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Sockeye haul linked aboriginal fishery to black market, DFO believes

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From the Globe and Mail – May 18, 2011

by Mark Hume

When federal investigators in British Columbia found 345,000 sockeye
stored in 110 industrial freezers, they thought they were onto a major
black market operation for salmon caught in aboriginal food fisheries.

But
Project Ice Storm, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans intelligence
operation that found the salmon in 2005, ran out of funding and wasn’t
able to track the fish from the cold storage plants to their final
destination, the Cohen Commission heard on Tuesday.

It has long been suspected in B.C. that the aboriginal fishery is a
cover for operations, with possible organized crime links, that trade in
salmon the way others trade in drugs. Native leaders have rejected such
allegations, saying their communities need all the fish they catch
because salmon are a cultural staple in everything from births to
funeral feasts.

DFO documents filed with the commission, which is
investigating the collapse of sockeye salmon populations in the Fraser
River, show enforcement officials felt the fish, caught under “food,
social and ceremonial” licences, were destined to go into the commercial
market.

“The FSC First Nations fishery on the Lower Fraser River
is largely out of control and should be considered in all contexts, a
commercial fishery,” states a DFO intelligence assessment of Project Ice
Storm.

“The Department of Fisheries and Oceans are unable to
effectively control the illegal sales of FSC salmon,” it states. “A
major change is needed in fisheries laws to effectively deal with the
commercial processing and storage of FSC fish.”

Another document,
recording a meeting of DFO enforcement officers in April, 2010, states
that “97 per cent of FSC harvest in LFR [Lower Fraser River] is thought
to be sold.”

Scott Coultish, regional chief of DFO’s Intelligence
and Investigation Services, said in testimony the estimate was based on
the personal comments of field officers, not from any research. But he
felt it was accurate.

Each year, bands are allocated a catch of
salmon to cover their food, social and ceremonial needs. Some years,
when there is a surplus of fish, they are also allowed “economic
opportunity” catches, which can be sold. In 2005, only 5,500 sockeye
were caught in the native EO fishery on the Fraser.

Mr. Coultish
said the 345,000 sockeye in cold storage plants in the Lower Mainland
and on Vancouver Island were registered to individuals and companies.
The fish, which were legally stored, were flash frozen, or smoked and in
vacuum packaging.

“Most or all of this was consistent with what
you would see for commercial fish,” he said. “This product was simply
not for food, societal and ceremonial use.”

Randy Nelson, DFO’s
director of conservation and protection on the Pacific coast, told the
commission his department didn’t have the resources to follow up on the
find, and he doubted they would in the future because he has been told
significant cutbacks are coming.

In an interview outside the
hearings, Ernie Crey, a fisheries adviser for the Sto:lo Nation, which
fishes on the Lower Fraser, rejected the implications of the testimony
of the two DFO officials.

He said 950,000 FSC sockeye were caught
by native communities in the Fraser in 2005, and because the season was
short and intense, a large number of fish arrived quickly and went into
commercial freezers.

“About one third of our fish were in cold storage. This would not be unusual,” he said.

Mr. Crey said salmon are served at almost every ceremony.

“If
a member of my community passes away, you’d get 250 to 1,000 people
attending the funeral. Fish would be served. It’s the same at weddings,
birthdays. … And that’s a lot of fish,” he said.

About 40,000
aboriginal people live in Metro Vancouver and about 15,000 are in the
Fraser Valley. It’s not clear how many of them get FSC salmon.

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Time Magazine: Was Fukushima a China Syndrome?

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From Time Magazine’s Ecocentric Blog – May 16, 2011

by Eben Harrell

The China Syndrome refers to a scenario in which a molten nuclear
reactor core could could fission its way through its containment vessel,
melt through the basement of the power plant and down into the earth.
While a molten reactor core wouldn’t burn “all the way through to China”
it could enter the soil and water table and cause huge contamination in
the crops and drinking water around the power plant. It’s a nightmare
scenario,the stuff of movies. And it might just have happened at Fukushima.

