Publishing a few books

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Writing is a gift – or is it?

Somewhere down the track where we evolved from apes to hominids with a brain that could handle complex sentences and a language, the basic tools for being a speaker were hardwired in.

I am told that this change essentially distinguishes anatomically modern humans from archaic forms, and that this development is rather recent, perhaps under a hundred thousand years old.

And then, much more recently, a mere five to ten thousand years back, folks started scratching around on the sand, of the walls of their caves, to describe something or other – passing phase of the moon, or the tide, or animals that were around them. And as humans discovered pastoralism and agriculture, experienced perhaps the first population spurt, and started building their own homes and not depend on caves, they managed to figure out how to use those scratchings for record keeping and identification. Written text, or script, was on the way.

And thus, although we have not yet evolved to the point where ability to speak in a language or read and write is hardwired into our genetic construct, and we have come  some distance towards it. A normal child will automatically pick up a language without being expressly tutored, simply by being around others speaking a specific tongue. Writing or reading, unfortunately is something that a human needs to specifically learn. It does not come automatically by hanging around people, or books, or a pencil.

Nonetheless, it is perhaps a fair assumption that a lot of people around the world can read some and write some, in some language. A few fortunate ones are comfortable in two languages, and some in more than two.

And that brings me all the way to my own situation. I had mentioned I knew three languages – Bengali, which is my mother tongue, Hindi, which is India’s national language, and English, which is the language I used in my profession as well as one of the two working languages of my adopted nation – Canada.

The problem these three languages each uses its own distinct script. This means, even if I am conversant in speaking in those languages, I would need to be familiar with three distinct scripts, or letters, to be able to read or write in any of them. This can be better understood if one considers differences between European languages such as English, Spanish and French. They use the same script, with perhaps a small number of special characters in each. If one is proficient in any language, one could more or less read the other, even if he fumbled with the exact meaning of grammar of it. Not so in my case. The three languages use three different scripts. Hindi and Bengali are both derived from a common mother language – Sanskrit and fall in the same language family, and yet their script separated from each other early on, and now one needs to be totally familiar with the different scripts to be able to read a sentence.

Anyhow, I write very little in Hindi, although I did part of my early schooling in that language and my first tentative writings and childhood poems were composed in Hindi.

My later years in a different part of India in a different school system let me lose familiarity with  writing Hindi, while picking up two others – Bengali and English. Today, I can read Hindi and converse in it, but would struggle to write in it.

I type the fastest in english, but that is primarily because the computer keypad is designed for english, and adapting that keypad to other scripts has its hassles, and sometimes I have to press multiple keys to generate a single letter in Bengali, which automatically slows things down and increases chances of mistake. While I can usually type in English without looking at my fingers, I cannot do that easily for Bengali using the same keyboard.

Anyhow, I have a lot of writings done in English and Bengali. And now the time has come I feel, to start publishing some of them since self publication is reasonably easy.

Some years ago, I tried to write a novel, but it turned out to be more a musing of an opinionated immigrant that observed the world around not superficially at the surface, but using What could amount to be a maverick effort at penetration below the surface and check if what we see at the surface is sustainable, or if the root is getting rotten, or in indeed the surface is shiny but is blocking out other parts of our world intending to insert an element of romance, the guy had a Canadian girl with him as they travelled across western Canada. But it was not really up to him to write a romance, and the continuing novella turn out to be a conversation between the two, mostly covering the land, its geological transformation, and evolutionary track of the living world, including man’s involvement is it.

Nonetheless, the total writings might appear to be somewhat curious and did include musings that I believe deserve to be preserved.

Due to sheer bulk of material, the writings needed to be split into multiple volumes. The first volume, covering 133 pages, was put up today. Its sections went as follows :

Captor description : Early writings
Section 1: A vanishing world
Section 2: Missing the world of his father’s paintings
Section 3: Golden
Section 4: An universe for an anchor
Section 5: Quantum mechanics of mass hysteria
Section 6: Storm warning
Section 7: Wish I could write like them
Section 8: Miguel, the Everglades and Lovelock’s warning
Section 9: Eocene Thermal maximum in a bowl of soup
Section 10: When you are right and wrong at the same time
Section 11: Rice in the Vedas
Section 12: Autobiographic blues
Section 13: At the water’s edge
Section 14: How green was my Facebook
Section 15: Suta at the riviera
Section 16: Coffee with a giant rhynoceros
Section 17: Considering Mabel
Section 18: Overload
Section 19: A sunset, mitochondria, peat bog, and a kiss
Section 20: A few pages on a leap year day
Section 21: The ten thousand year old woman
Section 22: The vanishing Y chromosome
Section 23: Cult of Tagore
Section 24: Old woman sacrifices herself.
Section 25: Hello world

And so, I compiled these twenty five blogs into 25 sections of chapter 1 of the book. The book has only one chapter but 25 sections, and is 133 pages long.

And then I converted it into an iBook (epub) format and uploaded it in Apple store.

Next, I exported it to pdf, reimported that for kindle and uploaded it again at Kindle.

Now, I can go have a coffee and plant some more seeds.

Paris Talks on Climate – a gathering of liars

I do not believe the Paris Climate talks will produce any result other than a lot of empty talk and photo shoot. Why do I feel that ? Because the world leaders appear to be allergic to calling a spade a spade, and spend their time on obfuscation that to me looks like deliberate attempt to hide the truth from the people who is responsible for the carbon, or total greenhouse gas emission. And the trick is – total emission by nations, and per capita emission by citizens of nations. If you cannot wrap your head around these two figures, you may fail to get to the bottom of this issue.

Here are a few graphs and sources of what I mean.

The above twin chart was made by me, taking CO2 emission figures from Wikipedia, World Bank, World Resources Institute and COTAP. The left half of the chart is what the major leaders would like to talk about – singling out China as the one polluting the planet. The same figures are also at the right half, but sorted according to per capita emission, or how much each person in these countries are emitting. And here you see a different pattern – the Anglo Saxon world is leading the attack on our environment, leading by far in carbon emission. Since these nations, and in particular USA, gives the impression of being among the best country in the world that others should imitate, they are setting the worst possible example for the rest of the planet. And this is something I would like to hear from Malcolm Turnbull, Barak Obama, or Justin Trudeau, And that is exactly what these leaders will not talk about, and will not accept.

Let us look at some more figures. This one is from Wikipedia

The list is sorted according to total emission of CO2 by nation. China is touted to look like the bad guy, having overtaken USA as the single largest CO2 emitting nation. But the bars at the right, give you the per capita figure. I added the red arrow to single out the greatest polluters on a per capita basis. Again, the Anglo saxons stand out as the worst environmental degraders, along with a few countries with easy access to fossil fuel such as Saudi Arabia, Kazakstan and UAE.

Now let us check a chart of total Green House Gas emission (Carbon Dioxide is not the only GHG) per capita, among the ten largest total emitting nations of the world, by World Resources Institute.

 I added the red and blue dotted horizontal line and the ellipses around USA and Canada. Notice that the world average emission is just over six (tons per person per year), along the dotted line. This means, if the playing field was made level right now, and the world decided not to increase carbon emission any further than what is today, every one will be allowed to emit only around 6 tons per year. Of course that is not what the world likes to aim at. They would like to limit total green house gas emission to what it was back in 1990. That total figure, of around 37 or so giga tons per year, when divided by the current population, of say 9 billion people, comes to, around 4 tons per person per year. That line was superimposed by the fat blue dotted line by me.

So now, let us see what this means. First, why do folks want to go back to the 1990 total, or reduce emission even less than the 1990 total? That is because folks have figured out that the cumulative effects of global warming and climate instability has a lag period in relation to the greenhouse gas emission. This means, even if every human dies today and stops producing any more CO2, the warming effect would continue for a while, before it begins to fall off. And we are not planning to all die off. Far from it. So, it was decided that going back to 1990 level would be a start. Even achieving that would ensure the world climate would change for the worse, up to a point, and then stay that way and not get any worse.

That was the basis for the 1990 emission level. So, now we understand the issue, and that the world average annual emission, based on 1990 total emission and current world population, should be around 4 tons.

