Category Archives: Western Canada

Shades of Green – Don’t worry, Be Happy

Canada, Politics, Western Canada, , ,
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“Don’t worry, be happy” is the refuge of the deceived and the oblivious, the
attitude that people assume when they fail to recognize the reality of their
situation.

“Trust us,” says our federal government. “We are planning the future of all Canadians so we care about the environment.” Meanwhile, it subverts international agreements on greenhouse gas emissions, assiduously avoids discussion of any environmental issues, silences scientists in its employ, eliminates hundreds of them in a budget cutting program, and inflicts a 43 percent funding cut to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, one of the rare federal bodies that stands between responsible development and ecological havoc.

“Trust us,” says our BC government. “We will protect the environment and subject all projects to rigorous environmental examination. Since we are the custodians of the land, water and air, we will ensure that no damage occurs to the ecologies that sustain us all.” Meanwhile, BC’s Auditor General, John Doyle, issues a scathing report about the abject failure of the BC Environmental Assessment Office to monitor and enforce the few regulations it is assertive enough to require.

“Trust us,” say the corporations, “we will look after you with jobs and prosperity. We will protect your environment and your future.” Indeed. The salmon farming industry respects BC’s pristine West Coast so much that they use our waters as a dump for the sewage from their open net-pens, and they honour the natural ecology so much that they scare away marine mammals and expose wild salmon to the plague of farm-source sea lice and diseases. Enbridge is so protective of BC’s wilderness that it is willing to build a 1,172 km oil pipeline that will inevitably release oil into our pure rivers and lure the offshore tankers that will inevitably spill oil into our coastal treasure.

“Don’t worry, be happy” is the implicit message from our governments and corporations, working together to bring us a prosperous future. “We are in control, we know what we are doing,” they contend. “Together we will lead you to a Promised Land of endless prospects and great profits. The tomorrows will always be better than the todays if you will follow our course of progress, believe in the rewards of perpetual growth and suppress the urge to be doubtful and critical. Remember that environmental concerns are impediments to the glorious destiny that awaits us all.”

Maybe modern Germans have an insight we should pause to reflect upon. In an time of unparalleled national prosperity, they are in a funk. Notes Stephan Grunewald, a Cologne-based psychologist, “The Germans have at the moment a mood, a feeling that things can go to pieces, a feeling of being in a situation in which one is completely incapable of action” (Globe & Mail, June 25/11). This feeling of helplessness and powerlessness, this angst in a time of plenty, is a curious paradox rooted deeply in an undifferentiated anxiety. “People no longer believe in this culture of accumulation, they no longer believe in growth…. Nuclear power, speculation, Greece, these all strengthen their feeling that things cannot go on like this. There is a kind of vacuum of meaning” (Ibid.).

Nuclear power is not a British Columbian or a Canadian issue – although the Canadian government has recently divested itself of the Atomic Energy Canada Limited. Neither is the financial situation in Greece. But European and American monetary issues do trouble Canadians because the entire world is financially interconnected. And we have our own disquieting issues – nationally, provincially and locally – that we are not confronting honestly, openly and sensibly. A summer of record heat and rain, of storms and flooding don’t seem to have budged the delusion that all is normal with our planet’s weather – in just one province, Manitoba, fires have caused $700 million in damages and floods have inflicted $2.5 billion in crop losses. “Don’t worry, be happy” is an obliviousness that must eventually awaken to reality, just as local communities must awaken to the reality of stuffed landfills, polluting mines, old-growth logging, threatened wild salmon and badly supervised fish farms.

The German epiphany, an awakening we need here before we lead our communities, province and country into China’s ecological mess, is that the freeway of perpetual growth leads to a chasm without a bridge. Everything is getting bigger, faster, more complicated – and worse. “Don’t worry, be happy” is the illusion of well
being propagated by our governments and businesses, the engineered psychology of avoidance which doesn’t want anyone to notice that key elements of Earth’s ecology are rapidly degrading, unraveling or collapsing. The signs have already entered our consciousness if only we were attentive enough to heed them. A few glib lines in a Maclean’s article about colonizing space with bacteria to ensure the continued existence of life in the universe is a clue. “The world is doomed. Even if we avoid annihilation by climate change or nuclear holocaust, the inevitable expansion of the sun will surely do us in” (Maclean’s, July 25/11).

The sun’s threat is not likely to materialize for about 500 million years. But a nuclear holocaust could be as immediate as tomorrow. And a world doomed by climate change is within a few decades of near inevitability. Would massive species extinction or acetic and dead oceans garner any more attention? Shouldn’t the mere hint of any such threats elicit a panic alert and a reflexive cold sweat of fear in anyone conscious enough to register the meaning? Wouldn’t the normal and sane response be spontaneous riots in the streets and frantic marches to the seats of government to counter such a course of madness?

