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The following story was told by Charles Price of the Peoples Church in Toronto, Ontario. I heard it on the summer sermon podcast for today. Below is a transcription.
I'm going to tell you a story I've told before from this platform. So some of you have heard it. Some of you will not have heard it. Some of you who were here when I told it before have forgotten it. And for those of you who do remember it, you'll benefit from hearing it again. But it's a story that challenged me tremendously.

I was invited some years ago now to speak at a conference of pastors in the city of Boston in the United States. It was organized by the New England Association of Evangelicals. New England, of course, is the six states in the north eastern part of the United States. And they came together for this conference and there were several speakers, and one of them was a man called Juan Carlos Ortiz. He was a pastor of a church in Buenos Aires in Argentina. And he... gave us a message... one day that challenged me thoroughly.

He told us that he had gone to Buenos Aires to pastor a church of 300 people, and it had begun to grow very quickly, and it soon became 1000 people, and he said, he became known as the pastor of the fastest growing church in Buenos Aires. And he was delighted with the reputation that gave him, he said.

He said one Sunday morning he had planned to preach a message on love. During the week, he prepared his message, and he came to the church that morning, very confident of what he wanted to say. And he sat on the platform during the time of worship and music, and during that time he felt a very strong impulse that he should not preach his message. But he had nothing else to say.

When the time came for his sermon, the worship leader said, "And now brother Juan Carlos will bring us his message," and he said, "I came to the platform, I opened my Bible, and I said, 'Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is, "Love one another."'" Then he stopped, closed his Bible, and he went back to his seat.

And there was silence.

And with the silence, there was confusion. The worship leader leaned across and said, "Are we supposed to sing another song?" But he sat their quietly, and after about two minutes, which is a long time when you don't know what is happening, he told us that he got up, came back to the pulpit and he said, "Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is 'Love one another.'" And he went back to his seat.

He said his wife was sitting in the balcony and she thought, "He's flipped! I knew it would come one day." After a couple of minutes of silence again, he got up a third time, came to the pulpit, said, "Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is 'Love one another!'"

And I think it was after the third time, and he went back to his seat, that somebody sitting somewhere in the congregation turned to the person next to them and said, "Excuse me. I don't know you. Is there any way I can love you?"

Somebody else turned to somebody else somewhere else in the congregation and said, "Excuse me. Is there something I could do for you?"

And within a few minutes, the whole church was alive with people talking to each other. He said, "We had 28 people in the church that morning who were unemployed. Every single one went home with a job." And he began to give other statistics, and I was writing fast, and I haven't got the figures exactly, but he said there were single mothers with children in the congregation that morning who were struggling alone, and every one of them went home with a family committed to help them and share with them, [and] help take some of the burden with them.

He listed other things. He said, "That Sunday morning changed our church." He said, "If I had preached my message on love, people would have come to me, shaken my hand and said, 'Brother, Pastor Ortiz, that was a good message. I really enjoyed that. Especially liked the differences you explained between the different kinds of love.'" They would have said all that, but he said, 28 people would have gone home unemployed, and to be utterly honest, he said, most of the church couldn't have cared less.

But something happened that day. He said, "The next Sunday, I got up for the message, and I said, 'Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the same as last week: "Love one another!"'" Went and sat down, and people said, "Well, who can I help this week?"

He said, "I didn't have any liberty to preach for three months. I just said, 'Here's my text, "Love one another." Go to it.'" He said, 300 people left the church. They said, "We don't employ you to stand up and say, 'Love one another.' We want you to teach us the Word!" But he said, for those who stayed, who really didn't want just to know the Word, they wanted to obey the Word, and they were discovering that it was obeyable, (If there is such a word as that) their lives, their relationships, began to change.

He said, "After three months, I got up and I said, 'Brothers and sisters, the Lord has given me a new text this morning.'" And they broke out in applause. He said, "My text this morning is, 'Love your neighbour as yourself.'" And he stopped, and their was a silence. He went back to his seat again.

