President Trump’s early executive actions and rhetoric about climate change and vaccines have a lot of American scientists on edge right now – worried about funding cuts, gag orders, and travel and immigration restrictions. To our north, Canadian scientists might as well be saying “been there, done that.” Between 2006 and 2015, Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, slashed science funding, dissolved jobs and projects, and severely limited public communication.
It didn't happen all at once. In fact, John Dupuis, science librarian at York University's Steacie Science & Engineering Library, says that, at first, it was a lot of little things - changes to environmental regulations, some projects de-funded.
"One of the ones that was a harbinger of things to come was when the National Science Advisor position was deleted shortly after the Harper Government took power," said Dupuis. "That was probably the biggest early one."
For the first few years that Harper was in office, the Conservatives were running a minority government. That meant they were constrained in how much of their agenda they could enact. (Think President Obama with a Republican Congress.)
That changed in 2011, when Conservatives gained a majority. Scrolling through Dupuis' chronicle of the Harper administration’s "War on Science," the uptick in the pace of action is immediately noticeable. One thing that drew international attention was the shutdown of Canada's monitoring of Arctic ozone levels.
"2011-2012 seemed to be a bit of a tipping point," said Kathleen Walsh, interim executive director of Evidence for Democracy. "A lot of the stories of muzzling had really started to come to the media's attention and the public's attention. All of that sort of caused the original planning of the Death of Evidence Rally."
In July 2012, scientists held a protest - a mock funeral for science - called the Death of Evidence Rally. Organizers exhorted potential attendees:
If you are fed up with the closure of federal scientific programs and muzzling of scientists, if you think that decisions should be based on evidence and facts instead of ideology, then please come out and show your support.
A centerpiece of the event were eulogies for scientific programs that had been cut and scientific activities that had been curtailed. In particular, Dupuis says they focused on three things - muzzled scientists, the canceling of the mandatory long-form census, and cuts and changes to Library and Archives Canada.
Still, the so-called war on science continued until, in 2015, Justin Trudeau replaced Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. Dupuis and Walsh say some things have changed, some funding has been restored. But gaps in long-term data records will never be filled, and both say the Harper administration altered the culture of science in ways that will take a very long time to recover.
"Specifically on the muzzling issue and the gag orders, there's a huge cultural change that's going to have to happen that's going to take time for government scientists," said Walsh. "We did an informal survey in the summer and talked to a number of them who, despite some communication policy changes, still felt as if they couldn't speak to the media, because that fear still existed."
Dupuis says it's not just an amorphous fear, it's infrastructure. During the Harper administration, the number of communications officials in the government grew significantly. That layer of people between scientists and the public, as well as the bureaucratic norms, remain.
Walsh says that American scientists who fear the same fate their Canadian colleagues suffered have a leg up. For one, she points to organizations, like the Union for Concerned Scientists, which do work similar to her own Evidence for Democracy - supporting and advocating for the science community. Plus, now, American scientists have the experience of their Canadian colleagues to draw on.
"Some of the lessons we learned was to employ a variety of methods in communicating your desires as a science community," says Walsh, citing both marches and working with sympathetic policiticians. "Part of it is equipping scientists and advocates with the tools that they need to do this work - to advocate."
Dupuis says the most important thing is for scientists to realize they have to engage with politicians and the public.
"The biggest thing you want to avoid is bringing a test tube to a Bunsen burner fight," Dupuis quipped. "If people refuse to engage, they'll just be steam-rolled. To say that science isn't political, or that my science isn't political, or the work that I do isn't political, too late. It is."
If reactions to the planned March for Science are any indication, that attitude is beginning to take hold in the American science community. But it is by no means unanimous.