Unless, of course, “Don’t worry, be happy” has created its charm of indifference and cast the spell of numbness that treats impending environmental catastrophes as casually as any two-for-one sale or discontinued fashion line. The result is a tragic reversal that has inflated the trivial and trivialized the momentous.

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“Is Scientific Inquiry Incompatible with Government Information Control?”

Canada, Politics, Western Canada,
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This title is quoted from a publication by Jeffry Hutchings, Carl Walters and Richard Haedrich, back in May of 1987. Their paper dealt with government control of science information in regard to the cod fish crisis in the Atlantic Ocean, and the Kemano Completion issue in B.C.  Now, almost 25 years later, their title question is still appropriate when we consider the control of public communication by Dr. Kristina Miller, a DFO scientist at the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo. The control is in regard to her public discussion of her (and co-author’s) highly technical paper on genomic signature and mortality of migrating Sockeye salmon (Science, pages 214-217, Vol. 331, 14 January, 2011). The muzzling of this scientist originates primarily in the office of the Prime Minister of Canada, far more than in the DFO bureaucracy.

I have read the paper and it is unclear to me why there should be any reluctance on the part of government, at any level, to having such research discussed with the public. It is even less clear to me why Dr. Miller is constrained from discussing such work until after she appears before the Cohen Inquiry in late August. Her work is already open to the scientific community through publication in the prestigious journal, Science. To the extent that Dr. Miller and co-author’s work on wild salmon in the Fraser River may provide help in sustaining them, it should be open to the public now. Science should not be used for playing political games.

When one considers the behavior and record of governments, over the years and at the  very “top end”, there is cause to wonder what the real commitment is, deep down, in regard to sustaining wild salmon. The bitter history of issues such as Alcan/Kemano, salmon farming, and Fraser River gravel mining underlie such concern. In each case there appears to be an unspoken policy of business and industry first, and wild salmon and their environments second. Salmon-friendly measures such as the “wild salmon” policy and “no-net-loss” principle are positive, however, they seem to have less weight than they should when big business is involved.

Such doubt and concern has “big roots” as far back as the mid 1980s in the Kemano completion issue. A major element of debate involved the allocation of adequate flows in the Nechako River for the Chinook salmon population that reproduced there. Full review of this unfortunate part of history is not possible in a limited space. A listing of the chronology of events is given in my paper in the publication (GeoJournal, October 1996, Volume 40, nos. 1 & 2, page147 – 164).

A deeper and harsher indication of the misuse of scientists and their work is given in the Brief to the B.C. Utilities Commission Review Panel by Dr. J.H. Mundie (The Kemano Completion Project: An Example of Science in Government, 50 pages, February 1994).              

  • Dr. Mundie tells of the Schouwenburg report, the joint year-long work of about ten scientists, being buried. This report contained the best advice the scientists could offer regarding required flows for salmon in the Nechako River.
  • He reviews how DFO scientists and managers were told that the minister accepted Alcan’s prescribed flows as adequate.
  • He reviews how a group of DFO people and Alcan consultants, over a four day weekend period, came up with a program to make Alcan’s dictated flow regime work.
  • He testifies to his being pushed, unsuccessfully, to change his expert witness document regarding flows required for salmon.
  • He quotes the minister’s statement in regard to scientists who were concerned about the Alcan/Nechako River process, they should either agree with him, or “take their game and play elsewhere.”    

Except for the need for brevity, the experiences of other scientists could be added to this section. This history is not presented to re-acquaint people with the whole controversial history of the Alcan/Nechako episode. It is touched on to indicate that little has changed during about the last 25 years in the way governments manage science and scientists.

Organizations like DFO contain many very talented and dedicated people. The public does not gain the full benefit that they might offer in the present politicized and bureaucratized system. Both the public and the public servants deserve better.

As for the Fraser River salmon, they face a difficult and uncertain future even if only the freshwater environment is considered. It is a future marked by change and complexity. The complexity involves interaction of climate, flow regimes, thermal and forest cover changes. Added to these are, expanding human populations, water abstraction, pollution, and competing demands for catch.

There is urgent need for a structure that can focus on these major challenges now and into the years ahead. Such complex and expanding challenges cannot be dealt with without scientific knowledge. Whatever the Cohen Inquiry might do, it is not a substitute for science now, and into the future.  

Beyond the provision of knowledge, we need a structure that allows the public to know what the scientific findings and advice are. We need a structure that permits thoughtful public response and feed-back to such information.

If political people must over-ride science for reasons of “greater societal good”, which they have every right of do, let them do so openly. Then let them also explain it openly, rather than trying to shape and manipulate science, through the bureaucracy, to serve political or business ends.

G.F. Hartman, Ph.D.,

August 2011


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A father and daughter in Tsawwassen plead in vain with Gordon Campbell to build safer power lines through their community

Why the BC Liberal Government Doesn’t Value Your Life

Canada, Politics, Urban & Transport, WATER, Western Canada, , , ,
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There are many instances I’ve come across in the past number of years which suggest to me the Campbell/Clark Government places no real value on the lives of its citizens – this despite Premier Clark’s “families first” motto.

