{"id":5401,"date":"2010-09-16T09:10:06","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T13:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5401"},"modified":"2010-09-16T09:11:28","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T13:11:28","slug":"no-wonder-the-government-wants-to-control-this-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/09\/16\/no-wonder-the-government-wants-to-control-this-information\/","title":{"rendered":"No wonder the government wants to control this information"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s obvious why: it <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edmontonjournal.com\/mobile\/story.html?id=3526525\" target=\"_blank\">contradicts the deeply held religious convictions<\/a> of certain members of cabinet . . . that the Earth is just over 6,000 years old:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This week, we learned more details of how the federal government systemically muzzles its scientists on controversial issues such as climate change and the oilsands. The revelations reinforced complaints contained in an Environment Canada document leaked last March pointing out how senior scientists had to seek permission from their political bosses before speaking to reporters. &#8220;Our scientists are very frustrated with the new process,&#8221; said the document. &#8220;They feel the intent of the policy is to prevent them from speaking to the media.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In one recent example, a scientist wasn&#8217;t allowed to talk to reporters until after the request had been funnelled through communications managers, policy advisers, political staff and senior advisers. And that was for a non-controversial report dealing with a flood that swept across Canada 13,000 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Weaver, an outspoken climate scientist at the University of Victoria, has called the Canadian government cone-of-silence policy &#8220;Orwellian.&#8221; <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>See, it couldn&#8217;t <em>possibly<\/em> have happened, because the Earth hadn&#8217;t been created yet, dummy!<\/p>\n<p>H\/T to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/colbycosh\/status\/24639121186\" target=\"_blank\">Colby Cosh<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s obvious why: it contradicts the deeply held religious convictions of certain members of cabinet . . . that the Earth is just over 6,000 years old: This week, we learned more details of how the federal government systemically muzzles its scientists on controversial issues such as climate change and the oilsands. The revelations reinforced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,84,28,16],"tags":[52,354],"class_list":["post-5401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-government","category-media","category-science","tag-absurd","tag-georgeorwell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1p7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5401"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5404,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5401\/revisions\/5404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}