Linda Keen Silenced

Here is the sequence of events over the past two days:

- Linda Keen is scheduled to testify before the Commons Committee.
- The Conservatives try to go against standard procedure and have Gary Lunn testify AFTER so he can rebut whatever she says.
- The chairman says no - that's not the way it's done. The Minister has to go first.
- Linda Keen is fired in the middle of the night.
- Keen (through the CNSC) sends an email in the morning indicating that she still intends to testify before the Committee today.
- Lunn testifies.
- Keen sends another email (also through the CNSC) that she will NOT, in fact, be testifying today.

I suspect that at some point between those two emails Linda Keen had a conversation with a lawyer, possibly having to do with a potential wrongful dismissal suit and the advisability of giving testimony before having further conversations with her attorney. And quite right.

Unfortunately, this has had exactly the effect intended by Gary Lunn and his superiors: to silence Linda Keen and allow Lunn to present their position uncontested, for at least as long as it takes for the media glare to die down and the public's attention span to run out.

Happily, Elizabeth May spoke to the media afterwards and made a point of connecting the dots between the government's actions, the Maple reactors, and the privatization of Canada's nuclear industry. At least somebody knows what's really going on here.

Here's a summary of Lunn's testimony.