Category Archives: Media

Rafe Mair’s landmark free speech case credited in salmon activist Staniford’s victory

October 12, 2012Media, Oceans, Salmon Farming and AquacultureAquaculture, SalmonDamien Gillis

I was delighted to learn recently that my good friend and colleague, leading salmon farming critic Don Staniford, won a major victory in the BC Supreme Court over the aquaculture industry – in large part thanks to an important legal precedent established by another good friend and colleague, Rafe Mair.

According to an opinion piece by Andrew Gage of West Coast Environmental Law, it was Rafe’s landmark victory at the Supreme Court of Canada a decade ago that formed the basis of Don’s victory in a defamation case brought against him last year by Mainstream Canada (the local arm of Norwegian global aquaculture giant Cermaq). At issue was a campaign the globetrotting British activist Staniford created comparing the salmon farming industry with Big Tobacco.

In his analysis of the case and judge’s ruling in favour of Staniford, announced two weeks ago, environmental law expert Andrew Gage explains how the precedent set by Mair’s victory in an unrelated defamation suit from his days on the radio at CKNW helped get Don off the hook today:

Don won because the Supreme Court of Canada has recently expanded the “defence of fair comment” in a case known as WIC Radio Ltd. v. Simpson. That case was a defamation suit against BC’s own Rafe Mair for comments that he made comparing a speech made by Kari Simpson on homosexuality to speeches made by Hitler and U.S. segregation era politicians. The Supreme Court of Canada allowed Rafe’s appeal, and in doing so, said that individuals who express honestly held opinions – as long as they are clearly opinions and not claims of fact – cannot be found guilty of defamation. The Supreme Court says that the defence applies where:

(a) the comment must be on a matter of public interest;

(b) the comment must be based on fact;

(c) the comment, though it can include inferences of fact, must be recognisable as comment;

(d) the comment must satisfy the following objective test: could any [person] honestly express that opinion on the proved facts?

(e) even though the comment satisfies the objective test the defence can be defeated if the plaintiff proves that the defendant was [subjectively] actuated by express malice.

Don’s case is the first defamation case that we’re aware of involving defamation by an environmental activist since the Supreme Court’s decision in WIC Radio, and Adair J. found that Don’s cigarette packages satisfied all of these criteria. In doing so, she made a couple of findings which will protect environmentalists and others seeking to comment on high profile public issues.

As Gage alludes to above, the campaign created by Staniford that led to Mainstream’s suit involved a series of cigarette package graphics – disseminated through his website, social media and print materials – containing images of the salmon farming industry and statements comparing it to the tobacco business. The essence of the comparison was more with regards to the industry’s PR tactics and corporate behaviour than medical matters, though many of the graphics raised specific health impacts for marine life and humans from its operations and products.

Staniford and his lawyer David Sutherland characterized Mainstream’s legal strategy as a SLAPP suit (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) – designed to shackle criticism of the company through the threat and reality of unwieldy legal costs. While Sutherland, acknowledged as one of the country’s top media and free speech lawyers, worked pro bono or at a reduced rate for much of the case, Don’s cause drew an outpouring of public support. In the end he raised $50,000 for his legal fund online, mostly through small donations, plus several other larger contributions from salmon fishermen’s unions, Norwegian anti-aquaculture groups and NGOs like West Coast Environmental Law.

I’ve had the privilege of working alongside both Don and Rafe for a number of years, doing battle with the Norwegian aquaculture giants around the world – and am proud of their significant contributions both to this cause and to the protection of free speech.

My assessment of Cermaq/Mainstream’s tactics in this case – apart from the legal dimensions, which are not my province – is that this Norwegian-Canadian Goliath allowed its own pride and bullying attitude to draw it into a battle it should never have waged.

