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Roger P. Parkinson Publisher and Chief Executive Officer William Thorsell, Editor-in-chief Colin MacKenzie, Managing Editor Margaret Wente, Editor, Report on Business Sylvia Stead, Deputy Managing Editor Sarah Murdoch Associate Editor John C. P. King, Deputy Managing Editor Earle B. Gill, Executive Editor The Globe and Mail is a division of Thomson Canada Limited 444Front St. W ., Toronto, Canada MSV 259 Telephone (416)585-5000. Fax (416)585-5085 The Globe was founded in 1844 The Mail was founded in 1872

, I N these environmentally parlous times, veracity of the paper's central thesis. the Show Boat song asserting that While we don't know precisely how con- "fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly" formist DFO's corporate culture is, our might well be amendedto add: " And poli- mouths don't exactly gape at the notion ticians gotta try to make them fish swim that even the most scrupulous govern- here, ahd those birds fly there." ment scientists would feel pressure to in- We croon thus becauseeverywhere we terpret data in a way which favoured vot- look, we see our elected leaders neck- ing fishermen over non-voting fish. deep in nature-managementexperiments The question is what to do about it. in which good politics and good ecology The professors' arms-Iength suggestion apparently war . seems a basically sound one to us. But How else do you explain why the East there is no reason to restrict its applica- Coast cod didn't realize that Canadian tion to the fisheries. Maybe all govern- politicians and bureaucrats had decided ment scientists working in environmen- it was the patriotic duty of Canadian fish tally sensitive areas should work in qua- to multiply faster than all the world's si-independent organizations. However, fishermen could catch them? And it is even with that, we are not sure that the not yet clear how \\"ell heavily logged person on the street is going to be able to British Columbia forests understand determine when good politics is also they are politically required to grow back good science. in a manner both en\ironmentally heal- Therefore, we suggest that the federal thy and economically sustainable. government, in conjunction with the Theoretically, government scientists provinces, set up something we are call- should mitigate these conflicts by objec. ing an Environmental Auditor-General. tively presenting nature's apolitical What we want is for someoneto have the point of view. However, as a recent paper mandate to -how shall we put this deli- which appear~din the Canadian Journal cately -cut through the crap. In the of Fisheries "nd ;q1l8tic Sciences has same way that the Auditc~.('Tf:l'i:r31pre- pointed out, a;l sorts of political and eco- sents a yearly report ,": :T'"'1rl , nomic pressures can militate against the tounds us with examplfs of go\c:rnmerj- independenceof government scientists. tal stupidity and waste, so too we want After documenting what it said were an environmental b.s. detector. abuses in the objective evaluation of the We envision this office as even-hand- East Coast cod and West Coast salmon edly acerbic. If it makes no ecolagical fisheries, the paper's three university- sense to fly thousands of Toronto geese based authors suggestedthat some kind to New Brunswick where they may of arm's-length relationship should sepa- freeze to death in winter, let's hear it. If rate the government's fish-science divi- we are constructing wildlife refuges big sions from its fish-policy branch. They enough to please local landowners but also recommended that both the avail- too small to sustain endangeredpopula- able fish data and the scientific dis- tions, let's hear it. cussions surrounding them should be reo We won't suggest who the fIrst Envi- leased so the public could see for them- ronmental Auditor-General should be, ~elves whether a given policy decision but we are certain Mark 1\vain's Pudd'n- was scientifically defensible. head Wilson has already enunciated the Not surprisingly, the Department of office credo: "When in doubt tell the Fisheries and Oceanshas challenged the truth."