This effectively means, if we really wish to make the playing field level, and that every human on earth is allowed have the same limit of GHG emission, then Canada, for example, will have to learn to do with a sixth of its current level of emission, or say 17% of its current level. And USA, the so called leader of the free world, will have to learn to live with a fifth of its current emission level. Can USA, or Canada, or Australia, manage to go back to energy consumption of a century ago? Can anybody imagine it? I do not see any of our leaders even talk about “per capita” emission, let alone setting any limit. And I know no poorer or developing country is going to accept any level that is lower pollution level than what the rich nations now enjoy. So, as long as the rich and the powerful are not willing to call a spade a spade, the rest of the world has every right to tell the leaders to go fly a kite, even if the outcome is environmental destruction that makes the earth’s surface less habitable by large air breathing vertebrate animals.

Meanwhile, how it is going to be for China, if the limit of 4 tons was to be implemented today ? Well, China will have to cut its own per capita emission to almost half. China is of course not at all ready to do that. In fact, China’s understandable argument or accusation has been that it is the west that caused the problem through four centuries of “development”, and damned if China is going to be penalized for that. China has every right, and will exert that right, to catch up with the west.

What does that mean, in terms of total emission ? If china is to catch up with the west, meaning primarily the anglo saxons (USA, Canada, Australia), it can easily double its per capita emission. That would add at least another 10 giga tons of carbon annually, and increase the global total by a fourth. In short, if the Anglo Saxons do not agree to decimate their emission level, China promises to increase global emission by 25%, from the current total level of around 40 to around 50 giga tons. What would that mean, in terms of average rise in temperature ? I do not know, and would appreciate anyone clarifying that.

Now, what about India? If we are to believe what some of the leaders are saying, it is USA, China, India, EU that are the power blocks. India is not high on total or per capita emission levels. But India is being taken seriously because it has the second highest population and is slated to overtake China as the most populous country soon. Not just that, but India is also an emerging nation, meaning it is recording a faster growth rate going over 7% annually, and its fuel consumption, deforestation, and contribution towards GHG emission is expected to climb exponentially for the coming decades.

Interestingly, among the top ten total emitters of today, in the chart above, only two nations, Mexico and India, have a per capita emission that is lower than the current average, while India is the only one that is below the average based on 1990 level too.

So, if India was to jump from its current low emission to the 1990 average level, there would not be a significant rise in global emission. But, if an agreement is not reached, and India too decides to go like China, and catch up with the Anglo Saxons, it can in essence increase its per capita emission ten fold, and national total by almost 20 giga tons, or 50% of the world total as of today. How much would that translate into a climate crisis ? How much would China+India catching up would cost the world in environmental greenhouse effect ?

Do we, as Canadians, have the right to demand that we continue to burn up 20 tons per man per year, and that China stays at 8 and India stays at 2? Will India or China agree to such a demand? Will USA agree to go back to the stone age with regard to fossil fuel consumption ?

Is anybody talking about these issues? I do not see truth coming from any of our leaders, not even second tier leaders. Not even small party leaders like Elizabeth May of the Green Party.

If we check the cumulative effect of CO2 emission since the dawn of the industrial age, from Dennis Silverman’s Southern California Energy blog, again USA stands out as a major villain, along with Germany, Russia, China. Eurasia, comprising of a rather vast region, and a slew of nations, still comes up with far less cumulative emission in the past two and a half century.

Greenhouse gases might be one out of more than one weapon of mass destruction we have unleashed on the planet – a chemical onslaught being at least one other. And since no leader is at all willing to call a spade a spade, I do not see how the higher planetary life can survive. Our leaders are calling a spade a Micky Mouse.

Whats the matter with the Anglo Saxons?

In general the more developed a nation is, more it has been polluting the environment with GHG. But out of them all, Australia, Canada and USA stand out as particular bad apples. Why? Is it something to do with their ethnicity, or culture, or work view or language, or geography? Well, Geography can be discounted since Australia, USA and Canada do not share identical climate geographic region. I shall let experts ponder this one out, but at first glance, the Anglo Saxons seem to be the least likely to provide a way out of this environmental dead end, because, as an ethnic group, it appears to be the most polluting in the entire planet. Unfortunately, the same anglo saxons also often assume they are in fact the leaders of the world, along with UK of course. Time for us to have a paradigm shift in our thinking, if we are going to solve this problem and get out alive as a civilization.

In general, the world is screwed, and human development and technology are, when you cut it to the bone, responsible for this crisis.

May be the solution would not come from humans at all, but from the micro organisms. I doubt man’s destructive “developmental” habits will be able to harm much of the micro-biota of the planet though. Those nitrogen fixing, oxygen breathing or exhaling, Methane eating, biochemically inventive micro-organisms might collectively produce a feedback loop, and begin to address the climate crisis, like in James Lovelock’s gaia hypothesis.

That, is a whole different story.

Bill C-51. What is a Canadian to do?

I am in search of an expert that is willing to speak with me on record about Bill C-51 and how it might affect free speech and rights of Canadian citizens, as well as why Canada should need such a law


Bill C-51, also known as Anti-terrorism Act, 2015, was proposed by Conservative MP Steven Blaney, was discussed in the parliament, voted on, got Royal assent and became law in the summer of 2015.
Part 1 of this bill is suspected to be an act legitimizing sharing of secret information about Canadians citizens by Canadian security agencies.
Part 2 is suspected to enact a Secure Air Travel Act that can restrict rights of air travel to suspect individuals.
Part 3 is suspected to amend the Criminal Code.

I use the word “suspect” because I do not consider myself an expert on the bill, and neither have I studied the bill personally. However, the implication of the bill concerns me as a citizen of Canada. I wish to learn more about it, and wish to spread awareness about it for Canadian citizens.I am aware that the bill, proposed by a conservative MP and supported by the Conservative party then in power, did not have the necessary votes to pass it, and that the Liberal party in opposition voted in support of the motion, thus providing it with the necessary number.
I have so far failed to get hold of a person that is able and willing to speak on record, preferably in short clips of no more than 5 or ten minutes, on what precisely the wordings of some sections of the bill is, and how this can affect citizens rights, either providing better security or taking away their rights to due process of justice.
There is a broader question as to why precisely does the Canadian Government need this anti-terrorism act, and if Canada is engaged internationally in actions that are expected to expose Canadian citizens back home to acts of retaliation or terror. The traditional image of Canada had been one that is a kind, peace brokering sympathetic nations that does not engage in foreign wars that are not our business. As a result, traditional Canada should not need to curtail its citizen’s freedom in order to stop terrorists around the world.So, what has changed ?Since I have been frustrated in my effort to find an expert that is willing to speak on record, and ask direct questions, I wrote this letter to the Canadian Bar Association, based on their online executive summary on the bill.


To the Canadian Bar Association
Hello,
I am a blogger (www.tonu.org), podcaster, amateur videographer (https://www.youtube.com/user/Tonymitra/videos), wild bird photographer (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tonu/), aspiring writer, a food security activist, a backyard organic farmer, a retired marine engineer and a concerned citizen of Canada. My blog gets between a thousand and two thousand hits a day.
I have been concerned about bill C-51 and its implications. I have been on a search to find a suitable person that is able and willing to speak with me, preferably on record, in order to create an brief audio podcast or a video to accompany a blog for the people, to explain how rights and freedom of Canadian citizens might be compromised by the bill C-51 and its broader implications as to why this bill has been created and what a secretive Government could do with this bill, to the people of Canada and to people outside of Canada, and why it should be important for Canadians to act on it, either supporting it or resisting it.
I have found many people that do not like the bill. I too do not like it instinctively. But unfortunately I am yet to find anyone that is knowledgable, has read the bill thoroughly, has checked how it infringes against people’s freedom point by point, and is willing to educate us on it.
I write to you because I have read your Executive summary on C-51, the anti-terrorism act of 2015 (http://iclmg.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/37/2015/03/15-15-eng-Executive-Summary.pdf).

From Canadian Bar Association summary

From Canadian Bar Association summary

Can you help connect me with a person that might be willing to speak with me on record of the specifics of this bill and how each of them impact our freedom?I live in Delta, BC, and am able to drive within the lower mainlands in BC, or connect over the phone or on skype.
Thanking you
Tony Mitra
(contacts)


A sort of petition to the Liberal Govt

Open Letter to MPs, to amend or kill C-51

The following is an open letter addressed to all members of Parliament and signed by more than 100 Canadian professors of law and related disciplines.

