Elizabeth May guestblogs on the Linda Keen/Gary Lunn nuclear fiasco at Scott’s Diatribes.

(Foreword: There have been many comments on the blogs over the firing of Linda Keen in the middle of the night and the circumstances surrounding it. One of those was from Chris Tindal, Green Party blogger and candidate who I met at the Progressive Blogger BBQ in Toronto last August. I casually asked Chris out of the blue if Green Party leader Elizabeth May would like to express an opinion on the Keen firing and how Gary Lunn and Harper have handled the situation in an op-ed on a blog. A day later, Ms. May contacted me and was pleased to do so, so my thanks to Chris for arranging this and thanks to Ms. May for agreeing to blog on this topic. Note that the opinions expressed by Elizabeth May does not necessarily reflect those of myself or of this blogsite - Scott)

I am honored that Scott’s DiaTribes asked me to submit a guest blog on the firing of Linda Keen. If you check the Green Party website, you will see I have written a lot on this already and had a fair go at a number of the nation’s national news shows as well. So let me summarize and throw in some new observations.

Clearly, Lunn should resign. Ministers have done so in the past for far less. Minister Lunn has interfered in a decision making process before a quasi-judicial board. I don’t know how he can have gone to law school (and a good one at that, University of Victoria, where my step-son and daughter in law were among his classmates) and have failed to learn some basics of the independence of regulators. Political interference in such boards is a large no-no. I leave open the possibility that he did know this but was ordered by his boss, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, to forget what he knew. Harper clearly does not understand the rule of law and the role of independent officers of parliament and senior civil servants. Auditor General Sheila Fraser commented on the disquieting nature of the late-night firing of Linda Keen on CBC’s “The House.” It was a shock to the traditions of our democracy.

Minister Lunn should also resign for mismanagement of the nuclear file. As he reports on his own website:

Minister Lunn speaks frequently about the need to streamline the regulatory approval process for energy and mining projects in Canada, and has made this a personal priority as he enters the next phase of his mandate.

Clearly, he has been so busy trying to reduce regulation of industry and so keen to fast-track approval of nuclear reactors to increase tar sands production, that he missed the warnings from the Auditor General that the replacement reactors for Chalk River (Maple 1 and 2) were running eight years behind schedule and far over budget. He missed that “deferred maintenance” referenced in her report amounted to a risk that the aging NRU reactor could be expected to have trouble meeting the demand for its radio isotopes.

Nevertheless, Minister Lunn’s performance is not as critical in reviewing this mess as that of his boss. Prime Minister Harper bears the brunt of responsibility for personalizing and politicizing the handling of the NRU shut-down. From his nasty turn in Question Period when he chose to describe the entire Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission as “Liberal appointees,” Mr. Harper has embraced the gutter on this issue (Admittedly, he is not known for taking the high road. He would need a map to find where the high road is).

There are layers within layers of inappropriate abuse in Harper’s attack on the CNSC. The first layer is that all government appointed bodies are appointed by some government or other. The individuals appointed to Governor in Council appointments are not to be tarnished with the politics of those who appointed them. It is not in our traditions to do so, and in this case in particular, it was nonsense.

The next layer of contempt for our institutions was in Harper’s preference for attacking the President of the Commission. Again, this reflected a complete ignorance of the nature of Commission decision-making. The decisions of the CNSC are not those of the President alone. Ms. Keen could not have been acting unilaterally. Attacking her, and now firing her, for being the chair of a commission that reached its own conclusions about how to treat a regulated industry that had chosen to ignore its licensing requirement, was, again, inappropriate and unfair.

And now I turn to an unexamined aspect of the Harper abuse: sexism. The ways he spit out the name “Linda Keen” day after day in Question Period, suggested he felt he could make hay out of the fact the President of the CNSC was a woman. If CNSC member Dr. Christopher Barnes, with both an Order of Canada and membership in the Royal Society of Canada, had been its President, I simply cannot imagine the Prime Minister rounding on Michael Ignatieff, as he did in the House, demanding if he was prepared to wait for “Dr. Christopher Barnes” with the scorn in his voice he emoted for “waiting for Ms. Keen!”. The Prime Minister has sought to attack and humiliate a career scientist and civil servant who happens to have been one of the few women to hold a senior position heading one of Canada’s quasi-judicial agencies.

So, on top of contempt for the role of quasi-judicial decision-making, bullying arms’ length regulators, a cavalier attitude towards the safety of nuclear reactors, negligence in ensuring the supply of 40% of the world’s medical radio-isotopes, and railroading the House into allowing the nuclear industry to regulate itself at the NRU reactor, we can add to the list of offenses a mean-spirited sexist streak.

Taken together, a breath-taking case for unsuitability to govern based on one incident.