Somebody got up here and began to go to the door. Somebody else got up, began to go to the door. Somebody else went to the other door. And before long, in 10 minutes, the whole church was empty, the parking lot was empty, there was a line of people at the bus stop. And they went home, went next door, knocked on the door, and said, "Excuse me, I'm a Christian. Is there anything I can do for you?" He said, it was the worst time to do it, because it was just before Christmas. He said, "My wife and I, and I have two daughters, had presents that we'd bought for each other, to give them at Christmas. And we discovered need in our street that we had no idea about, and we took our unopened Christmas presents and we gave them away to other people."

He said, "If that first Sunday, and the three months after that, changed our church, this changed our community, because, I tell you what began to happen," he said. "We had tried to reach our community in all kinds of ways. We had all kinds of methods. We adopted all kinds of programs. And some of them worked okay, many of them didn't work at all." But he said, what began to happen was the telephone began to ring at the church, and people would say, "Is that the church that helps people? My son is on drugs. My daughter is pregnant and unmarried. My wife has been diagnosed with cancer this week. Could you come and help?"

And he said, instead of saying, "How in the world are we going to reach our community?" the community began to come to us and say, "Would you help us?"

Now let me say this. I'm not going to do that, because that was a divine moment in that particular time. But I do want to ask you the question. Did you come here this morning expecting to bless somebody? To minister to somebody? Did you come here this morning, and when this service is over in a few minutes, are you going to look for people to talk to? Are you going to be bold enough, if they tell you something's wrong, to say, "Can I help you?" Because they might say yes. Were you going to talk to the person next to you, who you don't know? Or just get up and go? Have you thought you might invite some stranger home for lunch? Or out to a restaurant with you for lunch?

I'm only asking you the question. Because when a church begins to live, not just in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, but in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the life and character of God begins to flow into the community. Because God is love.

And I want to ask you this morning, is this the kind of church we want to be, or do we want to be a safe, easy, be-as-comfortable-as-you-want-to-be, kind of church? [With the attitude of] "But please don't expect me to take these things seriously."

How is the Christ Life in you? For as we have seen, Christ is the Head of the body, His Spirit is its life. And the life of Jesus, endwelling us by the Holy Spirit, is totally committed to loving, through you and through me.

If this isn't the kind of Christian we want to be, if this isn't the kind of church we want to be, and recognize we need to be, and recognize we are instructed to be, and recognize we have the resources to be, we're better shutting up shop. Because if you have the tongues of men and of angels, if you engage in all kinds of activities that other people applaud from a distance, but you do not have love, and you're not kind, and patient, and long-suffering, and trusting, and all the other qualities that are there, then you're just a noise, and all the neighbours ever think of us is, "We're glad when the service is over on Sunday, because then they can park their cars outside their houses." There is no sense, "Here are people that actually care."

And I'm preaching to myself. And I've preached to myself all week, and not just that, but I have brought my own heart once again to the cross of Jesus Christ where all this is made possible.

But it's not lots of individuals Paul is talking about, he's talking about the church in this chapter. This is how the church, made up of individuals, is going to function if we're going to please God.

I remember listening to this podcast of the September 9, 2010 episode of CBC's The Current, and finding this interview extremely eye-opening. The issues of loyalty and integrity do not often get this much limelight, and so I saved the MP3 for later.

In order to make this more accessible, here is a transcript of that interview.

You can find the original podcast MP3 here and you can find more on that day's episode at the CBC's website here.

The interview is a bit dry at the beginning. It's statistics after all, and Mr. Sheikh is very precise with his terms. But the overall message of loyalty and integrity comes through in the end.

David Anderson, MP: Thank you Mr. Chair, and thank you gentlemen for coming here today. Mr. Sheikh, does your home need renovations?

Munir Sheikh: Sorry?

DA: Does your home need renovations?

MS: Uhh... yes.

