Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Prime Minister of Canada's officeBy Katherine Bagley
27 November 2012

(InsideClimate News) – The government of Canada’s official position on climate change is that it’s real and requires an “aggressive” response. Despite that, Canada’s ruling Conservative Party government has been leading a slow and systematic unraveling of environmental and climate research budgets, according to local scientists—including shuttering one of the world’s top Arctic research stations for monitoring global warming. Hundreds of researchers have lost their jobs, and those that remain are forbidden from talking to media without a government minder. “They publicly announce their commitment to dealing with climate change and acknowledge that it is a serious issue, but then they go ahead and do the exact opposite,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate modeler at the University of Victoria and a lead author of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “They’ve closed virtually every funding avenue for climate and atmospheric science. They are deceiving the Canadian public.” The alleged “war on science” is so bad that some scientists are leaving Canada for jobs in countries where they feel they have more opportunities and freedom. Protests by scientists and their supporters have erupted across the country in recent months. Representatives from Environment Canada, the federal environmental agency, and Industry Canada, the department in charge of economic development and investment, denied that the government has targeted environmental science or scientists. “It is wrong to suggest that science … in this country is under assault,” said Stefanie Power, a spokesperson for Industry Canada. Primer Minister Stephen Harper’s office did not respond to requests for comment; it has previously said the cuts are cost-saving measures to balance the budget and slash the country’s $26 billion deficit. But some scientists and environmental groups say the eliminated climate programs are a tiny fraction of the budget and that at least one of the government’s goals with the cuts is to reduce opposition to oil sands development, the backbone of Canada’s energy economy. Extracting and processing oil sands crude creates 20 percent more well-to-wheel greenhouse gas emissions than drilling for conventional oil. Harper has weakened some environmental regulations, including fast-tracking permit reviews of oil sands pipelines and mines. He has also pulled Canada from the Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and appointed climate skeptics to head scientific agencies, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, whose work benefits industry. Canada’s natural resources expansion plans are “driving absolutely everything in the country right now,” said Tom Duck, an atmospheric scientist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. “Our capacity to do environmental science is being rapidly destroyed. We’re hemorrhaging scientists here.” […]

Outcry Grows Over Canadian Govt’s Undermining of Climate Science