That’s a bold claim, I know – which is why I’m going to state my case here, drawing on several specific and egregious exhibits. I will not pretend to be detached – for me, the subject matter at hand could not be more personal.

Exhibit A I touched on in a piece last week about the South Fraser Perimeter Road. Amongst the 2,000-plus page documents for the proposed truck highway submitted in 2006 by the Ministry of Transportation – under the direction of then-Minister Kevin Falcon – is the acknowledgement that air pollution from the SFPR would result in increased human illness. The route passes within 500 meters of up to 16 schools in Delta and Surrey, many of them elementary-level, where young children stand to bear the brunt of these health impacts.

The document went on to find a silver lining in all this anticipated misery (this little gem is courtesy of the Delta citizen who actually read all 2,000-plus pages of the submission, Mr. Don Hunt):

“With increased air pollution there can possibly be increased employment (e.g., in the health sector) because of the economic activity associated with correcting the results of its impacts.” (Technical Volume 16, page 39)

I bring this up again – as I have on several occasions in videos and articles over the past four years – because: a) it is just so damned outrageous; b) I believe it epitomizes an attitude that pervades this Campbell/Clark Liberal regime (the above are the words of a civil servant, but it’s the minister and his government with whom the buck stops – it is they who established the culture from which this appalling thinking sprang and who ultimately signed off on its inclusion in the document).

I also bring it up again because, to my knowledge, it has been published only once int he mainstream media – in an article by the Province’s Brian Lewis in 2007.

Exhibit B also involves then-Minister of Transportation Kevin Falcon (if I leave the impression here that I don’t much care for this man, it’s only because I don’t).

Also back in 2006-2007, Mr. Falcon and his ministry went further beyond the pale in events and statements surrounding the protest of a highway through a unique and sensitive ecosystem at Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver. While dozens of citizens, including a number of grandmothers such as the tireless Betty Krawczyk, were being dragged off to jail and threatened with absurd charges of criminal contempt of court by the corporate lawyers of an American construction giant, Peter Kiewett, Mr. Falcon made the following statement at a meeting of the Lower Mainland Municipal Association:

“The Chinese don’t have the labour or environmental restrictions we do. It’s not like they have to do community consultations. They just say ‘we’re building a bridge’ and they move everyone out of there and get going within two weeks. Could you imagine if we could build like that?”

(The answer to Mr. Falcon’s question is Yes, with surprising ease).

This apparently drew chuckles, as it was, of course, said only in jest. I’m sure the Eagle Ridge protesters found it hilarious.

Working as a corporate video producer at the time, I became increasingly disturbed by what I was hearing out of Eagle Ridge – which finally prompted me to take my camera out to West Vancouver and spend several days in the yet-to-be-destroyed forest with some of the brave souls who sacrificed and risked so much to protect that magical place from unnecessary destruction (they were pushing for a tunnel route under the ridge, backed by some of the world’s top transportation engineers as a safer, cheaper, far more environmentally acceptable alternative to the overland route).

What followed was one of the saddest incidents I’ve witnessed, frankly, in my life.

I was in court the day Squamish First Nation elder and protestor Harriet Nahanee stood up to Madame Justice Brenda Brown and informed her that her court had no jurisdiction over Ms. Nahanee or her unceded ancestral territory, upon which she was protesting its wanton destruction.

Shortly thereafter, Madame Justice Brown sentenced a frail 71-year old Ms. Nahanee to two weeks in jail for contempt of court. Ms. Nahanee’s counsel and physician warned against incarceration for health reasons, but their pleas were ignored.

Once jailed at Surrey Pre-Trial Centre, Ms. Nahanee quickly contracted pneumonia and died a week later, after being belatedly evacuated to St. Paul’s Hospital.

I want to be clear that I cannot publicly impugn the court – for legal reasons, but even more so because I take the big-picture view. Everything about that highway and the conflict that arose from it stemmed from this Provincial Government – and that is where the blame lies.

Reflecting back today on these events from five years ago which first drew me into the world of environmental politics in BC and irrevocably changed my life, I think that more than the environmental destruction, it was the sheer indecency of the situation that boiled my blood. It was the skulduggery of a callous, even immoral government that compelled me to start putting my talents to better use.

Finally, for Exhibit C, we return to the town of Tsawwassen in Delta – perhaps this government’s favourite of all punching bags. These fine people have been subjected to so much crap over the years, it’s a wonder they keep soldiering on the way they do. In keeping with my theme of this government not valuing the lives of its citizens, I must raise the battle over high voltage power lines through Tsawwassen that culminated in the summer of 2008.

The community was concerned about the health risks associated with the electromagnetic radiation (EMF) that would emanate from new high-voltage power lines set to pass right through the backyards of some 150 homes and over the grounds of the local high school. All they asked was for the government to properly bury and shield the lines – a far safer method, one which studies they paid significant sums of their own money to retain showed would be very comparable in cost to the overhead method.

