iN DISCUSSION: All about ostriches

This is where cold hard facts give way to the hottest of takes, mostly mine I suppose. I’m the editor, Marshall Jones.

Want to include yours? Listen, this isn’t the comment section, this isn’t social media. Discussion and debate requires context and a wee bit of bravery — we need your name and where you’re writing from. Build it in your account or email me anytime.

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May we chat?

Nov. 14 newsletter editorial

A few notes about the newsletter, etc….
First, you might have noticed them arriving earlier than usual. I’m shooting for 7 a.m. and thinking about producing them more frequently. Your opinion would be valuable here. 
Second, our awesome new website… could be a little more awesome. Our apologies for some confusion there, we are still working through some technical troubles.
Finally, this space. It’s for editorials and opinions. The only real goal with opinion writing is to not be boring. That usually means trying to find a new or different angle.
Sometimes I want to cajole readers into thinking differently, sometimes I want to poke and provoke.
There may be more goals but I assure you none of them ponders an outcome. I am not trying to change your opinion, just inform it, help you shape it and sharpen it against some pushback, reality and facts.
I’ve said many times before, my job is to get you thinking, I don’t care about your conclusions.
One of my favourite things is when someone writes me with a different thought or challenges me on my own conclusions. It’s awful when they cancel their subscription.
I had one cancellation recently because I was considered simultaneously too far left and too far right on the exact same issue. You can’t make this stuff up, folks.
If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with us. You’re my kind of people.
Thoughts? You know I love hearing them. Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

Interior Health finally saying the right things

Nov. 12, 2025 newsletter editorial

Interior Health seems to have emerged from a slumber.

New people in charge, new ideas, new energy. Activity, for goodness sake.

I mean, the organization isn’t exactly forthcoming with information. Perhaps that’s even a good strategy to not alarm people about your biggest challenges. We’ve known that it struggles to attract a dwindling number of doctors and nurses. 

Perhaps we assumed they had all this under control. But they knew fires but stayed silent while it burned. I certainly never heard any alarm bells, saw no one at IH with their hair on fire, new initiatives to solve its problems.

That’s our mistake for presuming they had this under control.

Full credit, again, to the BC Conservative opposition for calling it out, demanding and forcing change. They had enough of emergency rooms closing regularly, entire wards refusing to work because of unsafe conditions.

I have hope for new CEO Sylvia Weir. She’s saying the right things (saying anything is an improvement). She seems to recognize and name the institutional problems, recognizes the challenge and at least is trying new things.

I don’t expect perfection, no one does. Health care everywhere is under pressure and requires new solutions. But we don’t get there by wishing and hoping it goes away.

That’s just me. I’d like to know your thoughts. Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

iN RESPONSE

This organization has been a nightmare for many many years. Long before the NDP/Conservative push and pull. There are far too many officials and not enough workers. To make a decision that your family doctor cannot visit you in hospital unless she/he “pay” hospital rights is absurd. They are completely disorganized, over “ruled” and need a complete overhaul. Simply changing the head is a bandage not a fix.  

— Marti Giroux, via email

CFIA needs our support, lots of work to do

Nov. 10, 2025 newsletter editorial

I apologize if I sounded a little flippant last week when writing about the ostrich farm, where hundreds of birds were destroyed last week to protect against avian flu.

I argue it was necessary to protect other animals but we’re still talking about senseless slaughter. It’s not like anyone wants to kill them for the sake of killing them.

Lots of things with this story bother me, but mostly it’s the misplaced blame and outsized outrage. Disease protection is why they are dead, not the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. That organization does truly vital work, the same work they’ve done in the background for decades. 

You’re going to hear a lot more about them because they are going to order the destruction of a lot more birds and a lot more animals. This avian flu is spreading fast. It’s an awful way for birds to die. If the internet has better research about how to stamp out disease, it better work faster. 

If the agency does its job well, there will be fewer senseless deaths in the aggregate. We should trust their judgment.

Last week, instead of an interview with someone from CFIA explaining how and why they do their work, we had to report they were too afraid of speaking. Ostrich farm supporters have doxxed their staff, bullied and threatened them, their families, businesses contracted by CFIA and anyone else associated with them.

“They deserve every bit of the backlash that they are getting and if names of the individuals do slip out, then I think the world has the right to know who these Animal Murderers are,” one reader wrote me last week.

Astonishing take.

Being flippant wasn’t cool but that’s going too far in the opposite direction. That kind of extremism should be stamped out like a bad disease.

