Canada silences a salmon expert
By Joel Connelly
28 July 2011
The Canadian federal government in Ottawa has silenced a leading West Coast fisheries scientist who has argued that a virus is infecting and killing sockeye salmon when they enter the Fraser River, not far north of the U.S.-Canadian border. The undammed “mighty Fraser” supports four of the world’s greatest sockeye salmon runs, push other salmon, fish that are caught by commercial, recreational and native fishers in waters of both the U.S. and Canada. Salmon bound for the Fraser River use two routes coming from the Pacific. They migrate down Johnstone Strait in Canadian waters, as well as through the Strait of Juan de Fuca which forms the U.S.-Canada boundary. The Privy Council Office, senior bureaucratic component of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government, has told scientist Kristi Miller not to talk to media about Miller’s “Suffering Salmon” study, according to documents obtained by Postmedia News. Miller directs a $6 million salmon genetics project at the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans’ Pacific Biological Station on Vancouver Island. The research journal Science published her findings in January. “When the lead author of a paper in Science is not permitted to speak about her work, that is suppression: There is simply no ifs, ands or buts about that,” said Jeffrey Hutchings, a senior fisheries scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, quoted by Marlies Jordan in the Vancouver Sun. […] “In one high-profile case reported by Postmedia News last year,” wrote Jordan, “Natural Resources Canada scientist Scott Dallimore had to wait for ‘pre-clearance’ from political staff in the minister’s office in Ottawa to speak about a study on a colossal flood that swept across northern Canada at the end of the last ice age.” […] Time magazine, the CBC Postmedia News and other media on both sides of the border asked to talk with Miller about her piece in Science, but were rebuffed. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ communications office for the Pacific Region asked that Miller be cleared to talk, but was rebuffed by the Privy Council Office. […]
