UPDATE 3:40 PM BC Parliament – Minister McRea SAID he was going to amend this bill, but all he did was put it on the paper, he never actually stood to bring it forward. He told the media he was making an amendment and didn’t, so if this passes, I remain at risk of two years in prison for making any fighter disease results public.
This Bill may go against the constitution of Canada
The Public Health Association of BC has been contacted to review the implications of this for public health safety
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/McRae+considers+rewording+Animal+Health/6693069/story.html
However – think about this – why would he even want to silence the people on the front lines of epidemics? He says he is doing this to encourage farmers to report disease. Why not just make a law to make farmers report disease.
“So you can’t say what, you can’t say where and you can’t say who is responsible.”
In a recent letter from Lana Popham NDP Agriculture Critic McRea says:
McRea….if a person involved in the media, an independent scientist or the general public were to inquire to the individual farmer about a test’s results and the individual farmer wished to share them, he or she would be more than able to do so. If the farmer were to provide consent to the ministry, we would also be able to provide that information.
L. Popham: Well, that’s the minister’s interpretation, but I think that section 16 creates an obligation for the person to refuse to give information. In fact, that’s exactly the point. If they don’t refuse, they could be incarcerated; they could be charged. I mean, there are severe penalties for disclosure of this information.
Download Bill 37 Critic Response.docx (17.3K)
We are headed to the BC legislature in Victoria to see this thing come down, I hope you will considered joining us and/or writing to McRae or Lana Popham
The proceedings will be broadcast
The Legislative Assembly will be sitting:
Tuesday 10:00am- 12 noon, 1:30-6:30
Wednesday 1:30 – 9:00
Thursday 10:00-12 noon, 1:30-6:00
Write your newspaper, comment here, write the Premier, be heard or many of us will be silenced about the viruses seeping through our marine waters today.
Comments
3 responses to “Minister McRae Considers rewording his silence the messenger act”
Dear Ms. Clark,
I am writing to ask you oppose Bill 37 this week, as it seems to affect many civil liberties – including the liberty to speak out about our food.
I sit, listing to Pete Seeger’s song “Jacob’s Ladder” while I write this letter. Pete Seeger was blacklisted for many years for writing songs about such things as the civil rights and environmental movement. That was 50 years ago. I, of course, grew up with his music, and witnessed the good he was able to do in the world through his activism – whether it was through union activism, or cleaning up the Hudson River.
Therefore, I can’t believe that 50 years later, I might actually be witness to seeing an activist like Alexandra Morton, who publicize disease found in salmon, fined, jailed, or blacklisted – just for speaking out about our food!
It is as though 50 years of those like Pete Seeger, who stood up for the freedom of speech for all individuals, have accomplished nothing.
It’s important for everyone in BC that the salmon stay healthy, and I believe this bill is in reaction to private testing that revealed unhealthy salmon and the big businesses that were affected when those fish had to be destroyed.
I don’t believe that those who are aware of disease on a farm should be fined if they reveal it. I believe in just the opposite. What if no one had discovered and publicized the diseased salmon – and they all died out – like the Hudson River did, so many years ago.
Just like in Pete Seegers’ song, “Every new one makes us stronger,” I believe that this bill can be opposed if enough people stand up and say that it is wrong!
Please, I hope you will oppose this bill on Wednesday. For all of us “brothers, sisters, all_”
Thank you,
Jessie Judd
sparklejess@hotmail.com
Alexandra:
The path is now clear: they want war. However, the BC Liberal and Federal governments and their soulless, money-grubbing foreign conglomerate bedfellows are digging their own graves.
Their timing could not be more self-deprecating; just at the occurrence of one of the most publicized infectious disease outbreaks and associated quarantine events in the history of the local industry, the conspirators have chosen to effect this draconian legislative wall against all concerned, apparently in reaction to these concurrent events. The corrupt motives and objectives behind Bill 37 should be obvious and offensive to all but the most morally and ethically blind.
Now is the time to organize mass boycotts of the diseased and corrupt BC farmed salmon industry, both nationally and worldwide.
Let’s focus on their key American consumer base, together with the US west coast wild fisheries industry, affiliated government entities and their representatives, and the environmentally concerned, all of whom are at once being impacted and indiscriminately shunted in so far as international cooperation and transparency regarding epidemic disease control and information are concerned — and that to which is internationally legislated and mandated, and is being violated as of now. There are potentially vast numbers of Americans who are or will be highly concerned and disconcerted (read “pissed-off”) with our recent legislative and administrative developments.*
The industry’s critical proposed Chinese and Asian markets must be addressed; much of their desperate motions of denial and obfuscation, particularly regarding the ISA virus perception, are to protect these prime, lucrative long-term commercial objectives. Let’s take the issues directly to the international authorities, where such morally and legally unacceptable behavior shall not be condoned, and whereby motions can be well publicized. Let’s directly write and vent our mutual concerns to the Chinese and respective Asian governments and their affiliated consumer associations, as well as concerned groups and individuals, to close off those potential resources.
Let’s initiate these actions and others within the public forum before Bill 37 becomes truly effective. This unconstitutional proposal, as it now stands, must be blocked in legislature and the courts for as long as possible, and by any means necessary by concerned parties, until it is either acceptably amended, or curtailed altogether.
* See these Seattle Times articles and their many insightful comments against salmon aquaculture interests:
‘Meet salmon farming’s worst enemy: a determined biologist’
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018296338_viruslady27m.html
‘Canada kept detection of salmon virus secret’
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016890291_salmonvirus30m.html
‘Anxiety up as more salmon virus found in B.C.’
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016707358_salmon07m.html
‘Why fish virus spooks scientists’
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016583269_salmon23m.html
At one time in Victoria, there were cadres of legislative lawyers whose sole job was to parse the wording of bills.
Their objective was to ensure constitutionality, ensure words meant what they were intended to mean and in general to save the politicians from making fools of themselves.
It seems in Bill 37, someone bypassed the legislative draftspersons.
What is happening?
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