Anna Maria Tremonti: Well that man there, the one who needs the renovations, is Munir Sheikh, the former chief statistician at Statistics Canada. And the man asking him about the state of his home is Conservative MP David Anderson. That exchange is from a House of Commons Industry Committee hearing in July, right after Munir Sheikh resigned, and at the height of the controversy over the government decision to cancel the mandatory long form census.

DA: I notice my colleagues across the way are laughing at that question, but I think that your position on this question is that it is important, because you have made it mandatory on the long form census in the past. Should something like that be a mandatory question?

MS: I think I want to emphasize the fact that we are a data collection agency. We are not the users of the data. It is the users of the data who tell us what data do they need. So you should ask that question the people who are the users of that information.

DA: Well I find it interesting that you've distance yourself from that question, because the next question then is: is it worth imprisoning people, or threatening to imprison Canadians, for your users?

MS: Again, I think that's a question that the government needs to answer. If the government doesn't want people to go to jail, it's not my issue. The government can go and change legislation. All I'm stating is, Sir, is the quality of the information produced under a voluntary survey would be less than that under a mandatory census. Every statistician on this planet would answer that question exactly the same way. And that's the only issue on my mind.

AMT: Munir Sheikh's career as a public servant spanned 4 decades and 8 Prime Ministers. It ended in July with his resignation from Statistics Canada. In the process, he became one of the biggest news makers in the country. This morning Munir Sheikh still believes cancelling the mandatory long form census will mean data on which so many rely to make decisions will not be as good. He joins us now as part of our project "Shift," our look at demographic changes altering the country. Munir Sheikh is in Ottawa. Good Morning.

MS: Good Morning.

AMT: Well, as you well know, despite the decision to scrap the mandatory long form census, Statistics Canada will continue its work using a voluntary census. So, after five or ten years under a new system, what do you believe we would be missing as a result?

MS: Well, as you just said, Statistics Canada would keep collecting the information in that survey as had been done in the past in the census. What we are gonna lose out is basically two things: 1) the quality of the information that will be collected in a survey will be less than that of a census, and 2) because of the discontinuity in the information from the past, what happens in the future will not be comparable to what has happened in the past. So to try to determine whether or not things have gotten better or gotten worse, compared for example to 2006 and earlier, we will not be able to answer that question because the information will not be consistent in the future with the information in the past.

AMT: Now, Steven Chase is reporting today in the Globe that a study done for Statistics Canada while you were still at the helm shows that there can be significan errors if that census becomes voluntary. Do you remember looking through that study? Before you resigned?

MS: The results of that study are not a surprise. In fact that is exactly the point we keep making. That the quality of the information that we will get with a survey isn't going to represent the phenomena we are trying to capture. Just take about any piece of information which is part of the census. The census, since we count just about everybody as part of that process, will actually tell us what's going on in the country. When you have a voluntary survey, depending on the response rates that people give, it will introduce a bias and error as the Globe and Mail story indicates today. And when you compare the information from an actual count in a census, with the voluntary results of a survey, and you run a test, as the study did, you know the degree of inaccuracy that is introduced. And this study basically says the degree of uncertainty, the degree of inaccuracy, is really quite large.

AMT: Did you take that study to the government before you resigned?

MS: Well, as I think I've said in the past, and I'll continue to say that, as part of our advice to the government, we produced a number of facts, and we did, you know, a lot of analysis. But what did we tell the government is protected under the law, and so I'm not able to really answer the question as to what information or advice we gave to the government as part of our recommendations.

AMT: Ok. Can you give me an example of what you think we won't know, that we could have known, if this goes on for, say, 5 or 10 years? What won't we know at the end of a decade that we might have known?

MS: Well, I guess there are two parts to that issue. The first is what data would we gather in the future that we were gathering or not gathering in the past? And the answer to that question is that if the survey remains the way it is, in the future (which means that all of the questions that were being asked in the census are going to be exactly the questions that will be asked in the survey in the future) then Statistics Canada will indeed be gathering all of the same information in the survey that have been gathered in the past in the census. So the information will be available to Statistics Canada. The other part of course is...