There is much debate about EMF, which is why these citizens were calling for the Precautionary Principle to be applied (now that the World Health Organization has recognized EMF as a 2b possible carcinogen in a recent landmark report, there is even less scientific doubt as to the legitimacy of these concerns).

Some 2,500 citizens from this small community gathered one weekend at the high school to demand the government bury the lines. Among the expert speakers and community leaders they heard from was the head of Childhood Leukemia at Children’s Hospital, Dr. Jason Ford. Here’s what he told the crowd:

“Since this whole power line issue has come up in Tsawwassen I’ve had a lot of questions from people here, ‘Are my children going to be at risk?’ And I have to tell you that I don’t know – and the sad thing is that nobody really knows. This is an area of great controversy and intense research in the medical field…And the safe thing, when you don’t know, is to bury the lines.”

In the heat of the public backlash during that intense summer, Gordon Campbell summed up in a television interview his decision to ignore the community’s request – with the cold-eyed precision of a Swiss banker:

“The BC Utilities Commission said that we have to do what’s most cost-effective, so they are going ahead with that line.”

Most cost-effective. That’s it. Sorry, ma’am, we would have saved little Billy from cancer but the bean counters couldn’t make the business case.

Under no circumstances would this excuse pass muster with any reasonable, moral person – even if it were true…But it wasn’t.

First, Campbell pretended as though the BCUC and the BC Transmission Corporation building the lines weren’t already doing exactly what they were directed to do by him. Second, it didn’t prove to be more cost-effective – not by a long shot.

Taxpayers’ dollars were first used to spy on, intimidate, and harass though the courts women and children of the families who spoke out loudest against the lines. An expensive offensive was waged against them involving camera crews, police, helicopters, lawyers, round-the-clock work crews on overtime and a massive public relations effort.

And in the end, the government bought up many of the houses affected by the lines from families driven from their neighbourhoods of many years and flipped them at a loss of tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars to new families willing to take the risks or oblivious to them.

There was nothing cost-effective about the program. Nor was there anything humane or moral about the way Premier Campbell behaved.

Of course, a very similar issue of electromagnetic radiation connected to new BC Hydro equipment has reared its head of late – that being the “smart” meters now provoking widespread public outrage.

Once again this government and BC Hydro are playing fast and loose with the available science and the health of British Columbians. Energy Minister Rich Coleman recently brushed off citizens’ concerns with the following claim: “The smart meters are outside the home, and their emissions are one hundredth the power of a cell phone. If you stand next to the meter for 20 years, the radiation is the same as a 30-minute cell phone call.” This is all post-WHO report acknowledging the serious cancer concerns with EMF…But we’ll deal more with “smart” meters in subsequent columns.

I’m sure many of you have other worthy examples to add to the above list, from Bill 30 to Fish Lake, our appalling record on child poverty, mental health care, the Downtown Eastside – take your pick. Feel free to share them in our comments section and we’ll compare notes.

I therefore rest my case for now and leave it to readers to judge for themselves whether this gang deserves the privilege and responsibility of serving the people of BC for another term.

There is no doubt in my mind the Campbell/Clark Liberals care very much about your vote – just not the person casting it.


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DFO's Dr. Kristi Miller - recently muzzled from discussing her bombshell salmon disease findings, published in the prestigious journal Science earlier this year

Latest DFO Scientist Muzzling Part of Bigger Pattern Ignored by Media

Canada, Fisheries, Politics, Western Canada, ,
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The revelation by the Sun and the Province that a scientist in DFO, Dr. Kristi Miller, has been muzzled by the DFO and the Privy Council (which supports the Prime Minister’s Office) simply underscores how badly they have covered environmental matters in general and salmon concerns specifically.
 
For example, back in the mid-nineties there was a hell of a row over the Kemano Completion Project which involved taking some 90% of the Nechako River (near Prince George) which would have seriously impeded the large Sockeye runs into the Stuart River system. The permission for Alcan to do this was given, over the objections of fish scientists who had done a large study on the project and pointed out the folly it was. These scientists were hushed up by DFO and Tom Siddon, Fisheries Minister, who called it an “acceptable risk”. Several of these scientists were given early retirement or had their lives made so miserable that they got out. During this war, for war is what it was, these former DFO scientists were branded the “dissident scientists” by Alcan, a sobriquet they bore with great pride. They had been true to the public of Canada and to themselves.
 
The report to which I referred was buried by DFO and it came to me, 7 years later, in the height of the fray, in the traditional brown envelope.
 
None of this was explored by the media except Ben Meisner of CJPG in Prince George and me on CKNW – “explored” is hardly the term for we fought like cornered Tigers.
 
This leaked report had considerable influence on the BC Utilities Commission whose findings prompted then Premier Harcourt to tube KCP.
 
