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Canadian Government Trucking Generations of Scientific Data To the Dump
sandbagger writes "Canada's science documents are literally being taken to the dump. The northern nation's scientific community has been up in arms over the holidays as local scientific libraries and records offices were closed and their shelves — some of which contained century old data — emptied into dumpsters. Stephen Harper's Tory government is claiming that the documents have been digitized. The scientists say, 'The people who use this research don’t have any say in what is being saved or tossed aside.'"
There's a war on science in this country. It's a disaster. And it'll continue at least until the next election, which may be years away. I'm ashamed of what's happening to my country.
-- hendrik, a Canadian.
As if the government would give any warning, there's a reason it was done over the holidays. The PMO (Prime Ministers Office) has an iron grip on the government and nothing is said or done without their say so. This from a government that ran on being open and transparent and more democratic and yet make Obama look very open and non-authoritarian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
In a statement emailed to the Star by her spokesperson...
OK, who do you trust? The spokesperson for a minister with no scientific background and who has no idea what actually happens on the ground, or the scientists who have spent their entire careers working for below-market pay just because they love the pursuit of knowledge?
And come on, a savings of $443k a year for a federal library with over a hundred years of data? That paltry savings is just a drop in the bucket for the federal budget. That's the cost of around five people per year, when it probably cost hundreds of millions of dollars to do the research and collect the data of the course of the decades.
Don't believe Shea's claims about the usage numbers. Those stats reflect people who requested help in using the libraries - relatively rare with specialized research collections where a host of users just get to work in what used to be showpiece collections. Many of these users came from the DFO institutions but also from outside, including academics, people in industry and other government employees. The provision of materials over the internet? Largely had to be digitized from library collections. Now we'll have neither the collections nor the librarians to do so.
The hasty closures and haphazard deaccessioning of these collections that represent substantial investments of taxpayer money over decades? Entirely the opposite of what conservatives claim to value - careful custody of a nation's heritage and citizen investment. (Canada's federal government is in the control of the Progressive Conservative party, hard at work muzzling the scientists supported by our tax dollars.)
From The Tyee's December 23 story on the topic, "What Driving Chaotic Dismantling of Canada's Science Libraries": Moreover records on library usage were overtly biased and based on who asked for help, said Burton Ayles, a retired director general for DFO who lives in Winnipeg and has used the Freshwater Institute library frequently.
"Most people that come in to the library don't have to request help. They just use the material. Just look at any regular library."
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
You fucking idiot, NOTHING has been digitized. They are CLAIMING they are digitized, they have not actually BEEN digitized.
It's a cover story to allow the destruction of records that will allow drilling/mining/fracking companies to have completely uncontested applications for operating in the Canadian wilderness, because there will be no environmental records in which to make a negative assessment about the impact of such operations. That's the whole point. Erase the past to clear the way for the future.
Please use what's left of your pot-addled brain and actually THINK, for once in your life. If you read the facts on this story you'd know NOTHING IS BEING PRESERVED.