Several hundred Canadian scientists and their supporters held an unprecedented protest march on Tuesday to demonstrate against the government’s decision to close down major facilities and fire research staff.
The protesters, who say the right-of-center Conservative government dislikes science, walked through central Ottawa behind a woman dressed as the Grim Reaper and a coffin designed to mourn the “Death of Evidence.”
“Evidence is the way that adults navigate reality. To deny evidence is to live in a fairy world … when countries engage in fantasy it’s called state propaganda,” Simon Fraser University professor Arne Moores told a crowd of around 800 people gathered on Parliament Hill.
Canadian readers– tell us more! Fill us in! Send us better links than this! (Please)
Feminist Philosophers 
This conservative government has been cutting sources of evidence since it was a minority government. Then, it gutted Statistics Canada’s ability to provide the information to help policy makers by making the long form census optional — thereby invalidating the statistics derived from the responses. With the current budget (in an omnibus bill that folded in all sorts of problematic non-budget related actions), they have closed down research operations across Canada, but most visibly, the freshwater ecology research station in northern ontario — the station has been conducting long range experiments for 50 years. You can find a good review here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/ex-fisheries-directors-urge-harper-to-reverse-freshwater-research-cuts/article4363349/ and here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/research-on-oil-sands-impact-cost-centre-its-funding-scientists-say/article4266918/
There have been longstanding reports of the silencing of scientists at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, so they are not able to report findings that support assessments of environmental impact that the Conservatives don’t want to here. Marine biologists at my university have all kinds of stories.
On the Nature News Blog – http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/07/scientists-march-on-canadian-parliament.html
The killing of the long-form census I did follow with a lot of interest when I moved here, as census info is a pet interest of mine. The specific argument that there wasn’t evidence for the policy is in the last story linked:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/why-you-should-care-about-the-long-census-forms-demise/article1390301/
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/census/article/871359–even-one-dissenting-canadian-enough-to-kill-long-form-census-says-clement
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inside-politics-blog/2010/10/behind-the-numbers-trust-us-killing-the-long-form-census-was-the-right-thing-to-do.html
It is shocking that a country so otherwise rational would go out of its way to undermine statistically meaningful information which could have been useful for generations to come.