A Senate committee has decided to hold an extraordinary public investigation into an allegation that Health Canada managers suspended a departmental scientist because he testified at a Senate committee against approval of a controversial dairy production hormone.
The Senate privileges committee will haul senior Health Canada officials before it so they can explain the decision this summer to suspend scientist Shiv Chopra for five days.
If the Senate committee decides the suspension was in retaliation for Chopra’s appearance before senators, they can find those managers in contempt of Parliament, a conviction that can lead to jail.
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Deputy health minister David Dodge has denied the allegation.
Twice last year, Chopra and other Health Canada scientists appeared before the Senate agriculture committee to complain that politics and corporate pressure sometimes pushed aside scientific caution when the department assessed corporate applications for approval of new veterinary drugs.
The scientists’ main testimony centred on the controversial dairy growth hormone bovine somatotropin. Last January, after almost nine years of study, Health Canada said BST would not be licensed “at this time” although it thought it safe for humans.
The scientists said they feared their public testimony would cause them professional problems because the department had put them under a “gag order” not to publicly discuss their misgivings.
Senators on the committee told the witnesses to let them know if there was any retaliation. They extracted from senior managers a promise there would be none.
Last summer, when Chopra was suspended for five days, the department said it was because the minority rights activist said during a public forum in March that there was a racist climate inside his department.
Other side of the story
However, Chopra thought otherwise. He told Conservative senator Noel Kinsella that he believes the Senate appearance was the cause.
“All these actions were the direct consequence of my testimony, which I was requested to give before the (Senate agriculture committee) for its bovine growth hormone rBST investigations,” he wrote. Subsequently, deputy minister Dodge wrote Kinsella to tell him the suspension was not related to the Senate appearance.
Last week, Kinsella raised the issue in the Senate, suggesting the sequence of events looked suspicious, despite Dodge’s denial.
“It is clearly in the interest of our parliamentary committee that our witnesses feel safe to give unrestricted testimony without fear that it may jeopardize, directly or indirectly, their personal or professional lives,” he said.
If Health Canada has disciplined Chopra for his anti-BST testimony, “it would amount to contempt of the Senate and its committees.”
Speaker Gil Molgat agreed Health Canada should be called before the Senate to explain the discipline against Chopra.
Hearings on questions of privilege, a rare event on Parliament Hill, will begin this autumn.
