dissemination of science, expand power, and tamp down democratic culture. Only through a clear articulation of principles regarding the role of science in society, and a concerted effort to uphold such principles, can citizens be sure that science will genuinely serve their interests. Here are four implementable principles fundamental to this approach:

Scientists in the public service should be free to speak in public and to the press

The knowledge that scientists produce does not belong to the government, but rather to the people. Ministers and politicians have no privilege to “not be surprised” by the morning’s news. They should get out of politics if such surprises are too much for them. Scientists should make clear when they are not speaking for the department in which they work, but beyond that there should be no restrictions on their communications with the public (assuming no state secrets or personal privacy issues are involved).

Advice collating scientific information for use in decision making should be made public

Anytime formal advice is sought, such that groups of scientists are asked to assess a situation or body of work and to write a report, that formal written advice should be posted online immediately upon completion. Citizens have a right to see the advice that the government receives and to evaluate the government’s subsequent response in light of that advice. There should be no “ministerial privilege,” except regarding narrowly construed state secrets. Politicians may have good reasons for ignoring some advice when making decisions, but those reasons should be part of an open democratic discussion, not a private matter.

Governments should respect all three components of a robust research culture: Public-interest science, private-interest science, and disciplinary-interest science

Scientific endeavors in the 21st century fall across all three of these categories. Private-interest science is important for developing innovative technologies and must often be proprietary. Because this science is held privately, private companies should be the major funders of it. Public-interest science concerns the impacts of actions on the public, whether those actions are by the government (through its policies) or by private actors. The primary source of funding for this kind of work, whether done by government employees or academics or both, is the government. Private interests have little reason to fund such work. Disciplinary-interest science pushes fields forward at a fundamental level. It is often of little interest to those outside the fields, but can, in the long run, produce results of great import to both the public and private sectors. It too is primarily funded by the public purse. I do not think that each of these categories deserves equal funding; it is well within any government’s purview to shift emphases. What is not acceptable is an abandonment of public-interest science or disciplinary-interest science by the government (PIPSC, 2014). There is no one else to support this important work (particularly in Canada, where there is no strong private foundation culture).

Countries need mechanisms for informal science advice, so that science can be best used for the country’s good

Informal advising occurs when a trusted consultant (such as a chief science advisor, which no longer exists in Canada at the federal level) has private conversations with elected officials. In addition to formal advice (noted above), which should be made public, informal advice is crucial for making the most of science in the 21st century. It can help elected officials set more productive agendas and shape more effective policies. Here is where ministerial privilege can reside. Indeed, to be most effective, informal advice occurs within a circle of trust that requires confidentiality. Such advice need not be made public, given its nature. Despite its occurring behind closed doors, it should not be undervalued. Informal advice is crucial to shaping agendas and avoiding scientific blunders before they become matters of public record. Any formal advice that results from a process begun with informal advice should, however, be made public.

Science in the public interest

Against these principles, Canada is in sorry shape. Government scientists cannot speak freely to the press and cannot freely communicate their findings. Formal advice produced within the government is not made public. The current government has decimated funding for public-interest science and disciplinary-interest science in favor of private-interest science. And mechanisms for informal science advice have been dismantled.

This has been very upsetting for Canadian scientists, who in response have formed advocacy and protest groups—an unusual move for Canadian scientists, who tend to shy away from overt confrontations (O’Hara and Dufour, 2014). It should be just as upsetting for Canadian citizens. The traditional culture of good governance through broad consultations has been overthrown. Power, through information control, has been consolidated. Until this is recognized and reversed, Canadian democratic culture is under threat.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of science for society in this century. But if science is to serve the public interest, and not undermine democratic systems, clear principles and policies must be in place to govern the direction and dissemination of science. The power of science can be harnessed for democratic or undemocratic purposes. If science is to serve the former, government must have policies and practices that produce science in the public interest.

Footnotes

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Heather Douglas holds the Waterloo Chair in Science and Society in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo in Canada. She is the author of Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). Her research focuses on the interface between science and policy and on the role of science in democracies.

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