Write2Know Week is here!

Kicking off today, March 23, the national campaign to unmuzzle Canada’s federal scientists is in full swing. Canadians across the country are demanding the federal government stop restricting our access to important research, information, and awareness of the human and environmental health issues that affect us all. Canadians have a right to know. What is in our air, water, and soil? Who can tell us what is in our food? What are the predicted effects of climate change? We deserve to know. Help the Write2Know campaign send thousands of letters this week demanding answers to these questions and more. Are you concerned about any of the following issues? Pick a topic, learn more, then sign your name and send a letter directly to the officials who represent these concerns. It’s time to hold our government accountable.

• • Contamination in the Far North
• • Cuts to Aboriginal Health Research
• • Department of Fisheries and Oceans Libraries and Archives
• • Forest Management and Climate Change
• • Marine Plastics
• • Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
• • Resource Extraction and Biodiversity
• • Water Quality and the Oil Sands

Is there another issue you’re concerned about not represented here? Create your own letter. Having access to the research findings on these issues is crucial to our right to free expression. Without this information and data, and the knowledge and public awareness that come with them, the government can’t make informed, responsible policy decisions and citizens can’t know how their own and the environment’s health and safety are being impacted as a result.

Why do we need #Write2Know Week?

In Canada, scientific questions are increasingly going unanswered as funding cutbacks to federal science programs and other policies aimed at muzzling Canadian scientists continue unabated. Take a look at our interactive timeline that charts these troubling and deeply problematic events since 2012, as well as the live chat we held with a leading Canadian scientist and environmentalist reporter at the Toronto Star. Federal scientists funded by Canadian tax dollars are among those generating evidence relevant to public health and safety. They have been doing this work for decades, amassing large quantities of data in archives and libraries. Their research can give us a long-term view of social and environmental change. Yet the Canadian government has gone to extreme lengths to keep this crucial work, knowledge, and ongoing research from the public. Federal scientists are being silenced:

• • Over a hundred research programs have been cancelled.
• • Thousands of scientists who conducted essential research have been fired.
• • Libraries have been closed and data archives destroyed.
• • Communications policies prevent federal scientists from speaking directly to the media, the public, and even other researchers about the results of their work.

Journalists reporting on the environmental consequences of industry, for example, are regularly denied interviews with federal scientists monitoring the impact of industrial waste, and therefore cannot verify their stories. Government constraints on access to scientific research on public health and safety constitute a serious injustice. The Write2Know campaign aims to demonstrate the public desire for this information; support for federally funded science and scientists; the need to protect databases, archives, and libraries; and the importance of reinstating the essential programs that monitor human and environmental health. The easy-to-use letter template tool developed by Write2Know pays close attention to gaps between scientific evidence and federal policy. Let’s show federal scientists how much we value their work, and let’s tell the federal government that we want this information made public.

To participate in the Write2Know campaign:

• • Write a letter to a federal scientist or Minister using Write2Know’s simple tool.
• • Tweet using the hashtag #Write2Know, asking for the results of federal science programs and calling for the unmuzzling of Canadian scientists.
• • Organize a screening of the CBC documentary Silence of the Labs during Write2Know Week, running from March 23-27, using Evidence for Democracy’s simple tool.
• • Follow the Write2Know Project on Twitter at @poe_yorku and on Facebook.
• • Share the Write2Know campaign with your friends and family, and help spread the word that this is an issue that directly impacts all Canadians.

Who is driving the Write2Know campaign?

The campaign is an initiative of the Politics of Evidence Working Group based at York University. They are a coalition of academics, scientists, and activists formed in 2014 to challenge the fraught politics of scientific evidence in Canada today. Supporters include:

• • Canadian Association of University Teachers
• • Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE)
• • DESMOG Canada
• • Evidence for Democracy
• • Institute for Science and Technology Studies at York University
• • Scientists for the Right to Know
• • The Technoscience Research Unit at the University of Toronto
• • WaSTE (Waste and Science, Technology & Environment) at Memorial University

Visit the Write2Know campaign on Facebook for all the latest updates.