One of my treasured possessions is a poster showing a salmon jumping up a waterfall which all the “dissident” scientists signed in my honour. They were wonderful men. One of them, Gordon Hartman, was my constant adviser during the fight.
 
Please forgive me if I sound egocentric but what I’m telling you is the truth. Amongst the media I was first and perhaps only member supporting Alexandra Morton from the beginning. I reported DFO threats to arrest Ms Morton for “illegal testing” Pink Salmon smolts and their own fake testing in the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong tools. I helped expose the ridiculous DFO denial of escaping farmed fish and its idiotic advice to the Provincial government.
 
Editorial after editorial I pointed out that the same government department mandated to protect our salmon (DFO) were official shills for the fish farm industry.
 
The story is a long one but I simply emphasize that the media, especially the then Canwest (now in drag as Postmedia) and the Black Press were silent throughout.
 
I despair for the pressure Alexandra Morton has gone through and continues to suffer, more now, perhaps, than at any time. As she bears this terrific load on her back the media either doesn’t report what she and her allies are doing or misreport and belittle them.
 
A case in point – a couple of weeks ago a memo from a well respected DFO scientist, Dr. Brent Hargreaves, emerged from the documents revealed through the Cohen Commission into collapsing Fraser sockeye stocks. This from The Common Sense Canadian:
 
The 2003 memo recently made public via the Cohen Commission on collapsing Fraser sockeye stocks contains some truly shocking passages for their candour and for how clearly they vindicate those who have been critical of DFO’s salmon farm science. (emphasis mine) Written by a respected DFO scientist, Dr. Brent Hargreaves, the memo severely attacks the credibility of a colleague, key salmon farm apologist Dr. Dick Beamish, whose science Hargreaves labels as “shoddy” and “unethical”, among other pejoratives. Here are a couple of choice passages:
 
“The research on sea lice that has been conducted by Beamish has been strongly and widely criticized in both the scientific community and the public media…I think to a large degree it was the inadequacies of Beamish’s research and conclusions that led to the lack of public confidence in DFO science…

…I also do not want to be directly associated, either professionally or personally, with either Beamish or his research…He always does exactly as he pleases, regardless of the (often negative) impacts on DFO staff and research programs.“
 
And what did the media do with this? Zilch!
 
Here we have the scientist responsible for the Campbell/Clark government’s policy on fish farms exposed as “shoddy science” and Beamish as a shill for the Fish Farmers, and the print media does not consider this of any interest to the great unwashed! Imagine the millions of fish that died because the provincial government followed Beamish not Hargreaves!
 
The Vancouver Sun is “Seriously Westcoast”???
 
Better late than never, I suppose, but the media owes the public big time and that debt must be paid by full coverage of environmental issues even when to do so upsets advertisers.
 
Postmedia using Freedom of Information, did, to their credit, expose the egregious silencing of Kristi Miller. Are they, then, making amends?
 
Let’s hope so, although I’m bound to say that the environmentalist community has found ways around the “see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil” monkey business of the mainstream media.
 
But it could do with all the help it can get, including a media that may finally have found its tongue.
 
 
 

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UBCM “Best Practice” and “Excellence awards” are for CAO’s

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada,
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The Union of BC Municipalities is a powerful bureaucracy, forging education, political policies, directives and awards for excellence.  Good intentions have resulted in unintended consequences because ‘best practices’ and ‘excellence awards’ are not community based decision making, and the benefactors are not the communities, but chief administrators. 

How?  Can you imagine how much prestige and awe you would accrue, if you could format or implement ‘best management practices’ and obtain a $10 Million grant for your community?  You might be in demand to obtain millions for other small towns all over BC and possibly across Canada, find yourself receiving ‘excellence awards’ and happily implementing more ‘best practices’ elsewhere. 

But wait a minute… ‘Best management practices’ are in the Request for Decision regarding Cayoosh Creek campground in 2011.  Would anyone put that parched brown and almost empty campsite into the ‘best practice’ in any category?  The treatment of the previous campsite operators with a promise of a new lease for over a year?  Putting forth District plans to the Chamber of Commerce prior to alerting the operators of their loss of home and livelihood?  The LRA find nothing excellent in this. 

The $10,127,000 ‘water’ tax grant?  We have already published details for everyone’s scrutiny in ‘Not One Thin Dime’, Lillooet News, July 6, 2011. 

The 2010 tax assessment comparisons (available online) show per capita costs for Ashcroft $293, Barriere $256, Cache Creek $112, 100 Mile $281, Oliver $184, Pemberton $284 and Lillooet at $336.  Lillooet  proposes (per the $10,127,000 grant) to increase $250 per year, along with water metering charges.  What is ‘best practice’ when it chases gardeners away from their growing paradise?  What is ‘best practice’ when increasing our carbon footprint with more pumps for water delivery?

The intention of the UBCM ‘best practices’ and ‘awards for excellence’ with respect to certain matters fall far short of beneficial to Lillooet.  

