By Bob McDonald, Quirks & Quarks

The largest annual gathering of scientists in the world is happening in Vancouver this week, as delegates from almost 60 countries assemble for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting. It's the first time in 36 years the meeting has been held outside of the states, and Canadian science is at the forefront.

Most scientific conferences are focused on specific subjects, like astronomy, biology or physics, and those are where most of the big announcements of new discoveries are made. The AAAS is different, because it covers all disciplines, so it is more of a schmooze-fest, where scientists get to meet colleagues from other fields and find out what's going on in areas outside their own expertise.

This is important in modern science because today there are many cross-disciplinary subjects. No longer do biologists, anthropologist or chemists work in isolation. Today there is bio-chemistry, molecular anthropology or geo-engineering.

Canadians should be proud of our science, yet most people are unaware of the fine work that goes on from sea to shining sea. Canadian astronomers are some of the world leaders, and more than a thousand of our physicists work on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, which is the world's largest science experiment.

Project Neptune, off the coast of Vancouver Island, provides live monitoring of the bottom of the ocean, while the Sudbury Neutrino Laboratory and adjacent SNOLAB search for elusive particles from the sun and mysterious dark matter that makes up a quarter of the universe. And that's just a taste of what goes on in labs across the country.

But while Canadian science is solid, two disturbing issues were discussed at the conference that could taint our image on the international stage.

In the Feb. 14 issue of the newspaper of the American Geophysical Union, scientists expressed concern over recent budget cuts to Environment Canada and the shutdown of several ozone monitoring stations in the Canadian North. These stations have been keeping track of ozone levels in the Arctic since the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987. That treaty banned the use of substances that destroy ozone, but the chemicals continue to persist in the atmosphere for decades, creating annual holes in our ozone layer, which protects us from harmful ultra violet rays from the sun.

The Canadian monitoring stations have provided the baseline measurements for the northern hemisphere, but this year the government ordered some of them closed and scientists re-assigned for "streamlining" purposes. This is a serious issue, because the ozone problem has not gone away and international scientists depend on the Canadian system to keep track of it.

The second issue is the continued muzzling of government scientists, especially those from Environment Canada, to speak freely to the press without first getting permission from Ottawa.

We at Quirks & Quarks and other Canadian journalists have requested interviews with scientists and have either been denied outright, or else permission came too late for our deadlines. This is a violation of the principle of freedom of speech for our scientists.

As demonstrated in Vancouver this week, our country is highly regarded on the international scientific scene. We should be proud of it, and our scientists should be allowed to speak proudly about it.