By Tom Collins
TORONTO — The Ontario government is once again calling on television scientist David Suzuki to help get its message out, but the province’s auditor general says the latest ad would have been banned under old rules that were changed last year by the Liberal government.
Suzuki spoke to an auditorium of school kids about climate change where Suzuki warned that the earth is in trouble, not enough adults are doing anything and results could be irreversible if nothing is done immediately. Suzuki then told the kids they would have to live with the consequences. The talk was for an ad to support the Liberal climate change action plan.
Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysk slammed the ad, saying in early June that the commercial doesn’t provide any useful information.
“Instead, it appears to be designed to create apprehension about the effect of climate change so viewers will be more likely to support Ontario’s climate change action plan,” she said in a statement. She said the ad reflects support for the Liberal government. Taxpayers paid for it.
Suzuki, much-loved by environmentalists, doesn’t get the same admiration from the scientific community. Greenpeace co-founder and scientist Patrick Moore told Brian Lilley of theRebel.media in May that Suzuki is “now the geneticist who’s against using genetics because he is against all the genetic sciences that we have developed to improve our food and medicine.” Moore, who left Greenpeace when he said the environmental group abandoned science for ideology, added: “That to me is indicative of someone who has gone astray.”
Moore didn’t always feel this way. As a PhD student, he took Suzuki’s 22-lecture genetics course decades ago that Moore says was brilliant.
“He did a really good job of popularizing science in his early years, but he became political and ideological,” said Moore. “He just does not engage with anybody on any meaningful level who wants to debate with him or discuss with him. He’s not getting good advice from his people. Each one has an area that they’re supposed to be in charge of and they’re just feeding him all of this propaganda and that’s what he talks about.”
Suzuki also did a commercial for the Liberals in 2011, supporting then-premier Dalton McGuinty for re-election.