Last week, plant operator Tepco sent engineers in to recalibrate
water level gauges in reactor number 1. They made an alarming discovery:
virtually all the fuel in the core had melted down. That means that the
zirconium alloy tubes that hold the uranium fuel and the fuel itself
lies in a clump—either at the bottom of the pressure vessel, or in the
basement below or possibly even outside the containment building.
Engineers don’t know for sure, though current temperature readings
suggest that fission inside the reactor core has definitely ceased for
good (i.e. there will be no further melting).

Anecdotal evidence doesn’t bode well for how far the fuel melted:
Tepco has been pumping thousands of tons of water onto reactor 1 to try
to cool it—yet the water level in the containment vessel is too low to
run an emergency cooling system. That means the water is escaping
somewhere on a course cut by molten fuel–probably into the basement of
the reactor building, though it’s also possible it melted through
everything into the earth.

Many experts say a full-blown China syndrome is unlikely in large
part because the fuel from the type of reactors at Fukushima is designed
in such a way that it probably won’t sustain “recriticality” once
meltdown occurs. What’s more,  boron, which slows nuclear reactions, was
pumped into the cooling water of the reactor after the initial accident
to prevent the core from going “critical” again.

But assuming a worst case scenario hasn’t occurred, having so much
highly radioactive water sloshing around the basement is going to make
cleanup even more difficult. Tepco says it will come up with a new plan
to stabilize the reactor by Tuesday—and their main task will be to find a
way to suck up the water and store it while simultaneously ensuring the
reactor core remains cool. It’s unclear how this will be achieved, but
according to press reports, a giant water-storage barge – a Megafloat –
has been dispatched to Fukushima as a possible storage site for
contaminated water, and will arrive at the end of the month.

Tepco also said that it has started preparatory work for the
construction of a cover for unit 1’s reactor building, which had its
roof blown off by a hydrogen explosion on March 12.  The cover is to be
built as a temporary measure to prevent the release of radioactive
substances until further measures can be put in place, Nature News reported.

Meanwhile, around 5,000 residents in two towns, Kawamata and Iitate,
some 30 km from the power plant—well beyond the the 20 km exclusion
zone–were evacuated on Monday. More evacuations are expected in the
coming days as Tepco continues to struggle with the crisis. Around 
3,400 cows, 31,500 pigs and 630,000 chickens will soon be slaughtered
inside the Fukushima exclusion zone as feeding them has proven to be
impossible.

It’s difficult to say for sure just how bad things are at the plant
itself—high radioactive levels mean that engineers can’t get close to
the reactor cores themselves and can only make inferences, deductions
and guesses about the extent of the damage. As Alexis Madrigal of the Atlantic has
pointed out, we’ve faced this uncertainty—and troubling surprises—
before. Eight months after the Three Mile Island accident, “an Oak Ridge
National Laboratory scientist declared, ‘Little, if any, fuel melting
occurred, even though the reactor core was uncovered. The safety systems
functioned reliably.’ A few years later, robotic sorties into the area
revealed that half the core — not ‘little, if any’ — had melted down.”

I and TIME’s Kiev-based stringer recently published a piece for TIME from
Chernobyl in Ukraine, where clean-up efforts continue a full 25 years
after the accident. Whatever the end game at Fukushima, get your head
around this, folks: it is going to be a huge mess for a long time yet.

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B.C. log exports soar on new Chinese demand

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From the Vancouver Sun – May 17, 2011

by Gordon Hamilton

METRO VANCOUVER – When Port Alberni Mayor Ken McRae sees a freighter leaving his coastal sawmilling town loaded with wood, the pride he once felt has turned to a deep concern for the future of the British Columbia coastal forest industry.

Once those ships were loaded with lumber. Now, half the cargo is logs.

Log exports have exploded in B.C. in the last few months, largely to feed China’s voracious appetite for fibre. McRae is not opposed to exports; they have a place in a healthy industry, he said. But he fears China’s appetite for B.C. logs is going to cut into manufacturing here.

“China, Korea and Japan are paying more for logs than most of our sawmillers can afford. It’s a huge issue that’s going to come back to bite us,” he said in an interview.