AMT: Will it be skewed? I mean...

MS: That is exactly the point, that the information will be less trustworthy and less reliable compared to the information we were putting out in the past. And as a result, some of the information that was released in the past, Statistics Canada may not want to put that information out in the future, and that would apply to, for example, small area information or information on smaller groups, because that information will not really be good enough to be put out in the public. So I cannot answer the question as to what that information will be, because we have never done a survey like that in the past. And so it's really in the future that once StatCan looks at that data, they'll be able to determine as to which information that they put out in the past will not put that out in the future.

AMT: Now the debate over the government's decision to no longer make the census mandatory got very public and very heated over summer. Did it surprise you, how heated it got?

MS: Well, actually it did. You know, statistics is pretty boring subject...

AMT: You would have thought!

MS: There aren't that many people who would find this to be exciting. And so the reaction to what happened took me by surprise. And I'm still baffled on the reaction. I just thought that it would probably last a few days and then go away. But it hasn't.

AMT: What do you think it says about Canadians? What did it tell you?

MS: I think what it tells is that Canadians deeply care about information and they think that decisions need to be based on factual stuff and that the agency which produces that information, Statistics Canada, is held in quite high regard by Canadians. And we were really quite pleased to see that reaction.

AMT: Now during that debate there were those who said that the census is an antiquated way of collecting data, that we should be looking at new ways, that this is the chance. What do you say to that?

MS: Well, it's, I think, always a good idea to look at new ways of doing old things. And indeed, you know, Statistics Canada, I would say based on my 2 years of experience at that organization is one of the most innovative places I've ever worked at. But you know, of course, if there are better ways of doing these things, please, let's sit down and talk about those. But it's my view that changing things at this time of the year, just a few months left for the actual census, is probably not the appropriate time to make such a fundamental shift. So my preference would have been to run the 2011 census as is, but let's gather a group of knowledgeable people, try to figure out how to do a better census in 2016.

AMT: Now you have been immersed in statistics as an economist for a very long time. What do you see when you look at numbers that I might not see? What's the attraction? What's the fascination?

MS: Well, I'm sure you'll see in the numbers exactly the same thing as I see. For example, when we put out a number like the inflation rate is 1.8% What I see is that on average prices are rising at 1.8% a year and I'm sure you'll get the same information. I think where our knowledge may differ is the technical aspects of data collection where we statisticians probably know a lot more than most other people. But once the numbers are put out, I think you'll get exactly the same information from them that I do.

AMT: But you obviously have a fascination with the raw numbers.

MS: Yes, we like working with raw numbers and they're quite interesting, and it isn't an area which most people would find fascinating. Some people do. Others probably would not.

AMT: When you doodle, do you doodle in numbers or do you doodle in drawings? I'm just curious.

MS: I like numbers.

AMT: I'm not surprised.... Let's go back to July of this year. Your resignation was not simply about the change in the policy, was it?

MS: Actually, my resignation had nothing to do with a change in policy, and I'm glad you've asked that question so I can clarify it one more time. As I said in my parliamentary committee testimony, we the public servants are taught two things: 1) you provide fearless advice to the government, and 2) implement the government's decisions loyally. And as a public servant, and having taken oath on the Statistics Act, I can say without a shadow of doubt in my mind that I was able to fulfill my oath to the best of my ability. So that really wasn't a reason that I resigned, that the government made a decision to replace the long form census with a voluntary survey. The reason I resigned was simply, and just one reason, to protect the integrity and reputation of Statistics Canada.

AMT: .... Because... the industry minister said that Statistics Canada, that, that, or that you supported or endorsed the change. Am I correct?