Dear Members of Parliament,

Please accept this collective open letter as an expression of the signatories’ deep concern that Bill C-51 (which the government is calling the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015) is a dangerous piece of legislation in terms of its potential impacts on the rule of law, on constitutionally and internationally protected rights, and on the health of Canada’s democracy.

Beyond that, we note with concern that knowledgeable analysts have made cogent arguments not only that Bill C-51 may turn out to be ineffective in countering terrorism by virtue of what is omitted from the bill, but also that Bill C-51 could actually be counter-productive in that it could easily get in the way of effective policing, intelligence-gathering and prosecutorial activity. In this respect, we wish it to be clear that we are neither “extremists” (as the Prime Minister has recently labelled the Official Opposition for its resistance to Bill C-51) nor dismissive of the real threats to Canadians’ security that government and Parliament have a duty to protect. Rather, we believe that terrorism must be countered in ways that are fully consistent with core values (that include liberty, non-discrimination, and the rule of law), that are evidence-based, and that are likely to be effective.

The scope and implications of Bill C-51 are so extensive that it cannot be, and is not, the purpose of this letter to itemize every problem with the bill. Rather, the discussion below is an effort to reflect a basic consensus over some (and only some) of the leading concerns, all the while noting that any given signatory’s degree of concern may vary item by item. Also, the absence of a given matter from this letter is not meant to suggest it is not also a concern.

We are grateful for the service to informed public debate and public education provided, since Bill C-51 was tabled, by two highly respected law professors — Craig Forcese of the University of Ottawa and Kent Roach of the University of Toronto — who, combined, have great expertise in national security law at the intersection of constitutional law, criminal law, international law and other sub-disciplines. What follows — and we limit ourselves to five points — owes much to the background papers they have penned, as well as to insights from editorials in the media and speeches in the House of Commons.

Accordingly, we urge all MPs to vote against Bill C-51 for the following reasons:

  1. Bill C-51 enacts a new security-intelligence information-sharing statute of vast scope with no enhanced protections for privacy and from abuse. The law defines “activities that undermine the security of Canada” in such an exceptionally broad way that “terrorism” is simply one example of nine examples, and only “lawful advocacy, protest, dissent and artistic expression” is excluded. Apart from all the civil-disobedience activities and illegal protests or strikes that will be covered (e.g. in relation to “interference with critical infrastructure”), this deep and broad intrusion into privacy is made worse by the fact there are no corresponding oversight or review mechanisms adequate to this expansion of the state’s new levels of information awareness. Concerns have already been expressed by the Privacy Commissioner, an Officer of Parliament, who has insufficient powers and resources to even begin to oversee, let alone correct abuses within, this expanded information-sharing system. And there is virtually nothing in the bill that recognizes any lessons learned from what can happen when information-sharing ends up in the wrong hands, as when the RCMP supplied poor information to US authorities that in turn led to the rendition of Maher Arar to Syria and his subsequent torture based on that – and further – information coming from Canada.
  2. Bill C-51 enacts a new “terrorism” offence that makes it criminal to advocate or encourage “terrorism offences in general” where one does this being reckless as to whether the communication “may” contribute to someone else deciding to commit another terrorism offence. It is overbroad, unnecessary in view of current criminal law, and potentially counter-productive. Keep in mind how numerous and broad are the existing terrorism offences in the Criminal Code, some of which go beyond what the ordinary citizen imagines when they think of terrorism and all of which already include the general criminal-law prohibitions on counselling, aiding and abetting, conspiring, and so on: advocacy or encouragement of any of these “in general” could attract prosecution under the new C-51 offence. Note as well that gestures and physical symbols appear to be caught, and not just verbal or written exhortations. In media commentary and reports, there have been many examples of what could be caught, including in some contexts advocacy of armed revolution and rebellion in other countries (e.g. if C-51 had been the law when thousands of Canadians advocated support for Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in its efforts to overthrow apartheid by force of arms, when that was still part of the ANC’s strategy). So, the chill for freedom of speech is real. In addition, in a context in which direct incitement to terrorist acts (versus of “terrorism offences in general”) is already a crime in Canada, this vague and sweeping extension of the criminal law seems unjustified in terms of necessity – and indeed, the Prime Minister during Question Period has been unable or unwilling to give examples of what conduct he would want to see criminalized now that is not already prohibited by the Criminal Code. But, perhaps most worrying is how counter-productive this new crime could be. De-radicalization outreach programs could be negatively affected. Much anti-radicalization work depends on frank engagement of authorities like the RCMP, alongside communities and parents, with youth who hold extreme views, including some views that, if expressed (including in private), would contravene this new prohibition. Such outreach may require “extreme dialogue” in order to work through the misconceptions, anger, hatred and other emotions that lead to radicalization. If C-51 is enacted, these efforts could find themselves stymied as local communities and parents receive advice that, if youth participating in these efforts say what they think, they could be charged with a crime. As a result, the RCMP may cease to be invited in at all, or, if they are, engagement will be fettered by restraint that defeats the underlying methods of the programme. And the counter-productive impact could go further. The Prime Minister himself confirmed he would want the new law used against young people sitting in front of computers in their family basements, youth who can express extreme views on social-media platforms. Why is criminalization counter-productive here? As a National Post editorial pointed out, the result of Bill C-51 could easily be that one of the best sources of intelligence for possible future threats — public social-media platforms — could dry up; that is, extreme views will go silent because of fears of being charged. This undercuts the usefulness of these platforms for monitoring and intelligence that lead to knowing not only who warrants further investigative attention but also whether early intervention in the form of de-radicalization outreach efforts are called for.
  3. Bill C-51 would allow CSIS to move from its central current function — information-gathering and associated surveillance with respect to a broad area of “national security” matters — to being a totally different kind of agency that now may actively intervene to disrupt activities by a potentially infinite range of unspecified measures, as long as a given measure falls shy of causing bodily harm, infringements on sexual integrity or obstructions of justice. CSIS agents can do this activity both inside and outside Canada, and they can call on any entity or person to assist them. There are a number of reasons to be apprehensive about this change of role. One only has to recall that the CSIS Act defines “threats to the security of Canada” so broadly that CSIS already considers various environmental and Aboriginal movements to be subject to their scrutiny; that is to say, this new disruption power goes well beyond anything that has any connection at all to “terrorism” precisely because CSIS’s mandate in the CSIS Act goes far beyond a concern only with terrorism. However, those general concerns expressed, we will now limit ourselves to the following serious problem: how Bill C-51 seems to display a complete misunderstanding of the role of judges in our legal system and constitutional order. Under C-51, judges may now be asked to give warrants to allow for disruption measures that contravene Canadian law or the Charter, a role that goes well beyond the current contexts in which judges now give warrants (e.g. surveillance warrants and search and seizure warrants) where a judge’s role is to ensure that these investigative measures are “reasonable” so as not to infringe section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights. What C-51 now does is turn judges into agents of the executive branch (here, CSIS) to pre-authorize violations of Canadian law and, even, to pre-authorize infringements of almost any Charter right as long as the limits in C-51 – bodily harm, sexual integrity and obstruction of justice – are respected. This completely subverts the normal role of judges, which is to assess whether measures prescribed by law or taken in accordance with discretion granted by statute infringed rights — and, if they did, whether the Charter has been violated because the infringement cannot be justified under the Charter’s section 1 limitation clause. Now, a judge can be asked (indeed, required) to say yes in advance to measures that could range from wiping a target’s computer clear of all information to fabricating materials (or playing agent-provocateur roles) that discredit a target in ways that cause others no longer to trust him, her or it: and these examples are possibly at the mild end of what CSIS may well judge as useful “disruption” measures to employ. It is also crucial to note that CSIS is authorized to engage in any measures it chooses if it concludes that the measure would not be “contrary” to any Canadian law or would not “contravene” the Charter. Thus, it is CSIS that decides whether to even go to a judge. There is reason to be worried about how unregulated (even by courts) this new CSIS disruption power would be, given the evidence that CSIS has in the past hidden information from its review body, SIRC, and given that a civil-servant whistleblower has revealed that, in a parallel context, Ministers of Justice in the Harper government have directed Department of Justice lawyers to conclude that the Minister can certify under the Department of Justice Act that a law is in compliance with the Charter if there is a mere 5% chance a court would uphold the law if it was challenged in court. Finally, it is crucial to add that these warrant proceedings will take place in secret, with only the government side represented, and no prospect of appeal. Warrants will not be disclosed to the target and, unlike police investigations, CSIS activities do not culminate in court proceedings where state conduct is then reviewed.
  4. We now draw attention to effectiveness by noting a key omission from C-51. As the Official Opposition noted in its “reasoned amendment” when it moved that C-51 not be given Second Reading, Bill C-51 does not include “the type of concrete, effective measures that have been proven to work, such as working with communities ‎on measures to counter radicalization of youth – may even undermine outreach.” This speaks for itself, and we will not elaborate beyond saying that, within a common commitment to countering terrorism, effective measures of the sort referenced in the reasoned amendment not only are necessary but also must be vigorously pursued and well-funded. The government made no parallel announcements alongside Bill C-51 that would suggest that these sort of measures are anywhere near the priority they need to be.
  5. Finally, the defects noted in points 1, 2 and 3 (information-sharing, criminalizing expression, and disruption) are magnified by the overarching lack of anything approaching adequate oversight and review functions, at the same time as existing accountability mechanisms have been weakened and in some cases eliminated in recent years. Quite simply, Bill C-51 continues the government’s resolute refusal to respond to 10 years of calls for adequate and integrated review of intelligence and related security-state activities, which was first (and perhaps best) articulated by Justice O’Connor in a dedicated volume in his report on what had happened to Maher Arar. Only last week, former prime ministers and premiers wrote an open letter saying that a bill like C-51 cannot be enacted absent the kind of accountability processes and mechanisms that will catch and hopefully prevent abuses of the wide new powers CSIS and a large number of partner agencies will now have (note that CSIS can enlist other agencies and any person in its disruption activities and the information-sharing law concerns over a dozen other government agencies besides CSIS). Even if one judged all the new CSIS powers in C-51 to be justified, they must not be enacted without proper accountability. Here, we must note that the government’s record has gone in the opposite direction from enhanced accountability. Taking CSIS alone, the present government weakened CSIS’s accountability by getting rid of an oversight actor, the Inspector General, whose job was to keep the Minister of Public Security on top of CSIS activity in real time. It transferred this function to CSIS’s review body, the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), which does not have anything close to the personnel or resources to carry this function out – given it does not have sufficient staff and resources to carry out its existing mandate to ensure CSIS acts within the law. Beyond staff, we note that SIRC is a body that has for some time not been at a full complement of members, even as the government continues to make no apology for having once appointed as SIRC’s Chair someone with no qualifications (and it turns out, no character) to be on SIRC let alone to be its chair (Arthur Porter). And, as revealed in a recent CBC investigation, the government has simply not been straight with Canadians when it constantly says SIRC is a robust and well-resourced body: its budget is a mere $3 million, which has flat-lined since 2005 when the budget was $2.9 million, even as its staff has been cut from 20 in 2005 to 17 now. Without an integrated security-intelligence review mechanism, which should also include some form of Parliamentary oversight and/or review, and with especially SIRC (with jurisdiction only over CSIS) not a fully effective body, we are of the view that no MP should in good conscience be voting for Bill C-51.

