three canadian mps call on trudeau government to end importation of endangered macque monkeys

Photo: Ignacio Yufera

I've learned that the image of a macaque monkey that I posted was not the kind of monkey that is being illegally trafficked in Canada. That image was of a toque monkey. I've updated that previous post with an image of long-tailed macaque, also pictured here (two photos, see below).

There's been a welcome development on this issue! Three members of Canada's Parliament have brought it up with cabinet ministers and called for immediate action.

[Canadians: please click here to sign a petition to end the illegal trafficking of long-tailed macaques.]

In a letter sent on October 24, MPs Alexandre Boulerice, Laurel Collins, and Matthew Green called on cabinet ministers to immediately block any further illegal importation of long-tailed macaques for international monkey dealer Charles River Laboratories.

The letter urged the minister of transport, the minister of the environment and climate change, and the minister of public safety to:

• Enforce existing laws, focusing on scrutinizing international shipments involving endangered species,


• Strengthen penalties for violations in order to deter illegal activities, and


• Implement safeguards to verify that imported long-tailed macaques aren’t illegally abducted from forests.

The letter states, in part:

We are committed to working with our parliamentary colleagues to explore new legislative measures that could prohibit the importation of all primates for use in experimentation, protect endangered species, and prevent Canada from becoming a hub for unethical and illegal wildlife trade practices.

Photo: Ignacio Yufera

The letter follows a detailed report from primate scientist Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel and a fine imposed by the Canadian Transportation Agency against SkyTaxi, a small Poland-based cargo airline, for $7,500 for three illegal shipments of 1,980 monkeys. This works out to less than $4 per monkey. 

Fines may be a useful deterrent, but Charles River can undoubtedly find another carrier to do their dirty work.

A reminder that the US has already refused to allow Charles River to import these endangered animals, and that's when the company turned to Canada. Beginning in early 2023, Charles River 

Laboratories imported more than 6,700 long-tailed macaques into Canada, shipments valued at more than $120,000.

World Animal Protection lists five facts about long-taled macaques and has some great photos of these intelligent, social, endangered animals. 

I hope you will click here to sign a petition calling on Canada to end the illegal, immoral, unethical, and completely unnecessary trafficking of these animals.

canadians: endangered monkeys need your help. please help them.

Photo: Ignacio Yufera

An activist friend alerted me to this a while back. I wasn't able to focus on it -- ironically, because it's something I care so deeply about. 

Animal cruelty is the one place I can't go. Allan is the same way. We donate to animal-related causes, and we don't pretend it's not out there. But we both avert our gaze, because we find it too painful to face. 

I'm sure many of you are the same.

If this describes you, and you don't want to know too much about the issue, please just click here to sign a petition. I know some people have problems with PETA, but PETA is the only group working on this right now. I hope you will put your qualms aside and add your name with a simple click.

The issue in its briefest form: endangered macaque monkeys are being captured from the wild and imported into Canada for experimentation. There is no rational justification for this.

This is not only an issue of animals and the environment: it is also an issue of human health. COVID, HIV, and other infectious diseases originated when animal pathogens were transmitted to humans.

The US has already banned this. A reminder that Canada is not always more progressive than the neighbour we love to hate.

Canadian scholars and researchers have called on the Trudeau government to take action. Please join them.

Everyone can and should oppose this, no matter what you choose to eat or wear. 

Click here to send a letter to Canadian officials, demanding this abhorrent practice be banned.

More information below, if you want it.

*  *  *  *  *

Canadian scholars and researchers call on Trudeau government to stop importation of endangered primates for experimentation

For release November 7, 2024 - 8:00 EST

[Québec City, QC and Toronto, ON]—As Charles River Laboratories is scheduled to bring yet another plane load of hundreds of endangered macaque monkeys into Montreal via a Sky Taxi airline flight today, more than 80 Quebec and Canadian university professors, researchers, and clinicians have released their letter calling on the Canadian Government to stop importing primates for biomedical experimentation.

The letter includes support from renowned zoologist Dr. David Suzuki, CC OBC FRSC; Avi Lewis at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Climate Justice; international law professor and former member of parliament Craig Scott; Dr. Laura Mae Lindo, social justice scholar and former Ontario member of provincial parliament; Dr. Kendra Coulter, an expert on animal labour at Western University’s Huron University College; and Dr. Melissa Lem, a family medicine professor at UBC and the president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).

