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Protestors for science Yellowknife advocates and health professionals protest against what they say is a federal-driven silencing of scientists
Candace Thomson
Northern News Services
Published Friday, September 20, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
What started as a relatively small protest of 10 people outside the Greenstone Building on Monday grew to a crowd of nearly 100 as gatherers protested what they said is a silencing of scientists by Harper's government and its lack of evidence-based decision-making.
Ayan Waiss, left, and Courtney Howard, an emergency physician at Stanton Territorial Hospital, stand in front of the Greenstone Building on Monday to Stand Up for Science. - Candace Thomson/NNSL photo |
Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician at Stanton Territorial Hospital and chairperson for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, was there representing her colleagues in white coats.
The protest, titled Stand Up for Science, was put on by the organization Evidence for Democracy (E4D) in partnership with the Council for Canadians.
According to its website, E4D calls for "the transparent use of evidence in government decision-making."
The goal of the protest was to sound the alarm on what the organization said was a Conservative project to shift scientific research funding to economic research for the extraction of natural resources.
"I worked as an emergency physician for three years in Ottawa," Howard told the crowd. "And there was never a day when a politician came in and asked to be treated on the best available ideology."
Howard said doctors are taught that evidence is incredibly important.
"We realize in the hospital that human health and environmental health are linked," she said. "Most of what makes people healthy doesn't happen inside the hospital, it happens outside the hospital."
She said people go to hospitals and expect to be treated using methods that are strongly backed by scientific evidence and the environment should be treated in the same way.
"Here in Yellowknife, with Giant Mine looming in the distance, we're aware of the consequences of making big environmental messes we don't know how to clean up," she said.
Howard told protestors that the government has been keeping Canadian scientists from releasing their research from publicly-funded projects to the public. Some of the projects being silenced, she said, were on controversial topics such as climate change.
Howard said in a world that is changing quickly, there needs to be more evidence and scientific research, not less.
Doug Lansdown, a nurse at Stanton Territorial Hospital, said he was glad the rally was happening because he, too, was angered by the shift in federal funding away from scientific research.
"You're seeing research projects being shut down in the name of resource development," he said.
He was also there to show support for protestors rallying against the silencing of scientists.
"And now you've got government-funded scientists not being able to talk about their research," Lansdown said. "Science is done in the name of the people, so the people should have access to that."
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