(This post has been edited since it was originally posted. In particular, the letter from the defense lawyer to the prosecutor, referred to in the second paragraph–originally included with the post and then removed shortly after at the request of the defendants and their lawyer–has now been included after the defense concluded it wasn’t prohibited from publication.)
Add an additional piece of evidence to the list I provided in my previous blog post indicating desperation, and possible corruption, in the CFIA prosecution of Canadian farmers Michael Schmidt and Montana Jones.
In a 22-page letter presented today to the prosecutor’s office in the case, the defendants lawyer, Shawn Buckley, argues that the CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency) deliberately withheld from the defense key evidence about which of the sheep showed signs of scrapie and the course of the testing for the serious farm animal disease.
In Canada, as in the U.S., prosecutors are required to provide the defense records of incriminating evidence that is to be presented to a judge and/or jury. That documentation is supposed to be presented in a timely way, to allow the defense lawyers time to digest it and develop arguments to rebut potentially false or misleading evidence.
Buckley in his letter provides multiple examples of the CFIA providing incomplete or misleading documentation, especially with regard to emails that circulated among CFIA agents and other officials about the questionable sheep.
Buckley states near the end of his letter: My clients are now firmly of the belief that they are being railroaded into a conviction. Based on the disclosure over the last few days, I cannot fault them for this belief I am forming the opinion that the Defense should seriously consider bringing an abuse of process application, although I will need the requested disclosure for this. Part of this application may include the assertion that if it is true that evidence was being withheld from the Defense, that setting the Defense up for what could only be described as a pretend preliminary inquiry was itself abusive. Aside from now not being prepared for the preliminary inquiry scheduled to continue on Monday, I am firmly of the opinion that it would be inappropriate for it to continue when the preliminary inquiry itself may be abusive without further disclosure.
He concludes: In addition to the late disclosure issues, two of the witnesses you called last week shared with me their belief, based on their dealings with the CFIA that these proceedings were motivated to get at Mr. Schmidt. I must confess that I largely brushed these comments off. Then another person this week approached me with the same comment. Now with the issues outlined above with the new disclosure, I am thinking I need to follow up with those persons on that issue.
It must be getting a little uncomfortable around the collar for the CFIA prosecutors.
In our system, lawyers don’t send “letters” to judges. You have to do everything by way of an application, mostly in open Court. Shawn Buckley is one of the leading lawyers in Canada on this topic, ie. abuse of process by the (so-called) Health Authorities. His biggest win, was ; sending Crown Counsel away with its tail between its legs on the Strauss Heart drops farce. They dropped the charges on the courthouse steps. He will be VERY careful about not crossing the Powers-that-Be in the morass of the legal system, by tossing-in some frivolous complaint.. So when he uses this kind of polite yet emphatic language, we can bet that the rank abuse of process is “WAY worse.
here in BC, I started a Freedom of Information demand, months before Michael Schmidt and I were charged for operating the Our Cows cowshare. Now = 4 years later!! = my FoI is still “under Adjudication” in the Office of the Privacy Commissar. [ no typo]
Although I was promised 500 pages of FoI material, twice, half of it was withheld ’til the day before the verdict came down. The other (nearly) half, was coughed-up within an hour of the first round of the Adjudication … proving that it ought never have been withheld in the first place. another 100 or so pages of the REALLY good stuff, still to come
at this stage … a mere 1/3 of a year of dead silence from the Adjudicator … the question is : does she order production from the Ministry of Health, of deliberations of the Cabinet of British Columbia? As much as I have so far, I can prove four govt. lawyers with the Constitutional Law Group within the Attorney General Ministry, advised the Cabinet as to certain topics including me, raw milk and the Our Cows Cowshare.
the govt. is going to fall in the pit they dug for us
This just in: The judge in the case adjourned the proceedings until April 27. Demanded “complete” disclosure of all relevant documents to the defense.
My FOIA request still languishes at the CDC and FDA. Still no production after three months. They are supposed to respond in three weeks. My request will expose the over broad actions of the FDA on CFR 1240.61 and the exposure will be embarrassing.
Seems like government regulatory and enforcement agency misconduct is universal. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Twice we caught police officers having Michael Schmidt under surveillance when he was here in BC. Now with the federal govt. Bill C-51 about to be passed, giving Canadian Security Intelligence Service, all power, this sorry Dominion is de facto a police state. That Bill categorizes people who threaten the economic interests of Canada as “terrorists”. ‘Economic interest’ being : continuance of the Soviet style centrally-dictated command economy known as the dairy quota supply system.
Hyperbole?
