Read this report from The Tyee on the union that represents scientists int he federal government responding to recent revelations one of their members, Dr. Kristi Miller, was muzzled by the Privy Council Office from discussing her blockbuster salmon disease research. (July 29, 2011)
Read Alexandra Morton’s rebuttal in the Campbell River Courier to head salmon farm lobbyist Mary-Ellen Walling’s defense of the BC industry regarding the possible importation of devastating salmon diseases to BC. (July 29, 2011)
Just before I get down to business, I know that all environmentalists will be saddened that a former member of the group, Patrick Moore, allegedly got stiffed by a client for $120,000. I hate to sound like a “Johnny-come-lately” with good advice but, Pat, there are some professions where it’s wise to get your money up front.
Those who specialize in conspiracy theories – I’m a sometime member but inching closer to full membership – might wonder if the despoilers of our environment are ganging up on us. This thought came to me as someone representing yet another very worthy cause came to me asking for advice – this one was on the “smart meters” proposed by the bankrupt BC Hydro, which somehow has a billion plus rattling around in their jeans. This is interesting because the difference between this and a tax is invisible and the Campbell/Clark government hasn’t even bothered to go through the motions of putting it to a vote in the Legislature – in addition to removing oversight authority from the public’s supposed watchdog, The BC Utilities Commission (also stripped of authority over Site C Dam and private power projects).
The fish farm debate heats up, if that’s possible, as we learn the scientist who advised the provincial government – standing against all other fish biologists dealing with this subject – was practicing voodoo science. That’s not quite what a colleague said about Dick Beamish but one must infer it from what he did say as he dissociated himself from anything Beamish said or did.
We have Independent power being proved by the hour to be an environmental catastrophe as well as being fiscally mad as they drive BC Hydro over a financial cliff.
And what is the latest cost of the original $1 billion dollar Site”C” at now? Did I see $8 billion with independent estimates topping $10 billion all for power we won’t need but is deliciously placed to extract natural gas and “mine” the biggest polluter on the planet, the Tar Sands?
We still have the Fish Lake (Prosperity Mine – don’t you love the PR slant on that name) supported by Premier Clark.
We have a brand new environmental threat in what is called “fracking” where gas is “mined” horizontally with enormous amounts of water taken out of an already overburdened supply. We haven’t even considered the NAFTA ramifications.
We have Premier Clark, if not approving pipelines from the Tar Sands to Kitimat and greater capacity of the Kinder Morgan line to Burnaby certainly not disapproving even though the record of the companies involved is appalling. On the same subject, the Campbell/Clark government some years ago wrote the feds saying that they didn’t oppose large oil tankers plying the most spectacular and dangerous waters in the world. The Campbell/Clark crowd are utterly unfazed by the fact that spills on land and sea are not “risks” but mathematical certainties.
While all this is going on, the C/C government is paving farm land and threatening wildlife sanctuaries.
It’s hard not to sniff a corporate/government conspiracy, with the government thinking they can pile so much on us at one time we can’t get our acts together.
They are wrong.
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.
Read this bombshell report from the Vancouver Sun about leaked documents showing the Privy Council – which supports Stephen Harper’s PMO – ordered the muzzling of a high-level DFO scientist regarding her dramatic findings on the collapse of Fraser River sockeye, published in the world’s most prestigious journal, Science in January. (July 26, 2011)
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.
Read Alexandra Morton’s blog posting on key DFO salmon farm apologist Dr. Dick Beamish and the pillorying he took on the stand at the Cohen Commission recently. (July 19, 2011)
Why is it that the mainstream media ignore the down and dirty part of the environment?
Yes, they do stuff on global warming and it’s good that they do but when it comes to local issues, apart from where Vancouver sends its garbage, they’re nowhere to be found.
Consider the fish farm issue. This from an earlier blog on this site:
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. 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.”
My question – why did Postmedia (Canwest in drag) have no space for this story? After all, the Campbell government based its entire disastrous policy on fish farms on Beamish’s rubbish!
The facts on the Campbell/Clark energy policy are no longer in dispute. These environmental catastrophes, built and operated by big private sector companies, produce power that BC Hydro is forced to take but for the most part can’t use and must either sell at a huge loss or use it instead of the must cheaper power they can produce themselves. BC Hydro would be, if in the private sector, in bankruptcy protection or even bankruptcy itself. Anyone who tries to balance the household budget understands this; so does the Clark government as did Campbell before but they’re too scared to admit it. Premier Clark hopes that it will go away but I can assure her that it won’t!