MS: There were actually two parts to that. The first was an impression in the media left following a number of conversations that the minister had with a number of groups, but the media stories said that the quality of the voluntary survey data would be as good as that of the mandatory census. And secondly, I guess given that, that Statistics Canada and the chief statistician were fully supportive of the government's decision. Now of course, as I said, there isn't a statistician who would argue that the survey and the census produce equally good data. So the users of the data were quite baffled as to why would Statistics Canada, you know, provide that kind of an assurance? As I said earlier, the information we provided to the government as part of our recommendations, the analysis that we did, that is all protected under the law, and I cannot talk about it. So the question I was asking myself was, you know, how do I put the smoke out regarding StatCan's integrity and reputation? Honest to God, I thought of a variety of things, but the only thing that, you know, I thought I could do to put the smoke out as quickly and effectively as possible was to resign from my job, because I did not want to be held accountable for providing advice to the government that no statistician would find defensible.

AMT: So... I want to understand. You're actually telling me that had there not been a statement that said StatsCan and its chief, who was you, endorsed this change, had it just been announced that the change was going ahead, you wouldn't have had to resign? But it was the fact that there was the impression that it had your endorsement?

MS: That's right. If, you know, the government had basically said what the government has been saying since my resignation, that this is a decision made by the government and that, you know, they are totally responsible for the decision, we would have implemented, under my leadership at StatCan, we would have implemented the decision to the best of our ability, which I'm sure Statistics Canada would now do.

AMT: Even if you didn't agree with it? You would have done it?

MS: Even if I didn't agree with that. Because that is part of our job as a public servant and as a deputy minister. You know, I would have preferred that the census be mandatory, and I'm still making that argument in public now that I'm out of the government, but I would have implemented that decision to the best of our ability, and nobody outside StatCan or the government would have ever known where StatCan stood on it.

AMT: But the minister, Tony Clement, put you on the record essentially as endorsing it and that was too far? Am I understanding that correctly?

MS: I think there were stories in the media particularly the story that appeared on that Wednesday in the Globe and Mail, which basically said that the chief statistician is supportive of a decision which statistically would produce quality data that is as good as that of the census. That is not something that, you know, I can ever do, and so imagine if I was on my job, and there was this impression that I was advising the government, supporting things which are totally indefensible, my position at StatCan would have been untenable.

AMT: How long did it take you to make the decision to resign then? Was it a tough decision?

MS: It was a tough decision in the sense that I loved that job. I was working in one of the best organizations, I would say not even in Canada, in the world. People at StatCan are truly professional, they are wonderful. It's like a big family. And to walk away from all that is not easy. But at the same time, the agency's reputation and my own reputation were at stake, and given the choices between continuing to do the job you love versus putting the organization at risk, I thought the decision wasn't really that hard to make, and I'm glad I made that decision.

AMT: Ok... I'm still trying to understand what you're saying. You have been a public servant for almost 40 years. Eight Prime Ministers have come and gone. Over that time you must have had to bend when faced with government policy or changes with which you disagreed. And this one you would have bent. You would have kept doing it, if you could have done it without putting your name to it? Essentially?

MS: Yeah. Well, the question of... we have to bend? We bend 100% of the time. Any time a government makes a decision, we implement it. And of course, many many examples in my 38 years in the public service where the government made a decision different from the advice that the public service gave, we implemented it, and nobody outside those 4 walls knows about that. It would have been exactly the same thing in this particular case. The government made a decision to cancel the long form census. They made a decision to bring in a voluntary survey. That isn't something that, you know, in my mind, the best way to get statistics, but we definitely would have implemented the decision. It was this argumentation being put out that we believed that a voluntary survey results would be as good as that of the mandatory census. We cannot believe that. And that we were fully supportive of this change? We cannot defend the argument that I've mentioned, that we are not gonna lose on the quality of the data. We will lose on the quality of the data.

AMT: What you're telling me is interesting, because we often hear politicians say that Canada's civil service has a mind of its own, and that it fights politicians, that they take it upon themselves to change the rules. You're saying that's not the case, for most civil servants.

