Canadian Government Dismantles Ecological Libraries After Dismissing Thousands Of Scientists

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/10/3145971/canadian-government-closes-libraries-cuts-science/

By Ari Phillips on January 10, 2014

Climate change is a complex, dynamic, and sometimes polarizing issue. Libraries, on the other hand, are an established democratic institution meant to bring people together and facilitate the sharing of information. However, the Canadian government, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has managed to inject libraries into the broader national debate and make them a controversial focal point in a larger polemic between environmental concerns and natural resource development. His administration’s agenda of closing renowned fisheries and oceans libraries along with cutting back scientific funding for important environmental research is experiencing a bout of attention as the reality of certain libraries emptying their shelves comes into public view.

The Canadian government is closing seven of the eleven Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries across the country in what they deem a cost-cutting measure. Government officials promised that critical materials wouldn’t be lost, but would instead be digitized, offering greater access. However a document classified as “secret” that was obtained by Postmedia News mentioned “culling of materials” as a main activity in the reduction of libraries. As some of the libraries proceed through the shutdown process, reports have emerged of books being strewn across floors and even piled into dumpsters.

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While the books themselves should be properly archived, in the long-run they are not necessarily the main concern — it’s the information they possess that really matters. The potential for loss of information through the reorganizing process — information that doubtlessly cost millions of dollars to establish — has brought on a heavy backlash from scientists, already at odds with the Harper administration over research cutbacks.

“In the past five years the federal government has dismissed more than 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs and world-renowned research facilities have lost their funding,” CBC News reported on Friday. “Programs that monitored things such as smoke stack emissions, food inspections, oil spills, water quality and climate change have been drastically cut or shut down.”

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n a September editorial, The New York Times wrote that “over the last few years, the government of Canada — led by Stephen Harper — has made it harder and harder for publicly financed scientists to communicate with the public and with other scientists.”

“In retrospect, I am not surprised at all to find them trashing scientific libraries,” retired water ecologist David Schindler said. “Paranoid ideologues have burned books and records throughout human history to try to squelch dissenting visions that they view as heretical, and to anyone who worships the great God Economy monotheistically, environmental science is heresy.”

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