Steven Harper's Canada, Now With (Even) Less Freedom!

Taking lessons from the STASI?

 

Not content with silencing its scientists, Harper Government imposes new 'code of conduct' on Federal Librarians that includes 'duty of loyalty' and a snitch-line

 

Our Dear Leader gazes from atop the Archives Canada Preservation Building in Gatineau, Québec. Photo-illustration by Geoffrey Dow. Original photo of Archives Canada Preservation Building by Bruno Schlumberger/Postmedia News

 

By Margaret Munro

Canada.com/Post Media

 

15 March 2013 — Federal librarians and archivists who set foot in classrooms, attend conferences or speak up at public meetings on their own time are engaging in “high risk” activities, according to the new code of conduct at Library and Archives Canada.

Given the dangers, the code says the department’s staff must clear such “personal” activities with their managers in advance to ensure there are no conflicts or “other risks to LAC.”

 

The code, which stresses federal employees’ “duty of loyalty” to the “duly elected government,” also spells out how offenders can be reported.

 

“It includes both a muzzle and a snitch line,” says James Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which represents more than 68,000 teachers, librarians, researchers and academics across the country. (More.)