Friday, June 27, 2008

Linda Keen Gets Major International Award, Nobody Notices

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, we all remember Linda Keen. She was the scapegoat for AECL-MDS Nordion-MNR-GoC negligence and foul-ups. She was ignominiously fired as president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission by Gary Lunn after her inconvenient whistleblowing precipitated last December's so-called isotope crisis. Keen remains a CNSC member and employee.

Well, our gal Linda has been presented with a top award from a top international professional association. Here's the announcement from the CNSC website.

Linda J. Keen Receives 2008 Women in Nuclear (WiN) Global Award

On May 28th, 2008, Linda J. Keen, was presented with the 2008 Women in Nuclear (WiN) Global Award in Marseilles, France. She received special recognition for excellence in communications, education, leadership and mentoring in the nuclear sector. Ms. Keen is currently a permanent full-time Member of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and was formerly President and Chief Executive Officer. The CNSC is proud to acknowledge Ms. Keen as the first Canadian to receive this award.

Wowee! Sounds impressive. Run the maple leaf up the flagpole, stand and sing O Canada. Our home and native land oughta be proud. But, gee, this was almost a month ago and even avid nuke news watchers like ol' JB didn't see anything about it in the MSM or the blogs.

I only learned of this award a couple days ago through a nuclear issues email list subscription. If you go to the CNSC's home page, there's nothing there to indicate that one of their employees and their immediate past-president has been honoured with a prestigious international award. Digging a little deeper, I tried to find the news item on the CNSC's News page. Nothing there, either, except a link to More News Releases. I was sure I'd dug deep enough into the CNSC site that finally, I'd find the News story that I quoted above. Hmmm... I found a page purporting to show all 2008 news releases. But, dang it, the story about Keen's dismissal was there but not a peep about Keen receiving this big award.

Be proud, Canajuns. Be proud of Linda Keen.

Just in case the CNSC decides to make the announcement completely unavailable, I've grabbed a screenshot.
JimBobby

6 comments:

skdadl said...

Well done, Linda Keen and JimBobby.

And we're left to wonder, once again, how low this government can go ...

Scott in Montreal said...

One would think someone on the Opposition benches might've been keen enough to point this out in the HoC, and congratulate her on behalf of all Canadians (apologies for the pun).

JimBobby said...

I'm guessin' the opposition knows about as much as the general public. I'm pretty keen on nuke issues and subscribe to some listserves and google alerts on the topic. I only heard about this two days ago.

It hasn't been hushed up, exactly, but it sure hasn't received the type of attention one would expect from a Canadian public servant winning an international honour.

JB

Anonymous said...

Linda Keen and her award were mentioned on the At Issue panel on the National News last night.

It may now be available as a podcast or as a download at the CBC website.
It may well be worth a look.

JimBobby said...

Thanks for that, David. I saw part of the CBC panel but missed the first half. Maybe one of them is on the same mailing list as me. The award was presented on May 28 but the first I think it made any GoC news was on June 19th, a week ago.

BTW, I see Impolitical is calling Keen's firing the Worst Moment in the parliamentary session.

JB

JimBobby said...

Yer right, David. Mansbridge did give her a nod. No discussion to speak of.
It's after the 12 min mark in segment one.