Canadian Scientists Know What to Expect from Trump

The Canadian biologist Ian Stirling has spent much of his life with polar bears. Now seventy-five years old, he joined the Canadian Wildlife Service in the early nineteen-seventies, at a time when no one was doing much in the field beyond tagging the bears and waiting to see where they went. For years, the government paid little attention to how Stirling spent his time; he even did much of his own fund-raising. But, beginning in 2006, when the conservative, business-friendly government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper came to power, Stirling and thirty-six thousand other federal scientists were abruptly forbidden to talk about their work publicly, unless their statements had been vetted and approved by bureaucrats in Ottawa. The policy lasted for nine years, until 2015. In that time, according to Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada’s Green Party, Harper’s “Orwellian” requirement became “a humiliation for scientists, and brought us into international ridicule.”

Since Donald Trump’s Inauguration, U.S. scientists have begun looking north for signs of what’s to come. Within a few days of assuming office, Trump unveiled a raft of measures that could affect how research in this country is funded and communicated to the public, including a directive that would require new studies to undergo political review before being released. Trump’s staffing of the Environmental Protection Agency—he has nominated Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma Attorney General and a climate skeptic, to lead the agency, and has assigned advisers critical of environmental regulation to the E.P.A. transition team—suggests that he plans to make good on his campaign threat to “get rid of it in almost every form.” (Pruitt is expected to be confirmed as the E.P.A. administrator soon.) Meanwhile, a memo leaked to the press indicates that Trump has imposed a gag order on E.P.A. employees, preventing them from speaking with journalists, posting on social media, or sending out news releases. Past Presidents, including Barack Obama, have issued similar orders, but theirs tended to be limited in scope. Trump’s is comprehensive—much like Harper’s.