On another note, the Premier’s office is contemplating a new bureaucrat or bureaucracy called ‘Municipal Auditor General’ and ‘best practices’ were referenced in conversations.  One comment stated emphatically ‘the new municipal auditor general should be at arms length from the UBCM.’  Those on the feedback side seemed to be in accord on that point.

The only way to work for change in any community is by voting in councilors with the entire community at heart.  

Anne-Marie Anderson
Secretary/Treasurer
Lillooet Ratepayers Association

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Campbell/Clark Libs Have No Credibility – HST Promises Meaningless

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I commented here last week upon Premier Clark’s silence on all the great issues she faces and questioned what her policies will be. I expect no answer because she wants to put all Gordon Campbell did into the darkest corner of the cupboard. The strategy is “that was then and now is now”; I am Premier Clark and my responsibility started last March 14 when I was sworn in.

This, as I will show, is not so. It started the day she became a Campbell cabinet minister in May 2001.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane but start with a current issue – what does the HST have in common with the environment? The answer to this will weave an unbroken and unbreakable thread back to 2001.

Both the HST end the environment ask public acceptance based upon the credibility of the Campbell/Clark government – a government that has lied through its teeth for the seemingly endless decade-plus they have been in power.

Surely no one, not even the Fraser Institute, believes that the Liberal government will drop the HST to 10% in 2014!

First of all, God’s mercy will see that they’re no longer in power so they won’t be around to keep a pledge they never intended to keep on the first place. If God is just and not merciful, there isn’t a chance that a future Liberal government will keep that promise. In short, Ms. Clark has made a pledge she will never redeem and may never be required to.
 
All government policy depends upon credibility. Unfortunately, the public has learned to expect some government deceit but usually it’s deceit by way of exaggeration – rather like the gilding of the lily practiced in most societies in order to stay at peace with one another. We learn how to discount the statements made – political statements are expected to have a measure of barnyard droppings mixed in. As former New York governor Mario Cuomo said, “You campaign in poetry and govern in prose.”
 
But this is different. Big time. We’re talking about major league falsehoods.
 
I call this government the “Campbell/Clark” government for that’s what it is. Premier Clark participated in the deceit when she was in government, accepted it uncritically when she was a talk show host, and perpetuates it in office by not dealing with it.
 
It started when Campbell, after holding the NDP to the highest standards of probity, somehow forgot that idealism when he was thrown into jail for drunk driving. Christy Clark, Education Minister, offered not a whisper of criticism. Like all good Liberal toadies, she went along.
 
He lied about BC Rail, Fish Farms and private power.
 
With BC Rail, he pledged in two elections including the one that made him premier that he would not privatize BC Rail (as did Ms. Clark, as co-author of the Liberals’ 2001 campaign platform). Of course, he did and Clark went along with him at the time, during her radio career and to this date.
 
Not a peep out of Clark, on air or in office, as Campbell settled the Basi-Virk case just before he, former Finance Minister Gary Collins, and Sir Hiss, Patrick Kinsella, were to give evidence.
 
Premier Campbell let fish farms expand exponentially saying that he was following the best science available. The public now knows what opponents of fish farms have always known – the scientist he was listening to was a disgrace to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and a fish farm industry suck. He was out of synch with every fish biologist in the world that deals with this issue. Christy Clark has been silent since the beginning and is silent now.
 
With private power companies (IPPS) the Campbell/Clark government has uttered nothing but falsehoods. I hate to dwell on poor old former Finance Minister Colin Hansen because he seems to be such a nice guy, but in a video blog the Liberals have now erased, he made half a dozen statements about so-called “run of river” policy that were plainly and simply falsehoods. These falsehoods were not minor little errors – they went to the root of the matter. Ms. Clark has not uttered a word of criticism – or strangely support – of this disastrous policy which even the Vancouver Province called “folly” and which a recent op-ed in the Vancouver Sun, published under the aegis of former Fraser Institute “fellow”, Fazil Milhar, roundly criticized.
 
This policy forces BC Hydro to buy from IPPs power they don’t need and must thus export at a 50%+ loss or use it at double or more what they can make it for themselves. This cost Hydro $600,000,000 last year and this is just the beginning of the reckoning. Not a word from our premier.
 
We have seen this policy drive BC Hydro to where they would be, if in the private sector, in bankruptcy protection with much worse to come. Not a squeak of criticism or concern from Ms. Clark.

We’ve seen this policy destroy one river, and its ecology, after another yet not a word from the premier at the time the policy was made when she was a cabinet member, later as a talk show host, or now as premier. Premier Clark, a supporter of the Prosperity Mine proposal at Fish Lake, now in charge of energy and the demise of BC Hydro, acts as if nothing was happening. And now she has pipelines and tankers to deal with.
 
It is critical to understand that pipeline leaks and tanker accidents are not risks but certainties. The Liberal government told the Federal government, in writing, some years ago that it did not oppose super tankers on the coast. In the recent Premiers Conference Ms. Clark hedged on the pipeline issue; she refused to take a stand.
 