This is not a story requiring Postmedia coverage?
The Rupert Murdoch/News of the World scandal should make us all question our newspapers, especially Postmedia and the David Black papers. I don’t for a moment believe that either of these groups is hacking into private computers. I assure you that this is not my issue here. What the scandal does is alert us to the probably deliberate lack of coverage of environmental catastrophes, thus raising the clear question, WHY?
As the story goes, when a man gives his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason. And there’s a reason here.
I freely admit my bias – I don’t like the Postmedia papers and didn’t like them when they were Canwest or Pacific Press and before. But I tell you that there’s no malice here – just decades of demanding that they report what’s happening in our province fairly as news and critically as editors. I’m a lifetime British Columbian – damned near an octogenarian – so this goes back a long, long time.
There have been good years such as when the late Marjorie Nichols, the late Jack Wasserman, Allan Fotheringham, Jim Hume held the government’s feet to the fire – especially the government that I was in. In doing that, they were true journalists and we all, government and the public, were better informed, thus better for it.
Today’s columnists know that if they get down and dirty on some subjects they don’t get printed. This isn’t some idle comment – I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t have grounds to. And I understand that these folks have families to raise, mortgages to pay and kids to educate. I learned about this myself as I saw what happened to broadcasters if the clientele that feed their station doesn’t like what’s being said about them. In my opinion, that’s why columnists were fearless and stubborn about attacking the NDP (which they were right to do) – there were no major advertisers angry at a pillorying of the hated “socialists”.
Today, if one wants to see the present government held to account one reads the Globe and Mail (I never thought I’d live long enough to have that coming from my pen!)
The Globe and Mail is still pretty tepid in its role as critic but I see their BC section with Mark Hume, Gary Mason, Justine Hunter and others delving into subjects – not with the thoroughness that, say, Vaughn Palmer with the NDP fast Ferry program – but they at least open the subject to daylight where Postmedia fears to tread.
I don’t flatter myself by thinking that Postmedia and Black won’t cover anything I’m on – that may be coincidence even though the coincidences are many. However I am reminded of the story of the courtroom in the Southern US where smoking was permitted. The lawyer for the plaintiff continually puffed on a cigar even though the judge asked him several times, politely, to desist.
At the end of the case the judge found for the defendant whereupon the lawyer for the plaintiff complained that the judge shouldn’t have decided for the other side just because he, the plaintiff’s lawyer smoked a cigar.
The judged replied, “counsellor, that’s not why I decided against you”.
“Well, Your Honour,” said the losing lawyer, “that’s a better reason than any you gave in your reasons for judgement!”
The Vancouver Sun bleats that it is “Seriously Westcoast”, which is classic George Orwell’s “Newspeak” and has all the credibility of an ad singing the praises of cigarette smoking.
The public has two options as I see it – read the Sun because of Rex Morgan MD and the Province for Luann and get critical examination of issues from blogs they trust. There’s a danger, of course, that this leads to only getting information that supports your views but in working through the papers searching for the comics and sports pages one can’t help reading the government line if only by osmosis.
As we say with the Common Sense Canadian (TheCanadian.org), we must fill the content gap of the mainstream press by being our own media.
The Infectious Salmon Anemia virus (ISAv) is a ticking time bomb that could explode under BC’s salmon farming industry and their open net-pens. If this industry has imported such a disease into the ecology of the Pacific Northwest via infected Atlantic salmon material, the results could be an ecological catastrophe. Whatever remains of the industry’s besieged environmental reputation would be ruined, as would any vestige of confidence in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
But the real and lasting damage would be to Pacific wild salmon, together with the entire West Coast marine ecology and culture that depends on them. ISAv could dwarf sea lice as a scourge because it would be a persistent threat to the health of all wild salmon and herring – once established, the disease would be intractable and permanent.
ISAv was first detected in Norwegian salmon farms in 1984. It existed previously in Norwegian rivers as a benign infection that did not kill salmon. However, in a change that biologists call a “stochastic event”, it mutated to become lethal – probably in fish farms “because there is no reason for it to live lightly in fish destined for slaughter” (alexandramorton.typepad.com/). The lethal version was then carried with Atlantic salmon brood stock to salmon farm hatcheries where it was distributed by the industry throughout the North Atlantic and overseas to Canada and Chile – its arrival in Chile in 2007 nearly decimated the country’s entire salmon farming industry.