Continue reading B.C. log exports soar on new Chinese demand →

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Thoughts on Elizabeth May, MP

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Maybe one reason why so many young people have not been engaged in politics much
is that adults have wanted to protect them from what had become a rather hopeless
and unproductive process. But maybe all that can change.

Briony Penn once said of this riding that it has a “peculiar ability to mimic
future national political trends”. If this assessment is correct, maybe we can
allow ourselves to feel hopeful. Not really because a certain party has elected its first MP here, but because
politics has become something we can wish for our children to be involved in. The
night Briony conceded victory to Gary Lunn, she urged him to work towards a more
civil parliament, respect for democracy and its institutions. When she stepped
down from the stage at that Conservative victory party, a woman who was friends
with her parents came up to her, to tell her that her parents would have been
proud of her that night.

Almost three years later we did something in this riding that almost no one
believed we could do: we elected Elizabeth May, a woman who has dedicated her life
to protecting the things that are under vicious assault from the
consumption-growth cancer of our current economic system.

There is certainly something special about our community, with its hig levels of
volunteer involvement, citizens willing to set aside partisanship for the greater
good, the highest level of voter participation in all of Canada – and it is being
noticed. For intance, read film-maker/activist Damien Gillis’ article on
“Bottling that magic salt spring formula”.

I feel so lucky to live here! What is wonderful about this place was epitomized
when I went into the midwifery clinic where the Green party office was on election
day. To me, if felt a bit like entering a sacred space. Here were these people I
love, who had put their lives on hold to do this amazing thing. They were working
to make sure everyone who wanted to, even if they did not have an address to call
home or other trappings of “success”, got their chance to vote. There was this
quiet joy in that office of new birth – and even outside, as I wandered around
town, beaming at people as we lived this historic moment.

Where do we go from here? It is tempting to want to grow the Green party. I know
many across the country who are inspired by the “Vision Green” platform it has
offered us, available not just in time for elections, but 365 days a year. I sense
there is huge potential there.

But I know that there is good within each human being, also within the ranks of
each of our political parties. I believe Elizabeth has a special gift for bringing
out the best in people, and that ought really to be our goal – to connect with
what is best in others towards protecting the things that make life worth living.
This is something we can work towards across party lines and this is a kind of
politics we can be happy to invite our kids to be involved in.

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Meltdown did occur at reactor, officials admit – Pool of nuclear fuel found at bottom of vessel

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From the Vancouver Sun – May 13, 2011

by Julian Ryall, Daily Telegraph

One of the reactors at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant did
sustain a nuclear meltdown, Japanese officials admitted for the first
time on Thursday, describing finding a pool of molten fuel at the bottom
of the reactor’s containment vessel.

Engineers from the Tokyo
Electric Power company (Tepco) entered the No. 1 reactor at the end of
last week for the first time since the March 11 tsunami and saw the top
1.5 metres or so of the core’s threemetre-long fuel rods had been
exposed to the air and melted down.

Previously, Tepco believed
that the core of the reactor was submerged in enough water to keep it
stable and that only 55 per cent of the core had been damaged. Now, the
company is worried that the molten pool of radioactive fuel may have
burned a hole through the bottom of the containment vessel, causing a
leak of highly radioactive water.

“We will have to revise our
plans,” said Junichi Matsumoto, a spokesman for Tepco. “We cannot deny
the possibility that a hole in the pressure vessel caused water to
leak.” Tepco has not clarified what other barriers there are to stop
radioactive fuel leaking if the steel containment vessel has been
breached. Greenpeace said the situation could escalate rapidly if “the
lava melts through the vessel.”

However, an initial plan to flood
the entire reactor core with water to keep its temperature from rising
has now been abandoned because it might exacerbate the leak.

Tepco
said there was enough water at the bottom of the vessel to keep both
the puddle of melted fuel and the remaining fuel rods cool. The company
added that it had sealed a leak of radioactive water from the No. 3
reactor after water was reportedly discovered to be flowing into the
ocean. A similar leak had discharged radioactive water into the sea in
April from the No. 2 reactor.

Greenpeace said significant amounts
of radioactive material had been released into the sea and that samples
of seaweed taken from as far as 60 km from the Fukushima plant had been
found to contain radiation well above legal limits. Of the 22 samples
tested, 10 were contaminated with five times the legal limit of iodine
131 and 20 times of cesium 137.

