Science and the Canadian Government

I watched a depressing, sad and infuriating TV program last night. CBC's The Fifth Estate devoted the entire hour to a discussion about how internationally recognized Canadian scientist are being laid off and world renown Canadian scientific programs are being dismantled by the current government. This is not a new story. Bits and pieces of it have been on the national news for the past five or six years. (Although the news that the government had closed a number of scientific libraries and dispersed/ destroyed the information only came to light this week). But it was, at least to me, incredibly sad to hear from and to see the faces of the scientists who had lost their jobs speak with such passion about their work. 

Click on the above link and watch the program. It is worth the time. We all need to know what is going on. We need to understand the consequences of the Conservative Government's decision to ignore science when it says things they don't like. But there is also a deeper perhaps more worrying aspect to the story; there is a lesson to be learned about the political strategy that this government employs to weaken the country and thereby reduce resistance to the changes that they are bringing about regardless of whether or not the majority want them.

When I was attending university about 10 years ago, there was a lot of conversation in the "Arts" part of the school. There was great concern and frustration amongst those who had a passion for the Humanities and for the Social Sciences that funding was being re-directed from their programs courses to the science departments. There was a sense that the courses that talked about the world in terms of history, literature and how people matured as societies had become less important AND that the science folks thought that that was the way it should be. I never heard anyone say that both the arts and the sciences were equally integral to the university community. Quite frankly I think most of the science departments were delighted that they had more access to funding and therefore to the power at the administrative level of the university. The very people who had made it their life's work to understand how the world worked from a social point of view were demoted to a second class position within some universities. 

Now science is being attacked or at least certain branches of it are. It makes one wonder who is in line to have their funding chopped and their research maligned.  Will the "golden programs" of economic or applied research be next? One could almost wonder why the government appears to be afraid of anyone who thinks differently from them?

This tactic of divide and conquer is not a new tactic. Mike Harris won two elections in Ontario using this strategy. One wonders when we, as a collective, will understand and stop responding to it.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Socialist.
 
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
 
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out--
Because I was not a Jew.
 
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
 

Martin Niemöller

Holocaust Encyclopaedia