Harper Admin Dismantles One Of World's Best Fisheries Research Libraries To "Save Money"
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"I was sickened," said one prominent research scientist who had worked for the federal government for 30 years, and who did not want to be identified. "All that intellectual capital is now gone. It's like a book burning. It's the destruction of our cultural heritage. It just makes us poorer as a nation. There are so many willing accomplices to what's going on," the scientist added. "All of our federal libraries and archives are being diminished. It's an ideological thing coming from a right-wing libertarian government."
Since 2012, the government has closed or consolidated more than a dozen federal libraries at Parks Canada, Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Foreign Affairs, Citizenship and Immigration and Canadian Heritage (see sidebar). "The government is either incompetent or malevolent or both," added Ayles.
No scientist interviewed by The Tyee thought digital libraries could replace what has been destroyed. Digital libraries, for example, often don't include older material and journals and paradoxically reduce access to material due to payment schemes. They restrict rather than expand readership, say scientists. "You don't get rid of intellectual capital because one day you might need it, and if you have squandered it then you must redo it," explained one researcher. "People are not being told the truth about what is happening in this country."
Federal cuts by the Harper government have forced Fisheries and Oceans to lay off hundreds of researchers, as well as 700 Coast Guard workers; dismantle a marine contaminants program; and close the Kitsilano Coast Guard station, the first line of defence against oil spills. After dramatic cuts to the Canada Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research Centre at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, its director, Ken Lee, an oil spill expert, saw the writing on the wall and took a job in Australia.
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http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/09/Dismantling-Fishery-Library/