Scientific facts for Trudeau

For a prime minister who claims to champion science and oppose climate change, Justin Trudeau has a strange way of showing it.

The funding for Canada’s Climate Change and Atmospheric Research program was not renewed in the 2017 federal budget and will soon expire — meaning the eventual end of a vital, national environmental program.

Yet for reasons that are not clear, Trudeau and his Liberals will not commit to providing the lifesaver grant that would keep this initiative afloat.

Letting the program die would be a serious mistake — and experts are saying so.

More than 250 scientists from 22 countries recently signed a letter to Trudeau, urging him to restore or replace the Climate Change and Atmospheric Research program and warning its elimination means “a crisis is looming” in Canadian climate science.

Yet their reasoned and reasonable plea has gone unanswered.

This lack of response is a puzzle because it so blatantly contradicts the politics and policies Trudeau continually avows.

Supporting scientific research and aggressively tackling climate change have been core Liberal values for years — and were meant to show the party was different from and better than Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, who were portrayed as anti-science, climate-change foot-draggers.

“We are serious about climate change,” Trudeau said just weeks after winning the 2015 fall election. “This means making decisions based on science.”

And last September he boasted: “We have taken great strides to fulfil our promise to restore science as a pillar of government decision-making.”

Except, it seems, when it comes to funding “the only dedicated program funding climate and atmospheric research in Canada.”

That’s how more than 250 scientists characterized the program in their letter, which was published this week by the advocacy group, Evidence for Democracy.

They say the program’s loss “will be felt far beyond Canada’s borders.”

To be fair to the government, it does pay for work done by government scientists employed by Environment and Climate Change Canada.

But the Climate Change and Atmospheric Research program is different. And unique.

The program allows universities across Canada to collaborate as they gather and review data.

It allows them to examine how changes in sea ice and snow cover affect our Arctic regions.

It helps them explore how carbon dioxide moves between the atmosphere and the ocean.

And it brings Canadian evidence and a Canadian perspective to a problem that will impact not just Canada but the world.

It’s not terribly expensive, either. It provided seven projects with $1 million a year for five years. The best known of these projects, the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory on Ellesmere Island, has been granted a temporary reprieve — funding for 18 more months.

The six other projects are cutting research staff and preparing for the end. Surely this government can do better. As the Liberals prepare the 2018-19 federal budget, they should find the cash to keep this major research program going or put something even bigger in its place.

The needs of science and a warming planet demand no less.