It's been a tough week for the experts.
The Harper Conservatives have been taking turns punting around the Chief Election Officer, political scientists and anyone else with professional understanding of the Fair Elections Act. Anyone with the nerve to question their good intentions must be an elitist, ivory tower snob (a Liberal, in other words) or a tax-and-spend socialist (the NDP).
We already know what the Conservatives think of researchers that study climate change and the effects of natural resource development on ecosystems.
The Conservatives lower themselves to the level of their Republican counterparts in the U.S. when they dismiss academics and other experts with some anti-intellectual mumbo-jumbo about common sense and the wisdom of the average joe. What the Conservatives really mean is they like science and academic rigour when it agrees with their ideology, such as a review panel that endorses the building of the Northern Gateway pipeline with conditions. Expertise that runs counter to their ideology, however, must be politically-motivated junk science.
But it's not just the folks on the right side of the political spectrum that choose ideology over science.
NDP MP Nathan Cullen loved the panel's report discouraging approval of the construction of the New Prosperity mine but harshly criticized the recommendations made to the federal government by the Northern Gateway panel. That panel spent thousands of hours hearing from hundreds of expert witnesses and pored over tens of thousands of documents regarding the proposed pipeline. To suggest, as Cullen did, that the three-member panel got it all wrong is to dismiss their intelligence and their expertise.
Cullen is as ideologically opposed to Northern Gateway as Dick Harris is ideologically in support of New Prosperity. At the end of the day, no amount of science could actually convince Cullen that the pipeline is worth building and Harris that the mine is not.
It gets even worse when the politicians introduce ethics and their personal morality into the equation.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said Wednesday that he is against the Vancouver Aquarium keeping whales and dolphins in captivity.
If Robertson got off his high horse long enough to inform himself about the Vancouver Aquarium's mission, he'd quickly change his tune.
For starters, researchers have been studying beluga whales at the aquarium for decades to help gain a greater understanding of the effects of rapidly changing ecosystems.
Secondly, the aquarium is proud of its status as the only Canadian facility with the resources to rescue and rehabilitate injured marine animals. When those animals sustain injuries that make it impossible for them to be released back into the wild, they become permanent residents at the aquarium.
Would Robertson prefer aquarium staff euthanize the animals unable to be set free?
And even if those issues weren't in play, there are still good reasons for the Vancouver Aquarium to keep whales and dolphins.
Chances are that more than a few of the marine biologists working at the aquarium and elsewhere made their career choice in childhood, after a wide-eyed visit to a place like the Vancouver Aquarium, where they could see these beautiful creatures in a safe environment and up close.
Furthermore, the aquarium and other marine facilities do a great job of informing the paying public about the damage people are doing to marine habitats and telling them what they can do to help fix the problem. Even if most people don't lift a finger to address the issue, at least they're better informed than they were before they walked in the door.
And then there's the paying public. Those admission tickets help pay for the rescue and rehabilitation of those injured animals, as well as either their reintroduction back into the wild or their long-term residency at the aquarium.
For those who could care less about the critters, the aquarium employs more than 400 people and makes a significant contribution to Vancouver's tourism industry.
There are plenty of good reasons to leave the Vancouver Aquarium alone to do its great work.
And there are plenty of good reasons for politicians to have more faith in science and rational inquiry, than ideology and emotion, when making difficult and complicated decisions.
