Mail from Alex Morton - Victory - Bill 37 has been withdrawn, so far!!

Hello

Almost unbelievably Minister Don McRae's Bill 37 has been withdrawn. It remains on the order paper, but will not be revisited in this sitting of the BC Legislature!  The Liberals have cancelled the fall sitting, so it won't come up for another year. Therefore,  we are free to continue tracking these viruses, figuring out which ones are present and where and what they are doing.  The threat of prison was extremely unpleasant, but we had decided to challenge the act had it passed - a number of lawyers thought it was unconstitutional.

I want to thank all of you who wrote letters, posted comments on the Salmon Are Sacred facebook page, signed thepetition (please keep signing). Lana Popham, Michael Sather, and Scott Fraser are fantastic wild salmon warrior MLAs, Bea Olivastri of Friends of the Earth wrote a press release on this Bill from Ottawa this morning, Andrew Gage of West Coast Environmental Law wrote a powerful critique of the Bill in a letter to McRae, Elizabeth Denham, BC Information and Privacy Commissioner also wrote a powerful letter to McRae laying out the implications of his draconian bill. Karen Wristen, Greg McDade, John Davis, Jeff Jones, David Sutherland, Vince Gogolek all lawyers whose response to the bill helped us sort this out. Thank you to everyone who donated - so glad we can use the money for testing now! Thank you Ethan Baron for the fantastic reporting that first alerted us and then further reported on McRae's comments about needing this bill ASAP in case of a summer epidemic that might require limits to free speech. Thank you to all the people of this coast who have seen enough and are speaking up to tip us about the situation out on the salmon farms right now. Thank you Anissa Reed!!! You are awesome, Thank you Sabra Woodworth for always being there.

We turned this terrible thing back, it was all of us, not one person less, perhaps democracy is still alive. It is SO rare to get good news, but this is huge. We can get back to work now to turn off the viral spills. We are truly a movement now, a beautiful, inspired creative, peaceful, diverse enormous, movement not afraid to use our voices. We just want wild salmon to survive, and to protect them we have become like them we don't give up, thank you, thank you, thank you all of you!

Very important to keep the change.org petition  http://www.change.org/petitions/costco-safeway-loblaws-we-don-t-want-to-eat-salmon-flu-or-heart-viruses petition growing so the supermarkets will understand that we don't want diseased farm salmon to be sent all over the province on ice to supermarkets where the viruses could spread and people are eating them.  I realize the word is that these viruses don't hurt people, but we do know feedlot influenza is dangerous and knowingly moving it all over the place is a bad idea.

The BC Liberals were set to push this bill through and we turned it back 

Back to work

Alex