Wake up you serfs …. stupified by the race traitors in high places … IN THE PULPITS OF YOUR GOD-DAMNED BAAL BARNS
Gordon, I took the letter down at the request of the defendants and their lawyers in the sheep-napping case. Apparently, documentation in this “preliminary inquiry” doesn’t have the same privileges of “public record” as does documentation in an actual trial. Persisting with keeping that letter could have had the effect of creating penalties for the defendants. I will be glad to reinstate the letter if and when the legal threat dissipates.
My apologies–I should have immediately noted the removal of the letter.
I will definitely use their tardiness and total disregard of regulatory compliance to my advantage when I file my new CFR 1240.61challenge.
Relevance is known as a catch word in the legal game. *Complete* disclosure doesn’t mean a thing if he also used the word relevant, if you get my meaning.
FCC votes 3-2 for Net Neutrality.
Warren Meyer at http://www.coyoteblog dot calm/ writes:
“ This is utter madness. Since when has “free” ever meant “tightly controlled by the government”? Regulation like this always locks in current competitors and business models. Hate Comcast? You just guaranteed them their infinite existence and profitability. They will be the Ma Bell of your generation.
New competitive models and technologies will now have to be vetted by government bureaucrats who will soon be captured by the industry itself. It literally always happens this way. How much innovation did you ever see in the landline phone business? My telephone at my birth in 1962 was identical to the one in my dorm room in 1984.
Only in cellular data has there been any innovation, and that is to date the one place in phone communications the FCC has not regulated with this model.
This problem of blocking web sites is almost entirely hypothetical, and to the extent it has been used at all it merely has been a negotiating tactic between big boys like Netflix and Comcast who can take care of themselves. It could have easily been fixed with a narrow bit of rulemaking but in stead we get this major regulatory takeover.
Doesn’t it bother you that this is a problem that could have been solved with a fly-swatter but instead the regulators demanded they be given a 16-inch naval gun. Don’t you worry why they need all that regulatory power to swat a fly? Aren’t you at all suspicious there is more going on here?”
Have a glyphosate free month!
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
(Quoting from: http://en.wikipedia dot ogre /wiki/Berlin_Blockade and corroborated elsewhere (BBC and U.S. Airforce documents))
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The Berlin Airlift ran from 6/26/1948 thru 9/30/1949, and brought in to Berlin every day:
1,534 tons of food,
3,475 tons of fuel, for a total of
5,009 tons per day.
The American military government, based on a minimum daily ration of 1,990 calories (July 1948),[45] set a total of daily supplies needed at 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk for children, 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese. In all, 1,534 tons were required each day to sustain the over two million people of Berlin.[44][46] Additionally, for heat and power, 3,475 tons of coal and gasoline were also required daily.[47]
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
When Mr. Meyer writes: New competitive models and technologies will now have to be vetted by government bureaucrats who will soon be captured by the industry itself. It literally always happens this way., it is the, government bureaucrats who will soon be captured by the industry itself statement that we see played out here at TCP.
It would appear that fresh, safe, delicious raw milk can only really be properly produced in small operations. Many thousands of small operations. It would appear that milk is designedly not fit for CAFOs. The force-fit to CAFOs is destructive economically, environmentally, and nutritionally. And as a force-fit, it is destructive politically, engendering corruption of politics, law and the courts. The force-fit death spiral. If this is so, then there is a great need for many thousands of economically thriving dairy farms. As someone pointed out, possibly 3-family farms. Prisons could produce their own fresh dairy products. And so forth.
Thank you, food producers.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
Once productive but now overgrown and vacant land would return into production. Local dairies abattoirs and dealerships would also make a comeback. The overall diverse vitality of rural communities would return.
Ken
Ken
drawing on what’s in the batch of disclosure dumped on him, literally, as he walked in the courtroom, Shawn Buckley lays out – beyond argument – how the Canadian Food Inspection Agency a] backdated documents so as to hide the fact that they botched the entire thing from Day One. b] lost control of the chain of custody of the evidence/ test results pertaining to the testing of materials from animals suspected of having scrapie c] altered documents crucial to the evidentiary base of the prosecution ; meaning = they forged another, new copy of the form upon which it’s predicated. And that, after it took 3 tries (tests) to get what they wanted on paper!! d] deliberately withheld from the defence, items PROVING that the animal in question was NOT the very animal which tested positive. Their own documents show that a ram imported from the US, was the one with scrapie. Whereas the impunged animal central to the whole episode, was a ewe born on Montana Jones’ farm, which had never left the place. e] refused to comply with the defence demand for full disclosure of documents they knew existed. If that isn’t obstruction of Justice, I don’t know what is.