Above, we have limited ourselves to five central concerns, but it is important to reiterate that some or all of the signatories have serious concerns about a good number of other aspects of C-51 – and/or about detailed aspects of some of the concerns that were generally expressed in the above five points. The following are some (but only some) of those concerns, in point form. They are included by way of saying that signatories believe these all need to be looked at closely and rigorously during House of Commons committee study of C-51, now that it has passed Second Reading:

  • C-51 radically lowers the threshold for preventive detention and imposition of recognizance with conditions on individuals. Only three years ago, Parliament enacted a law saying this detention/conditions regime can operate if there is a reasonable basis for believing a person “will” commit a terrorist offence. Now, that threshold has been lowered to “may.” There has been a failure of the government to explain why exactly the existing power has not been adequate. In light of the huge potential for abuse of such a low threshold, including through wide-scale use (recalling the mass arrests at the time of the War Measures Act in Quebec), Canadians and parliamentarians need to know why extraordinary new powers are needed, especially when the current ones were enacted in the context of ongoing threats by Al-Qaeda to carry out attacks in Canada that seem no less serious than the ones currently being threatened by entities like ISIS and Al-Shabab.
  • C-51 expands the no-fly list regime. It seems to have simply replicated the US no-fly list rules, the operation of which has been widely criticized in terms of its breadth and impacts on innocent people. Is this the right regime for Canada?
  • C-51’s new disruption warrants now allows CSIS to impinge on the RCMP’s law enforcement role, bringing back turf wars that were eliminated when intelligence and law enforcement were separated in the wake of the RCMP’s abusive disruption activities of the late 1960s and early 1970s. But, even more important than turf wars is the potential for CSIS behaviour in the form of disruptive measures to undermine both the investigation and the prosecution of criminal cases by interfering with evidentiary trail, contaminating evidence, and so on.
  • C-51, in tandem with C-44, permits CSIS to engage not just in surveillance and information-gathering abroad, but also in disruption. There are many questions about how this will work. The danger of lawlessness seems to be significantly greater for CSIS activities abroad, in that CSIS only needs to seek approval for disruption under C-51 where Canadian, not foreign, law could be breached or where the Charter could be contravened (with Canadian law on the application of the Charter outside Canada being quite unclear at the moment). And there is no duty for CSIS to coordinate with or seek approval from the Department of Foreign Affairs, such that the chances of interference with the conduct of Canada’s foreign affairs cannot be discounted. Nor can we ignore the likely tendency for disruption measures abroad to be more threatening to individuals’ rights than in Canada: for example, Parliament needs to know whether CSIS agents abroad can engage in detention and rendition to agencies of other countries under the new C-51 regime.

We end by observing that this letter is dated Feb. 23, 2015, which is also the day when the government has chosen to cut off Second Reading debate on Bill C-51 after having allocated a mere three days (in reality, only portions of each of those days) to debate. In light of the sweeping scope and great importance of this bill, we believe that circumventing the ability of MPs to dissect the bill, and their responsibility to convey their concerns to Canadians at large before a Second Reading vote, is a troubling undermining of our Parliamentary democracy’s capacity to hold majority governments accountable. It is sadly ironic that democratic debate is being curtailed on a bill that vastly expands the scope of covert state activity when that activity will be subject to poor or even non-existent democratic oversight or review.

In conclusion, we urge all Parliamentarians to ensure that C-51 not be enacted in anything resembling its present form.