It reads, in part:

A decade ago, chimpanzees, our closest primate relatives, ceased to be used for experimentation because using such animal "models" could no longer be justified from scientific, ethical, and/or financial perspectives. Despite the emergence of many new methodologies, including organs-on-chips, 3D bioprinted tissues, organoids, advances in in silico modelling, stem cell-derived models, multiomics, and systems biology approaches, the pharmaceutical industry suppliers have dramatically increased their reliance on another primate species for biomedical experimentation, the long-tailed macaque.

In addition to the rapid disappearance of macaques in Asia, we are also concerned about the serious risks of transmission of zoonotic pathogens (diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans), which are the highest in primates and bats.[3] The trade in certain macaque species has a high zoonotic potential.[4] In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, we urge extreme caution regarding human exposure to zoonotic pathogens linked to the international wildlife trade.

We the undersigned urge the Canadian government to:

• End illegal charter flights organized by Charles River Laboratories to import monkeys via SkyTaxi or any other airline; 

• Send a clear message that Canada is not a safe haven for animal import violations by strengthening enforcement and penalties for animal import and testing violations 

• Adopt regulations banning the importation of all primates for biomedical testing 

• Implement incentives for researchers to move from animal models to new technologies.

Quotes

“The COVID-19 and HIV pandemics have taught us the importance of remaining vigilant about the transmission of zoonotic pathogens to humans,” said Dr. Michael Schillaci, PhD, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. “US Fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Justice authorities are investigating primate importers for allegedly illegally importing wild-caught macaque monkeys from Cambodia. The importers remain unable to prove that shipments coming into the US from Cambodia did not contain wild-caught monkeys who had been falsely labeled as captive-bred.”

“The greatest risk for zoonotic pathogens would be with wild-caught macaques,” Schillaci continued. “There are no methods for analyzing tissues, such as blood or hair, to establish with any reasonable degree of confidence which monkeys, if any, are captive-bred rather than wild-caught. The Americans seem to understand this. The Canadian government needs to protect Canadians’ public health from the zoonotic pathogens that imported exotic wildlife, such as these macaques, can carry.”

“My colleagues and I urge prime minister Justin Trudeau and environment minister Steven Guilbeault to close Quebec and Canadian skies to the trafficking of endangered monkeys for experimentation,” said Dr. Jesse Greener, PhD, a professor of chemistry at the Université Laval. “If the Trudeau government is serious about its climate and environment commitments, it must use its power to keep macaques in their natural habitat, not in Canadian laboratories.”

“Indeed, the government of Canada should be encouraging researchers to pivot to emerging technologies such as organ-on-chip, which significantly reduce ethical considerations while producing more reliable results,” Greener concluded.

Quick Facts

More than 10,000 long-tailed macaques were imported into Canada  from Cambodia between January 2020 and July 2024.

Long-tailed macaques are the most heavily traded species of primate for use in biomedical experimentation and in 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elevated them to “Endangered.” Their extraction from the wild for use in experimentation was cited as one of the factors leading to their dramatic population declines since the 1990s.

A macaque in the forests, temples, or villages of Asia is not a significant infectious threat to humans and in fact plays a crucial role as a buffer in these complex ecosystems. But when those monkeys are caught up in the experimentation pipeline, not only do they suffer in unspeakable ways, they also become significant infectious disease threats.

In early 2023, Charles River Laboratories, the self-described largest importer of monkeys in the world, had multiple shipments of long-tailed macaques denied clearance by United States (US) Fish and Wildlife authorities when the company was unable to prove that these animals, imported from Cambodia, were not illegally captured from the wild and falsely labeled as captive-bred on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) permits that accompanied them to the US.

US Fish and Wildlife authorities instituted a de facto ban on importation of Cambodian-origin macaques in early 2023 and since then Charles River Labs has pivoted to importing Cambodian-origin macaques to Canada instead.

Breeding captive long-tailed macaques doesn’t produce enough monkeys to meet the experimenters’ demand. This has led to a deadly trade in wild-caught monkeys in which entire troops of macaques are targeted in vicious trapping schemes. Macaques destined for Canada are boxed up at monkey factory farms like Charles River’s supplier K-F Cambodia. Diseases are common at these facilities. Many of the monkeys die or are injured in the crowded, filthy, and barren cages.  

my post-election venting copied from facebook

This post says nothing new or original or the slightest bit interesting. I just want to preserve what I've been posting on Facebook* over the last week.