Seaweed is a huge part of the
Japanese diet and the average household eats almost three kilograms a
year. Fishermen are preparing to start this season’s harvest on May 20.
Inland from the plant, there has been a cull of livestock left inside
the 30-km mandatory exclusion zone with thousands of cows, horses and
pigs destroyed, including 260,000 chickens from the town of Minamisoma.

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For salmon, a deadly sea – Mark Hume on New Landmark Study

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From the Globe & Mail – May 9, 2011

by Mark Hume

A landmark migration study on the West Coast that tracked thousands
of young salmon as they swam down rivers and then went out to sea has
upended one of the longest-held tenets of fisheries science.

Until
David Welch and his colleagues surgically implanted more than 3,500
young salmon with electronic tags, it had been believed the high
mortality afflicting salmon happened mostly in river estuaries as fish
made the transition from fresh to salt water.

But Dr. Welch,
president of Nanaimo-based Kintama Research Services Ltd., said an array
of listening posts strung for more than 1,500 kilometres along the
coast allowed researchers to follow the fish as they migrated out of
B.C. rivers and headed north, swimming an average of 20 kilometres a
day.

“The scientific body for a century has said the marine
survival problems are happening very early in the life history. Now we
are measuring that and saying, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t look like that.’ Most
of the mortality is happening more than a month after entering the
ocean,” said Dr. Welch, who published new research on the subject this
week after gathering data for several years.

The study made use of
a marine telemetry array called POST, for Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking,
which picks up signals from electronic tags surgically placed inside
the body cavities of young salmon, most of which are about 150
millimetres in length when released.

Once in the ocean, the main
body of fish headed up Georgia Strait, on the east coast of Vancouver
Island, while a smaller number went out Juan de Fuca Strait and up the
west coast of the island.

The fish – sockeye, steelhead, coho and
chinook – mostly survived the early stages of their migration and were
tracked for four to six weeks until they were lost after passing the
last POST array.

“Most of the mortality happened beyond the north
end of Vancouver Island. Now, whether they dropped dead from sea lice
one day past where we [last] measured them or some other disease
problem, or whether it was some place two years out in the ocean, we
can’t resolve that – it’s just that we know most of the mortality
happened beyond the Strait of Georgia, in the Queen Charlotte Sound
area,” Dr. Welch said.

The study estimates one-eighth of the
mortality occurred in Georgia Strait and seven-eighths occurred after
passing northern Vancouver Island.

There has been speculation that
fish farms, which are concentrated in ocean channels near the northern
end of Vancouver Island, might be exposing migrating wild fish to sea
lice and disease.

But Dr. Welch said his study doesn’t shed any light on that controversy.

“I
do want to emphasize that our results do not say the fish farms did
play a role, it’s just that the fish passed the salmon farms and at some
point after that, died,” he said.

Dr. Welch said he is currently
helping to design a study that will use the electronic-tag technology to
directly examine the issue of whether migrating salmon are impacted by
fish farms.

A small number of the tagged salmon carried extra
batteries, which were turned off after about a month and then turned on
again two years later. Among that group, two fish were picked up again
by the POST array when they returned as adults.

Dr. Welch said it
was an exciting development, because it revealed the remarkable
synchronicity of migrating salmon. Heading north, the two fish left
Georgia Strait one week apart – two years later they returned to
Vancouver Island only 12 hours apart, and within two hours of each other
re-entered the Fraser River.

Dr. Welch gave a partial preview of
his research to the Cohen Commission earlier this year, but the detailed
paper was published this week in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States.

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Shades of Green: Decisions and Information Overload

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The information that saturates our modern world should increase our ability to address the many critical environmental challenges demanding our attention. But new psychological studies suggest that all this information may be more debilitating than helpful. The plethora of facts, opinions, news items and scientific data enveloping us from a persistent and pervasive barrage of electronic, print and auditory media may be overwhelming our ability to decide and act.

