Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

Increasingly, the federal Government has been tightening its leash on its scientists and science in general. For instance, most publicly funded research must now have an industrial component. In several departments, researchers are now only allowed to speak about their studies if ministerial permission has been granted. In many documented cases, scientists have been muzzled in speaking to media about their research. The federal Government contends that when federal scientists speak with the media, they do so under media rules that were changed a few years ago. Interviews may now be permitted days, weeks or months after a request is made and by that time, of course, the story could be old news. The speaker will argue that there are few issues more fundamental to democracy than the freedom of our taxpayer funded scientists to follow their passion in research and our ability to access the scientific information that they produce. A society cannot make informed choices about critical issues if we don’t have th