I'm going in order of posting, rather than the reverse-chrono of blogging and social media. Also not including likes and comments, as those use full names.

* Yep, I'm old.

rtod: "what makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed"

Revolutionary thought of the day:

"What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

Hannah Arendt, 1974 interview

u.s. voting, "trump is a symptom," genocide, and reality: further thoughts

image: self-righteousness and left activism

Yesterday I wrote about, among other things, why Americans should vote Democrat despite their very obvious shortcomings, blindspots, corrupt partisanship, militarism, support for the Israeli apartheid regime... and so on.

The reason is simple. Life will be substantially worse for ordinary people under another Trump presidency.

Life for workers will be worse.

Life for most women will be worse.

Life for most people of colour will be worse.

Life for all transgender people will be worse.

What little is left of US democracy may well be revoked.

The courts will be more biased than they are now. Justice will be less accessible than it is now.

It will be open season for bigtory of all types -- racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, and especially transphobia. Even more than it is now.

There will be no progress on gun-law reform -- and there will be no possibility of progress on gun reform. This means that children will continue to die. Teachers will continue to die. Americans will continue to be slaughtered by their fellow citizens who have unfettered access to assault weapons. Parents will continue to live in fear that every day their children go to school, they may not return, or may live through unspeakable trauma. 

There will be zero progress on climate change, and zero possibility of progress.

A convicted felon and a rapist will be President of the United States. Almost every POTUS has been a war criminal. That doesn't in any way negate, balance, or validate putting a convicted felon in the White House.

My socialist comrades -- or people who I once regarded as comrades -- are correct about many things. Trump is a symptom, not the disease. Harris will enable genocide and other horrors. True and true. But when I hear that there is no real difference between a Trump presidency and a Harris presidency, I can only believe they are full of shit. And I must conclude that they are putting their high-minded principles, and perhaps their self-image, ahead of basic empathy and compassion. 

I wonder if leftist Canadians who are so adamant about the need to vote for neither Harris nor Trump have actually tried to imagine what it would be like for themselves and their loved ones living in the US under another Trump presidency. If they have, and still hold this belief, they are fools. If they have not, they are dangerously deficient in empathy.

American lives are not more important than Palestinian lives. Neither are they less important.

If this makes me less purely leftist, less socialist, less whatever-the-fuck, than these self-righteous revolutionaries, I couldn't give a fuck, and perhaps I should be glad.

elections: here some relief, there... only fear

I rarely -- almost never -- write about politics anymore, either Canadian or US. But of course the upcoming US election is weighing heavily on my mind, as it surely is on yours. 

Good, sane people everywhere can only watch in horror and disbelief as the US becomes increasingly bizarre and unhinged. We've all run out of adjectives. It is simply surreal. 

Why I still vote NDP

I had another election on my mind, too. There was a provincial election in BC: the incumbent progressive NDP trying to fend off a Conservative surge. 

There's a lot of anger against the NDP government, most of it based on ignorance and lies from the right, and magical thinking from the left. As governments go, the BC NDP government was as good as it gets. They've been focused on improving life for ordinary Canadians in ways that make a real difference -- healthcare, childcare, housing. 

Their part in the criminalization of the Wet'suwet'en land defenders is very troubling. The pipeline blockaded by land defenders was approved by the elected Wet'suwet'en council, but is opposed by the hereditary chiefs. Amnesty, environmental groups, and many Indigenous allies see this as an end-run around the principles and intent of DRIPA.

It's true that the elected councils are vestiges of colonialism, brought in by the Indian Act. However, they exist, and the Nations elect them. Should we discount elected councils and chiefs because of their origins? Do we have the right to do that -- or are we conveniently siding with the view of the Indigenous people who we agree with? I'm not sure. Whatever the answer to this complicated question, no sitting government will allow a blockade to continue, and no sitting government, of any party, will say no to a pipeline.

Similarly, the BC NDP walks an impossible balance: being too pro-logging for environmentalists, and being too green for the industries (and workers) who would cut down every tree, extract every living creature from the ocean, and uproot every acre of earth in service of short-term jobs and profits. A party that doesn't support logging in BC will never form the government.

I'd rather have a government that allows controlled logging, and also strengthens public healthcare, builds housing, creates affordable childcare, raises wages, and supports workers than a government that allows uncontrolled logging and privatizes everything. The pipeline and the logging is a given. The rest of it is up for grabs. 

