Shorter Peter Kent: Muzzling Government Scientists Is 'Established Practice'

AllTheCodswallopThatFits
FullOnConVille


And, according to Minister Kent, that is a good thing.

Mike DeSouza has the story, twice, in his PostMedia pro-blog.

The set-up is here....

The kicker, in which Mr. Kent boots all Canadians generally, and Canadian government scientists specifically, in the head is here:

...After being taken to task by NDP deputy leader Megan Leslie for his remarks, describing the government’s policies (on scientist muzzling) as an “established practice,” Kent suggested the quote was taken out of context.


“That is an outrageous misquote I think it is fair to say,” Kent said Tuesday in the House of Commons.

One day earlier, he told the Commons: “It is established practice to coordinate media availability. In fact, many of our younger scientists seek advice from our departmental communications staff.”

He also suggested that the government was controlling interviews given by its scientists because it didn’t like questions raised by the media.

“Where we run into problems is when journalists try to lead scientists away from science and into policy matters,” Kent said on Monday.

But the next day, Kent, a former award-winning broadcast journalist, suggested that the dozens of scientists from his department at a Montreal conference on polar issues were, in fact, “spreading the good news of the policies of our government, both with regard to mitigation of climate change, both within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as outside, with a number of like-minded countries, to address short-lived climate pollutants.”...

Meanwhile the breathy analyses of whether or not the first year of the Hard-Con 'Majority' has perhaps had an impact on Canada continue, unabated...


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Our original post on the 'muzzling' (with Milo Minderbinders included), which was based on a Postmedia piece from Margaret Munro, is here....
Dr. Dawg has a great post on the Hard-Con 'War on Data', here....


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