Skip to content
May 20 / Kimberly

Dupuis: The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment

Posted by John Dupuis – Confessions of a Science Librarian at Science Blogs:

This is a brief chronology of the current Conservative Canadian government’s long campaign to undermine evidence-based scientific, environmental and technical decision-making. It is a government that is beholden to big business, particularly big oil, and that makes every attempt to shape public policy to that end. It is a government that fundamentally doesn’t believe in science. It is a government that is more interested in keeping its corporate masters happy than in protecting the environment.

As is occasionally my habit, I have pulled together a chronology of sorts. It is a chronology of all the various cuts, insults, muzzlings and cancellations that I’ve been able to dig up. Each of them represents a single shot in the Canadian Conservative war on science. It should be noted that not every item in this chronology, if taken in isolation, is necessarily the end of the world. It’s the accumulated evidence that is so damning.

Most of the items come from various links I’ve saved over the years as well as various other media articles I’ve dug up over the last week or so. This series at The Huffington Post has been particularly useful as has this article at the Wastershed Sentinal.

A long list of various environmental programs that the Harper government has discontinued or slashed funding to is here. I haven’t found individual media stories about all of them, so they aren’t in the list below. If you can help me find stories about some of those programs, etc, please let me know. As well, some stories are treated multiple times, with perhaps an initial story telling the big picture or introducing a large series of cuts and later stories fleshing out details.

This list is no doubt incomplete. There may also be link errors or duplications.

In particular, if you have updates on any of the stories, including reversals or reprieves, I want to hear those too.

Please feel free to make suggestions and corrections in the comments or to me at jdupuis at yorku dot ca.

Share
May 17 / Kimberly

#SaveLAC: How ordinary citizens can make an impact

As reported earlier on this blog, in March I sent an email and follow-up letter to my MP, Dr. Carolyn Bennett, describing my concern for poor decision-making and what appeared to be “muzzling” the staff at Library & Archives Canada. I was thrilled when I was contacted a week later to speak on the phone with Dr. Bennett.

My conversation with Dr. Bennett was short but very useful. We concurred that activities at LAC – from the cutting of staff, programs and services to their controversial Code of Conduct as well as the obvious lack of passion and respect LAC Head Daniel Caron had for Library and Archives Canada as an institution, for colleagues specializing in libraries and archives, and for the care and preservation of our Canadian heritage as a whole.

When I asked Dr. Bennett for advice on what concerned Canadian citizens could do — aside from making a ruckus via social media — she was very helpful in suggesting a plan of action. And this is important, my friends, because what we need to do is quite simple: we need to demonstrate evidence of damage caused by bad decisions at LAC.

And this is where we need to work together — to gather evidence that can be delivered to our representatives that speak for us in the House of Commons. We are librarians, we do this every day. Let’s use our skills and expertise now for the good of our country.

Our Mission: Do the Research, show the Evidence

Here are some examples of how we can show evidence of damage as a result of activities at LAC:

  1. Issue: We know that our National Library and Archives do not receive adequate funding, that funding has been inadequate for many years, and funding continues to be diminished.

    Task
    : Look into what other OECD countries invest in their national libraries and archives. I suggest we take a look at the G7 countries, to start: United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. We could also look at Australia and New Zealand, since those countries seem to be making good decisions recently. Create a simple table to show what the G7 countries have invested in their national libraries and archives over the past 10 years, and include Canada. The table will show very clearly that Canada is way down the list.
  2. Issue: Earlier this year the wildly popular InterLibrary Loan program at LAC was terminated. Given it’s popularity, it will be missed – but we need to show who will miss it, and what will happen as a result of terminating the service.Task: Find data that indicated the number of ILL requests, ILL requests fulfilled, and the types of material. This is a tough one, since this information may not be easy to find. Still do your best. You may want to try the Way Back Machine to look for cached web pages from before the service was removed. Be crafty. Then, speak to your local library systems, who were the intermediaries that received the ILL materials from LAC and delivered them to the patrons. They likely have data on how often the system was used. And then, we need stories from these libraries – now that ILL is gone, what are the patrons doing to get the information they seek?  A popular ILL system has disappeared — we need to uncover the consequences.

These are just two issues of many, but it seems to be they are the most obvious issues where we can find evidence of damage. There are so many more, and I encourage you to find ways to show evidence of damage being done.

Have Evidence, Will Send to the House of Commons

This evidence won’t do us a whole lot of good unless we provide it to our representatives who can speak for us in the House of Commons. A good first step is to contact your MP in your riding, but here are some other MPs who hold a position on the Heritage Committee who are in our corner, and are doing their best to bring attention to our concerns:

Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage

  • Rob Moore, Chair (MP Fundy Royale, NB; Conservative)
  • Pierre Nantel, Vice Chair (MP Longueuil-Pierre Boucher, PQ; NDP)
  • Scott Simms, Vice Chair (MP Bonavista-Gander-Grand Falls-Windsor, ON; Liberal)
  • Ray Boughen, Member (MP Palliser, SK; Conservative)
  • Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, Member (MP Hochelaga, PQ; NDP)
  • Gordon Brown, Member (MP Leeds-Grenville, ON; Conservative)
  • Paul Calandra, Member (MP Oak Ridges-Markham, ON; Conservative)
  • Andrew Cash, Member (MP Davenport, ON; NDP)
  • Matthew Dubé, Member (MP Chambly-Borduas, PQ; NDP)
  • Jim Hillyer, Member (MP Lethbridge, AB; Conservative)
  • Blake Richards, Member (MP Wild Rose, AB; Conservative)
  • Terence Young, Member (MP Oakville, ON; Conservative)
  • Christine Holke David - Clerk of the Committee - 613-947-6729
  • Michael Dewing - From the Parliamentary Information and Research Service, Library of Parliament
  • Marion Ménard - From the Parliamentary Information and Research Service, Library of Parliament