A nail-biter

It was a wild election, with some ridings needing automatic recounts and others decided by absentee ballots. The NDP formed the government with the minimum number of seats needed for a majority. The Greens won two seats; with proportional representation, they would have won eight. Our own MLA (provincial representative) lost, the riding flipping to Conservative, which is unsurprising. But most importantly, we escaped the orgy of privatization and cutbacks that would have followed a Conservative win.

US-style Canadian trolls are already trying to manufacture doubt about the outcome, accusing Elections BC of all kinds of malfeasance. 

American insanity, and some leftist insanity, too

About the US election, what is there to say? The anxiety and fear of good-hearted, right-thinking Americans is justifiably soaring. What will happen if Trump wins -- and what will happen if he loses? Fascists are making death threats against election workers and their families. Fascists with a higher level of education have hundreds of lawsuits ready to drop, to slow and attempt to invalidate results. I assume wmtc readers know about this, but just in case, a primer: Republican Party efforts to disrupt the 2024 United States presidential election.

One sad and infuriating bit, for me, is the response of many leftists, exhorting people to not vote for Harris, because the Democrats, like the Republicans, support the ongoing genocide and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

I find this by turns infuriating and depressing.

US foreign policy does not change. There is no "cut the military budget" party. No "stop supporting dictators" party. No "break ties with Israel" party. Trump's love of dictators in Russia and North Korea is only a new variation of the long history of US support for (and often installation of) dictators the world over. Neither party will stop that vile madness.

But to say there will be no difference between a Harris presidency and a Trump presidency is wildly disingenuous, incredibly ignorant, and unforgiveably callous. The socialist activists I know who exhort US voters to shun both parties fall into the third category. 

A Facebook contact recently explained a bit of this thinking: they said that Trump is a symptom, not the disease. I agree. But what do we normally do with symptoms of diseases that have no imminent cure? Do we refuse to treat them, allow people to wither and die, because the disease itself cannot be cured? 

I've heard versions of this all my life. Don't donate to food banks because it allows governments to not provide adequate supports. Don't work with grassroots groups facilitating abortion access, or helping rape victims, don't teach people who didn't finish high school, because those things "let governments off the hook". 

Choosing to help people who have been fucked over by capitalism and patriarchy doesn't preclude working to change those conditions. Can a person who needs to terminate a pregnancy wait for their state to pass better laws? Should we let families suffer from hunger and malnutrition until we achieve a more just and caring society? 

Sure, Trump is a symptom. When looked at through a socialist lens, everything that's wrong with our world is a symptom. And we need to treat the symptom to the best of our very limited ability.

I had to unfollow some really smart, interesting, and engaged socialist activists, because I can no longer bear this peculiarly leftist brand of bothsiding. Right-wing cruelty is on display every day. I expect it from them. This left-wing cruelty is infuriating and heartbreaking.  

Hypocrisy? Not really and who cares

I voted Democrat in 1992, and for a third party in 1996 and 2000. My vote was of no consequence, thanks to the US system, and I was free to not vote for a party I despised. Those who blamed third-party voting for the debacle of the 2000 election are either short-sighted, misinformed, or party hacks.

In 2004 I voted Democrat. I hated the Dems as much as I ever did, but I felt the popular vote count might be important. Turns out it was not, thanks again to the Dems themselves.

That was the last time I voted in a US election.

If I still lived in the US, I would absolutely vote Democrat now. This, and I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and am horrified and grieving over Israel's extermination of the Indigenous population. I would vote Democrat because it is an emergency.

In her acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination, Kamala Harris uttered the words "the rights of the Palestinian people". I have never heard a POTUS candidate say that before. Just words, of course -- but words we could try to build on. Not voting Democrat will not help the Palestinian people, but the harm that choice could bring is unfathomable.

As we hold our collective breath: I want to cry tears of joy

On August 1 of this year, I posted this on Facebook. 

It's been 20 years since I last voted in the US and my disgust at the DNC and my feelings about the sham democracy are well documented. But the idea of a brown woman being POTUS thrills me and I will cry tears of joy when she is elected. Just as I did when Obama was elected, even though I knew who he truly was and what his election would (and wouldn't) bring. The US is the US. I'm not expecting anything other. But I want Harris to fucking kick that felon's butt. I want to see a fucking landslide, a decisive victory. I want to cry at her inauguration.