Canada's
Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans
Suppressing Scientific Evidence
Again
The Globe
and Mail (Toronto) March 28,
2011
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/mark-hume/dfos-stifling-of-research-a-case-of-dj-vu/article1959051/
DFO's
stifling of research a case of
déjà vu
By Mark
Hume
Vancouver -
When a federal
commission
investigating
the collapse of Fraser
River
sockeye
stocks heard recently that a
Fisheries
and Oceans
scientist who has done
groundbreaking
research
was being silenced, it gave
Jeffrey
Hutchings a
bad case of déjà
vu.
"Your
recent articles on DFO's muzzling
of Dr.
Kristi
Miller remind me of similar
attempts by
DFO to
stifle the imparting of science
from
government
scientists to other scientists
and to
the
Canadian public," he wrote in an
e-mail.
Prof.
Hutchings, a widely respected
fisheries
scientist,
holds the Canada Research Chair
in
Marine
Conservation & Biodiversity
at Dalhousie
University,
in Halifax. In 1997, he, Carl
Walters
from the
Fisheries Centre at the
University of
British
Columbia and Richard Haedrich,
Department
of Biology
at Memorial University
of
Newfoundland,
set off a media firestorm with
a
paper that
ripped DFO for
suppressing
controversial
science.
Writing in
the Canadian Journal of Fisheries
and
Aquatic
Sciences, they outlined two cases
- the
collapse of
Atlantic cod stocks and the
diversion
of the
Nechako River, in B.C. - in which
they
maintained
research was stifled because it
didn't
conform to
political agendas.
They argued
that, on the East Coast, DFO
silenced
scientists
who warned Atlantic cod stocks
had
been
devastated not by seal predation,
but from
overfishing.
And, in the West, they stated
that
DFO
rejected research that showed an
Alcan plan
to divert
the Nechako River would damage
Chinook
stocks.
In both
cases, they wrote,
hard-working
scientists
had their findings suppressed by
DFO
managers
who didn't want to see research
that
clashed
with political goals.
"We contend
that political and
bureaucratic
interference
in government fisheries
science
compromises
the DFO's efforts to sustain
fish
stocks,"
Mr. Hutchings and his colleagues
wrote.
When the
article came out, it created
headlines,
sparking a
national debate on the role of
science
within
government. DFO officials denied
stifling
any
researchers. But the article,
quoting
internal
DFO memos, showed scientists had
been
"explicitly
ordered Š not to discuss
'politically
sensitive'
matters Š with the
public,
irrespective
of the scientific
basis."
Earlier
this month, the Cohen Commission
of
Inquiry
Into the Decline of Sockeye
Salmon in the
Fraser
River, saw an e-mail by Dr.
Miller in
which she
complained about being kept away
from a
workshop
because her DFO masters "fear
that we
will not be
able to control the way the
disease
issue could
be construed in the
press."
Dr. Miller,
who suspects a virus is
killing
millions of
sockeye salmon in the river, had
a
paper
published in the prestigious
journal
Science
earlier this year. But she has
not been
allowed to
talk to the press about
it.
"By
preventing Dr. Miller from
speaking to the
media and
from participating in
non-DFO
controlled
meetings/workshops, DFO is
inhibiting
science,"
Mr. Hutchings said in his e-mail.
"This
action, so
evidently lacking in openness
and
transparency,
is regrettably consistent with
the
objective
of controlling the information
that
public
servants are permitted to
disseminate to
the
public."
Dr.
Miller's situation also inspired
Alan
Sinclair, a
retired DFO scientist, to
write:
"Your
recent article reporting that DFO
put a gag
order on
Dr. Kristi Miller's research on
disease
in sockeye
salmon is very
disturbing.
Unfortunately,
this sort of thing is all
too
common in
DFO and other Federal Ministries
with
large
science components. I encourage
you to
follow up
on this and make Canadians more
aware
of what's
going on."
But
following up while Dr. Miller is
locked away
from the
press won't be easy. She isn't
due to
testify
before the Cohen Commission for
several
months.
Until then, Canadians can only
wonder
what she
discovered - and why she was
silenced.