MS: Well, I can speak on my behalf. In my long career in the public service, it hasn't troubled me once to implement the government's decision, which was contrary to what I personally believe in. That is my job. And if I cannot do that job, I should not be in the public service. The one instance where very specific situation developed where I was supposed to be supportive of a change which to anybody would be indefensible, that is a problem which affected the reputation of the agency I worked in, and in my mind, you know, the reputation, the integrity of an institution far outweighs any personal interest in the public service any public servant may have.

AMT: Now that you have left Statistics Canada, do you think the scrapping of the mandatory long form census could have other implications for it as an agency? Could this open the door to more change? Could this change its reputation?

MS: Well, I hope it doesn't go any further than this, but the fact that we're not gonna have a long form census is going to have an effect in the future on the quality of the information a number of other surveys will produce, so the effect just doesn't stop here. This is somewhat technical issue, but I'll mention it. That the census provides benchmarking for a lot of the other surveys that Statistics Canada does, and if that benchmark is lost then the quality of some of the information in those other surveys will diminish as well. So the impacts of this decision are gonna be ongoing on the organization.

AMT: Is it still hard for you to believe the federal government has taken this decision and is sticking to it?

MS: Well I think I won't want to speculate on this, but you know I wish we had gone on with a mandatory census in 2011, and that the government have setup some kind of mechanism to study whether or not the census can be done in a better way, and then implement whatever the results of that analysis would be for the 2016 census.

AMT: And what is next for Munir Sheikh?

MS: Well, I have joined Queen's University, the school of policy studies, and I'm gonna be doing a bit of lecturing, hopefully some research, and maybe even teach a bit. So that's where I am at least for now.

AMT: Mr. Sheikh, thank you for speaking with me today.

MS: You're very welcome.

AMT: Bye-bye

MS: Bye.

AMT: I've been speaking with Munir Sheikh. He resigned as the chief statistician at Statistics Canada this summer. He spoke to us from Ottawa.

This is a transcript of a rant by Carlton Reid as heard on The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast, episode 48, on Saturday, February 20, 2010.

It is not an issue for me[1] I haven't even thought about it for years and years. My phone will not go on in the car, and there's no risk of me answering it because it just wouldn't be on. And that's not because I'm holier than thou, or it's some legal restriction, it's just like, why would I do that? I'm driving! And I haven't got a hands-free. It's just, I'm driving. I'm going to concentrate on, guess what, on the road.

I'm not going to concentrate on anything --- I think I might have said this in the show before --- when I, I don't drive that often, but when I do drive... it tends to be the longer distance drive, when we go to inlaws and stuff, and I'm driving for three and four hours, I come away from that drive with the most amazing mental headache. Because I've been concentrating just so much. Because if you don't come away from a long drive with a screaming headache, you've been on auto pilot. If you've been on auto pilot because ``oh, I know those roads!" --- no, you don't, because around the next corner, there's a tractor, there's a trailer, there's a cyclist, there's a pedestrian.

Anything could happen, perhaps even more so, on the roads you're familiar with. If you're on auto pilot in a car, that's a huge dangerous signal. You add in all these other distractions on top --- I don't hate on mobile telephones in cars, I hate on anything that distracts you. Just anything. You should be paying so much attention to that road. Not because you can kill a cyclist. You could kill yourself! You could kill another driver, you could kill anybody, because these are very fast, very heavy bits of machinery going along very narrow, in your analogy of an airplane[2], it's got a very narrow piece of real estate. And you're going so fast, you look down for one second and --- I'm sure if I Google I could find the statistics of exactly how far you travel --- but if you're travelling 70 mph, you look down for one second you could have gone through so many different stop lights, so many pedestrians who are just crossing the road at that point in time. You just can't take your eye off the road for a second.