As always, folks, that’s just my opinion. I’d like to know yours. Email me at mjones@infonews.ca.

iN RESPONSE

Thanks so much for your even-handed tone on the ostrich deaths (sorry, I missed the one said to be flippant). Your note managed to also be blunt while polite.

Poultry has been crucial to humans probably for millennia for both meat and eggs. Once again I must apologize for failings in our education system. Social media does get a share of the blame. 

Please continue to report on news of this scourge in other areas. 

— Linda Rightmire, via email

I agree they were just doing their job! You have to put faith in the system. These people that have turned to the internet to get their answers have forgot that science has gotten us this far pretty safe and healthy, let them do their job!
I am afraid that social media, fake news, is rampant in the US and moving North, god help us!

— Georgia Wiltse, via email

Hi Marshall,
Your comment “I can’t begin to imagine what the next one will be, but this anti-government, anti-authority community will find another common cause” is truly offensive! This “community” was supporting the farmers who were trying to save their healthy birds from slaughter and standing up against the government’s overreach. I cried when I heard the supreme court wouldn’t hear the case to save these healthy birds. RFK Jr. wrote to our government that these birds are so valuable and should be studied further as they have developed herd immunity. RFK Jr. even offered to cover any costs. Why didn’t the CFIA test the ostriches or even allow the owners to have them tested? What about the cost of all hotel & food expenses for the CFIA, out-of-town police and the number of police sitting in their vehicles on site controlling the area. Without doubt it was in the millions. And for what purpose? What sort of “sharp shooter” did they hire that it took him 900 rounds to shoot 300 birds with some to be wounded only to suffer throughout the night and all done under the cover of darkness? This is about government control! Anyone who stands up against the government is punished severely. Remember the truckers’ convoy?

— Tamara Clarke, via email

I totally agree with you on this one and you weren’t flippant. It was awful having to kill all those gorgeous birds and all the birds that will necessarily have to be killed in the future. 

Sad.  

But, when there are two sides to an issue like this, one must go with the experts and scientists. Very much like listening to and following Bonnie Henry’s advice during covid. We maybe didn’t enjoy isolation (actually I did) but it was the best way to stay safe at that time.

And I want to add here that if people would just get out and go see cattle feed lots, pig barns, chicken barns, it’s just a matter of time when all our animals that we control for food will be in distress and need putting down. Maybe not this year and maybe not next but it’s coming!  Thanks for your insights!

— Helen M Price, via email

Raided Kelowna business owner says she got the drugs from India, won’t get a licence

Dangerous charlatan should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Doesnt believe in licensing? Next she will be pro iting do it yourself surgery. Absolutely shameful that she would do this to vulnerable people.

— William Mastop, Vernon, via iNFOnews.ca

CFIA employees face harassment and death threats after BC ostrich cull

So let me get this straight, you are horribly opposed to killing the birds, but it’s ok to threaten the lives of employees doing their job?

— Bonnie Derry, Vernon, via iNFOnews.ca

How a Clearwater logging company mostly talked its way out of a $250,000 fine

Nice to see a bit of reasonableness intrude on this assessment. There was zero impact here. The conduct to be penalized was a regulatory breach at the minor end of the scale.

— William Mastop, Vernon, via iNFOnews.ca

Biggest landowner in Cowichan area wants Aboriginal title case reopened, in rare move

This case should not be reopened. Instead the decision should be appealed and the appeal should result in a declaration directing the entire matter back for an entirely new hearing. It was a collosal error not to give notice to people who may have their property rights affected. They should have had opportunity to be heard at every step of the case including each pre-trial hearing. Simply re-opening the matter does not then make it just. By way of example, if one approached a citizen and announced they had been tried and found guilty without notice to them but they could now make submissions would that correct the unfairness? Of course not. The only way to correct that is to start entirely anew.

— William Mastop, Vernon, via iNFOnews.ca

Tara Armstrong Recall Countdown

Tara Armstrong Recall Countdown

Tara Armstrong is currently the MLA for Kelowna-Lake Country-Coldstream. She rode the coattails of the BC Conservative Party, got elected, then rejected and left the party to serve as an Independent within weeks because the Conservatives were too left wing. Now she gets to spout moronic, hateful rhetoric and claim that her riding supports her.

but not for the first 18 months after an election. Some people started an online petition calling for a byelection once she made a shift to independent, then got herself a raise by forming her own party, but it won’t mean anything until the countdown clock hits zero.

So let the countdown begin!

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