From the Globe & Mail – March 27, 2011

by Mark Hume

When a federal commission investigating the collapse of Fraser River
sockeye stocks heard recently that a Fisheries and Oceans scientist who
has done groundbreaking research was being silenced, it gave Jeffrey
Hutchings a bad case of déjà vu.

“Your recent articles on DFO’s
muzzling of Dr. Kristi Miller remind me of similar attempts by DFO to
stifle the imparting of science from government scientists to other
scientists and to the Canadian public,” he wrote in an e-mail.

Prof. Hutchings, a widely respected fisheries scientist, holds the
Canada Research Chair in Marine Conservation & Biodiversity at
Dalhousie University, in Halifax. In 1997, he, Carl Walters from the
Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia and Richard
Haedrich, Department of Biology at Memorial University of Newfoundland,
set off a media firestorm with a paper that ripped DFO for suppressing
controversial science.

Writing in the Canadian Journal of
Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, they outlined two cases – the collapse
of Atlantic cod stocks and the diversion of the Nechako River, in B.C. –
in which they maintained research was stifled because it didn’t conform
to political agendas.

They argued that, on the East Coast, DFO
silenced scientists who warned Atlantic cod stocks had been devastated
not by seal predation, but from overfishing. And, in the West, they
stated that DFO rejected research that showed an Alcan plan to divert
the Nechako River would damage Chinook stocks.

In both cases, they
wrote, hard-working scientists had their findings suppressed by DFO
managers who didn’t want to see research that clashed with political
goals.

“We contend that political and bureaucratic interference in
government fisheries science compromises the DFO’s efforts to sustain
fish stocks,” Mr. Hutchings and his colleagues wrote.

When the
article came out, it created headlines, sparking a national debate on
the role of science within government. DFO officials denied stifling any
researchers. But the article, quoting internal DFO memos, showed
scientists had been “explicitly ordered … not to discuss ‘politically
sensitive’ matters … with the public, irrespective of the scientific
basis.”

Earlier this month, the Cohen Commission of Inquiry Into
the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, saw an e-mail by Dr.
Miller in which she complained about being kept away from a workshop
because her DFO masters “fear that we will not be able to control the
way the disease issue could be construed in the press.”

Dr.
Miller, who suspects a virus is killing millions of sockeye salmon in
the river, had a paper published in the prestigious journal Science
earlier this year. But she has not been allowed to talk to the press
about it.

“By preventing Dr. Miller from speaking to the media and
from participating in non-DFO controlled meetings/workshops, DFO is
inhibiting science,” Mr. Hutchings said in his e-mail. “This action, so
evidently lacking in openness and transparency, is regrettably
consistent with the objective of controlling the information that public
servants are permitted to disseminate to the public.”

Dr.
Miller’s situation also inspired Alan Sinclair, a retired DFO scientist,
to write: “Your recent article reporting that DFO put a gag order on
Dr. Kristi Miller’s research on disease in sockeye salmon is very
disturbing. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is all too common in DFO
and other Federal Ministries with large science components. I encourage
you to follow up on this and make Canadians more aware of what’s going
on.”

But following up while Dr. Miller is locked away from the
press won’t be easy. She isn’t due to testify before the Cohen
Commission for several months. Until then, Canadians can only wonder
what she discovered – and why she was silenced.

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