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“Cutting off fundamental, curiosity-driven science is like eating the seed corn. We may have a little more to eat next winter but what will we plant so we and our children will have enough to get through the winters to come?” —Carl Sagan

The above quote characterizes the Canadian government’s approach to fundamental science for the past decade. Only science that could rapidly underpin new commercial applications was deemed to be worthy of public support.

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Canadian environmental science, despite its stellar reputation for proactively identifying and inexpensively solving problems, was singled out as a barrier to industrial development.

Environmental groups (and by inference environmental scientists) were even labelled as foreign-funded radical groups that conspired to hold back economic progress. Federal environmental scientists, even those of international renown, were silenced from speaking about their own research. Several federal science libraries were closed.