The honeymoon period continues with the new federal Liberal government.
So far, most of the things that they’ve done have been to keep campaign promises, and most of those promises have been pretty uncontroversial.
Pulling Canadian troops from directly taking part in air strikes in Syria has been the lone one so far to even ping on the side of prompting debate.
Just after penning and printing an editorial opining that we hoped they’d bring back the long form census forthwith the announcement came down that they were doing just that for the next census reporting period in 2016. Nothing but applause here.
It also felt like emerging once again into daylight when the announcement came that government scientists would no longer be muzzled by the prime minister’s office.
This one always seemed like it belonged under some authoritarian regime somewhere in the 1980s, not now, in a democracy like Canada.
These scientists, after all, are supposed to work for the people of Canada, not the Conservative Party, or whoever else might happen to be in power in the House of Commons at any given time. As such, Canadians should be able to hear from the horse’s mouth exactly what it is they are doing with our tax dollars.
We believe that the people of Canada want to hear the truth, unfiltered by anybody’s particular political agenda. And we certainly don’t want it kept from us entirely because it might be inconvenient to a political philosophy.
We cheer the move that now lets scientists talk to the public directly and without censoring about their work in any number of important fields from fisheries and oceans, to climate change.
Now we’d like to see it taken that next step and see some of the axed funding for important research in the public interest restored.
That might be where the stumbling block comes in. After all, we’re being warned this week that all is not as financially well in Ottawa as our previous government led everyone to believe pre-election (no surprise there), and that economic outlooks aren’t that rosy.
For now, it’s stay tuned.