Researchers analyzing the effects of such information overload are able to track its impact on our brains by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to actually observe “the activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region behind the forehead that is responsible for decision making and control of emotions” (Newsweek, Mar. 7/11). Too much information and too many choices causes this portion of the cortex to stop functioning in a condition termed “information fatigue”. People in this condition either fail to make decisions or the ones they do make are less reasoned and sensible. Mistakes and procrastination cause frustration and anxiety to soar.

When this psychological phenomenon is applied to the complex environmental issues confronting us, we can begin to understand why decisions are so difficult to make and why corrective measures seem to proceed so slowly. Many people are simply confounded by the number and complexity of choices confronting them. Is buying a new and fuel-efficient car better than keeping an older and less efficient one? Should the car option be abandoned in favour of a bicycle or public transit? When flying has such a high carbon dioxide impact, should international travel to vacations and relatives be abandoned? Given the greenwashing that takes place in marketing, what products can be trusted as ecologically benign? When pesticides, pollution and processed foods seem ubiquitous, how do we choose healthy and safe diets? As energy demand increases, what sources do we condemn and endorse? Or should we just wait for the arrival of a saving technology? What are the practical limits of a philosophy of “refuse, reuse and recycle”.

While the information that saturates our world presents us with innumerable dilemmas, it also informs us that each individual decision we make is important because the cumulative effect steers the direction of industries and markets, ecologies and climate, even civilizations and history. Indeed, each decision we make is imbued with influence and power.

In analyzing our decision making processes when we are overwhelmed with information, psychologists have identified four distinct effects (Ibid.). First is a “failure to decide”, a consequence of the information load being “debilitating”. Marketers have discovered that too many choices of toothpaste, breakfast cereal or snack foods so immobilize consumers with options that they choose nothing. So, too, people can be so overcome by the complexity of the environmental issues before them that they are immobilized.

The second effect of information overload is “diminishing returns”. The human memory has difficulty working with more than about seven items at a time. Further information has to be stored in long-term rather than short-term memory, a process that impairs decision making. Add the continual and rapid arrival of new information to decision making and the experience can be overwhelming. “The ceaseless influx [of new information] trains us to respond instantly, sacrificing accuracy and thoughtfulness to the false god of immediacy,” writes Sharon Begley in her Newsweek article. And whenever we do make decisions, they can be invalidated by the instant arrival of more current information, a disquieting effect that further impairs decision making.

The third effect of information overload is “recency” over “quality” – because we are wired “to notice change over stasis”, we tend to give greater weight to the most recent information we receive. “We’re fooled by immediacy and quantity and think it’s quality. What starts driving decisions is the urgent rather than the important,” notes Eric Kessler in Begley’s article. Indeed, we are psychologically inclined to give equal weight to all information we receive. Impulse buying operates on this principle. In the salmon farming controversy now occupying so much attention on the West Coast, the phenomenon of recency explains why the industry always responds to every reasoned criticism or scientific study questioning the environmental wisdom of growing fish in open net-pens – the last impression, no matter how trivial or irrelevant, always carries a disproportionately high influence.

The “neglected unconscious” is a fourth consideration Begley explores. We need time to process information if we are to arrive at creative and wise decisions. This requires a retreat from the complexity and constant influx of new input so the “subconscious” can sort, process and integrate the collected information. Some must be ignored. Urgency and hurry subverts this valuable process – “Act now or miss this incredible opportunity!” is an invitation to a bad decision. The sensible ecological and economic principle of protecting a park is eroded by a tempting business proposal. The 2008 gasoline panic that rushed the decision to make fuel by converting valuable food products such as corn into ethanol is a model example of an ill-considered reflex to a complex energy problem.

The psychological dynamics of information overload helps to explain why we make foolish environmental decisions or why we may not even undertake necessary action. Explanations, however, are not substitutes for excuses. Even if our rapidly changing and complex world is saturated with information, this doesn’t excuse us from making helpful choices. Indeed, as environmental threats intensify, almost any thoughtful choice will be helpful.

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Infectious Salmon Anemia in BC? Rules keep fish findings under wraps

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From the Times-Colonist – May 5, 2011

by Judith Lavoie

Too many fishy secrets, buried in documents filed with the Cohen
Commission of Inquiry, are being kept under wraps even though they
could affect the health of wild salmon, according to the biologist and
anti-fish farm activist Alexandra Morton.

