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Comment by shaftoe | Hacker News Reader

Does Canada have no protections for freedom of speech?

As an American, the idea of muzzling a scientist is strange. I had thought Canada was more free than this.

There is no absolute freedom of speech law in Canada; the closest they get to it is "Freedom of Expression", and that's been abridged in dozens of ways through court decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_Canada

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Canada#Criticism...

Even in America there are restrictions about what federal employees may say to the media. Freedom of speech is different when you are representing an employer, although the restrictions on Canadian scientists were egregious.

> Even in America there are restrictions about what federal employees may say to the media.

Not outside of the military except in the case of classified documents or the identities of covert agents. It's not even illegal for non-government employees to publish classified documents, as far as I know.

>> Even in America there are restrictions about what federal employees may say to the media.

> Not outside of the military except in the case of classified documents or the identities of covert agents

I'm pretty sure that's wrong. I clearly remember the Bush administration restricting government scientists (and other employees) from talking to the media, requiring all communications to be approved by political appointees in their departments.

The scientists do have freedom of speech like other Americans, if that's what you mean, but that freedom doesn't protect your job; you can be fired for what you say, just not imprisoned or forced not to say it. It also doesn't protect you if you disclose your employers secrets that are protected by NDAs and similar agreements. For example (and speaking very generally), if a former Apple employee revealed details of some secret Apple tech protected by NDA, I'm almost certain the employee could be sued for damages.

Not usually illegal, but grounds for disciplinary action or firing. There are many cases of the government punishing employees for inappropriate speech while on the job. Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006) is a Supreme Court decision finding that some speech of public employees is not protected.

And then there's the Hatch Act (1939), which prevents most federal employees from engaging in activity that could be seen as political.

>As an American, the idea of muzzling a scientist is strange. I had thought Canada was more free than this.

It isn't about law, it's (bad) policy and politics. And to think that similar circumstances aren't occurring in America is naive.

This is less about free speech, and more along the lines of an NDA. We're talking about researchers employed directly by the federal government. Canada has a public service whose role is to advise the current government and provide input into policy decisions, and then to implement whatever policy decisions came down from above.

By and large, though, it seemed like Harper's government didn't seem to really want input from the public service unless it agreed with whatever policy decisions had already been made. If you think this is just about the environment, you'd be very wrong, too; I live in Ottawa and know people in Health Canada, in Transport Canada, in Statistics Canada - I don't know anyone who wasn't complaining to me about how the advice they were giving was being ignored in one way or another.

Nonsense. Government scientists must be cleared to speak with press.

Do all of them? I know we did when I was at the DoD, even for mundane things like generic medical research. Heck, we had to get our stuff cleared to be able to share it with anyone, not just the press.

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