CKNW Editorial
for July 6, 2001

A couple of matters this morning, matters of raised suspicions. I must tell you at the outset that instinctively I don’t believe explanations by governments … I don’t say they lie necessarily but just that they are usually economical with the truth. That’s because every answer they give comes from self interest.

For example … I was distinctively underwhelmed by Attorney-General Geoff Plants answers yesterday to questions on the shutting down of the Bingogate Inquiry. Why was I underwhelmed? Because the answers made little or no sense. For one thing the Liberals in opposition screamed like stuck pigs to have this investigation and supported it all the way – until they became the government. Strange, wouldn’t you say?

Essentially Mr Plant says that the Inquiry has already cost $6 million, Mr Stupich has been dealt with, and the public doesn’t want to spend another $2 Million, much of which will be spent fighting lawyers for persons to be named in the report.

Until a report from Commissioner Smith is filed we’ll never know what value we have for our $6 million. By shutting down the inquiry we now know that the value is zilch because we’ve just thrown it away.

Mr Stupich is only part of the problem. The question is, what other parts of the problem is Mr Plant afraid to have exposed … and why? It’s all very well for the A/G to huff and puff that such a question is insulting – perhaps it is but it still deserves an answer. If the reason Mr Plant won’t spend is $2m is that lawyers are eating that up taking court applications I have two questions - since when did Mr Plant start caring about making lawyers rich and more to the point, does this mean that every time there is an inquiry and lawyers start playing lawyers’ games we’re to toss the towel in?

Mr Plant also makes the point that the government can learn some things administratively from what they already know and since they won’t get any further assistance from Mr Smith’s commission, there is no value left in it.

Interesting when you contrast this reasoning against the proposed Inquiry into the Fast Ferry fiasco. Inquiry into what? If anyone wants to know what happened here a boo at Vaughn Palmer’s columns from day 1 will answer all questions. We will, alleges the Attorney, learn lots of lessons how not to do things. Really? Does his government need an inquiry to tell them not to let a premier run wild and bully all around him … to learn that Treasury Board must do its job and not be bullied by the premier? Ditto the Cabinet? Ditto senior public servants and heads and directors of Crown Corporations? There’s already been an inquiry into the ferry scandal … it’s called an election wherein the ferry fiasco was, without question, the deciding factor.

No, I suspect that the government would like to rub it in and hope that a damaging report – to go along with reams of evidence we already have including an Auditor-General’s Report – will linger into the next election.

When the facts first became known there should have been an inquiry and I in fact called for one and criticized the then government’s position that the Auditor-General’s report was sufficient. It was sufficient in terms of advising the government went wrong. In fact it was a masterpiece. I thought there should be an inquiry into whose fault it was. Since the only penalty to be paid for that was political – and that has been paid, in spades – from here on it we are going to spend the money we should have spent to finish the Bingogate Inquiry on an exercise to rub the NDP’s nose in it. And if, during this inquiry, lawyers start playing their expensive little games do you suppose Mr Plant will shut the inquiry down?

If your answer is yes, see me after the show because I have some very interesting land in Florida I’d like you to sell you.

On another matter, what has the Fish Farm industry got on federal and provincial politicians and head bureaucrats? Some compromising pictures? A little inside dope on youthful indiscretions? Or what?

Here is a filthy industry that bids fair to destroy our prized seven species of salmon and governments are giving them the green light. Herb Dhaliwal, the federal minister, and John Van Dongen, the provincial minister, are going to expand this industry. It is one of the most unbelievable government screw-ups I have seen in a lifetime of looking at them and, I confess, occasionally being part of them.

The industry is a tissue of lies. Not only have Atlantic salmon escaped, contrary to promises, they can and are taking hold in rivers and streams that provide a safe haven because, due to past federal and provincial screw-ups have few if any native salmon now using them. The salmon pens are, with their waste, an ecological disaster. It is all but certain that they will bring hitherto unknown diseases to our salmon who have not, like the imports that carry them, built up appropriate immunities. And now, suddenly, we are faced with a huge sea lice problem.

None of this should come as any surprise. These experiences have occurred elsewhere. Norway lost most of its salmon producing rivers to disease from farmed fish. Scotland and Ireland, especially the latter, have had their runs of sea trout, the Brown Trout equivalent of the Steelhead, wiped out by lice. It’s all there … but our government won’t listen.

The problem from the outset has been the onus of proof. Here come some entrepreneurs wishing to use the people’s oceans and endanger the people’s salmon and somehow the onus has never been on them to prove conclusively that they will do no harm … but upon the citizen to prove that they will. I have news for you Mr Dhaliwal and Mr Van Dongen – there isn’t a jury in the world that wouldn’t convict the fish farm industry on the evidence presented.

We have placed our wonderful pacific salmon, the signature of this province, in woeful straits even without fish farming. Our devastation of the habitat, government sanctioned overfishing, the utter destruction of herring populations to tickle Tokyo palates … and the list goes on. Now we bring in an exotic fish that escapes, takes hold in native waters, spreads disease and, because of their numbers attracts millions of sea lice that attach themselves to and kill our native salmon. Our politicians and senior bureaucrats instead of protecting our fish, which is their mandate, connive in their destruction. You don’t have to be a cynic to wonder just what it is that gives the fish farming industry such clout.