Yours sincerely,

Jennie Abell, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Amir Attaran, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law , University of Ottawa
Natasha Bakht, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Clayton Bangsund, Assistant Professor, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan
Margaret Beare, Professor of Law and Sociology, York University
Faisal Bhabha, Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Jennifer Bond, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Suzanne Bouclin, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law – Civil Law, University of Ottawa
Susan Boyd, Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia
Sarah Buhler, Assistant Professor, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan
Karen Busby, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, and Director, Centre for Human Rights Research
Michael Byers, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Global Politics and International Law, University of British Columbia
Angela Cameron, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Pascale Chapdelaine, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Larry Chartrand, Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Allison Christians, H. Heward Stikeman Chair in Tax Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University
Brenda Cossman, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Stephen Coughlan, Professor, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University
François Crépeau, Hans & Tamar Openheimer Professor in Public International Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University
Hugo Cyr, Professor of Law, University of Quebec in Montreal
Jennifer E. Dalton, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy and Administration, York University
Maneesha Deckha, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria
Julie Desrosiers, Professor, Faculty of Law, University Laval
Peter Dietsch, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal
Stacy Douglas, Assistant Professor, Department of Law & Legal Studies, Carleton University
Susan Drummond, Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Isabelle Duplessis, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Montreal
Stuart Farson, Adjunct Professor, Political Science, Simon Fraser University
Gerry Ferguson, Distinguished Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria
Leonard, Findlay, Professor, College of Arts and Science, University of Saskatchewan, and Director, Humanities Research Unit
Colleen Flood, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa; Research Chair in Health Law & Policy
Fabien Gélinas, Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University
Daphne Gilbert, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Jassmine Girgis, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary
Isabel Grant, Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia
Marie Annik Grégoire, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Montreal
Sakej Henderson, Professor, University of Saskatchewan, Research Director, Native Law Centre of Canada
Gleider I. Hernández, Senior Lecturer in Public International Law, Durham Law School
Steve Hewitt, Senior Lecturer, Department of History, University of Birmingham
Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, York University
Felix Hoehn, Assistant Professor, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan
Jula Hughes, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of New Brunswick
Allan Hutchinson, Distinguished Research Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Shin Imai, Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Martha Jackman, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
Juliet Johnson, Associate Professor, Political Science, McGill University
Rebecca Johnson, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria
Jasminka Kalajdzic, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Charis Kamphuis, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Thompson Rivers University
John Keyes, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
Muharem Kianieff, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Jeff King, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Laws, University College London
Jennifer Koshan, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary
François J. Larocque, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Fannie Lafontaine, Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair on International Criminal Justice and Human Rights, University Laval
Louis-Philippe Lampron, Professor, Faculty of Law, Laval University
Nicole LaViolette, Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Jean Leclair, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Montreal
Ed Levy, Retired Professor of Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Brian Lewis, Professor of History, McGill University
Jamie Liew, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Catherine Lu, Associate Professor, Political Science, McGill University
Audrey Macklin, Professor of Law and Chair in Human Rights Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Alice MacLachlan, Associate Professor, Philosophy, York University
Warren Magnusson, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Victoria
Kathleen Mahoney, Professor of Law, University of Calgary; Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Marie Manikis, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University
John Manwaring, Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Michael Marin, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Graham Mayeda, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Sheila McIntyre, Professor Emerita, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Michael M’Gonigle, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria
Cynthia Milton, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Montreal
Richard Moon, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Mary Jane Mossman, Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Claire Mummé, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Roxanne Mykitiuk, Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Pierre Noreau, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Montreal
Darren O’Toole, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
Charles-Maxime Panaccio, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
Steven Penney, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Alberta
Denise Reaume, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Philip Resnick, Professor Emeritus, Political Science, University of British Columbia
Darryl Robinson, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University
David Robitaille, Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Ottawa and trustee at the Quebec Centre for Environmental Law
Sanda Rodgers, Professor Emerita, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
Bruce Ryder, Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and Academic Director, Anti-Discrimination Intensive Program
Hengameh Saberi, Assistant Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Calvin Sandborn, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria, Legal Director, UVic Environmental Law Centre
Steven Savit, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of British Columbia
Jennifer Schulz, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba
Dayna Scott. Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and Graduate Program Director
Noel Semple, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Martha Shaffer, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
Elizabeth Sheehy, Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
James Sheptycki, Professor of Criminology, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University
James Stewart, Assistant Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia
Donald Stuart, Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen’s University
Marie-Eve Sylvestre, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law – Civil Law, University of Ottawa, and Vice-Dean, Research and Communications
François Tanguay-Renaud, Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, and Director, Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security
David Tanovich, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Christine Tappolet, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Montreal
Saul Templeton, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Calgary
Kimberley N. Trapp, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Faculty of Laws, University College London
Gus Van Harten, Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University
Lucinda Vandervort, Professor, College of Law, University of Saskatchewan
Wilfrid Waluchow, Professor, Senator William McMaster Chair in Constitutional Studies, Department of Philosophy, McMaster University
Christopher Waters, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor
Wesley Pue, Professor, Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia
Reg Whitaker, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, York University, and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, University of Victoria
David Wiseman, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law – Common Law, University of Ottawa
Stepan Wood, Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University

Relevant Links :

Bill C-51 (Historical)
Openmedia Petition

A Petition about Glyphosate

I have had a series of exchanges with Health Canada on Glyphosate. These include :

1. A letter to Ms Rona Ambrose, the minster of health, hand carried by outgoing MP Alex Atamanenko to Ms Ambrose, on the issue of lack of laboratories in Canada (at the time, i.e. last year) where Canadians could test themselves (urine sample or breast milk), or their food, for presence of Glyphosate. That produced a convoluted response from the ministry, without actually covering the main issue, i.e. labs for Canadians. At the time, Canada had labs that test for Glyphosate only in soil and in water. That is all.

Things have improved since then. I do not know if it happened because of my question, and because MP Alex Atamanenko pushed it with Health Canada, or because World Health Organization re-classified Glyphosate as a probable carcinogen, or for a combination of reasons including the above two. Whatever the reason, a number of Canadian labs now offer testing of food items for presence of Glyphosate. Some will test only vegetables, or processed food. Some will test grains. Some might only test crops from the field. Some have this testing methodology and process accredited. Some claim they can get the accreditation but have not done so because it is costly and they do not know if the business will be enough to maintain this accreditation that involves high annual fees.

Some will only test target weed type plants that show visible damage due to suspected glyphosate attack, but will not test plants that show no trace of damage, such as RoundUp Ready crops.

They mostly use High Performance Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry or similar high end methods and have a lowest repeatable and verifiable detection level that is between 10 and 20 parts per billion.

Most will do such tests for any paying customer including the general public. Costs can vary from around 200 to 400, depending on various factors.

Unfortunately, testing of human body fluids such as urine, blood, or mother’s breast milk, for presence of Glyphosate, is still not possible in Canada. There is a system in the US, that allows Canadian urine to be transported safety and tested in the US, for USD 119 each – and effort in which I am personally involved. We have sent out the first batch of samples and are awaiting results. This is covered in another blog.

2. Safety test documents: Request to Health Canada, through Access To Information (ATI) act, for Health Canada to disclose to me the document, based on which it approved Glyphosate. This resulted in huge file being copied into a CD and sent to me by mail. But the document and its attached reports and links did not include direct test data conducted on animals that have been exposed to the chemical. Rather, it was a summary report comprising of visiting other scientific papers. So the issue remains unresolved, i.e. if Canadian Government of its Pest Management Review Association has at all sighted a direct safety test report with their raw data, or not. And if it has, then will it make those document(s) public. I intend to make fresh requests to Health Canada, with different wording, for disclosure of the safety test raw data.

3. Results of Canadian foods being tested for Glyphosate content. I know the Canadian Government has started testing our food for Glyphosate content. I know existing labs are scrambling to get on board, and are either developing their own technology or adopting/licensing European or American systems. I asked the Government, against under Access To Information Act, to disclose to me all such results. Unfortunately, again, I am being given selective results, involving tests of crops suspected to be clean already, such as organic plants, and not conventional, or RoundUp Ready plants. So, in my view, the Government is playing hide and seek with us on safety data on glyphosate.

4. A fresh petition: Now that we have a fresh Government to take helm, and this Government is promising to be more transparent, I intend to see if fresh engagements will help bring transparency in this field which has been opaque for too long.

This petition, which is now collecting signatories and is sort of open ended. I was thinking of closing it when it collects 500 signatures. A letter should be sent to New Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as well as the new Minster of Health, for them to disclose the safety documents relating to Glyphosate, and also to make the system transparent so that people do not have to run around to get an honest answer on issues of food safety.

Meanwhile, there has been some interesting sniping behind the back from some anti-GMO and anti-pesticide talking heads, who might be harbouring a desire to own the movement, or appear to be the omnipotent guru in their ivory towers.

One comment that has come back through circuitous paths is that it is not Health Canada’s duty to sight first hand safety test data and not their duty to prove to the citizens of Canada that a product it approved is safe. All Health Canada needs to do, perhaps, is copy paste whatever they get from the biotech industry.

The petition has gathered over 19,000 supporters by November 14. It also got under the skin of a Harold Ingram, who was kind enough to send me an email.

Naturally, that is not what we expect a Government to do. There are rule books and guidelines on that the approval regime under the ministry of health is supposed to follow.

I had a minute and a half talk with Dr. Shiv Chopra, and converted that into a video, for clarifications.

[youtube 7K54gEqDedY]

So, here is a request for those that believe such a petition is necessary – go sign it. Click on the petition image to go to that page.

Thank you.

Yellow journalism

Used to be a time when each town had one or two family owned newspapers, and collectively a nation had a lot of variety in their news services. Each paper may or may not have a particular tilt in its presentation – pro poor, pro rich, left or right, anti this or anti that.

Together, they presented multiple angles and points of view on issues that mattered to the people, and to the nation.

Unfortunately, that is not how things are today, thanks to extreme consolidation of the news media. Today a single mogul or media house, who may not even be from your country, can own every large paper and coax all of them to to push its own bias on an entire nation.

Ideally, there should have been an anti-monopoly laws that prevent this from happening, but then, there are a lot of things that should have happened in Canada but did not.

