The provincial government's justification for its Orwellian Animal Health Act is not only worrying, it's an insult to the public's intelligence.
Bill 37 overrides B.C.'s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act to make it a crime punishable with jail time to reveal information about a disease outbreak among animals. The provision doesn't apply to the media or the general public, just to those who administer the act - meaning whistleblowers. It has been rightfully condemned by the province's information and privacy commissioner.
The Liberals argue the law will make the public safer by encouraging farmers to report suspicions about disease, secure in the knowledge that their businesses won't be sullied in the headlines.
The same reasoning could be applied to any number of safety issues that embarrass those responsible. By the province's rationale, unsanitary restaurants, contaminated food products, toxic spills - all should be protected in the same way, and yet somehow the government sees no reason to do so.
Sadly, the most plausible explanation for this seemingly arbitrary move is the protection of our legislators' pet industries, first among them, fish farms.
Victoria has a long record of willful blindness to problems with aquaculture. The government has ignored or shouted down those who hold up evidence that open-net farms are centres of contagion that endanger young wild salmon. More than likely, Bill 37 is just the latest front in that battle.
If this is true, our leaders should come clean, and stop insulting the public to whom they owe their jobs.