Morton, like other
participants in the inquiry looking into the decline of Fraser River
sockeye, has signed a legal undertaking not to disclose the contents of
395,000 documents filed with the commission until they become exhibits
and part of the public record.

The rules were expanded last
month and are being interpreted by the commission’s lawyers as
including all applications, correspondence and legal material filed by
participants.

That means no information about applications made
to a public inquiry can be made public — including a letter this week
asking that Morton be released from her secrecy undertaking to allow
her to report information to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency about
an infectious salmon virus. Information about the virus was gleaned
from the business records of salmon farms which are among stacks of
documents filed with the commission.

“The level of secrecy is
ramping up and, by not reporting things that are reportable by law, we
have a problem,” said Morton, who could not talk about her concerns
because of the secrecy undertaking.

“It’s a terrible situation. I am at my wits end.”

Greg McDade, Morton’s lawyer, said the commission’s work should be public.

“But,
currently, the rules preclude me from telling you what’s in the
letter, they preclude me from telling you what the issue is and they
preclude me from telling you what the ruling is,” McDade said. “Hence
our concern … All I can tell you is that I can’t comment.”

After
a meeting of lawyers Tuesday, some are hoping the secrecy dispute will
now go to B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen, who is heading the
inquiry.

Sources say that records indicate that infectious salmon
anemia may have been found in fish from a salmon farm tested in
provincial laboratories and there are also suggestions that symptoms
were seen in Pacific salmon, which could indicate a new virus, similar
to ISA, is spreading among wild salmon in the northeast Pacific.

ISA
is a disease that affects Atlantic and coho salmon and has wiped out
fish farm stock in Norway, Scotland and Chile. An outbreak in New
Brunswick in the late 1990s resulted in almost 10 million farmed salmon
having to be killed.

Although most Pacific salmon are believed
to be resistant to ISA, the virus can mutate and evolve. For years,
activists such as Morton have said it could threaten wild Pacific
salmon runs.

Carla Shore, spokeswoman for the Cohen Commission,
confirmed that Morton has written to Commission counsel asking to be
released from the secrecy undertaking.

“But I can’t share the
letter from Ms. Morton’s lawyer or the response because they are
covered by the undertaking of confidentiality,” she said.

“An
undertaking of confidentiality is very common in the legal process.
Participants have the opportunity to review all the documents and
participants can request that any documents be entered as an exhibit.”

Once
a document makes it through the process and is entered as an exhibit
it becomes public, but aquaculture will not be examined by the
commission for some time, meaning none of the filed documents relating
to salmon farms can yet be made public.

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Mark Hume: Cohen called on to release information on salmon virus

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From the Globe & Mail – May 3, 2011

by Mark Hume

A federal public inquiry into the decline of sockeye salmon in the
Fraser River has been accused of suppressing information that an
infectious virus has been detected in British Columbia waters.

The
concern is raised in letters to the Cohen Commission of Inquiry by
Gregory McDade, a lawyer representing salmon researcher and anti-fish
farm activist Alexandra Morton.

Officially the commission is not engaged with the issue, but the
letters, obtained by The Globe and Mail, show that Ms. Morton’s
knowledge of the disease and a debate over the public’s right to know
about it has developed into a contentious issue behind the scenes.

The
commission suspended its hearings for the day on Tuesday for what
spokesperson Carla Shore described as a routine all-counsel meeting to
discuss legal housekeeping matters.

But sources say the issue up
for discussion is the one raised by Mr. McDade’s letters, in which he
argues Ms. Morton should be released from the commission’s undertaking
of confidentiality.

The undertaking prevents participants in the
hearings from making public any information they have obtained through
disclosure. And with 390,000 documents and more than 188,000 e-mails
disclosed so far, that means there is a mountain of material to keep
secret.

Mr. McDade wrote that in combing through that vast volume
of material, Ms. Morton came across “indications” a disease known as
infectious salmon anemia virus, or ISA, may have been detected in fish
samples tested by provincial government labs.

