There’s a lot of snickering and snide jokes about the B.C. Supreme Court decision this week to not recognize the sasquatch.
But it doesn’t take an outdoor-education degree to tell who’s laughing the hardest — the sasquatch himself. This judicial endorsement of a provincial coverup plays right into his big, hairy hands.
He’s free to continue skulking around in the old growth to his heart’s content, foraging for berries, rodents and German tourists. Based on this week’s ruling, he’ll continue lurking in the bush with no regard for modern-day wildlife expectations.
You’d think a regulation-happy, process-oriented NDP government would be the first to recognize the need for a wildlife-management plan and lots more studies of these creatures.
This province has an official management plan for the two-centimetre-long warty jumping slug, for God’s sake. Officials would jump at the chance to plan the sasquatch’s life. Just citing the need for sasquatch habitat protection could open an exciting new chapter in the battle over the pipeline.
But shockingly, the Forests Ministry is continuing to pretend they don’t exist. It contested sasquatch-hunter Todd Standing’s case, and it won in court.
Conspiracy theories all develop the same way. First, you develop an unusual belief — that giant, secretive ape-creatures inhabit the B.C. wilderness, for instance. Then you take your belief to friends and neighbours, and when they ignore it, you list them as suppressing the truth. Then you take it to the authorities, and when they don’t take it seriously, you add them, too. Same goes for the media.
(And shame on the CBC for reporting that Standing’s suit was “sas-quashed.” The national broadcaster shouldn’t be trivializing this vital case.)
The Golden, B.C., investigator has now reached the point where the government and the courts are on the list of conspirators. They’re all in on it.
All he wanted was a ruling that the sasquatch exists, that the government infringed his fundamental human rights relating to his concerns and that the government is shirking its duty to recognize sasquatches.
But B.C. retaliated that his suit was unnecessary, scandalous, frivolous and vexatious. That’s an awful lot of adjectives to throw up against a guy just because he believes in Bigfoot.
It said the case is based on assumptions and speculation and “lacks an air of reality.”
That sums up every question period ever held in the legislature. But you don’t see the court declaring that MLAs don’t exist.
As if it’s not clear already, the suit shows that Standing has a lot of imagination. He claimed he was unable to share information on where sasquatch sightings occur because there are no safeguards in place to protect the species from being killed. So therefore, his rights to freedom of expression are being violated.
But the judge said the government’s non-acknowledgement of sasquatches doesn’t have any impact on his ability to express his views.
Standing claimed cruel and unusual punishment and treatment as well. The verdict said he wasn’t being punished and there was no “treatment.”
He also claimed he was being discriminated against on the basis of his beliefs. The judge tossed that as well.
“A belief in the existence of the sasquatch is not an immutable personal characteristic … it’s not a political matter. Where religion can be an element core to a person’s state of being … the same cannot be said of a belief in the existence of the sasquatch.”
Strike three, you’re out.
But the decision ignores a few things. Standing has some video posted online that includes “two PhDs talking” about sasquatches. It’s on YouTube, so it must be true.
And the judge referred to sasquatch’s Latin name, Giganto horridus hominoid. That might have been a critical slip. They don’t give Latin names to imaginary creatures, do they?
It’s not for me to speculate on why the authorities are pretending the sasquatch doesn’t exist. But it’s clear that’s the way he wants it.
Once you make the species-at-risk list, it’s all paperwork and bureaucracy. You start edging closer to town to get Wi-Fi, and pretty soon you’ve got caseworkers nagging you and tourists taking selfies. Better to live free, and keep the wild in wildlife.
