Thanks for your well-written post, shuswap. I agree with quite a bit of it.
I would add that it would be naive to think that a mere change in ruling parties and the Prime Minister - substantially changes the administrative functioning and departmental/corporate mentality in any federal department - as much as I welcome the change from the Harper regime. Party politics still precludes elected representatives from truly representing their electorate. The same lobbyists still peddle their wares in Ottawa, and elsewhere. The same PR firms are hard at work engaging and distributing their information via various media sources. The same Deputy Ministers down to Regional Directors still carry-on with their policies and ways of being promoted within every department. There is still the same problems with confusion over duties and protection of industry verses being a "public" servant with the upper echelons of DFO and CFIA.
Don't get me wrong - I am glad Harper and his entourage are gone - and I hope that Trudeau will encourage better governance structures - maybe. But he is a politician, after all.
Unfortunately, our government is broken. Maybe not as broken as the states and other countries - but still - broken.
And it is a tough go for any government employee to stand-up to the corporate mentality from above - and put their career advancement below seeking and telling the truth. I have quite a bit of admiration and respect for Kristi Miller. I don't think she chose the easiest path within DFO....
Is government perfect? No. Are government the best communicators? No. However, taking a broad brush and painting many public servants the way you are doing is not right and not accurate as Ziggy pointed out. It's like if I took a broad brush and called all environmentalists a bunch of PR propagandists because.....they are still environmentalists after all. Changing ruling parties probably doesn't necessarily reset the clock, but in this case there are much clearer and flexible communication lines between departmental scientists and the media as well as the public.
Scientists like Dr. Miller and university scientists have done presentations to stakeholders talking about their preliminary work. I actually got to see and hear some of these people in person so that's why I know some of what I read here is more alternative fact, misinterpretation or miscommunication. However, the social science aspect of this particular issue and science in general is gaining more attention and is actually quite revealing - likely going playing a greater role in how scientists and stakeholders interact in the near future. It's sort of like having different personality types where certain individuals of one type tend to process and think about information differently than another. In that course, we learned to recognize different personality types and work with them.
Scientists and stakeholders engage in different information seeking behaviours. Findings suggest that scientists need to branch out from their realm and engage stakeholders and the public more directly by building relationships. Scientists should go to where these stakeholders are rather than be separate from them. It is thought that working relationships will build some of the trust that many believe is lacking. In this way, scientists and stakeholders can work from a common set of facts and knowledge rather than competing with one another. In some respects these working relationships with different groups is going on right now and are quite successful, but with others there could still be improvement. However, it's important to note that this is not necessarily because some manager, Regional Director or Faculty Dean is preventing their staff from engaging in these relationships. What I'm learning is that, in some instances, people work in parallel environments with little understanding of the other. Stakeholders want to see how relevant the research is to them and how can it be applied. Merely stating findings appears to fall short of their expectations.
Many will say this isn't mind blowing and I agree with that to some extent, but I don't believe we (everyone) look at these differences as much as we should, especially here. When I read some of the comments (especially the more recent ones) here I feel that some of what is discussed in this social science work is found here in this forum. However, for some prominent activists this will likely not really matter much - working relationships and greater understanding are not high on their agenda so it's a moot point, in my opinion.
This sort of relates to my previous post on this thread topic. I have provided an explanation of why this current research has not been as "final" as some would prefer. It's not because everyone in government is being tight-lipped. It's not because Deputy Ministers are actively engaged in deceptive practices to prevent stakeholders and the public from knowing what's going on with this. Miller would love to talk more about her work, but many people seem to want to discuss how she is muzzled - the political aspects. I provided some places folks can inquire to get more information. If they don't trust contacting government scientists because they feel there is a gun to their heads after what I just said they can talk to the other parties involved, such as the universities.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901116302520 (Sorry only an abstract).