Wednesday through Friday was spent attending panels, and on Saturday I had the chance to tour some pretty cool places around Ottawa. However, this blog post is dedicated to my favorite panel of the conference, so I’ll have to tell you about Saturday’s tours at a later date. | Laurentian science communication students, past and present. |
The panelists
There were two panelists for this event: Katie Gibbs and Kathleen Walsh.
Walsh also works for Evidence for Democracy as the director of policy. She has a master’s in science (MSC) in development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, specializing in gender and international development. Walsh has worked at several non-profit organizations during her career, including the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Nobel Women’s Initiative.
The four stages of science organizing
During their talk, Gibbs and Walsh explained what they saw as the four stages of science organizing that has taken place in Canada since 2008, starting under prime minister Stephen Harper. Harper’s administration is infamous among Canadian scientists for drastically dismantling support for science during his tenure. While Harper was originally elected in 2006, it wasn’t until 2008 when his party won a stronger minority in the government that the anti-science policies began rolling in.
Phase 1: ‘War on Science’
This period has been dubbed the ‘war on science’ by scientists describing these years under Harper. During this time, the media did not create a cohesive narrative showing all the attacks Harper implemented against science; rather, the media would report on individual examples of damages to science, but they did not discuss how all the examples together created a hostile environment for science.
The Harper administration started by establishing new rules that required Environment Canada’s senior scientists to obtain permission from the government before speaking with reporters, a policy that reduced the department’s engagement with media on climate change by 80 percent. Then, in 2008, the position of national science advisor was abolished, and in 2010 the government let a climate research fund run dry. Various examples throughout 2011 showed instances of scientists being ‘muzzled’ from speaking to the media, or directed to speak only from scripted statements that ran completely counter to the scientific facts. | Stephen Harper served as the prime minister of Canada from 2006 - 2015. Many Canadian scientists credit his administration with the struggles scientific research faces in the country today. Photo courtesy Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press. |
Despite this, scientists did not engage in any major proactive forms of protest against these policies, but that changed starting with Phase 2 and the “Death of Evidence” rally.
Phase 2: ‘Scientists Take Action’
On July 10, 2012, scientists gathered on Parliament Hill to denounce the Harper administration’s attacks on science, in what was “likely the largest protest seen in Canadian history,” according to Gibbs. The keystone of the protest was the person dressed as the Grim Reaper, which Gibbs said the protestors included to ensure media would take pictures.
Earlier in the same year, a group of over 600 scientists concerned with ecological matters wrote a letter to Harper, urging him to not remove the habitat protections from the Fisheries Act. Scientists also began agitating to save the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) after an omnibus budget bill in the spring of 2012 cut the Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s freshwater research funding, a cut that would defund money for the ELA. After two years of protests, the ELA was transferred from the government’s hands to the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), an independent, non-profit, non-governmental research organization. | Gibbs noted that some people felt the inclusion of the Grim Reaper "too much of a gimmick," but she argued that you know you're doing something right when people feel a little bit uncomfortable and that it's a little bit controversial. Photo courtesy of Richard Webster / Death of Evidence. |
Scientists’ hopes seemed to be realized in 2015, when Justin Trudeau became the new prime minister.
Phase 3: ‘Celebrating Wins & Waiting for Results’
After Trudeau’s election, it appeared support for science would experience an upswing in support. Canada went from having no science ministers under Harper to having two under Trudeau, and the 2016 budget gave a $95 million boost to the tri-councils (those being the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)).
In 2016, documents sent to Treasury Board President Scott Brison by Yaprak Baltacioglu, the top bureaucrat at Treasury Board, warned against allowing scientists to be openly critical of the government.
Phase 4: ‘Return to Action’
After the election of Donald Trump in the United States, it served as a wake-up call to Canadian scientists that they couldn’t afford to be lax even if the current administration was friendly. As the United States demonstrated, they could be only one election away from returning to the Harper years.
On April 22, 2017 (Earth Day), Canada participated in the world-wide March for Science, which is unquestionably the largest science demonstration ever. Also in April, a panel charged with reviewing the federal government’s support of fundamental science released its final report, colloquially known as the Naylor report for the panel’s chair, University of Toronto president David Naylor. The report laid out a multi-year strategy that includes greater investment in independent investigator-led projects, better coordination between the four core research funding agencies, and the creation of an oversight body called the National Advisory Council on Research and Innovation. | Canadians march on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Earth Day (April 22, 2017). Many people around the world questioned the efficacy of hosting the March for Science in their own countries since they saw it as a national discussion for Americans, not a platform for a global protest. Photo courtesy of Justin Tang / The Canadian Press. |
Evidence for Democracy (E4D) has also been working to get scientists past public displays of protest and into the nitty gritty of policy. They’ve done this by teaching scientists how to speak to the government directly, through projects like A Researcher's Guide to Pre-Budget Submissions.
However, Walsh warned that scientists can’t just worry about getting their message to the government anymore; they need to worry about getting their message to the public as well. This was never more evident than when the Oxford Dictionary named ‘post-truth’ the word-of-the-year in 2016 (to which Stephen Colbert responded they were simply ripping off his 2006 word-of-the-year, ‘truthiness.’)
As Walsh noted, “The science community will have to work really, really hard” to spread their message among both groups.
Science organizing in America
Following the 2016 election, the Internet exploded with comparisons being drawn between America’s current situation and Canada’s recent past (even The New York Times wrote an article about the similarities). However, I’m going to take this section to give my two cents’ worth.
The Death of Evidence rally and the March for Science both accomplished what they set out to do: draw in big crowds, create engaging visuals, and end up as headliners for newspapers across the country. However, after the protests, Canada did what America didn’t: mobilized.
After their protest, Canadian scientists began serious efforts to ensure the election of a government that they would be happy to support, by planning more campaigns, hosting events, and running a dedicated social media presence. What did America do? So far, the main response I’ve witnessed is scientists telling themselves that if they let the government f* up enough, eventually Trump’s voters will realize what a mistake they made and naturally change sides on their own.
BUT THAT ISN’T ENOUGH
As Trevor Noah so eloquently put it in one of his videos,
Scientists are the same as the Democrats in this regard. They can’t wait around for Trump supporters to figure out for themselves that the defunding and discrediting of science is bad, they need to go out and teach it themselves. But they can’t do it by throwing a bunch of facts around. If that’s all it took, we wouldn’t have climate change deniers crawling from the woodwork. What scientists need to do is understand their audience and realize that their audience likely has vastly different priorities from their own.
Some of that audience, like coal miners and unskilled laborers, are being displaced by eco-friendly and mass-production technologies, and while they might be worried about the environment, they’re more concerned with the here and now, where they find themselves without a job. Even if they were to somehow manage taking on the financial burden of returning to college for a technical degree, they’d likely be passed over for a younger person in this digitized job market. If scientists really want to make a difference, they need to address these very real concerns the audience has, and describe climate-saving practices in a way their audience won’t see as threatening their entire life.
While I admit there is some generalizing in these paragraphs, and I could write an entire blog post analyzing all the different aspects I see at play as to why scientists are doing so poorly influencing the public opinion, the point I wish to make here is that scientists aren’t being nearly active enough in trying to get their message heard outside their own science fan clubs. | I'm so glad I get to explore Canada during its 150th anniversary! (I'm on the right) |