Who Crowned Gordo?

(Note: A few weeks ago I was clearly wrong to bring George III into this mess as the following will, I hope, amply demonstrate.)

Louis XIV, the Sun King, the last European king to exercise total power, is reincarnated, alive and well in Victoria. He and Russia's Vladimir Putin have one thing in common -- they think they're the only mortals on the planet who can handle public affairs. The public may sometimes be heard but never, for God's sake, listen to them!

Consider the power now in the Sun King's hands. All municipal power is ultimately wielded in Victoria. Any project His Majesty's friends want to undertake, no matter how much the people who will have to live with it object, will be approved without any interference from tiresome councils.

The power of Metro Vancouver (formerly the Greater Vancouver Regional District) to run Transit within its boundaries has been gutted and transferred to friends of the King. This unelected, unaccountable new transit authority will have wide ranging powers to raise money from taxpayers who have nothing to say about it. Where have we heard "no taxation without representation" before?

Louis XIV controls the environmental assessment process in that he gets to choose the guy who runs it. It comes as no surprise then that environmental assessment is started after the deal is done. The present process has no power to stop a project, only to make the best of it. Such projects as the Sea-to-Sky highway very much including the Eagleridge desecration, the South Fraser Perimeter Road and the Deltaport expansion gave no chance to the people who live in these areas to express an opinion before the deal was cooked.

All hail the untouchable one

The Agricultural Land Reserve poses only a token problem when His Majesty decides that his government would be fine with seeing the land developed, especially if it might help swing a deal with an Indian band.

There is of course the understanding that the King can do no wrong. He can be thrown into jail in lands across the sea without any loss of power at home. Members of his court, however, can be banished for writing a nasty letter.

Our beloved monarch can sell our property, like BC Rail, call it a lease, and account to no one.

The next move will be when our Sun King grants rights to WestPac out of Calgary to build an LNG plant on Texada Island so that they can sell gas into the American market with the huge safety and environmental risks being borne by local residents. Incidentally, the King must know that no American state on the Pacific coast will take this highly dangerous plant -- dangerous not only as a plant but supplied by dangerous tankers.

Let them eat farmed fish

With all the elected tyranny we've seen, none can compare to the arrogance shown by King Louis on the Atlantic salmon farms issue. From the outset the King has denied all problems in the face of overwhelming independent scientific evidence. Report after report have been issued outlining a host of environmental problems, all of them serious, including the devastating attacks by sea lice from the cages on migrating pink and chum salmon smolts. Eighteen world class scientists wrote to the premier, oops! I mean, His Majesty last fall begging him to understand the problem and make the farms move from the path of migrating salmon smolts and he hasn't deigned to reply.

Last month, the following article appeared in the Vancouver Sun, after first appearing in the Victoria Times-Colonist, usually committed royalist papers incidentally, which reflected reports in virtually every English speaking media story in the world -- making British Columbia look like a bunch of idiots in the bargain.

Here's the story based on the release of a paper by Martin Krkosek and Alexandra Morton published in the highly regarded Journal of Science. Headline: "Fish farms to blame for possible wild salmon extinction: study." Published on Dec. 13, 2007, reporter Scott Simpson wrote:

"A groundbreaking scientific study has today established for the first time a large-scale and deadly link between fish farms and sea lice infestations that threatens to wipe out entire populations of wild Pacific salmon.

"An article to be published in Friday's edition of Science, one of the world's foremost scientific journals, says wild pink salmon runs on the British Columbia central coast will be extinct in as little as four years because of a cluster of salmon farms that are creating lethal infestations of sea lice in that area. [emphasis added]

"The article's authors, including University of Alberta researcher Martin Krkosek and B.C.'s Alexandra Morton, looked at 37 years' worth of Fisheries and Oceans data for 71 central coast rivers and found that wild pink runs have comfortably withstood decades of commercial fishing -- but cannot survive fish farms. [emphasis added]

"'What we have seen is a very rapid four year decline in the pink salmon populations in the Broughton,' Krkosek said in an interview earlier this week.

"'Based on that measured rate of decline, which is real, we can expect that in another four years those fish will be all gone if the sea lice infestations continue. [emphasis added]

"'Sea lice hyper-concentrate around the farms and spread to wild salmon migrating in the vicinity of the farms. The lice may not be lethal to adult fish, but they're deadly for infant pink salmon making the transition to the ocean from their natal streams. . . .'

"The report says lice infestation rates are 70 times higher among juvenile pink salmon on central coast rivers compared to infestations in fish farm-free areas farther north.

"It also says mortality rates among juvenile pinks infested with sea lice 'is commonly over 80 per cent.'

"'If outbreaks continue, then local extinction is certain, and a 99 per cent collapse in pink salmon abundance is expected in four pink salmon generations,' the article says. [emphasis added]

"The study brings an element of finality to the debate about the threat salmon farms pose to wild fish. It also puts Canada's federal and provincial governments, and the salmon farming industry, at odds with the reigning body of opinion in the global scientific community." [emphasis added]

His Majesty's agriculture Minister, one Patrick Bell, reacted angrily because the Journal of Science didn't inform him first. The King himself hasn't deigned to reply.

Who is the State?

But the verdict is in. Sea Lice from fish farms are destroying our wild salmon while the King acts as if this issue was just some sort of parish pump political game. His supporters use every diversionary ploy possible. They point out that many other things kill the wild salmon smolts and of course that's so. Smolts must deal with predators in the river before they start migration and after; temperatures may kill them; there may be other factors they have to face. No one denies that. The points are these:

• The major problem the tiny migrating pinks and chum, on their way to the ocean, must face is the mass of sea lice surrounding fish farms.
• Of all the hazards in the smolt's journey, the sea lice from the fish cages is the only one we mere mortals can deal with and eliminate.

All the independent, peer-reviewed and published science makes it abundantly clear that it will be the sea lice from caged farm fish that will do the wild fish in. Louis XIV and his Council of Half-Wits simply don't care.

Louis XIV's government is hell bent on destroying our wild salmon and I can only ask this: How soon will King Louis of British Columbia utter the deathless words of his namesake, l'etat, c'est moi? (for the linguistically challenged, "I am the State")

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