Kristi miller picked up a ringing telephone on November 6th and spoke to a journalist. Until this month, she was not allowed to do that. The government of Stephen Harper, a Conservative who led Canada for nearly ten years until his defeat in an election in October, demanded that scientists in its employ, like Ms Miller, get authorisation to speak to the press. The first targets of the policy were researchers on climate change, a subject Mr Harper avoided discussing, but it spread to other specialities. It represented everything the prime minister's critics loathed about him. Justin Trudeau, his Liberal successor, scrapped it the day after he took office on November 4th. This is one of several swift changes intended to show that his Canada will be very different from Mr Harper's.
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