Scott Anderson, Member of Parliament for Vernon-Lake Country-Monashee's Ostrich Update:
I flew in from Ottawa Saturday morning and made the two hour drive out from Vernon to Edgewood in the afternoon, as my Chief of Staff already has a few times this week. It is increasingly clear to me and everyone else that the Ministers of Agriculture and Health need to intervene and either declare these birds research subjects or explain to Canadians why they are allowing the slaughter without testing.
If you’re reading this Ministers, please tell Canadians why you’re allowing this? We’d all like to know.
How the Liberals allowed this drama to become a moral, political and scientific fiasco of international proportions is beyond me. Sorry to be partisan, but I’m angry. These Liberals have had a decade to change the country, and as a result we’re so far behind everyone else now in the G7 that it’s tragic. And on this issue, as with so many, they are lost.
My office is receiving upwards of 1000 communications a day on every medium, and other MPs tell me some of theirs are from as far away as Europe and Australia. The out-of-control Liberals have already made us economically poor, socially confused, and all-round angry at each other, and now they’re making us into an international laughingstock and a national pariah all at once. And all over a herd of ostriches. Well done, Mr. “elbows.”
Canadians need to be able to trust our institutions, and to do that we need transparency. Our institutions are supposed to translate law into action, so if the CFIA is following its mandate only the Liberal Minister responsible can stop it. If it’s overstepping its mandate then we have an even bigger problem, but I can’t imagine that. If the slaughter goes ahead, it is because the Liberal Ministers allowed it. If they allow it they should tell Canadians why they allowed it and not mumble some polysyllabic Latin cliché ending in the well-worn English word “safety.” The Ministers should tell Canadians clearly and emphatically why the ostriches have to die, because whoever is supposed to tell Canadians what’s going on is on vacation.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is operating what appears to be a completely unnecessary communications nightmare in Edgewood and the Liberals are letting it. Together they have managed to hand conspiracy theorists a near perfect scenario: a mysterious operation with high levels of secrecy including a heavy police presence, a sinister-looking construction, a tight-lipped refusal to release any information to Canadians, and a vague statement on their website using bureaucratic weasel words like “associated with” and “possible,” all salted with dire warnings about “health.” The camera feeds to the house have been cut and the cameras covered over. Drones periodically buzz overhead as robotic surveillance. On the way back to Vernon we passed 14 police vehicles, both logoed and ghost, in convoy on the way to the farm, presumably for shift change.
Far away from the front gate of the farm, in a field in the middle distance but visible from the highway, a fenced compound has been erected, covered in black tarping and surrounded by another fence. On two sides ramparts of stacked bails of straw or hay stand inside the fence…a rumour is that atop them the CFIA will stand and shoot down into the ostriches, but I have no confirmation of that and many rumours are flying. The small crowd on the highway thinks it’s the killing chamber too. Police observation posts are set up every few hundred yards around the perimeter, about 100 meters outside the enclosure walls.
It sounds like the set for a sci-fi movie about Area 51 in the US, except this is actually happening in Edgewood, a small town on the other side of the Monashee mountains along the evergreen-wooded Arrow Lake system in my riding of Vernon-Lake Country-Monashee.
Videos are circulating that show CFIA personnel wandering around the ostriches with no personal protective equipment (PPE) and none of the police are wearing PPE either. After being asked about it, the CFIA kitted up in hazmat suits, but floating around on social media are comic operatic videos showing things like CFIA workers in hazmat suits being driven around by RCMP officers in pickup trucks with no PPE and the windows rolled down. How can this make sense to rational Canadians? Is there a danger to humans or not? Are they putting police officers’ lives in danger or is the CFIA putting on a show to cover their collective butts?
The night before I visited there was a fire in the bales that was reported as having started under suspicious circumstances. Three hours later there was another fire in the bales. Sunday morning a third fire broke out…the idea that someone could sneak in and start a fire and then sneak out undetected in broad daylight under the noses of police pickets is utterly fantastic. Nearby farmers say that the CFIA had piled the bales wrong, and that given the moisture content and condition of the hay and weather, it wasn't surprising that the hay combusted three times. I don't believe the second or third fires were reported as being suspicious by the RCMP.
In an effort to dispel rumours and weird theories and try to ensure calm in the crowd at the gate, my Chief of Staff visited the farm and asked the police if she could speak to someone from the CFIA to get a quick briefing. The police transmitted the message to the CFIA but my CoS waited four hours to no avail. I went personally on Saturday and waited around for an hour after asking to speak with someone from the CFIA, but no one showed up. The police liaison told me he delivered my request to the CFIA and I believe him. Since the CFIA won’t talk to the media, or the scientists, or even the local federal Member of Parliament, I’m left wondering what the hell is going on as well.
If the Liberal government had actually set out to make people distrust them, they couldn’t have done a better job than this bungling gong show. It’s both tragic and ridiculous. Is it any wonder under these conditions that conspiracy theories are rampant? Is there a rational answer as to why the CFIA won’t test the ostriches? They claim all sorts of things from two high cycle PCR tests on dead birds back in January, but refuse to test a herd of apparently healthy birds eight months later before slaughtering them? In what universe does this make sense if the object is to save humans? And if it’s not that, what is it? If they won’t talk to a federal Member of Parliament, is there anyone they WILL talk to?
No wonder so many rational people are able see and support a bogeyman theory…because people will always fill the unknown with the suspected. It’s a rational response to this kind of secrecy, obfuscation and bureaucraspeak. Even if the CFIA discovers that the birds are sick, at this point who will believe they didn’t make the birds sick themselves? The Liberal Ministers have to step in…if they are even able to.
I have only good things to say about the RCMP. They don't want to be there any more than the protesters wants them there, but they are professional and polite and doing what they’re paid to do. It's easy to say they have a choice not to, but those of you who have a family to feed and whose family's wellbeing depends on your career, not job, but the career you trained for, look deeply into a mirror. These police are just like us but they don't put their lives on the line every day as a member of a paramilitary force just to flounce when things get uncomfortable. They signed up to protect the law, and the law says the CFIA can slaughter the birds. The RCMP are doing exactly what they promised to do when they joined: defend the law and keep the peace.
The protesters themselves have organized a sort of security/PR to stop any signs of trouble and ask the culprits to leave, as you’ll see in a video attached here. At the time of my visit there was a minimum of tension between the crowd and police. The police are friendly and seem to be getting along well with the crowd, but the CFIA are staying well away. I can glimpse them in the background walking in hazmat suits among the uniformed police.
It should never have come to this. We apparently can’t make either the CFIA or the Liberals talk, but I can't help wondering why? The national embarrassment of this macabre deathwatch is both tragic and inane, brought to us yet again by Liberal befuddlement at the rudder of the ship of state.
Please Ministers, answer four questions:
1 Do these birds pose a threat to human life?
2 Why not test them?
3 Is culling actually necessary?
4 Why not tell Canadians what the hell is going on out there in Edgewood?
