A small but significant followup to my comments about Arthur Carty last week. Today, the Globe and Mail reports that Carty's decision to retire was a response to his being told that the position of science advisor was being phased out. This casts the series of events in a different and even more worrisome light.
It's ironic that this tangible evidence of the federal government's disdain for unbiased advice about science happens during the same week as the hearings regarding the dismissal of Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, for ordering our Chalk River facility closed because it posed a risk of nuclear accident 1000 times higher than acceptable standards.
I don't want to turn this into a political blog (and I promise that I won't), but as a scientist, a concerned citizen, and the father of several children whom I'd like to see have a chance to live decent lives in a world that's changing too fast to even measure, I can't help but worry about these kinds of actions.
I live and work in an environment where there seems to be near unanimous agreement that the general public needs to have more access to good science. People need (and I believe want) to be helped to the tools necessary to evaluate the scientific evidence that relates to the massive changes that lie just beyond the crest of the next hill. That's what drove me to put so much of my time into writing for a wider audience, even when this means I can actually do less research myself. It unsettles me that I'm currently represented on the world stage by a government that seems to take much the opposite view.
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