Here is an example – of what I consider to be yellow journalism. This article came out in Globe and Mail on October 29. This looks like an angry reaction to an interview that CBC conducted on Dr. Shiv Chopra, in relation to the TPP deals  in general, and about possible import of American milk from cows treated with growth hormones in particular. The CBC interview with Dr. Chopra can be found here.

In my opinion TPP is engineered to promote profiteering by corporations against the interests of a nation and gives these corporations extraordinary power to prevent national Governments from protecting its market, its interest, or its people from predatory practices by these corporations. In its basic form, it can be argued that such deals are anti-democratic, and there are justifiable reasons one can have objections to such deals.

This lady might be beholden to the religion of corporate greed or share holder profiteering. Anyhow, her article appears to be aimed at trashing Dr. Shiv Chopra’s life work, particularly because Chopra was vocal in his criticism of TPP and questions the safety of American milk treated with rBGH.

Perhaps she considers a corporate driven USA to be the reference point of every heavenly thing that earth has seen, meaning, if something happens in USA, then it must be the best thing.

One could take this kind of convoluted logic to an extreme, and claim that, if USA has most per capita people in jail, then Canada should follow suit and start jailing our people right and left, because, by that mind set, we are badly lagging behind USA in this important area.

Dr. Chopra was employed as a top scientist in Health Canada involved in approval of products that went into human food system. His concern was human health and safety.

The bovine growth hormone (rBGH) was being touted as the next best thing since our species ancestors lost their tail and got down from trees, figuratively speaking. Injecting cows with this growth hormone is supposed to force ( they used more Gandhian terminology such as “induce” instead of force) the cows to produce more milk than they would normally do.

Shiv wanted to see safety tests done on this product before approving it. This is a very normal request, especially from someone in his position. His job was not to see if the injection does indeed result in more milk. His job was to check if that milk could be harmful to people who drank it.

So he asked for test results to be submitted to him. These results would normally involve sample mammals such as rats or rabbits to be injected with this hormone, and then the blood chemistry and milk chemistry of these animals as well as other health parameters to be measured, and compared with another set of animals of the same species that were not treated with this hormone. The resultant comparison of raw data is expected to indicate if the treated animal remained healthy, if its milk did not contain undue amounts of growth hormone, if its body did not produce unwanted antibodies as a reaction to the hormone, if its milk did not contain anything other than what normal milk should contain, etc.

Normally, it would not be necessary for an approval authority to ask for these safety test data, because it would automatically be included by the producer in their application. But, for reasons better known to the producers, this safety test documents were excluded from the file and Shiv Chopra did not have them.

So he asked for them. Simple.

But, instead of providing the requested information, the producer went over his head to the politicians, and got Shiv Chopra sacked. Not only that, the Government passed a gag order on Shiv, so that he would not be allowed to speak about the circumstance under which he was fired. Dr. Chopra had to fight this gag order in court and had that lifted, before he could publish a book – Corrupt to the core, to expose endemic corruption within Health Canada.

That is the story about Shiv Chopra, and rBGH. That hormone remains unapproved in Canada and milk treated with it remains banned from import. A majority of European nations have outright banned the hormone in their dairy industry. But now, thanks to TPP, such milk may enter Canada through the back door.

That is what concerns Dr. Chopra, and that is what he spoke about.

The article in Globe and Mail essentially amounts to a murder of truth, and an sorry example of corporate driven yellow journalism. You can see your yourself by clicking on the picture.

I do not fault the woman for the twisted view she is projecting. Not every one is knowledgable. Not everyone is perfect. People have a right to be stupid. I however fault Globe and Mail for putting it up. But then, I started this blog on the issue of death of true investigative journalism. Globe and mail article proves that in Canada, free press has been replaced by free jokes.

The question in my mind is – should I consider Globe and Mail same as junk mail.

Questions for Canadian election candidates

Canadians are facing an election. It is our duty, as citizens, to be responsible in voting.

I decided to ask the candidates my question, directly, to ascertain what each candidate feels about it. Here is a copy of it.


Letter sent to :
Conservatives : Kerry-Lynne Findlay
NDP – Jeremy Leveque
Liberal – Carla Qualtrough
Green – Anthony Devellano

Dear candidate (name) from Delta,

I am a voter and a concerned citizen. I believe it to be my duty to be engaged this election season as a concerned citizen. That is the reason behind this letter, trying to understand the individual candidates of my riding.

I am against voting along party lines.

I am an engineer and have worked in multiple continents with folks from all across the world. I have also studied the economic, social and political systems of the nations of this planet within my means, and looked at them through the lens of time. In short, I believe I am not completely stupid.

I have serious reservations on the general economic model that is often pushed by the Canadian Govt. under different leaders and different parties.

Carla Qualtrough, Liberal, Delta BC

I have decided not to vote for any logo or picture of party leaders and will vote for the person from my riding that seems to be most balanced and with good convictions that rhyme with my views. 

Jeremy Leveque, NDP, Delta BC

I am not interested in learning what a candidate can do for me. Instead, I am keen to learn what he or she will do for the long term health of Canada – its land, its air, its water and its people. Canada has been doing poorly those areas for a while now.

To that effect, I need to find answers to questions that are not being asked by the mainstream media, and what I have not heard a candidate address so far. Again, I am not so much interested in what their party leaders have to say. I am supposed to be voting for a person and not a lamp post that carries a party tag.

My questions are, briefly :

1) Canada has a huge landmass and huge reserve of resources and forestry and a small population to manage and distribute this wealth to. Yet, Canadian people are fast sliding to be at the bottom of the barrel in quality of life, public support systems towards healthcare, education, transportation, jobs, living wage, housing, poverty index, and toxicity in their environment. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

Anthony Devellano – Green Party, Delta BC

2) Canada is signing trade agreements that allows foreign corporations to trump Canadian citizen’s concerns. This destroyed our independence and democracy. Canada should not be for corporations to loot. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

3) Canadian food and agriculture is moving away from small farmers growing organic food, to mega farms producing potentially toxic food that is also patented by foreign corporations. The toxicity of these crops and pesticides have never been independently tested by Canadian institutions that are outside of influence by either the corporations or the Government. The patent rights intends to have all useful living organisms to belong to a few patent holding corporations instead of Gods own creation. Seeds will not longer belong to farmers. Trees will no longer belong to nature. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, Delta BC

4) Canada has surpassed Brazil and every other country on earth in most rapid destruction of its forestry and depletion of its carbon reserve This is disastrous and shameful. We are cooking the planet and killing ourselves. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

5) Canada, while promoting industrial chemical agriculture, has been steadily depopulating the rural landscape, forcing folks to move to towns and be unemployed job seekers, instead of reversing the trend, reducing massive corporate controlled farms and solving its employment, urban sprawl and civic services problem by repopulating its agricultural landscape with thousands of farming families and assisting rather than hindering them. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

6) Canada appears to be excessively in control of big corporations. It allowed these corporations to pay minimal taxes for taking away natural resources from our land, which essentially amounts to robbing the land. We aught to greatly increase tax revenue from these corporations, impose controls on how they do their business with regard to environmental degradation, and increase public owned firms to be involved in resource management, and thus improving the wealth of the nation instead of fattening the pocket of a few individuals and corporations and their share holders. Example to follow – Norway. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

7) I believe bill C-51 was a blow to democracy and takes away citizen rights that should have been unalienable. I believe a Canadian is more likely to be killed by a moose than by a terrorist. I believe we would not be targets of terrorism at all if our Govt stopped warmongering and bombing innocent people in far off lands that have done nothing to harm Canada, and that the best way to protect Canadian citizens is to stop bombing others and to stop supporting a military industrial model. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

8) I believe the Canadian constitution, on which elected officials should be taking oath of service, obliges the elected persons to a) abide by the constitution and b) follow the wishes of the electorate of his riding and NOT c) the wishes of the party leader. This is what I believe. Question – what do you believe ?

I shall be very happy to read your response, or speak with you either face to face or over the phone. My telephone number if 604-649 7535.

Based on my finding, I may donate, or volunteer or promote a candidate or a number of Candidates, as part of my duty as a citizen and a voter.

Looking forward to your response

Tony Mitra, a voter
(address & contact)

Vallianatos exposes EPA through his book – Poison Spring

As the title says, Evaggelos Vallianatos, along with Mr. M. Jenkins co-authored the book on EPA, and how the organization has been literally captured by the toxic chemical industry, to the disadvantage of the average American, and by extension, of the people the world over.

