Feature

by Jeff Hutchings
PHOTO CREDIT: Bill Fisher

What do Atlantic cod and BC’s canary rockfish have in common with the burrowing owl and Vancouver Island marmot? They have all declined by more than 80 or 90%. And they are all considered to be at increased risk of extinction by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). COSEWIC is the national science body, arms-length from government, responsible for advising the federal Minister of the Environment on species at risk.

Despite similar declines, these species part company when it...

Compiled by Joyce Nelson

Fisheries & Oceans
Discontinued: Species-at-Risk Program, Ocean Contaminants & Marine Toxicology Program, Habitat Management, Experimental Lakes Area (Northern Ontario), DFO Marine Science Libraries, Centre for Offshore Oil & Gas Energy Research
 

by Joyce Nelson

Canada’s Information Commissioner, Suzanne Legault, agreed at the end of March to launch an investigation into the extensive muzzling of federally-funded scientists at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and other federal agencies. Her decision comes after a February 20th complaint formally filed by Democracy Watch in partnership with the Environmental Law Clinic of the University of Victoria, which called for a full investigation and was accompanied by a 128-page report, Muzzling Civil Servants: A Threat to Democracy.

That report documents systematic silencing since 2007 of

Excerpt from Joyce Nelson's WS article, "Harper's War on Science"

Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology, has consistently defended the Harper government from accusations of a War on Science by emphasizing the $5.5 billion that the Feds have provided to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), including another $225 million to the CFI in Economic Action Plan 2013 released on March 21.   

The CFI – the key decision-maker for all science funding in

by Susan MacVittie

Photo credit: John Gardner, Timothy Foulkes

When residents in St. Andrews, New Brunswick heard that the federal government was going to close the St. Andrews Biological Station (SABS) Library, discontinue the Contaminants and Toxicology (CT) program, and reduce the Habitat program as part of its cost cutting measures, they formed Save Ocean Science (SOS) to raise awareness about the impact of lost jobs and lost science.

Since 1908, the SABS Library has provided resources to

by Miranda Holmes

March 22 is World Water Day, established by the UN as a day to contemplate the importance of access to water for life on earth. Just like every other day of the year., on World Water Day, nearly 2000 children around the world will die from diarrhea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation.

It is almost impossible to overstate the difference access to clean water can make to an impoverished community.

by Dawn Paley

Even in the quiet of late afternoon, the market down the street from my apartment in Mexico City is a hive of activity. Dozens of butchers cut up all kinds of meat and make sausages. Women display whole chickens, and offer to prepare them according to what a passing customer desires. There’s homemade ice cream for sale across from a fish stand, and a tortilla stand that always seems to have a line-up. I buy my vegetables from a man who stands at the top of a pyramid of lettuces, tomatoes, avocados, carrots, potatoes, and whatever happens to be in season. While heweighs and bags the veggies I select, he often talks about how good Mexican food is, but how so many people don’t eat the healthy and tasty things he offers for sale. Before I started working on this story, I assumed he was just talking up his business.

by Joyce Nelson

Enbridge public relations (PR)advisor Hill + Knowlton Strategies (H+K) has become the butt of jokes because of those wildly distorting animation maps for the Northern Gateway pipeline/tanker route and its bungled handling of Enbridge’s 2010 Kalamazoo disaster. But while TV viewers laugh at the tagline – “It’s more than a pipeline, it’s our path to the future” – H+K is ably earning its multimillion-dollar fees from Enbridge and other energy clients through its skill in government relations alone.

Government Relations
Michael Coates, Canadian CEO and Chair of H+K, is reportedly well-regarded by the Harper government, having

by Susan MacVittie

In March 2011, ethnic Maya Q’eqchi communities of smallholder farmers in southern Guatemala were violently evicted by state security forces from land they had farmed for generations. About 3,200 people from 14 communities in the Polochic valley were forced off land they believed they had a right to live and work on. Within months, hundreds of hectares of the lush valley in the province of Alta Verapaz were being planted with sugar cane that would be turned into ethanol for European cars. Today, displaced families live by

by Heather Menzies

In early January, a man identifying himself as a seventh-generation descendent of Chief Tecumseh, who led the Native Nations in an alliance with General Isaac Brock in the War of 1812, came to see Chief Theresa Spence on Victoria Island. He stood across the sacred fire from where she sat, and explained that he’d felt “called” by the spirit of his ancestor to “stand up” and support her. “You speak from the heart of the earth,” he said.
As I listened, I realized that he was using a language that’s virtually extinct in public discourse. Yet it’s a language that