The first evidence of ISAv’s arrival in Canada was in New Brunswick salmon farms in 1996. In 1998, the Friends of Clayoquot Sound were expressing concern about its arrival in BC. In January of 2009, David Suzuki, Chief Bob Chamberlin, Professor Larry Dill, Alexandra Morton and over 100 other concerned citizens wrote a letter to the Premier of British Columbia, requesting “that B.C. immediately prohibit the importation of live farm salmon material (all species of broodstock, milt and eggs) to protect BC from the spread of Infectious Salmon Anemia.”
In June 2009, Alexandra Morton wrote another letter of concern. “I am not hearing how the [salmon farming] industry can possibly safeguard British Columbia from contamination with their ISA virus. Infectious Salmon Anemia is a salmon virus that is spreading worldwide, wherever there are salmon farms.” She highlighted her concern with the authoritative prediction of Professor Are Nylund, head of the Fish Diseases Group at the University of Bergen, Norway. He warned that, “based on 20 years of experience, I can guarantee that if British Columbia continues to import salmon eggs from the eastern Atlantic, infectious salmon diseases, such as ISA, will arrive in Western Canada.”
The inevitable may now be the reality. At least two media outlets, The Tyee and Pacific Free Press, have reported the possibility that ISAv is in BC marine waters. The Globe & Mail (May 03/11) reported that “there are approximately 35 indications of the existence of ISA identified in [the Cohen Commission] records to date” and that these records contain “information showing provincial inspectors found signs of a disease, infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, had been detected in British Columbia.”
The salmon farming industry is certain that ISAv has not reached the West Coast because high mortality in its pens would be an obvious indicator. But such mortality would not occur with the difficult-to-detect non-lethal form of ISAv (Ibid.). And DFO, in concert with the industry’s position, has repeatedly assured concerned British Columbians that regulations are in place to prevent ISAv from reaching the West Coast. Given DFO’s overtly supportive relationship with the salmon farming industry, however, Morton decided to “ground truth” this assurance. She found “that at every location where they could have caught ISAv there was a gaping hole…. except where trade sanctions loomed, then the proper documentation surfaces” (Ibid.).
If Plan A fails, will Plan B work? Even if ISAv is brought to the West Coast with farmed Atlantic salmon, Pacific salmon are supposed to be immune to the disease ‹ supposed to be. But as every biologist knows, and as ISAv has already demonstrated in Norway, such viral diseases are mutational acrobats. Wild Pacific species would be an irresistible opportunity that ISAv could reach simply by mutating. The result would be an unmitigated disaster for everything from ecology to culture associated with BC’s iconic wild salmon. Morton writes that she has found Broughton Archipelago herring with the symptomatic ISAv bleeding around their fins but has been unable to get a laboratory to test the samples (Ibid.).
Meanwhile, the Cohen Commission’s inquiry grinds on. From August 25th to September 9th, 2011, it will examine the relationship between disappearing Fraser River Sockeye, West Coast salmon farming and the gauntlet of open net-pens that wild smolts have to pass on their out-migration to the sea.
The salmon farming industry, meanwhile, has been doing its legal best to prevent the release of privileged information it has been forced to divulge to the Commission, arguing that this release to the public could cause them “reputational and economic damage”. The public availability of such confidential information previously hidden from open environmental scrutiny, it contends, would create a “media circus”.
“Media circus” is the industry’s term for losing control of a public relations agenda that for decades has been construing conspicuously damaging environmental practices as harmless. ISAv could blast that benign image out of West Coast waters. Indeed, a whole minefield of bombs are ticking under the industry’s open net-pens.
It’s the latest chapter in a long and increasingly heated battle between BC’s coastal First Nations and the Norwegian salmon farmers that operate in their waters. The Musgamagw-Tsawataineuk peoples of the Broughton Archipelago recently gathered in the village of Gwayasdums in response to a serious breach of protocol by Marine Harvest, the largest open net cage fish farm operator in the region. On June 27, the company made an unauthorized boat trip through the territory, using elders to gather valuable information about the history and cultural sites of the area – underhanded tactics that take place amidst a high-stakes legal battle between the aquaculture industry and these same First Nations. Hereditary and elected leaders, matriarchs and community members emerged from the meeting in Gwayasdums united, with renewed resolve to rid their territory of open net cage salmon farms.