Don had some valid points and he wasn’t the first to make them – in fact, the genesis of his campaign concept was a comment made by mutual ally and aquaculture critic Otto Langer in a documentary Don and I produced together a few years ago, called “Farmed Salmon Exposed”. In that film, the retired DFO senior scientist and manager equates the industry’s choice to deny steadfastly the growing body of evidence of its environmental impacts with Big Tobacco’s denial of health effects. But rather than agree to disagree with Don’s campaign, rebutting it through their own PR machine (which they did in abundance), they had to go one step further and bully him through the courts.

They saw Don was financially vulnerable and decided to attack him with a vengeance.

But Don had many assets on his side they failed to see: overwhelming public goodwill stemming from years of frustration with the industry – which translated into tens of thousands of dollars for Don’s legal fund – a skilled lawyer with a point to prove, and that little case won years ago at the Supreme Court by Rafe Mair.

In choosing to take this beef into the courts, Mainstream gambled and lost big time. Not only will they have to repay some of Staniford and Sutherland’s legals costs as part of the court’s judgement, but they suffered yet another black eye in the media.

As Andrew Gage asserts in his insightful post-mortem, Staniford’s case is a “victory for free speech” and “give[s] environmentalists some comfort that they won’t be held liable for any controversial statement made about corporations.” Yet it also underscores how heavily the legal process has become weighed toward corporations – and should prompt renewed discussion about tilting the balance more in the direction of free speech and social activism:

…the decision does nothing to address the broader problem of allowing large corporations with extremely deep pockets to drag their political opponents into court. The costs of going to court (and defamation cases are particularly expensive) are prohibitive for activists, but are a tax deductible expense for big companies. The result is an unequal playing field where those who speak out against environmental destruction risk being sued by deep-pocketed opponents.

Gage and Sutherland both offer solutions, including legislative changes to ban corporate lawsuits in defamation and specifically restricting SLAPP suits. Clearly, Don’s case brings these concerns to the fore again and it’s high time we had this discussion at the political level, instead of relying on costly courtroom battles to decide these matters one precedent at a time.

For the moment, though, I offer a pat on the back to my two friends and colleagues, Don and Rafe, for their ongoing commitment to the environment and free speech. Both have the balls to take on Goliath and the skill to land one between the eyes every now and then.

The Internet Addiction

September 2, 2012Media, UncategorizedInternet, Ray Grigg, Shades of GreenRay Grigg

Canada’s media guru, Marshall McLuhan, wrote that we invent things and thereafter they invent us. So, what invention are we being transformed into by the things we invent? Perhaps, if we truly understood the character of our inventions, we could anticipate the way they shape our perceptions, our awareness and our behaviour – how they form us as individuals and as societies. But we don’t. Consequently, we move blindly into the future, discovering after the fact how we have been shaped by the things we invent.

One of the most powerful and pervasive of our recent inventions has been the Internet, the digital magic that has compressed time into microseconds and space into irrelevance. The distance between individuals – wherever they may live – has been obliterated. McLuhan’s notion of the global village has become reality through the World Wide Web, Facebook, Twitter and Google. We extol the wonders of this connectivity, of knowing nearly instantaneously the events that occur everywhere around us – London, China and Mars are now closer than our next door neighbours. We know that we created the Internet. But what has it created?

Studies outlined in Newsweek magazine (July 16, 2012) give us an indication. In the US, one of the most connected societies, the effects of heavy use of the Internet among those under 50 years old are depression, loneliness, obsessive-compulsive and attention-deficit disorders, and even psychosis. The average American spends eight hours a day gazing into screens and receives 400 text messages per month; teenagers manage seven hours per day and average 3,700 texts per month. The Internet has accelerated human minds to the hyper speed of a frenetic buzz, their consciousness absorbed and mushed into the intensity and immediacy of ubiquitous digital signals. If 38 hours per week online is considered a reference for addiction, many people have reached this benchmark by mid-week. “This an issue as important and unprecedented as climate change,” notes Susan Greenfield, a pharmacology professor at Oxford University (Ibid.).

