Recent comments

Here are a few comments on this article regarding salmon virus:

1. Originally there were two Atlantic Ocean variants of ISA, east Atlantic and west Atlantic - not Canada. The east Atlantic strain was mutated into a virulent form in 1984 in Norwegian fish farms. From there it has spread most places they have set up shop: Note it is from a Kiibenge powerpoint presentation: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2011/10/isa-infections-world-wide-sine-1984.html.

Chile now has 28 strains of ISA. That is how quickly it mutates in fish farms. Their outbreak caused $2 bilion in losses, perhaps a quarter of a billion dead fish. Now there is no going back from ISA in Chile - where there are no natural Pacific salmon.

2. Other than fish farm imports of eggs/embryoes, other possible sources of the 'original' ISA in BC is the fish farms in Puget Sound that predate BC's, or from the feds attempt to establish Atlantics here in the first half of the 20th century - about 8 million were planted.

3. There has never been ISA in BC. There is only Atlantic Ocean ISA. That is why it is such a big problem if it has been introduced into BC. It could spread all around the Pacific Ocean from California to Korea.

4. I think it is fairer to say that Nylund made the comments about the 'hard' evidence earlier in the testimony than when Miller revealed her ISA results from the mid-80s. His data tables say he thinks it is likely ISA is in BC. What he meant is that they need virus isolates to sequence. Here is what he has stated in the past: Are Nylund, head of the Fish Diseases Group at the University of Bergen, Norway, has stated: “… 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”.

5. Chinook salmon are killed by marine anemia. This may turn out to be a mutated strain of ISA. It has proven virulent in both Clayoquot Sound and around Quadra Island.

Dennis Reid

The AG's report on our broken immigration security system indicates that little progress has been made since the previous AG's report in 1999. In fact the problem goes back much farther.

Brian McAdam, a Foreign Affairs diplomat responsible for security, discovered in 1991 that the Hong Kong mission had been infiltrated by Chinese organized crime and was allowing large numbers of known criminals to migrate freely to Canada and set up shop here. This was serious enough, but an even larger concern is that all attempts to investigate and fix this known problem were stymied by a few bureaucrats and politicians.

McAdam was silenced and forced out of his job. Robert Read, the RCMP investigator who came close to uncovering the truth, became convinced that his bosses were systematically undermining his investigation, went to the media and was then fired.

The RCMP Review Committee rebuked the RCMP for firing Cpl Read and observed that Read had "exposed the fact that the Force had, for seven years, failed to take appropriate action to determine if employees of the Mission had engaged in immigration fraud." However the review committee's conclusions are not binding on the RCMP Commissioner and Cpl Read received no redress.

The Sidewinder Report that the CSIS team produced in 1997 confirmed McAdam's concerns and concluded that an intricate web of connections between Chinese intelligence services and criminal gangs posed a threat to Canada's national security. However, CSIS senior management ordered the project to be aborted and to shred thousands of pages of documentary evidence McAdam provided to both CSIS and the RCMP.

Investigative journalists Andrew Mitrovica and Jeff Sallot wrote in the Globe and Mail in May 2000: “Sidewinder was politically unpalatable and the Canadian government was keen to protect what they believed was the lucrative trading relationships with China.”

The bottom line is that this situation has existed for at least 20 years, during which time apparently incompetent or corrupt bureaucrats and politicians have protected themselves by covering up and silencing witnesses rather than fixing the problems. As a result Canada today is a haven for wealthy and powerful foreign criminals, who can easily gain entry and are then almost impossible to dislodge.

David Hutton

Congratulations to RN Diane Shay for standing up and reporting elder abuse. She herself has suffered a lot because of the injustices hurled against her by her employer, City of Cornwall.

I wonder if the managers who did this to her would want an elderly parent of theirs to suffer horribly by being abused. They did not know the law, tried to silence her and let one of their most vulnerable citizens face excruciating pain -- pathetic .

Red tape is both a cause and a symptom of corruption.

Regulations that are all-encompassing or impossible to meet give officials enormous discretion to make life difficult for those subject to the regulations. So officials can easily extract bribes in return for permits or licences. In this way red tape facilitates corruption.

Excessive red tape can also be a symptom of corruption. Creating burdensome regulations may be a conscious strategy -- a way for corrupt officials to pump up business.

This article describes in Quebec the kind of conditions found in many third-world countries, where impenetrable red tape undermines the rule of law and creates the conditions for predatory officials, corrupt businessmen and organized crime to flourish.

This problem can be tackled by 1) writing simple, practical regulations that are easy to understand and leave little wriggle-room for interpretation, and 2) administering these in a completely transparent manner, for example by making all of the records publicly available  for anyone to examine.

David Hutton