Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver Centre.

I am quite pleased to be standing up on this issue. There are many scientists who live in my constituency. In fact, Macdonald College, the environmental and agricultural sciences faculty of McGill University, is located in my riding.

Sometimes when I look at the government, I see a government that seems to want to look wistfully back at a simpler time in the past. I see this in its approach to a myriad of policy issues. I find it perceives the world sometimes not as a modern global village, messy and complicated, but as an old-style village, with its town square where staples are exchanged by local merchants and cottage industries. That kind of world is, for the most part, static. There is little or no innovation in that world. There are no environmental problems in that world. The word “environment” has not yet even been invented. There is no way to even conceive of environmental problems needing to be solved.

The water is clean, there are lots of fish, there is no threat to the local fishery or waterways from overfishing and pollution, there are no discharged pharmaceuticals in rivers and streams, there are rarely epidemics because the village tends to be insulated from the larger world. There are no oil sands or urgent need to discover alternative energy sources. There is no global warming or climate change. There are no melting glaciers, no GMOs, no preservatives in food. It is, more or less, a world without science and community decisions are simple. Usually they involve implementing and reinforcing, sometimes harshly, social norms, norms based on perceptions of what is right and what works to achieve the desired end, whether they actually work or make problems worse.

Reality is uncomplicated and observable to the naked eye, but this is not the modern world we live in. Most of what affects us is not readily observable to the untrained eye. Phenomena, whether pollution, disease, or even macroeconomic variables, must be studied carefully and rigorously by those who have dedicated their lives to understanding very specific specialized phenomena using a peer-reviewed scientific method.

We are talking today about the government's attitude toward its own scientists, wanting to limit the possibilities for these scientists to communicate with journalists and other Canadians, but muzzling also occurs through budget cuts. It reminds me of the way the government treated the Experimental Lakes Area about three or four years ago.

There was not just science at the ELA but world-renowned science. It was science that had the support of scientists and researchers around the world and the government treated it almost with disdain and really left scientists wavering for many months, at least one or two years, about what the future of the Experimental Lakes Area would be. It did this despite the fact that scientists were writing to the Prime Minister of Canada from around the world.

As a matter of fact, I think the government received about 35 letters, many from scientists including scientific associations. For example, there were letters from David S. Schwartz to the Minister of the Environment, the Centre for Ecological Research, the Canadian Society of Environmental Biologists, the Japanese Society of Limnology, Global Lake Temperature Collaboration, and so on and so forth. There was a letter from the Ecological Society of Japan. Therefore, the government's reputation for treating scientists with a certain amount of indifference or disdain is not limited to scientists here who protest on Parliament Hill, who make documentaries like Silence of the Labs.

These expressions of concern and opposition to the government's attitude toward scientists did not come out of the blue and are not confined to scientists in Canada, who the minister will claim are part of some union negotiation conspiracy against the current government. These are international scientists, experts in their field, who understand that the government is not being fair to science and is not enlightened in its treatment of science and scientists. Therefore, as I said, muzzling is not just about telling scientists they cannot speak to journalists, it is also about funding cuts.

Another example that comes to mind in an area that I am particularly interested in is the way the government has treated the Maurice Lamontagne Institute in Quebec at the door of the Gaspé region. I had the opportunity to visit the institute about three or four years ago and I was awestruck by this facility in small-town Quebec on the shores of the St. Lawrence. It was conducting extraordinary research into aquatic biology. I saw its collection of artifacts of aquatic life. I saw its map-making department, which makes extraordinary maritime maps. However, the government has not invested properly in this facility. It is the only facility in Fisheries and Oceans Canada that operates in the French language, which I think is something important to consider.

In May 2012, the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada issued a press release, which said:

According to our initial analysis, DFO will soon close the Laboratories of Expertise in Aquatic Chemical Analysis (LEACA) and dismantle the scientific team working on marine toxicology and chemistry. What we’re talking about here is cutting 100% of the chemists and 25% of the researchers.

It seems to me, the last time I looked, that we have issues with pollution in our waterways. We need to research the impacts of some of the substances that are entering our waterways and being consumed or imbibed by fish, which later on make their way into the food chain, including in food for humans.

I will continue to read from this press release from May 25, 2012, which said:

There will be impacts on several levels: first, the federal lab (LEACA) will no longer be available to conduct chemical analyses in emergency situations (e.g., oil spills). The lab also works on improving detection methods for new toxic molecules accumulating in the aquatic food chain.

The absence of monitoring of the biological effects of chemical compounds (PCBs, heavy metals, pesticides, organochlorines, antibiotics, etc.) in the aquatic environment raises concerns for the health and safety of many species and the people who consume them.

A government that believes in public science does not make those kinds of cuts.

We understand what copyright is all about, and we need copyright in the marketplace. Those who pay for research should benefit from it, and obviously they do not have to share it with their competitors in a competitive marketplace. However, we are talking here about publicly funded research, and so the copyright belongs to the people of Canada. The government does not have a right to keep that information, the fruit of that research, from the people of Canada.

I understand that we do not want public servants going on a crusade against an elected government. We understand that. However, there is a middle ground. I believe that in the United States federal researchers are allowed to speak more freely, but they have to make it clear that they are speaking in their own name and are not somehow enunciating a government policy.

I think that if the government were creative, if it would let go of the reins of control a bit, it would see the benefit of the free market of ideas. This is in fact the strength of democracy itself. Democracy is all about making information available to the widest number of people, because somewhere, at some point, one of those people will have the insight that solves a very big problem.

Francis Scarpaleggia

$519,285.00