playing the lawyering game in BC

[Guest guest]

I was in the Supreme Court of BC at New Westminster, yesterday, applying for directions in my appeal of the Cease and Desist Order against Alice Jongerden. Because I am someone aggrieved by the Order, I have status to appeal it, per section 102 of the Health Act RSBC

All that happened was the judge directed a timeline for the matter to proceed, which is what usually happens at this stage. Mister Justice Barrett declined my other Motions = for a stay of the Order pending the actual appeal, and for Orders compelling the govt. agencies to produce records and certain officials for Discovery

The appeal will probably come on in March, after both sides deliver materials to each other. Meanwhile = the REAL MILK continues to flow. Every day we produce raw milk, get it to its owners in the Big City, and no-one gets sick, is another small proof that raw dairying can be done properly. Thus undoing the rationale for Regulation 181/88 of the Health Act, upon which the Order is predicated, which says that "raw milk is a hazard to health"

Comically ; the face of the Order says that the Fraser Health Authority will come back and inspect the premises to ensure compliance ; they haven't been back ... so the govt. is in breach of its own Order! What does that say? It tells me they've been embarrassed by someone who shoved back and exposed their stupidity.

I have good reason to believe that the govt. has acted illegally, and is hiding material which will show malfeasance of public office. Already, via the Freedom of Information route, I have copies of inter-agency e-mails wherein they admit to each other that they need a complaint against our raw milk dairy in order to move against us, yet they don't have one. They acknowledge that they were well aware - before they moved - that I had two separate letters from the (then) Mininster of Agriculture and from the (then) Acting Director of the Health Protection Branch, expressing govt. policy, which is that cow~sharing / herd~sharing is categorically exempt from the Milk Industry Act RSBC

after 5 months of me asking, they still refuse to produce - for purpose of me perfecting my appeal - the contact information for the purported "complainant". Yesterday their lawyer misled the Court by saying that they have produced the complaint, when they have not.

They refuse to give me a copy of the contract which the Fraser Health Authority has with the laboratory, Siliker. They refuse to give me the directions which the Inspector gave to the lab that day, when he submitted the sample of milk. That tells me that the Inspector DID direct the lab to look for certain bacteria sometimes found in raw milk, and which cause disease in humans ( listeria monocytogenes / campylobacter jejune / E. coli 1057h ) yet the lab DID NOT find those bacteria in the sample. If so, then that would be proof positive that that batch of milk did not present a hazard to the Public Health.

If my suspicion is correct, then the govt. is hiding from the Court material to which I am entitled, in order I can exercise my right to make full answer and defence. That's "obstruction of Justice". As two or more co-operate in such a crime, it becomes another offence : conspiring to commit an indictable offence

Ironically, had they left us alone to go a'dairying for ourselves, we would have been just another special interest group. But because they made me crack the legal volumes in order to fend them off, I wound up in the Royal Archive in , reading the Report of the Provincial Royal Commission into milk marketing ; 1955. Mister Justice JV Clyne made clear that raw milk has always been legal for sale in British Columbia, and directed the Legislature to ensure that the Milk Industry Act have a provision so that those who want un-pasteurized milk, can get it! Up 'til 1996, those sections were part of the Act. They were removed but never repealled. Thus, the Court will have a big problem when I bring on my Constitutional Challenge within the appeal.

Our situation is quite different than Schmidt and cow-sharerers in Ontario. Here the law is on our side!

the govt. of BC has a statutory obligation to accomodate our demand for raw milk. Having failed to carry out that duty, they're negligent!

you'd think a jar of milk is pretty banal stuff. But, as so often happens when the bureaucrazies get hold of something, they botch it. Then they compound their error by circling the wagons, to prevent scutiny. So "the cover-up becomes the story"

I suggest that an investigative journalist could put together and tell a very important story, which is that the incidents all over America where smallholders providing raw milk are being snared in the legal racket, are not isolated. It's a co-ordinated effort by the dairy cartel in order to stifle competition from micro-dairies. What's really going on is that fearmongering about "health" is a cover-story for 'Restraint of trade'

Gordon