The order puts a stop to efforts by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which is shutting down as its government funding ends, to transfer its website to a think-tank based at the University of Ottawa. The think-tank, Sustainable Prosperity, had offered to keep the government-funded research accessible to the public.
Kent’s spokesman Rob Taylor said the government still planned to continue giving Canadians access to the panel’s “full body of work.” He said Environment Canada would assume ownership of the website and redirect users to the web page of Library and Archives Canada, which would store the public records.
But the order also prevents the panel from posting a farewell message that includes praise from its former leaders, including Gov. Gen. David Johnston, who was its founding chairman.
The panel, created by former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s government in 1988, is shutting down in a few days in response to a 2012 federal budget decision to end its annual $5 million in funding.
“The rights to the domain name nrtee-trnee.ca will not be assigned or otherwise transferred to any outside entity, but will be transferred to Her Majesty the Queen, in right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of the Environment,” wrote Kent in the letter, dated March 22, to the panel’s vice-chairman, Robert Slater.
“Further the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) will upload no further content to its external website, as of the date on which this direction is signed.”
Kent’s letter also said the Harper government would continue to make the panel’s research available through existing federal policies on access to publications.
The panel was previously an arm’s-length organization, independent of the government, but changes adopted in budget implementation legislation last July gave Kent powers to control its public messages.
Kent suggested last year that the round table was no longer necessary since governments and industry could rely on research from the Internet and other sources.
Several statements prepared by former leaders from the round table suggested the contrary.
In his own personal message, Johnston wrote that the panel’s greatest achievement was developing a clear and comprehensive definition of sustainable development with supporting legislation adopted in Parliament.
“The Round Table’s mission was rooted in a clear-eyed understanding that our desire for a modern economy and our duty to a sustainable environment are not mutually exclusive, but rather mutually reinforcing,” Johnston wrote for the document that is now not going to be posted. “Another of the real achievements of the Round Table was to establish a broad network of interested parties from senior levels of government, the environmental sector, the business community, and academia. It was unique to have Cabinet Ministers in the same room as people from other sectors on a regular basis.”
Slater, who is also a professor of environmental policy at Carleton University, says the government was aware of its efforts to transfer its website to Sustainable Prosperity, but only informed him of its objection in Kent’s letter last week.
The round table’s former chair, Bob Page, said he spent the past few months writing an essay about the organization’s record and achievements, and was upset to hear the government was preventing its publication.
“When I see the desire to try and get rid of documents which (analyze and debate evidence for policies) then I see that as a comment on democracy,” said Page, who directs a sustainability centre at the University of Calgary’s business school. “I see it as a comment on the ability of Canada as a democracy to have a vigorous public policy discussion.”
Meantime, the round table also sent copies of its research reports and files to more than three dozen recipients across the country, including libraries, government agencies or representatives, non-government organizations and other think-tanks.
He said the files include 120 formal reports and hundreds of research papers from its 25-year history.
Liberal MP David McGuinty, a president of the panel from 1996 to 2004, said that the minister’s actions suggest the government wants to censor access to information that shows its environmental and economic policies are on the wrong track.
“Minister Kent’s involvement at this level of detail is automatically a signal for me that they are trying to control information,” said McGuinty. “They really want to extinguish even the name of the organization. It’s Orwellian … It’s like burning books, burning the names, (or pretending) it never happened. And that’s just ridiculous.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Mike De Souza
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