I found the book very useful to understand how toxic chemicals get approved and how much of a clout the industry has over the regulatory mechanism. So much so that I approached Evaggelos Vallianatos for a phone interview, even if I was not very successful in pronouncing  his first name accurately.

He agreed and we had a talk a few days ago.

Here are the basic points:

  • The prevailing culture in EPA was to pretty much let the chemical industry to run the show.
  • The Government has been captured by the industry, and EPA is simply an example.
  • EPA is too important to be allowed to be dominated by such outside forces.
  • Decision made in EPA are questionable due to the influence that comes from the Congress, from the White House and directly from the Chemical Industry.
  • Credibility of science has been damaged due to the history of fraud in the testing of these toxic chemicals for decades.
  • The climate of fear, and acceptance of outside influence, is still pervasive.
  • America aught to reject the current EPA and redesign it as an independent organization, with a wall of protection from the industry so the scientists would feel secure and confident that their work and decisions are to be made on reliable and untampered data.
  • Also, the EPA or the Government needs to create a set of independent laboratories to test all these chemicals before they get into the market, and not rely on labs under control of the industry.
  • Credibility of the industry right now is as good as zero. Nobody trusts it’s findings. He himself would not trust them because of what he has seen in EPA.
  • This is very important because this not only affects the people of America, but also of Canada and pretty much the rest of the industrial world and beyond.
  • The system needs to be reformed, and its workings set right, and the industry needs to be kept away from interfering with the work of this agency.
  • We need to raise awareness by speaking about it, in Canada, in USA and elsewhere, in order to raise public awareness to the level where it can make an impact.
  • It has been 53 years since Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring. There should be no need now to re-state the problem, and we are still tackling with the same old problem albeit with a new breed of toxins.
  • CSPAN book TV has interviewed Dr. Vallianatos to be broadcast soon – and people are encouraged to see it.
  • Eggevelos Vallianatos would love to speak to Canadians on this.
  • He believes, if we have to select just a handful of pesticides that should be removed immediately, we might choose to kick out 2,4-D and Glyphosate first.
  • When EPA banned 2,4,5-T, they likely made a secret agreement with Dow not to touch 2,4-D since it was so popular.
  • Glyphosate in Roundup is used for decades and there are some experts that believe it will destroy American agriculture. We don’t think such extremely toxic substances should be in our environment.
  • Moms Across America has some young mothers test their breast milk and found traces of Glyphosate in them. Imagine the feeling of the mothers when they know they might poison their babies through breast feeding !!
  • There is science papers out there already about how bad these toxins are for many animals and even humans. And now it is in mothers milk.
  • Governments should ban it. There is enough good food possible through organic clean agriculture. There is no need for this toxic model.
  • So why is this toxic industry surviving? Not to provide nutrition or kill insects or do any favour to nature or people, Vallianatos argues. They survive so a small number of corporations can have a mega empire.
  • Advise to  Canadians – start eating organic food. Doing so you avoid GMO, you avoid pesticide, you avoid sludge, radiation, and other synthetic chemicals. Then, start influencing others to do the same. Join environment protection groups. Then try to organize bigger groups to influence the politics of your region and your nation.

Its a 14 minute interview. You can listen to it directly at the bottom of this page, or you can download it to play later through your music player.

I shall be glad to hear your opinion. Write to tony.mitra@gmail.com

Cheers

Tony Mitra


Prince Edward Island, Chloropicrin and Dr. Anthony Samsel

Malcolm Joseph Pitre of Prince Edward Island asked for information that might help him resist the PEI provincial Government’s plan to introduce Chloropicrin for soil sterilization for a fruit farm, presumably strawberry.

Chloropicrin 100 - MSDS

I tried contacting Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus, Purdue University. But he was not around. So I called Anthony Samsel of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Samsel knew Cholopicrin and told me much about it, which I recorded for listeners here.

Chloropicrin was a chemical warfare agent in the first World War, was stored in WW II, but is now banned, I believe, from military use – but is still used in Agriculture, for example as a soil fumigant. CDC identifies this chemical as a Lung Damaging Agent.

It is hazardous, a killer. Some of it would evaporate out of the soil after use. This gas is heavier than air and would stay close to the ground. The safety warnings say people should stay away from it. As Sr. Samsel said, non-toxic methods are less harmful and should be the first choice – such as steam sterilization methods. These technologies exist, and units are available that can be hauled as a trailer to site. A few samples are given here.

There are quite a few examples of steam soil sterilizers out there if one googles it. There may be someone within PEI that can source one locally or from within the maritime provinces. There are many documents freely available on line that give examples of how to use Steam, or even solar power to organically sterilize a patch of soil before planting. If needed, I wonder if Av Singh of Nova Scotia might help locate one, or offer advise on another non-toxic method of doing the same job.

As to calculating the pesticide load, I first picked the data off Environment Canada’s document on pesticide use in PEI as well as other provinces. Then I checked the area and the population, to create a table of per capita and per unit area, the average pesticide use for each province. PEI stands out in contrast because of the high pesticide load, which is ten times higher per capita and up to 17 times higher per unit area, compared to its neighbour Nova Scotia. It also appears to be way higher that any other region in Canada.

I would not be surprised if reported cases show higher occurrence of some disease, such as Cancer,Crohn’s disease, Celiac, Autism, obesity, and other illnesses were higher per unit population than elsewhere in Canada. However, I do not have the data, and it would be important to get the information on this. I did write a letter( emails ) to the Government of PEI, but received no response. I have not checked thoroughly for the PEI government information online, and would encourage local residents to try to locate or ask for information on annual reported cases of these illnesses and then see how they measure up against the rest of Canada and the rest of the western world.

After all, PEI is part of Canada and Canada is not exactly a third world country – or is it?

Gutsy Walk for Crohn’s and Colitis Canada, for example, says in its web site:
Canada has one of the highest rates for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis in the world and those rates are increasing. Most alarming, the number of new cases of Crohn’s disease in Canadian children has almost doubled since 1995. Crohn’s and colitis are lifelong diseases that can have a devastating impact on quality of life, elevate the risk of colorectal cancer, and in the case of Crohn’s disease, shorten life expectancy“.

Sustainable Pulse, for example, has an article about the link between Monsanto’s Roundup and Global Bloom of Celiac disease and Gluten intolerance.

There are more things in the pipeline for Prince Edward Island, the maritime Provinces and the rest of Canada. One of them is about testing of Glyphosate in body fluids such as blood, urine, breast milk and also soil samples.

Dr. Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff have gotten engaged in providing a service that includes scientific analysis of the data, and on a more professional level. This service is provided to the right candidates in Canada. The right candidates would be those that are already sick from exposure, and those that are suspect due to living close to areas with heavy pesticide use, or are not so careful with what they eat. Nursing mothers with babies are preferred if they are suspect, since they can provide multiple samples, that could prove bio-accumulation of the material.

The cost of each test is US$ 100, to be paid ahead of the tests. Should a deserving candidate cannot afford to pay for the test, Drs. Samsel and Seneff will try to cover it out of their own pocket.

From our end, we need to identify the right candidates, and if they cannot afford the test, we should consider raising funds to help out, and not tax Dr. Samsel and Dr. Seneff far as possible.

More on all this later. This part of the talk (testing for Glyphosate) is not included in the podcast and will be covered with more detail down the line.


For now, you can click on the play button and listen to the 10 minute podcast of Dr. Samsel about a cleaner method for soil sterilization that Chloropicrin – for residents of PEI.

I shall be most happy to hear your comments to: tony.mitra@gmail.com

Thanks/ Tony

Letter to Mayor Jackson, Delta, BC, about testing for Glyphosate

To: Ms Lois E. Jackson, Mayor, Delta, BC, mayor@delta.ca

Dated : Thursday, May 15, 2014

Mayor Jackson

Subject: Canadians arranging to test their urine and water for presence of Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer – requesting your moral support

Dear Mayor Jackson,

Good day.

We are a group of concerned Canadians from Delta, BC, and across the land all the way to the east coast of Canada, that are arranging to have our waters, urine, blood and mothers breast milk tested by ourselves, for presence of Monsanto’s week killer Roundup. This is in recognition of fact that a rising tide of serious illness in north America may be linked to an ever increasing release of Glyphosate as a weed killer, as an agricultural desiccant, and an antibiotic, on our agricultural fields as well as out forests and watersheds.