This issue, like the private power issue, has no middle ground as in “you can’t be a little bit pregnant.” All the evidence she ever needs is there in logic – an unfettered risk is a calamity in waiting – and evidence of the colossal negligence of pipeline operators generally and Enbridge specifically. The decision is “yes” or “no” and there will never be more information needed than the premier presently possesses.

Silence implies consent. One of the penalties of consenting to the Liberal record is that no credibility remains.
 
As it is with the HST, as it is with the disgraceful deceit by this government from the outset, so it must be predicted for the future – an utter lack of credibility.
 
It is a millstone around Premier Clark’s neck she consented to.

It’s a millstone she can never be rid of.

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Christy Clark’s Silence on the Big Questions

Canada, Politics, WATER, Western Canada,
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I worry a lot when politicians are talking – usually double or even triple talk. Did I do that when I was in government?…Well it takes one to know one.
 
I worry even more when they say nothing, something that Premier Christy Clark finds impossible when fudging on motherhood “issues” and tossing out the usual barnyard droppings. What Premier Clark is very good at is deathly silence on matters of great consequence.
 
What is the premier’s stance on Independent Power Projects (IPPS) in the environmental sense?
 
Does she care about the enormous environmental impact they have? Has she considered the clouding of the river during construction? Is she concerned that the main river goes down to a trickle when it’s diverted into a tunnel? Does she concern herself with the clear-cutting for roads and transmission lines? It would be good to know.
 
Her only environmental pronouncement I know of is her support of the Fish Lake project which is not, to say the least, encouraging.
 
Does the premier care that because her government has forced BC Hydro to take IPP power when it doesn’t need it, Hydro must either sell it at a loss or use it instead its own much less expensive power? Does she even understand this? I ask because her spokesperson on the political panel on CBC at 7:40AM on Mondays clearly doesn’t.
 
Does the premier know that BC Hydro is carrying over $50 BILLION dollars in obligations to IPPs and that this increases with every new contract?
 
Surely Ms. Clark understands that this is the prescription for bankruptcy – or does she? Maybe she’s never had to balance a home budget and doesn’t comprehend these things.
 
Does the premier know that early in the Campbell regime – when she was deputy leader – her government told the federal government that it had no objection to oil tanker traffic on our coast? Do we take from her silence that even though a spill (and there are no good ones) is a certainty she doesn’t understand this or just couldn’t care less?
 
Moreover, if she and her government support these issues, why aren’t they boasting about them as good politicians always do when, like Jack Horner, they pull out a plum?
 
And what about pipelines? The Enbridge and Kinder Morgan lines will crisscross the province, over its most sensitive terrain and again, a spill is not a risk but a certainty – does that concern her?
 
Come to think on it, does the premier understand and does she care that BC hardly makes a dime out of these catastrophic oil transport deals?
 
What’s the premier’s attitude to the Highways Ministry paving agricultural land? Threatening sensitive wildlife preserves (in the case of Eagleridge they just paved it) and wildlife sanctuaries?
 
Does Christy Clark care that the Ministry of Environment – the resident eunuch in her harem – has virtually nothing to say on these matters because, thanks to her government, it’s a mere shell of its former self?
 
Does she care about anything except money?
 
Ah, Rafe, you must be fair here for she does say she cares for the family, although you’d never know it by the record of her government.

I think that the voters of BC are entitled to specific answers to these specific questions.
 
I also think that the best we can expect is platitudinous bullshit.
 
When Premier Clark flouts the fixed election term legislation passed by her and her government accompanied by passionate concern for democracy and fair play and calls a snap election, she will be asked these questions.
 
The Liberals were spared these questions in 2009 during an appalling campaign by the NDP – I don’t think they’ll be so lucky next time.
 
In the meantime, Damien Gillis and I of the Common Sense Canadian will be taking these issues by the internet and in person to every corner of the province and she should know that.
 

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Dick Beamish, a key government apologist for fish farms, has been thoroughly discredited by a colleague

Salmon Farm Apologist’s “Shoddy Science” Outed by DFO Colleague’s Memo

Canada, Politics, Western Canada,
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“Blockbuster” hardly describes an internal DFO memo recently uncovered through the Cohen Commission on collapsing Fraser sockeye stocks – now made public in a blog by Don Staniford, the doughty fighter against Atlantic Salmon fish farmers, which battle has included a lawsuit by the shameless bastards.

The 2003 memo (download here) contains some truly shocking passages for their candour and for how clearly they vindicate those who have been critical of DFO’s salmon farm science. Written by a respected DFO scientist, Dr. Brent Hargreaves, the memo severely attacks the credibility of a colleague, key salmon farm apologist Dr. Dick Beamish, whose science Hargreaves labels as “shoddy” and “unethical”, among other pejoratives. Here are a couple of choice passages:

“The research on sea lice that has been conducted by Beamish has been strongly and widely criticized in both the scientific community and the public media…I think to a large degree it was the inadequacies of Beamish’s research and conclusions that led to the lack of public confidence in DFO science…

…I also do not want to be directly associated, either professionally or personally, with either Beamish or his research…He always does exactly as he pleases, regardless of the (often negative) impacts on DFO staff and research programs.”

