Linda Keen fighting back

The effort to make Linda Keen the "fall gal" for the Chalk River nuclear shutdown is not going to end the way the Conservatives think it is. She's fighting back against the smear job and is serving notice today that if they try to fire her, they'll have a fight on their hands. Good for her for standing up to this inappropriate bullying of her commission for doing its job. Her commission shut down that reactor for safety reasons. And it was justified in doing so. There were two earthquakes near Chalk River in December. Keen's response today to Lunn's effort to fire her:

The president of the Nuclear Safety Commission is accusing Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn of improper interference with the agency.

And in a letter to Lunn, Linda Keen warns that she'll fight in the courts any attempt by the minister to have her fired.

Keen says Lunn's letter threatening her termination for refusing to follow a ministerial directive will send a "chill" through quasi-judicial agencies that are supposed to be at arm's-length from government.

The nuclear watchdog says she has asked the privacy commissioner and the RCMP to investigate how Lunn's letter came to be leaked to the media.

Keen appears to have decided that she's willing to draw a line in the sand with the Conservative government and its treatment of her but there's also a hint here that she's got support lined up behind her. Recall that Mel Cappe, a former Clerk of the Privy Council, Canada's top public servant, spoke out on her behalf in December. She is sending a message on behalf of public servants by taking this position and no doubt, she has their support. Also sounds like she's got herself a lawyer.

Keen's response today is related to this National Post story, prompted by a leaked letter to the Ottawa Citizen authored by Minister Gary Lunn on December 27:

The Harper government is poised to fire Linda Keen, Canada's top nuclear watchdog, amid renewed accusations that public health and confidence in nuclear safety have been jeopardized by her uncompromising handling of the Chalk River medical isotope scare.

In a letter obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn accuses the president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission of refusing to heed a Dec. 10 ministerial "directive" from him and Health Minister Tony Clement to allow the restart of the isotope-producing nuclear reactor at Chalk River.

"Serious questions have arisen about whether the commission, under your leadership, could have dealt more appropriately with the risk management of the situation," Mr. Lunn writes in the three-page letter, dated Dec. 27.

Despite intense political pressure at the time, including criticism from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Ms. Keen insisted the 50-year-old reactor, Canada's oldest, remain shut until work was completed on a backup safety system to prevent the remote risk of a core meltdown during an earthquake or other disaster.

That put the government in the embarrassing position of having to enact emergency legislation overruling the country's nuclear regulator in the name of nuclear medicine, embodied by Canada's world-leading $3.7-billion global molecular imaging and radiotherapeutics market, led by Ottawa's MDS Nordion. (emphasis added)

The heavy-handed Conservatives would rather finger-point and fire an independent regulator than deal with the consequences of a difficult situation. Whatever it takes to avoid any semblance of accountability.

H/t pogge, Accidental Deliberations.