We are in discussion with labs in Canada and the US for suitable bulk quote for such a test and building of data base on the spread of this week killer in human blood, organs and tissues across Canada. There are claims made by Monsanto and other producers of Glyphosate in herbicides that identify this chemical as harmless to animals and only affects plants, and any ingestion is promptly flushed out by humans without accumulation in our body and without causing any harm. As a result EPA has raised the presence of Glyphosate to be considered safe for food to a level several thousand times higher than that in Europe. It has recently been proven by tests conducted on human urine, blood and mothers breast milk, that the claim of safety for humans in false, that it bio-accumulates and crosses several safety boundaries to be able to enter blood and breast milk. Further, it has been established by independent scientists  that the item wrecks havoc with our micro-biome which is responsible for producing a lot of our enzymes, vitamins and other essential bio-chemicals which makes it possible for us to function properly.

I personally know and speak with many such scientists, and will provide references to two conversations, one with Dr. Anthony Samsel (http://www.tonu.org/2014/05/14/samsel/) and another with Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT (http://www.tonu.org/2014/04/19/stephanie-seneff/) about the harmful effects of Glyphosate. These scientists have been studying Glyphosate for years.

You probably know that an organization in the US, named Moms Across America (MAA) have already started doing such tests by themselves, and some shocking results are coming up, including presence of this toxin in their mothers milk.

So, grassroots groups are joining up across Canada, to arrange for similar testing of human body fluids as well as ground water, for presence of Glyphosate, at their own cost. I am part of it, and am writing to find out if this effort may have your moral support. All we intend to do is find out if the weedkiller is already accumulating in our bodies, and then let the chips fall as they may.

Ideally, such a test should have been conducted by Health Canada, or Environment Canada, or corresponding ministries within individual provinces, or departments of Environment within Municipalities. However, since the Govt has taken no initiative to investigate this potentially huge health risk, citizens are arranging to take initiative in their own hands, bypassing the political establishment.

I write this to you, asking if you might like to lend your support to this effort. We do not seek financial support, nor do we seek your organizational or campaigning support. We simply ask if you are willing to publicly come out in support of this grassroots movement, by lending a few words of encouragement in writing that we can use, or to have your voice recorded and added in future audio podcasts, which will be made to cover this issue.

You are the fourth elected official I write this to, and the first one from a Municipality. I wrote a letter to MP Alex Atamanenko of NDP yesterday after speaking with his legal assistant team. I also wrote two other personalized letters earlier today, to South & North Delta MLAs Ms Vicky Huntington and Scott Hamilton. For now, I am not planning on writing to any more elected politicians. However, this being a transparent grassroots organization that exchanges views with others, I may inform of my effort to reach your office as a sample for others across Canada to consider doing the same in their own areas.

There is a high level of interest by people across Canada. We know about this interest since I am part of a team that have been touring the length and breadth of Canada speaking to folks on invitation, on the potential harm of GMO and pesticides in agriculture and environment on one side, and the need for citizens to take initiative without waiting for politicians on the other side, and have now links with groupings from the east coast of Canada to the west coast, and have a huge number of volunteers ready to send samples for testing, at their own cost. Thats how we know.

I would appreciate your feedback if you consider this effort worth providing your moral support, or not. Absence of any response would be taken as either your disagreement that such a test should at all be conducted to check if Roundup weed killer is accumulating in our bodies, or that you find this movement politically unacceptable in your point of view.

Should you be interested to meet me and a few like minded citizens face to face, I shall be most glad to pay you a visit.

Hoping for a positive response,

With best wishes

Tony Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E3L7, Canada

tony.mitra@gmail.comwww.tonu.org 604-649 7535

A letter to the Govt of New Brunswick, department of forest management

To: Government of New Brunswick – Forestry

Ms Gail Elliott, Administration, Regional Unit

Government of New Brunswick, Canada

cc: Honorable Mr. Hugh J. Flemming, Minister of Health, New Brunswick

cc: Dr. Thierry Vrain, Genetic Engineer, retired, Agriculture Canada,

Subject: Data regarding past annual release quantities of herbicide containing Glyphosate in Forestry and agriculture, in New Brunswick

Dear Ms Elliot

Good day. I am a retired engineer, a nature lover, citizen journalist and blogger, and food safety activist with some contact with the world of scientists on study of Glyphosate and its effects on people and environment.

Dr. Thierry Vrain, copied, is a genetic engineer that worked for 35 years with Agriculture Canada before retiring, and is a critic of GMO and its associated herbicide Glyphosate, on account of health risks and absence of sufficient testing in Canada.

We are coming on invitation to speak to a gathering in Fredericton on the 2nd of May, and would like to invite you and your colleagues to attend the meeting. Details are:

St. Mary’s Anglican Church

780 McEvoy Street

Fredericton, NB  E3A 3B7

Friday, May 2nd, 2014

7:00PM-9:00PM

Host:  NB Community Harvest Gardens Inc.

www.nbchg.org

info@nbchg.org

I would also like to present to you a recent audio podcast I made through talks with two scientists, Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus, University of Purdue, and Dr. Stephanie Seneff of MIT, USA. Both these scientists have done extensive research on Glyphosate and its possible harmful effects on living world, both bacteria and higher animals such as wildlife, cattle and humans. We would request you to consider listening to them:

Meanwhile, we request you to kindly provide us, or point us to the right direction where we might find, the year upon year release (use) of the forest herbicide of types Forza, Vision and Vantage Forestry, which are listed in the Government web site on forest management as the brands used on New Brunswick forests, each of which contain Glyphosate as its active ingredient, far as we could see.

We are enclosing one recent article from Dr. Stephanie Seneff and Dr. Anthony Samsel that came out in Interdisciplinary Toxicology for your reference. Perhaps you are already aware of it.

The paper shows links with rapid rise of various disease and release of Glyphosate in agriculture, but the effect may be the same if Glyphosate released on forests got to animals and people.

Anyhow, we have been checking if concerned people can have their blood, urine, or breast milk tested for presence of Glyphosate. This is an initiative recently started in the US by a group named Mothers Across America and the some of the results are rather disturbing, with Glyphosate noted to be present in mothers breast milk in some cases.

We are also checking if similar tests can be done for those Canadians that might be concerned, or live near or downhill of the forests where Glyphosate is being sprayed. There is also an appeal from Deer biologists in New Brunswick that claim that wildlife is under serious harm through Glyphosate exposure.

We wonder if you might be interested to discuss or join hands with us in encouraging independent testing on presence of Glyphosate in humans and animals in New Brunswick. If there is no trace of Glyphosate, the matter can be put to rest and results publicized. If on the other hand results show presence of Glyphosate and if they correlate with people having health issues, then it might indicate a need for further investigation and a kicking in of the precautionary principle.

We understand use of Glyphosate makes business easy, and keeps cost down for the logging industry, but we are sure you will put health of people and environment on a higher priority than just profit for the logging firms.

By copy to Honorable Mr. Hugh Flemming, Minister of health, we are keeping him advised and also extend the request assist us in organizing some sample testing done for presence of Glyphosate within body fluids, of people of New Brunswick that might be living close to areas of Glyphosate application, or are suffering from some of the Chronic diseases such as Celiac, Intestinal infection, Cancer, Kidney injury, renal disease, Parkinson’s, all of which, according to study by Dr. Seneff, Dr. Samsel, Dr. Huber and Dr. Swanson, show strong correlation with increase in application of Glyphosate in USA.

A similar study in Canada would require the data on annual use of Glyphosate and record or reported illnesses, for Canada and also New Brunswick. We request that this data be made available to us.

In case this message should be directed to the another person in the department of forestry, appreciate if you will do that for us.

Hoping to see you or get a chance to shake hands when we are there.

Looking for to your response

With thanks

Tony Mitra

10891 Cherry Lane, Delta, BC, V4E 3L7, Canada

604-649 7535

tony.mitra@gmail.com

www.tonu.org

=======================================

From: Natural Resources Info / Ressources naturelles Info <dnr_mrnweb@gnb.ca>
Subject: RE: Data regarding past annual release quantities of herbicide containing Glyphosate in Forestry and agriculture, in New Brunswick
Date: April 20, 2014 at 5:53:03 PM PDT
 
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