It took months of meetings, written requests and public pressure to receive an official response from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to a 1.5-year-long wait for a request related to a widely condemned DFO report. This report found, contrary to mountains of peer-reviewed evidence, that infestations of sea lice on open-net salmon farms do not influence numbers of lice on wild salmon. Our appeal was simple: For the report’s authors to share the data used to reach their conclusion, to enable us to reproduce the analysis—a fundamental principle of modern science. The eventual response? A data sheet with much of the key data removed.

Early in my career as a research biologist, I assumed my toughest challenge would be understanding nature’s intricate ecological systems, such as the complex interplay between diseases, their hosts and the environment. Instead, much of my attention has shifted to something much more disheartening—battling a DFO bureaucracy that systematically redacts and censors its own scientific data and scientists.

The DFO is currently under investigation by the Integrity Commissioner for........

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