1) A new petition regarding cell towers has been presented to Parliament. It is a good start but IMHO there is much more that needs to be addressed. The government has not responded yet.
https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-404
2) A member (in a major city in the interior) just realized that, even though she has a smeter, her bills since February have been estimated. She has been given no reason for this and, like many without an RF meter, has no way of knowing if the smeter is actually working, connecting with the grid or is being manually read. Given the estimated bills, I suspect the latter is the case. Another member told me today that her neighbour (in a large city) is having her smeter manually read – still. What is going on? We were told that the 50,000 meters being manually read were in rural, hard-to-get-to places or in condos with concrete electrical rooms underground. Not true.
Would someone care to write to BC Hydro and find out what is going on?? Why are we being charged $32.40 a month when our next door neighbours’ meters are being read manually. No additional work involved.
3) Another disconnect: Someone in the Cowichan River area has his legacy meter in his garage. BC Hydro knows this and has arranged times for meter reading when someone is home to open the garage. Yesterday, while everyone was at work, someone cut the power line, without notification, no call, no email, no nothing, and BC Hydro now wants $700 to reconnect. This is outrageous and this maltreatment of customers must stop.
I sent the letter below to John Horgan, Adrian Dix, and several media outlets, and I would ask that you do the same. We need to stop BC Hydro from being able to act like thugs while putting lives at risk. I advise that everyone have a camera handy to take pictures or videos of these invaders, and call the police.
4) Two short videos re fires that were made a while back but which show why we are fighting – for the safety of our homes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMfgO3vXqMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e71qAr_qGk
Letters:
From: Sharon Noble
Sent: October 27, 2016
To: ‘Laurel Ross’ <commission.secretary@bcuc.com>; patrick.wruck@bcuc.com
Cc: greg.reimer@bchydro.com; ‘BC Hydro Regulatory Affairs BC Hydro’ <bchydroregulatorygroup@bchydro.com>; ‘Patricia MacDonald’ <support@bcpiac.com>
Subject: disconnections without notification –
Dear Ms. Ross and Mr. Wruck,
As an intervener in the recent rate review application by BC Hydro, I raised concerns about changes being made to the Electric Tariff, as well as some of the parts of the existing document. One of the concerns I raised pertained to the ability of BC Hydro to disconnect customers without prior notice and without liability. BC Hydro argued that they would make an effort to notify but refused to include this in the Tariff because “it is a business practice.”
I am hereby notifying you that BC Hydro has taken this to an extreme, even before the changes are finalized. They and contractors are disconnecting people in a most egregious manner.
– No notice whatsoever, even when they know from experience the meter is inaccessible because of the location, e.g. in a garage. One person who, for the last 20 years has arranged for the meter to be read when someone is home to open the garage, had his power cut yesterday when he and his wife were both at work.
– Individuals refuse to identify themselves, and are rude when asked to do so. Hydro customers are left to believe that these unknown strangers acting in threatening ways are to be trusted making the meter exchange. We have all been told that no one except a fully qualified Hydro employee should be allowed to touch the meter, yet when anyone refuses access to these possible thugs, the power is cut. One person who was confronted by people with no uniform or visible identification linking them to Hydro was told to “blow off’ when he asked for proof that the person worked for BCH and was qualified to do the exchange. He, too, had his power cut.
– Individuals who are elderly and sick are being left without power and without concern for their safety or welfare when they are afraid to answer the door to strangers.
Ms. Ross, I believe the worst of my predictions has been realized with BC Hydro treating its customers with disdain. And to add insult to injury, they demand a $700 reconnection fee.
No one is allowed to be assured that these meters are safe. No one is allowed to protect their homes and families from potential fires or potential invasion by strangers. People are lied to, being told that the analogs are dangerous if they expire, when the truth is that accuracy is the reason for Measurement Canada’s re-certification requirement.
The public to whom this once proud crown corporation belongs deserve better treatment and I would ask, Ms. Ross, that you refuse to grant BC Hydro the right to disconnect power without proper and reasonable pre-notification. This is the way it has been done for years and the way it should be done now.
Thank you.
