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Tories torch and dump centuries of priceless, irreplaceable environmental archives
I'll x-post this to the Canada group, too. And General Discussion if people think it's worthwhile.
From BoingBoing:
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/04/canadian-libraricide-tories-t.html
From the article:
Back in 2012, when Canada's Harper government announced that it would close down national archive sites around the country, they promised that anything that was discarded or sold would be digitized first. But only an insignificant fraction of the archives got scanned, and much of it was simply sent to landfill or burned.
Unsurprisingly, given the Canadian Conservatives' war on the environment, the worst-faring archives were those that related to climate research. The legendary environmental research resources of the St. Andrews Biological Station in St. Andrews, New Brunswick are gone. The Freshwater Institute library in Winnipeg and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland: gone. Both collections were world-class.
Unsurprisingly, given the Canadian Conservatives' war on the environment, the worst-faring archives were those that related to climate research. The legendary environmental research resources of the St. Andrews Biological Station in St. Andrews, New Brunswick are gone. The Freshwater Institute library in Winnipeg and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland: gone. Both collections were world-class.
Honestly, this may be some of the worst news I've heard in a long time out of Ottawa. How did they decide that they could do this? How did committee discussion and group action lead to this information being irrevocably lost forever? It's baldly obviously why this is a good idea for the Harper gov't. Without the historical data to put the current environmental conditions in context, it's easy for them to continue to deny global climate change and continue to support the wealthy corporations whose best interests are served by loose and weak environmental regulations.
Time for Harper to leave the house. It would be great to see the Conservatives destroyed as they were in 1993.
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