�Muzzling' of Canadian government scientists sent before Information Commissioner

Federal Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault is being asked to investigate the ?muzzling? of Canadian government scientists in a request backed by a 128-page report detailing ?systemic efforts? to obstruct access to researchers.

?She is uniquely positioned, and she has the resources and the legal mandate, to get to the bottom of this,? says Chris Tollefson. Tollefson is executive director of the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre, which issued the request with the non-partisan Democracy Watch.

Newsrooms nationwide are familiar with the unusual restrictions Canadian government scientists face when attempting to communicate their work.

For a story last December on how climate change is affecting the Arctic and Antarctic, The Star contacted scientists at NASA, Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada.

Emails to the U.S. government scientists were personally returned, usually the same day and with offers to talk in person or by phone.

Emails sent to Canadian government scientists led to apologetic responses that the request would have to be routed through public relations officials. Public relations staff asked for a list of questions in advance, and then set boundaries for what subjects the interview could touch upon. Approval to interview the scientists was given days later. In all cases, a PR staffer asked to listen in on the interviews.

Government scientists who were contacted for this story informed the Star directly and through intermediaries that they did not want to comment, fearing repercussions.
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Tollefson says Legault?s office has confirmed it has received the request. Following usual practices, a preliminary investigation will be conducted to see whether the commissioner has jurisdiction to carry out a full probe.

The report was compiled by law student Clayton Greenwood, who spoke to approximately 40 sources. It details how public relations staff accompanied researchers to an International Polar Year conference, and directed all requests for interviews through themselves. In two high-profile incidents, scientists researching Arctic ozone loss, and others studying salmon declines, were not given media clearance for weeks or months.

Federal librarians and archivists who set foot in classrooms, attend conferences or speak up at public meetings on their own time are engaging in �high risk� activities, according to the new code of conduct at Library and Archives Canada.

Given the dangers, the code says the department�s staff must clear such �personal� activities with their managers in advance to ensure there are no conflicts or �other risks to LAC.�

The�code, which stresses federal employees� �duty of loyalty� to the �duly elected government,� also spells out how offenders can be reported.

�It includes both a muzzle and a snitch line,� says James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents more than 68,000 teachers, librarians, researchers and academics across the country.

He and others say the code is evidence the Harper government is silencing and undermining its professional staff.

�Once you start picking on librarians and archivists, it�s pretty sad,� says Toni Samek, a professor of library and information studies at the University of Alberta. She specializes in intellectual freedom and describes several clauses in the code as ��severe� and �outrageous.�

The code is already having a �chilling� effect on federal archivists and librarians, who used to be encouraged to actively engage and interact with groups interested in everything from genealogy to preserving historical documents, says archivist Loryl MacDonald at the University of Toronto.

On the other, if you sign a contract with the person that pays your salary and that contract includes a clause of non-disclosure,

Nobody should feel bad for the reporters in the parliamentary press gallery.

During the day, we do interesting work in beautiful buildings, and in the evenings we can guzzle free wine at receptions � although, admittedly, too often it is watery Ontario red.

But as good as we have it, in a way these days we are like frogs in a pot of water on top of a stove. The water is getting warmer and we haven�t really noticed.

The government of Stephen Harper has gradually increased the level of political control over public information to an extent that is unprecedented in Canada or similar countries, to the point that we are starting to think it is normal.

The government has the legal authority to act as it is acting, and the political mandate to do so, since the gallery made this an issue in the recent electoral unpleasantness, and Harper won a majority.

That doesn�t mean, though, that we should pretend that this is normal. It is not normal.

When I came to Ottawa, in 2004, reporters were able to get officials on the phone and interview them. Departmental communications officials answered their phones and spoke freely.

There were bullies in the some of the political offices, and the Liberals had been in power so long that the staffers did not always behave as humble servants of the people, but it was usually possible to get responses to queries from public servants in a timely way.

If the political staffers in the ministers� offices were not very careful with their public statements, they could find themselves being contradicted by civil servants, which meant they had to be careful to stick to the truth.

In 2006, when Harper took over, he set about imposing his will on an Ottawa bureaucratic and media establishment that was largely hostile to him. He did so by subjecting those departmental communications people to political control.

There is now a complicated and mysterious series of approvals that communications officers must obtain before they can release the blandest bit of information.

They will not normally speak on the phone with journalists, instead insisting on written questions in email form. Those emails are then routed through ministers� political offices and vetted by analysts in the Blackburn Building on Sparks Street in downtown Ottawa.

These public servants work in the office of the Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet (Communications and Consultations). In the 2008-2009 Government of Canada telephone directory, there were 95 phones associated with that organization, up from 35 in 2001-2002.

It takes more people to control the information flow across government. The Treasury Board Secretariat told me Wednesday � I asked Saturday � that there are 3,824 Information Services employees in the federal public service, up from the 3,118 in place when Harper came to power.

It would be difficult to get a detailed breakdown of the number of public servants engaged in communications, since the people who know are not allowed to talk to journalists and the political people likely would prefer that we don�t know.

The work of the Privy Council Office employees who approve media responses is secret. The organization will only say it plays a role in co-ordinating responses among departments. They also interact with the political staff in the prime minister�s office in approving queries, but they will not comment on that.

There is a cost to all this control. Canadians have less information about what their government is doing than they used to have, and less information than citizens in the United States or United Kingdom.

The governments in both those countries have made available online huge amounts of information. In Canada, the government is talking a good game about openness, but a similar project is in its infancy, and there has been a huge, co-ordinated effort to restrict the flow of information and a massive push to use the techniques of marketing in government communications.

Harper�s former director of communications, William Stairs, gave a talk to a Quebec journalists conference on the weekend. He told them that Harper sees politics as a chess match, and when he moves a piece on the board by publicly communicating, he doesn�t want anyone else to do anything that messes with that message.

He has every right to exercise that control, but it�s getting a bit weird.

Nobody gets in trouble for keeping their mouths shut, but people in government are really afraid � like, really afraid � of Harper, and they are right to be. He has shown repeatedly that he will end the careers of public servants who contradict his message.

The result of this fear is paralysis and silence.

Doug Saunders, the Globe and Mail�s reporter in London, recently went to Bangladesh to cover an election there. He contacted the British, American and Canadian embassies to ask for a �background briefing,� an off-the-record chat.

�Within two days of arriving I was able to sit down and have tea with the British ambassador, have coffee with the American adviser and the Canadians, who had to do it through the PMO, got back to me two weeks after I got back from Bangladesh.�

This is not normal.

Emails sent to Canadian government scientists led to apologetic responses that the request would have to be routed through public relations officials. Public relations staff asked for a list of questions in advance, and then set boundaries for what subjects the interview could touch upon. Approval to interview the scientists was given days later. In all cases, a PR staffer asked to listen in on the interviews.

Government scientists who were contacted for this story informed the Star directly and through intermediaries that they did not want to comment, fearing repercussions.

"Bodah" said


Standard procedure as a public servant. This goes for any department every PS has to sign a keep your mouth shut agreement and leave it to the Communication department. That is one of their primary functions.

Department policy directives are setting the rules here, not Harper. They've been in place way before Harper came around, but all of a sudden people want a free-for-all.