First, a bit of background.

For nearly a decade we who were fighting Atlantic Salmon fish farms, led by the intrepid Alexandra Morton, were told by the provincial government that the “science” was on the side of the fish farms and that they would continue to permit the industry to expand.

The international scientific community familiar with the issue of sea lice from fish farms killing migrating Pacific Salmon supported her fight against. Her findings were published and peer-reviewed; several fish biologists also published papers condemning fish farms and Dr. Daniel Pauly of UBC, one of the most distinguished scientists in the world according to Scientific American, said flatly “the debate is over.”

Still, the Campbell government had the “science on their side.”

At the request of Premier Campbell, I presented him with an analysis of the scientific evidence which he ignored. He had the “science on his side.”

On it went – study begat study, all of which endorsed Alexandra Morton’s findings.

Still, the government pressed on. And so did Alex, who brought lawsuits, wrote, marched, all at considerable personal expense – not to mention the huge emotional beating she took.

And the Campbell government maintained that it had the “science on its side.” (Needless to say, Premier Christy Clark was part of that government in the critical early days.)

Alex has had lots of supporters very much including her “Boswell,” Don Staniford – here is an excerpt from is his July 13 release:

…The memo went on to describe Dr. Beamish’s scientific research as “unethical”, “unprofessional” and a “‘lapse’ in judgment”.

In his testimony to the Cohen Inquiry last week, which saw his career flash before his eyes like Klingons off the starboard bow of the Star Trek ship ‘The Enterprise’, Dr. Beamish said: “Maybe it’s aliens” before adding unbelievably: “Obviously I don’t believe in aliens”.

Dr. Beamish certainly doesn’t believe that sea lice from salmon farms are killing wild salmon and spent his career staunchly defending the Norwegian-owned salmon farming industry.  At last year’s ‘Sea Lice 2010’ conference in Victoria, Dr. Beamish refused to answer questions on sea lice from salmon farms.  This was even more incredible since Dr. Beamish was the plenary speaker in a session on ‘Wild/Farmed Interactions’.

The audience in the public gallery at the Cohen Inquiry last week were left in no doubt which side Dr. Beamish was on when he greeted Mary-Ellen Walling, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association.  “My inspiration,” he gushed as he hugged her like an old flame.

“This is bad science?” asked lawyer Greg McDade as he ripped apart Dr. Beamish’s scientific work.  Thankfully, Dr. Beamish recently called last orders on his career with the DFO.  His future scientific credibility would be in jeopardy otherwise.

I find it hard to speak on this – a rare thing for me – my anger is so intense. The scientist Campbell and co. relied upon so stubbornly was, according to a respected colleague, “unethical” and “unprofessional”.

Just one or two thoughts:

  • The shit and abuse we all have taken, most especially Alex, at the hands of environmental turncoats like Patrick Moore to say nothing of Liberal Party hacks.
  • The refusal of the government to apply the “precautionary principle” – it’s the law – placing the onus of proof on the industry not private citizens.
  • The deliberate bias of the media who allowed the fish farm flack, Mary-Ellen Walling, to roam the op-ed pages virtually at will…and their utter lack of any scrutiny.
  • The silence of the media columnists who trashed the government when it was NDP and have been struck dumb on this issue.
  • The lawsuits Alex took and won and paid for – to a large extent – out of her own pocket.
  • The lies of the industry, deliberate lies – I say deliberate because the largest shareholder of the biggest company, Marine Harvest, admitted that sea lice were slaughtering migrating wild salmon.
  • The terrific support we’ve all had from the decent public which BC is mostly made up of.
  • Most of all, the appalling loss of millions of our precious salmon – destroyed because the Liberal government consciously and deliberately refused to look at the massive evidence.    

Will the Clark Liberals do the decent thing and apologize?
 
Not a chance. The moral compass of this bunch was set when Campbell got thrown in jail for drunk driving and imposed no penalty on himself.
 
Will they immediately act to stop all new licenses and give the present farmers 60 days to dismantle and leave?
 
You have to be kidding! Admit error? Bite the hand that feeds them? Show a little contriteness?
 
Hell will definitely freeze over before that happens.
 
Every single Liberal MLA from 2001 until now ought to hang their heads in shame.
 
I’m sure I speak for Alexandra Morton, her loyal “Boswell”, Don Staniford, and the thousands of citizens who have supported what often looked like a lost cause, in saying that the vindication of Dr. Hargreaves’ evidence is swamped by the sense of the massive loss of our province’s soul, the Pacific salmon, which would have lived were if not for deceit and negligence of a government which, if they had an ounce of decency, would resign en masse.

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