Let’s Get Started

I’m going to begin with the two tasks I’ve outlined below, and I will share my results so many of us can send evidence to our MPs. Please let me know if you’d like to help me with this. Many hands mean light work :-)

Share
May 15 / Kimberly

Ottawa Citizen: Library head Daniel Caron resigns as $170,000 in expenses found

OTTAWA — The head of Canada’s National Library and Archives resigned Wednesday, surprising librarians and archivists who say they hope his replacement as the country’s top librarian is a better advocate for the trade.

Daniel Caron landed in hot water with Heritage Minister James Moore this week after it was revealed that he spent nearly $5,000 of taxpayer funds on private Spanish lessons last year.

On Wednesday, the NDP released a document outlining what Heritage critic Pierre Nantel called Caron’s “titanic expenses” over the past two years.

The publicly available figures show Caron expensed $87,000 in each of 2011 and 2012, dwarfing Moore’s own expenses, which averaged $46,000 in each of those years.

Expenses ranged from business meals, vaguely described as “lunch with a consultant” at expensive Ottawa restaurants such as the Rideau Club (31 visits costing more than $2,000), to stays at pricey hotels in Quebec City and Puerto Rico, and travel costs to Toronto, Europe and Australia.

While he was not available to comment on the numbers released Wednesday, Caron had earlier defended his efforts to learn Spanish on the public tab, saying he was trying to reach a basic competence in the language for attending international conferences, including the Forum of National Archivists in Toledo, Spain, and the International Federation of Library Associations in Puerto Rico.

But the Conservative appointee received a ministerial dressing-down earlier this week, in which Moore “spoke with Mr. Caron and made it clear that spending taxpayer’s money on Spanish lessons was wrong,” Moore’s spokeswoman Jessica Fletcher told the Citizen.

Caron announced his sudden departure in a short internal email, sent to LAC staff Wednesday, with no reason given for the resignation. “Over the last four years, we have made a lot of progress in modernizing our institution,” he wrote. “I am very proud of the accomplishments and conscious of the work yet to be done. The challenges remain vast and fascinating. I now believe it is time for someone else to take on and build the necessary support to continue to make the institution increasingly responsive to the digital environment. I would like to thank all of those who have largely contributed to the progress made and encourage you to continue this collaboration.”Caron’s critics, however, would call his tenure neither productive nor progressive, saying instead that his policies barely adhered to the Library and Archives legal mandate to acquire, protect and preserve documents and artifacts important to Canada’s history and identity.

Coping with a $10-million federal budget cut, Caron oversaw major staff downsizing to the department, reduced funding to scores of tiny archives across Canada, halted most acquisitions of historical artifacts, closed the National Archival Development Program, and stopped a system of inter-library loans through which Canadians could access material from its vast collections.

In the process, he alienated many of the country’s librarians and archivists, who said his training as an economist did little to inform his policy-making for the national repository of Canada’s political, military and cultural history.

Myron Groover, with the British Columbia Library Association in Vancouver and author of the blog Bibliocracy, said Caron “showed pretty profound contempt for the professionals that he needed to work with to get things done.”

Groover said that since the beginning of Caron’s tenure in 2009, he “wasn’t very interested in working with librarians, archivists or technology specialists, thinking instead that he could just go it alone and figure out this huge modernization push without any sort of grounding in fiscal or professional reality.”

Groover called many of Caron’s policy decisions “baffling,” saying that Caron spoke about preserving Canada’s digital history “in guarded or obtuse terms” while failing to understand or commit resources to the time-consuming, expensive and detail-oriented work needed to fulfil his promises.

“He would talk about how he wanted to modernize and digitize. But then he wasn’t really able to show that he was building any infrastructure to support those activities in the long run.”

Groover said his colleagues across the country were breathing a collective sigh of relief at the news, but wondered who Caron’s replacement would be.

“I think the general consensus in the community is that we would really like to see someone who has a professional background and some demonstrated experience with successfully running libraries and archives. That would seem to be a good baseline.”

In an emailed statement, Kelly Moore, executive director of the Canadian Library Association, said Caron’s resignation “will allow Library and Archives Canada to turn a page and return focus to delivering on its core mandate.”

“The Canadian Library Association has long called on the need for a professional librarian or archivist to run LAC,” she said.She added that the association would underscore its opinion in a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that “a qualified professional librarian or archivist” should take on the next phase of leadership at the LAC.

In the interim, Hervé Déry, assistant deputy minister of policy and collaboration, will take over Caron’s job.

— With files from Chris Cobb

tesmith@ottawacitizen.com

twitter.com/tsmithjourno

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Library+head+Daniel+Caron+resigns+expenses+found/8391614/story.html#ixzz2UAWvq1my

Share