And I think again on the show, I've mentioned this, another one of my bug bears is when you see TV presenters who are doing pieces to camera, when they're driving in a car. It's now a standard TV thing. You interview somebody while they're driving. And I hate that so much! How can they remember their lines, and do all these things, and drive? And most of the time they're not being pulled along on a trailer like they do it in Hollywood. These are people genuinely driving. And at some point on these blooper shows, you're going to see these cars smashing into stuff, and people go ``Oh, isn't that funny." No, it's not funny. You are distracting a driver by pointing a TV camera at them. Or, in just normal life, you are talking to somebody, or you are asking them to look at you. And you mustn't do that. The driver is driving something phenominally, unbelievably dangerous that could kill your sister, your brother, your mother. It could kill you. You want that driver to be paying 100% attention. Anything, anything! that takes that attention away, whether it's a burger, an apple, a phone call, a text, anything, has got to be absolutely, socially unacceptable.

[1] answering the cell phone in a car

[2] David Bernstein was arguing earlier in the podcast that if he can fly a plane in three dimensions while talking on the radio, he should be able to talk on the phone while driving a car in two.

This is a transcript of the mail segment of CBC's The Current on January 14, 2010. Specifically, the conversation regarding the recent BC bomber investigation and the oil company's handling of sour gas.

You can find more information at the CBC's website at: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/201001/20100114.html

---

Rick MacInnes-Rae: Well, finally this morning, the arrest and subsequent release of Wiebo Ludwig last weekend was followed by a sweeping search of his property by the RCMP. And looking for evidence connected with the bombings of six gas pipelines in northeastern BC. Monday on The Current we spoke to Ludwig from his home. When asked if he's the bomber? This is what he said:
Wiebo Ludwig: I'm not interested in being interrogated. I've been interrogated for 10 hours already, and I don't need that from the media. Try to shift the focus to the real culprits, the people who do a lot of damage, not just to locals here, but to the world [and?] the petro chemical industry. And we've tasted their sharp pains that they inflict quietly. I've been knocked out in the field. My children have been heavily suffering from it, asthma, different things. And miscarriages. This is no joke.

Anna Maria Tremonti: Wiebo Ludwig spoke to us from his home in Trickle Creek, Alberta, Monday.

Now hearing him speak prompted J. Daniel Beachenor of Calgary to write:

Everytime I hear Mr. Ludwig speak, I'm surprised by his articulate and charasmatic nature. You can hear the frustration in his voice. Although I'm not a spiritual guy, I find his ideas very thought-provoking. He has more conviction than any of our current political leaders. The media seems only to want to cast him in one light, one which is very "headline news." I don't believe Mr. Ludwig is the bomber, but who knows? But if he isn't, doesn't this just add credence to the fact that more people are getting frustrated with their sense of powerlessness against the oil and gas industry?

RMR: That's from J. Daniel Beachenor of Calgary.

Now Dave Cardel of Millerville, Alberta took another tack as he writes:

Wiebo Ludwig comes across as arrogant and condescending, with a single agenda, and it seems pretty obvious he loves the limelight. I appreciate that the residents of northeastern BC and northwestern Alberta are having problems with the oil and gas industry, but surely, you can find a better advocate for their concerns.

AMT: That comes from Dave Cardel of Millerville, Alberta.

Tim Ewert has his thoughts on this subject. He's an organic farmer from Pouce Coupe, a small village near Dawson's Creek in northern BC, and we've reached him at home. Hello!

Tim Ewert: Good morning, Anna Maria.

AMT: Now, we were talking about this issue related to Wiebo Ludwig but there is another bigger issue here, is there not?

TE: Yes, there definitely is. I mean there's... I think people need to realize that there has to be a much larger story behind this, for someone to risk spending the rest of their life in jail, they obviously have felt very threatened and have certainly felt that they have not had any kind of adequate redress from the authorities on this issue. I mean, it's obviously an act of desperation... this is my interpretation, anyway... that they have no other way to bring attention to the grievances that people here have.

AMT: So in other words, you're talking about the gas development that is going on in your neighbourhood.

TE: Yes, it's going on at such an amazing rate. And a lot of people feel that it's really out of control.

AMT: Give us some perspective... how long have you had your farm and what's been going on in the last decade or so?

