Heading Down a Dangerous Path

In 2008, the Conservative Government introduced a media protocol that forbids Canadian government scientists from participating in interviews without first being cleared by government officials. On BBC News, Pallab Ghosh quotes university scientist Thomas Pedersen as saying, "The Prime Minister (Stephen Harper) is keen to keep control of the message, I think to ensure that the government won't be embarrassed by scientific findings of its scientists that run counter to sound environmental stewardship. I suspect the federal government would prefer that its scientists don't discuss research that points out just how serious the climate change challenge is."

In 2011, a couple of days after he called the Prime Minister’s office to voice his opposition to the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, John Allsop of British Columbia received a visit from the RCMP that was geared toward intimidating him. When the Globe and Mail spoke with the PMO’s office, the investigator was told that the RCMP were not asked to investigate and that there is no record of Allsop even calling. Allsop’s phone bills prove otherwise.

In 2012, the Harper Government overhauled the federal environmental review process for development projects by implementing defined timelines and dedicating fewer resources to examining proposed projects. In essence we are handing stewardship of our natural resources over to the corporations who are profiting from their exploitation.

In this same year, Stephen Harper has virtually eliminated monitoring of the ozone layer over Canada. It’s not just ozone monitoring that has been gutted. Environment Canada acknowledges that other pollutant monitoring systems are also being downgraded.

Not so slowly Stephen Harper is dismantling anything that can interfere with his economic and environmental decisions. Armed with his first majority mandate, he is making Canada less and less like a democratic society everyday. The first step to stopping this trend is awareness.

"Stephen Harper not only opposes Kyoto, but he refutes the science. He’s back in the dinosaur era. Harper is just totally out of it." - David Suzuki (b.1936)