Hello Melanie Mark
MLA, Vancouver-Mount Pleasant
BC’s New Democrats
cc: Ravi Kahlon, NDP, MLA from my constituency of Delta, BC
Thank you for your email dated March 28, 2018, asking for donations, which I received from info@bcndp.com, which strangely carries the name of leader John Horgan, but I am sure it is not read by any leader, but likely read by a ghost person working for your party.
Before I consider making any donation, I would like to know what you will do for the people specifically in area where I have spent considerable amount of time and effort, freely, for the benefit of Canadian ecology and health. I am talking about glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s RoundUp as well as many other branded herbicide products, which is by far the most used biocide (killer chemical) ever used in Canada and the rest of the world. Approval of glyphosate is consider illegal by me, since the safety data and report, that is supposed to prove that the chemical’s presence in food does not harm humans or animals, has been “illegally” kept hidden by the Canadian government for over 40 years. Glyphosate hurts us as a seriously harmful broad spectrum antibiotic that messes up our microbiome, our ability to digest food, our ability to pick up nutrients from food, our immune system through damaging the bacterial colony that assists our immunity, and finally by molecular mimicry, its ability to slip through our defences and be mis-incorporated into our proteins, thus turning them into rogue proteins which is the beginning of a journey to a cascading series of diseases down the line. There is a concerted effort by the industry to de-fund or otherwise downplay findings to these dangers, but you can find out the details if you were really interested. I can help you, if you like.
[youtube ERBZ6Ze6ZYc]
I have been fighting a lone battle in Canada for quite a while to :
1) get Ottawa to disclose all safety data and document that prove glyphosate is safe. I am not interested in getting a fat list of hundreds of “reports” which found glyphosate to be safe. All these reports are third party opinions, which can be filtered to present an impressive volume of rubbish. What constitutes safety test data, is a study of animals subjected to glyphosate in their food, and their health parameters compared with identical animals living identical life and eating identical food, but without glyphosate. That, and that alone, proves if glyphosate is or is not safe. I have a long standing Access To Information Case with the Canadian government. Through that case I learned the following a) that I, and every Canadian citizen, have right to this document, and yet the government hides such data, b) therefore, approval of glyphosate is to be considered illegal. Government may not approve any product for release to the public while withholding safety data of the product, c) Ottawa has over 130,000 pages of such document, and was willing to allow me to visit Ottawa to see the documents sitting at their library, but would not allow me to copy, scan or otherwise take any page out of the place. It was willing to let me see all that data, keep it all in my head, and then if I was to tell Canadians that glyphosate is unsafe according to these safety tests, that would only be my opinion because I cannot furnish the proof.
Chart from book – Poison Foods of North America – by Tony Mitra
So, I would first like to know, in plain english, what you and your party are prepared to do, to address this runaway use of glyphosate in agriculture, forestry, prairie and environment. I warn you, this is not the first time I have asked such a question to Canadian politicians including members of the DNP. If you do not respond, you will not be the first to disappoint me.
2) I have had better success in getting the Ottawa government to seriously start testing foods for presence of glyphosate, thanks to a then NDP MP Mr. Alex Atamanenko. This resulted in Canada being the first and as far as I know only country to test multiple thousands of foods for glyphosate. I further succeeded in getting a copy of all the rest results, and analyzed them, thus discovering that Canadian food, along with foods grown in the US, are far and away the most toxic in the entire planet. I compiled and tabulated the data received from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, made representative charts, and published the findings in a 400 page book on Amazon, titled ’Poison Foods of North America”. I do not expect you to buy or read that book. I have come to the conclusion that politicians, including Canadian politicians, prefer to be selectively educated on issues and would rather tap dance around subjects that the party likes to avoid addressing. I have come to the conclusion that fighting wholesale and long term slow poisoning of Canada through toxic chemicals in our food an environment is one such issue Canadian politicians are unwilling to face squarely.
I take the trouble of writing this long response, even if I expect you to do nothing, because I am driven by the desire to do what I need to do, as a citizen, towards fulfilling my civic duty, even if the effort is useless, and our politicians will remain blind to the problem, as long as this does not threaten their ability to hold on to their political chair.
Thus, I have also become an activist, hoping that one day millions of Canadians will wake up, grab the nonplussed political system by the scruff of its neck and shake it to its foundations. That is perhaps the only language that a politician understands. This letter, therefore, will be a public letter. The idea is, if you do not respond, perhaps the people will.
I look forward to what to have to say, or do not have to say. I shall most certainly not donate even a cent of my hard earned savings, unless I get a response that proves to me that NDP has glyphosate in its radar.
I am copying this email to MLA Ravi Kahlon, and Lana Popham. Mr. Kahlon had met me before election to learn about glyphosate. I am still waiting to see what he is prepared to do about it, other than passing the buck to someone else, such as agriculture minister Lana Popham, who herself refuses to consider testing local food for glyphosate and disclosing both he results and the source of the food, to the people, so people can decide what to avoid, if the government will remain inactive in pushing back at this poison.
This letter might end up in blog, video and/or on petitions aimed at tackling glyphosate, raising awareness, and encouraging citizens to take this up in greater numbers against our disastrous political establishment that refuses to address avalanche of poison on my dinner plate and a 900 pound gorilla named glyphosate in my kitchen.
If you or any party volunteer is interested to know if and how this letter ends up on social media, you may find me (Tony Mitra) on Facebook, on youtube, and tonu.org, my blog on the web.
My last comment, about the subject heading of your email, which is “Can we work together”? my response is – yes we can, but that needs to be a two-way street.
Thanking you
Tony Mitra
(I voted NDP in last federal and provincial election, and I have been disappointed with NDP so far. Not that I am happy with any other party)
10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada
x-xxx-xxx-xxxx (landline at home)
+91 98317 13068 (temporary mobile phone from India, since I am currently visiting India)