The protest and website were set up by the union government scientists are obliged to join (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Institute_of_the_Public_Se

The protest and website were set up by the union government scientists are obliged to join (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Institute_of_the_Public_Service_of_Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Institute_of_the_P...), not an actual group of scientists. That's quite a bit different than a group of actual scientists risking their funding by taking a stand. Scientists are just one component of the union's membership, by the way - they represent all government employees who have professional designations. Unions in Canada are uniformly hostile to the Canadian Conservative government (although, interestingly, their membership largely is not, especially in the industrial unions). That is not to say that the union's point of view is not valid. But this is certainly not a Bush-era-esque case of the scientific community standing up to government hostility to science.