14 DAY TRIAL // Just a couple of days ago, a considerable number of Canada's scientists decided that the national government gave them no further choice but to go out in the streets and protest against the latest budget cuts to environmental research.
Apparently, this nation's high officials decided that the country's green-oriented agencies, such as Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the Polar Environmental Atmosphere Research Laboratory are spending too much money.
As a result of this, said organizations were faced with significant budgets cuts that are quite likely to keep them from doing their job as efficiently as they did in the past. Mongabay argues that, in spite of researchers' usually being well-balanced men and women, the government's decision seems to have considerably altered their typical calmness, thus causing them to go out in the streets and engage in open protests.
The same source informs us that Canada's researchers carried several banners that read “Stop Harper's War on Knowledge” and “Scientists Shouldn't Wear a Muzzle.”
Moreover, the crowds carried a coffin up and down the streets, supposedly trying to bring forth the idea that these budget cuts represent the “death of evidence.”
It is estimated that about 2,000 people took part in this protest, most of which presumably claim that the Canadian government chose to no longer give them any more money for research after they expressed their opinion that the nation's tar sand industry is negatively impacting on the environment.
Ecologist Scott Findley from the University of Ottawa is argued to have told members of the press present at the rally, “Scientists are generally not agitators, but this continuous set of decisions has got very many scientists hot under the collar.”
From where we stand, environmental research is not something to be toyed with, and the Canadian government should probably go back on its decision to no longer fund it accordingly.
