{"id":2184,"date":"2012-06-04T11:13:43","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T15:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/?p=2184"},"modified":"2012-06-04T11:13:43","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T15:13:43","slug":"black-out-speak-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/04\/black-out-speak-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Out Speak Out"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s War on Environmental Science<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t normally wade into discussing politics because 1) I don’t follow it as closely as perhaps I should and, 2) it can be a pretty controversial topic which can get messy in a hurry. I don’t want to weigh this week’s flypaper down too much, but I feel compelled to share a number of deeply concerning developments in the Canadian government’s recent cuts to environmental research.<\/p>\n

The Environmental Lakes Area, a world-class facility studying the affects humans and our products have on freshwater ecosystems, is being closed down.<\/a><\/p>\n

If we’re not studying the affects of pollution on freshwater ecosystems, I guess we can still keep track of pollutants in marine environments.\u00a0Wait, you mean that entire department has been cut as well? Oh.<\/a>\u00a0(As a slightly ironic aside,\u00a0even the US media is picking this one up and questioning what the hell Canada is thinking<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Well, certainly our protected terrestrial environments will be studied and Canadian National Parks kept safe.\u00a0No?! You have got to be kidding me.<\/a>\u00a0(It’s not only the natural history aspects of Parks Canada getting cut, it’s also our cultural history.<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Add to this the\u00a0thousands of jobs cut across the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, Environment Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada and Health Canada<\/a>, and it’s not hard to see that our current government views scientists & environmental research as an\u00a0inconvenient\u00a0truth (especially when they don’t tow the party line<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I’m incredibly proud to call Canada my home & native land, but am utterly ashamed of these “cost saving” measures being rapidly pushed through by the Conservative government. These short-sighted cuts will have long-lasting environmental ramifications well beyond the tenure of any political party’s leadership, will tarnish Canada’s reputation as an environmentally-friendly nation, and will hamper our ability to attract new minds to our universities, industries and governments. I have no doubt that in 10-15 years we will look back on this government and wonder “O Canada, what have you done?”<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s War on Environmental Science I don’t normally wade into discussing politics because 1) I don’t follow it as closely as perhaps I should and, 2) it can be a pretty controversial topic which can get messy in a hurry. I don’t want to weigh this week’s flypaper down too much, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,348],"tags":[609,400],"class_list":["post-2184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-rant","tag-environment","tag-politics","category-156-id","category-348-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2184"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2193,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2184\/revisions\/2193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}