The suggestion is
the symptoms of the disease were detected, but not the disease itself,
which has never been reported on the West Coast. ISA can be lethal to
Atlantic salmon, but Pacific salmon have proved immune to it in tests.
The concern is that if the disease were present, it could change and
begin to kill Pacific stocks.

“Canada and Canadians are obliged to
report diseases of aquatic animals as a member of the World
Organization for Animal Health,” Mr. McDade wrote.

“There are
approximately 35 indications of the existence of ISA identified in these
records to date,” he wrote. “Of great biological concern is that some
of these diagnoses are in Pacific salmon, suggesting potential spread of
a novel and virulent virus into native populations may be underway into
the North Pacific.”

He asked that Ms. Morton be released from her
undertaking so she can report her ISA concerns to the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency.

“There is a very substantial public interest in
ensuring full reporting of ISA indications. An ISA epidemic could prove
devastating to wild salmon stocks. In our submission the public
interest in proper reporting must outweigh the interest in
confidentiality,” Mr. McDade wrote.

The request was refused by commission lawyers – but neither the ruling nor Mr. McDade’s application were released.

In
a second letter Mr. McDade objected to the secrecy around the
application and the ruling, saying it “is reminiscent of the criticisms
of the Star Chamber. It is not appropriate to a public inquiry.”

Mr.
McDade wrote that British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Bruce Cohen,
who is heading the inquiry, should hear submissions on the matter “in an
open public setting.”

He concludes by stating that the second
letter, which was distributed to the more than 20 lawyers representing
participants at the hearings, should not be covered by the undertaking
because it does not contain any confidential documents.

Mr. McDade did not return calls on Tuesday. Ms. Morton said because of the undertaking she cannot discuss her concerns.

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Rafe in the Tyee: Thinking Through My Vote

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From TheTyee.ca – May 1, 2011

by Rafe Mair

I write this on Saturday with less than two days to go
before we vote. As might be expected from a paper whose editorial chief
is a fellow of the Fraser Institute, the ill-named Vancouver Sun wants a Tory majority. So does the Globe and Mail, and I can hardly wait to see the Province’s opinion. I will not be taking their advice.

Elections ought to be about issues (a bit
of profundity for you!) and not about political parties. One blog I read
urges us not to vote “strategically” but stay loyal to our party so as
to prevent an extension of the calamities of a minority government.

Let’s deal with that for a bit. What’s so
bad about minority governments? Most western countries have them and
they seem to be doing OK.

The main argument is that “nothing gets done” and that Parliament is full of catcalling and rude jibes. 

Let me pose this proposition — Thank God
Harper has been confined to leader of a minority government! Can you
imagine what the bastards would have done had they been able to do as
they pleased?

Minority retorts

The noisy lack of discipline in the Commons
shouldn’t bother us because it’s better to do it there with words
rather than with sticks and stones on the street. For the most part,
this sort of behaviour speaks to the frustration of MPs who, because of
our first-past-the-post system, have virtually nothing to do with how
the country is run.

Imagine yourself an MP in Opposition and the majority brings in a
budget that you see as evil. Of course your side has the rules laying
out privileges of “debate,” meaning a few in your party will be allowed
to bitch loud and clear in a fight against the preordained government
victory. The same applies to legislation. Your side has a limited power
to rail against it and when that time’s up, the government votes the
bill into law.

Suppose you’re an MP and the same bad
buggers are in office but as the minority. The finance minister can no
longer say, if just under his breath, “Like it or lump it.” You and all
other MPs suddenly have the whip hand. No longer can a minister bring in
legislation on the “like it or lump it” basis.

Now there are practical limitations on the
power of the minority to stop or at least slow down the government — no
party wants a sudden untimely election on fiscal grounds if nothing
else. But this applies to the government too.

What does happen is consultation amongst
the parties. Surely that’s a very good thing, not evil as the tightly
owned, government-loving media would have us believe.

British Columbia has issues

Let’s talk about issues. For as long as I
can remember (a long time I must admit), the issues have been
healthcare, unemployment, social services, law and order and such
matters. Every election brings those to office who sound like they are
the ones to deal with these matters; they never do it, and the next
election is fought on the same grounds with the same speeches and the
same results.

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