TE: We're in our 36th year on this farm, and we've seen things go from being a very peaceful, quiet, tranquil kind of place that we could really enjoy living in, to a place where you hear the roar of drill rigs, the huge noise that flares burning make constantly. We've got heavy traffic. There are semi trucks going up and down the roads. The dust. You know, there are all those kinds of nuisance issues. And we, in November, November 22 to be exact, had quite a massive leak in our area, which has gone very under- reported.

AMT: Tell me about that. That was a Sunday, right?

TE: Yes it was. It was a Sunday morning.

AMT: What happened?

TE: Well, I could not see the cloud of gas from my house. It was on the other side of a fairly large hill. But there was a gigantic cloud. This has been reported to me by a number of people who saw it.

AMT: Your neighbours, in other words, right?

TE: Yes

AMT: Ok

TE: It was a gigantic cloud that people at first assumed was a fog bank, until a neighbour drove into it, and realized right away that it was heavily laden with H2S, and this neighbour is employed in the oil and gas industry and is trained about H2S.

AMT: H2S is Hydrogen Sulfide?

TE: Yes

AMT: That's what the "sour gas" is, right?

TE: Yes, and it's a very deadly neurotoxin. And it's something that's cummulative. It degrades your central nervous system, and has drastic long term health effects, for people, for animals, well, for every living thing.

AMT: And it smells like rotton eggs, right?

[transcriber's note: http://www.mrwa.com/watersmellrotteneggs.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_sulfide]

TE: Yes, basically.

AMT: Ok, keep going.

TE: And this cloud was moving down a hillside and had engulfed a home. And I spoke to a resident in that home yesterday, who told me that she had burnt lungs and she has a note from the doctor saying that this is the case.

AMT: She has burnt lungs from that morning?

TE: Yes. She was asleep in her house, and her house became sort of enveloped in this cloud as it drifted downhill. And there have been, you know, reports of livestock deaths from it, and very erratic behaviour in livestock for a couple of weeks following it.

AMT: Now there has been a release from the BC Oil and Gas Commission that acknowledges that there was, what they call, a piping failure at an Encana Natural Gas well site on that day. But have they acknowledged more?

TE: Well, not at this point. And I don't know whether the authorities realize, or whether they just don't really care, that their refusal to come clean on these kinds of things ... it just further erodes the trust of people. And it's the kind of thing, you know, that makes policing more difficult for the local RCMP, because the ???, the National Security and Intelligence gathering unit has been really out in force.

AMT: So you're talking now, about the investigation that's under way in the Tom's Lake / Dawson Creek area because of the bombings of the Encana well sites.

TE: Yes, we've had just a massive police presence in our area. There's a security camera on our road. If you happen to come in late at night, you are likely to be followed, and you know, quite likely stopped and asked what you're doing, what your business is, why are you driving around at this time of day.

AMT: Have you been questioned by police?

TE: Yes, a few times.

AMT: And what kinds of things have they wanted to know?

TE: They basically sort of accuse us of knowing about the bombings, and demand DNA, fingerprints... they've asked to search our farm, because they've said, "well if you have no explosives, then you're not involved in this, then you certainly don't mind if we search for explosives on your farm."

AMT: So did you let them?

TE: No. And we did not give them... we did not give them our DNA or our fingerprints. We really don't feel that it's appropriate that the police have that kind of information on people who are not connected, have not been charged, whom they have not a single shred of evidence to connect them to any crime whatsoever.

AMT: How many of your neighbours feel the same way you do?

TE: The vast majority of people here in the countryside would agree with me. And I don't claim to be the spokesperson for any group or anyone in particular. I'm speaking essentially for myself.

AMT: Tim Ewert, thank you for sharing your concerns with us.

TE: You're very welcome, Anna Maria, and thank you for your interest in this.

RMR: Tim Ewert is an organic farmer from Pouce Coupe, a small village near Dawson's Creek in northern British Columbia.

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