_________________________________________________________________________
From: X
Sent: October 26, 2016
To: Jane.Philpott@parl.gc.ca
Cc: bill.casey@parl.gc.ca; Len.Webber@parl.gc.ca; don.davies@parl.gc.ca; Ramez.Ayoub@parl.gc.ca; colin.carrie@parl.gc.ca; Doug.Eyolfson@parl.gc.ca; ‘Rachael.Harder@parl.gc.ca; Darshan.Kang@parl.gc.ca; John.Oliver@parl.gc.ca; Sonia.Sidhu@parl.gc.ca; justin.trudeau@parl.gc.ca
Subject: government response to HESA report
Dear Ms. Philpott,
I am profoundly disappointed in your presentation of the government’s response to the HESA report on Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Radiation and the Health of Canadians. I realize your busy schedule of duties as Minister of Health make it impossible for you to keep up with the rapidly developing evidence of real human harm being caused by radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF), but I expected something more from you than repeating the talking points spouted by previous governments. e.g. “there is no credible evidence of harm;” “Safety Code 6 provides adequate protection, even for children;” “Canada is a leader in research on the subject;” etc., etc.)
Here is a link to 23,735 publications of peer-reviewed studies of the effects of RF-EMF: https://www.emf-portal.org/en . How many of these have you personally reviewed? How many of the 5,845 summaries of these studies are you familiar with? If you had delved into these at all, you would find that Europe is far, far ahead of Canada in protecting its citizens. Even Russia and China have exposure standards that are exponentially more stringent than Canada’s.
You give the standard erroneous government argument that Safety Code 6 protects the public, since ‘only thermal radiation can be harmful.’ May I again draw your attention to the EMF Portal link, which lists 244 epidemiological studies of the effects of low and RF radiation on children? That’s epidemiological studies on real-life children, not on a six-foot non-living dummy with a head filled with water. As well, may I point out a link within the link you provided on the MOBI-KIDS study – a study you admit is partially funded by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association? (I suspect the results you would find from this group and similar industry groups are “weighted” far more heavily than independent studies in the government’s decision.) In spite of this clear conflict of interest, the link within your link refers to the findings of the US National Toxicology Program, which were so important that the findings were made public long before the experiment is due for completion:
An important study found an increased risk of glioma and of schwannoma of the heart in relation to exposure to mobile phone radio frequencies.
This finding ( http://www.crealradiation.com/index.php/en/news/ge ) is a game-changer in that it refutes the long-held argument that non-ionizing, non-thermal radiation such as that from cell phones cannot possibly cause cancer. Indeed it can. How can you state there is no evidence of increased brain tumours associated with cell phone use when there [is] no national database of brain cancers at all?
How much of a danger RF-EMF from cell phones and other wireless devices presents to public health is, of course, open to speculation – that is, until it is proven to be a public health catastrophe. Given the direction in which solid research is increasingly pointing, surely the Precautionary Principle should be applied: warnings printed on cell phones similar to the warnings on cigarette packages; mandated hard-wired Ethernet connections instead of Wi-Fi in schools, hospitals, libraries and other public places; the replacement of mandated wireless “smart” electrical and water meters with safe analog meters; local (citizen) control over the number and placement of cell towers; etc.
May I remind you of the example of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey, a medical officer in the US Food and Drug Administration in the 1960s. Despite relentless heavy pressure from drug manufacturing companies to approve the drug Thalidomide for morning sickness, and in spite of the fact that Thalidomide had already been approved seemingly without harm in dozens of other countries, including Canada, Dr. Kelsey looked at the actual facts and remained unconvinced that the drug was safe. She never did approve it, so it never became available in the US. As a result of her integrity and courage, untold numbers of babies and their families in the US were spared the tragedy of being born with missing or deformed limbs.
In Canada, due to the lack of will of the government of the time to look at the facts instead of listening to industry propaganda and letting themselves off the hook by rationalizing that “it’s already widespread,” we are still compensating victims of Thalidomide 50 years later.
As a doctor yourself, I hope that you will take time to research the ramifications of RF-EMF personally, and follow the example of Dr. Kelsey.