Studies in China, Korea and Taiwan suggest that many millions of people are literally addicted to the Internet, with a rate as high as 30 percent among teens. A Chinese study found heavy Internet users have “abnormal white matter” in their brains to accommodate the neurological changes required for excessive attention, control and immediate action the same physiological characteristics of those with obsessive-compulsive behaviour and attention-deficit disorders. Other Chinese studies found “structural abnormalities in gray matter” that were identical to those addicted to drugs and alcohol impairment to those functions related to speech, memory, motor control, emotion and sensory processing were typically 10 to 20 percent. One in eight Asians is deemed to have an unhealthy attachment to the Internet. An American study found 10 percent of iPhone users “fully addicted” to their devices, compulsively checking e-mail, text messages or their social network “all the time” or “every fifteen minutes”(Ibid.). Internet Addiction Disorder is now accepted as a treatable diagnosis in China, Korea and Taiwan.

The extreme examples are arresting: a young couple whose real infant died of neglect while they kept alive a virtual baby; 10 heavy users of the Web who died of blood clots from being immobile too long; universities unable to conduct campus addiction studies because they couldn’t find enough students who were willing to disconnect from the Internet; a man reduced to a psychotic wreck by the torrent of compliments and criticisms inundating his popular blog; the high-schooler who only ended his 24-hour-a-day iPhone use when committed to an asylum; a teenager who simultaneously maintained four separate avatars, with his real self “usually not my best one” and another teen who confronted the onerous task of replying to 100 new messages on his phone with the plaintive question, “how long do I have to do this?”

Serious as these problems are at the personal and psychological level, they suggest a society becoming progressively disconnected from the real world in which real people must function realistically. An objective and rational connection to reality becomes increasingly crucial as the speed and power of our technological world accelerates its disturbing impact on the planet’s ecosystems. As communities, we can’t make considered and apt decisions if we are disengaged and psychotic, if we are distracted and dysfunctional. And we can’t sustain thoughtful and persistent strategies if we are depressed and impulsive. The compulsive tendencies that accompany Internet addiction lock its victims into the repetition and inflexibility that has been the source of our problems. How do we break loose from the bonds that are creating our present environmental difficulties if we can’t be open, flexible and genuine, if the psychological and sociological conditions of our age are eroding our ability to act realistically?

Societies make their own futures. Granted, some exigencies surprise and disrupt our plans and intentions. But mostly we are the saviours and the victims of ourselves – probably truer now than at any time in our history. With our potential, as Susan Greenfield reminds us, “we could create the most wonderful world for our kids but that’s not going to happen if we’re in denial and people sleepwalk into these technologies and end up glassy-eyed zombies.”

Our hope must be that we become fully aware and carefully watchful of the way in which our inventions invent us. Education, study and diligence can spare us from being victims. We have much to know, very much to do and little time in which to act. The Internet has the incredible potential to suture our world into a comprehendible and manageable whole – it can be our salvation as easily as our ruination. We just need the mindfulness and discipline to use it wisely.

Cartoonist Murphy at it again: New video mocks Enbridge’s route animation

August 17, 2012Energy and Resources, Media, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and SupertankersBC Oil Pipelines and Supertankers, Enbridge, Oil and gasDamien Gillis

Province cartoonist Dan Murphy is back at it – poking fun at Enbridge’s laughable marketing campaign for the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline. (Incidentally, The Common Sense Canadian first alerted the public to Enbridge’s deceptive animated map back in February).

This time, it’s a spoof on the company’s bucolic animation of the pipeline and tanker route, derided by the public and media of late for its airbrushing out of the significant geolocial and environmental challanges to the project posed by BC’s rugged landscape and coast. This latest cartoon comes on the heels of the one he made several months ago, taking on the company’s newly-launched TV ad. That spoof stirred up major controversy as it emerged Enbridge had leaned on The Province’s parent company, Postmedia, to yank the cartoon, under threat of pulling a million dollars of advertising from the media chain. Murphy bravely went public with the situation, which helped the cartoon to go viral, giving both the paper and Enbridge a black eye in the process.

Check out Murphy’s latest cartoon: