Scientists across Canada are expressing growing alarm that federal government cutbacks to research programs will deprive Canadians of crucial information, according to a documentary broadcast by Canada’s national public radio and television broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada.
The 45-minute documentary report “Silence of the Labs” was featured Friday (January 10) on the CBC TV programme “Fifth Estate”.
“What’s important is the scale of the assault on knowledge, and on our ability to know about ourselves and to advance our understanding of our world,” said James Turk, Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers in the documentary.
Journalist Lynden MacIntyre reports that in the past five years the federal government has dismissed more than 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs and world-renowned research facilities have lost their funding. Programs that monitored things such as smoke stack emissions, food inspections, oil spills, water quality and climate change have been drastically cut or shut down.
More information:
Fifth Estate/Linden MacIntyre – Silence of the Labs (text and video report) – here
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