All this = from over-educated idiots who cannot distinguish a male from a female = who show up with loaded guns, dictating how to run our farms!!
the CFIA and especially the Prosecutor, has buggered-up this prosecution so badly that it’ll be tossed out tout-suite. This one will go down in lawschool textbooks as an example of why we hold Preliminary Enquiries.
But that won’t be the end of it. The seminal case in Canada is “Stinchecomb” Mr Stinchecombe, a lawyer, was convicted of serious crimes because the prosecutor knew of overwhelming exculpatory evidence, yet deliberately hid it from him. After being vindicated, Stinchecomb then won a civil lawsuit for abuse of process. Same here = the malice of the CFIA … determined to ‘get’ Michael Schmidt because they don’t like his political opinions … is actionable.
all the more delicious- now that it’s degenerated into comedy – is that I get to go after the CFIA’s co-operation with the so-called “health authorities’ in British Columbia. Obviously they targetted Michael Schmidt NOT for any actual wrongdoing on his part, but rather, because he was getting traction in the media, making people think for themselves about the Central Party Line re the Soviet-style food system.
Truth is the daughter of Time
…………..
AN EMOTIONAL Vicki Jones from Mountain View Organic Dairy received a standing ovation from the crowd at the last week’s EatBuyGrow event in Melbourne Australia, after telling her side of the raw milk story.
It was reported late last year a child died in Victoria after allegedly drinking raw milk from Mountain View Organic Dairy. The exact cause of the child’s death is expected to be examined by the coroner’s court.
But Ms Jones claims a new investigation reveals there was a two-month time delay between the child drinking the unpasteurised milk and passing away.
The information suggests the child drank the milk in August and died the end of October.
She said this information was provided to her by the health department.
“I am very emotional about this,” she said.
The news sparked a debate on labelling laws, with health authorities now pushing for raw milk which is sold as a cosmetic product to be labelled more prominently.
rest of the article at URL
http://www.stockandland.com.au/news/agriculture/general/news/time-lag-in-milk-death/2724893.aspx
Obligatory music link https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEVjrzD_FUD8wAfyElnIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTB0dmRibmhwBHNlYwNzYwRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkA1lIUzAwMV8x?p=the+way&tnr=21&vid=211304AE4BC20A05ADC0211304AE4BC20A05ADC0&l=265&turl=http%3A%2F%2Fts4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DUN.607990747657275299%26pid%3D15.1&sigi=11rmmrupr&rurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Db0wfu3tOrtQ&sigr=11bjhmig6&tt=b&tit=Fastball+-+The+Way&sigt=10igoubim&back=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fyhs%2Fsearch%3Fp%3Dthe%2Bway%26ei%3DUTF-8%26hsimp%3Dyhs-004%26hspart%3Dmozilla&sigb=12j7iluce&hspart=mozilla&hsimp=yhs-004
Unfortunately, the truth comes out too late, after farmers like Vicki Jones have been intimidated into giving up raw milk production. They don’t realize that the dairy industry and its regulator friends aren’t interested in the truth, but rather in pushing small dairies out of business, never to compete again.
One advantage the U.S. has over countries like Australia and Canada is its tradition of de-centralized authority and its system of checks and balances. The tradition of elected county sheriffs and prosecutors provides a check on FDA-sponsored state ag departments like that in Minnesota (see the most recent post). Otherwise, the federally directed FDA/CDC money machine would be running more roughshod on our rights than they already are.
PMO, the very milk that by PMO standards, is deemed properly pasteurized (and therefore fit for human nutritional consumption) when the milk component that makes possible the nutritional absorption of the milk calcium is rendered inoperative.
Madness.
The golden sound of family business tarnishes when one leg is shackled to the ostrich family aka the paramilitary, imbecilic FDA (and their more local toadies) and the other is shackled to processors schemes.
God bless the family dairy farmers.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
[quote from article]: “The mere hint of an FCC Commissioners dissatisfaction with the operations of an Internet Service Provider will cause that provider to appreciate all too well that the regulators displeasure makes essential approvals far more difficult to obtain. Instead, most will alter their business plans to avoid regulatory payback, even if that means constricting access to some in favor of others, thereby affecting who may speak and what may be said.[end quote]
Uh-huh. America can just as well pack up its freedom bags. They’re on a flight to nowhere.
A panel of government-appointed experts has recommended new food taxes, eating less meat, restricting food marketing, and banning some food at the local level.
http://reason.com/archives/2015/02/28/taxes-and-restrictions-masquerading-as-f