Bear Hunting only one of the first victims of a recently new destructive force..

I want to introduce them to you. It is a new name I implore you to use. They are the Minority Culture Exorcists. They are the mass marketing fanatics who employ themselves with manipulation of the public and government. The short-form of theses groups are referred to as 'C.E.'s, (pronounced 'SEIZE')

Remember the name, and use it when you talk of these people. It is a new name, and very powerful to their intended victims. It is a way to let the general public know what they are about.

The political process which allowed these special interest factions and governments to victimize us today is written in Canadian and Ontario Law. It is dangerous and allows for others to repeat this same strike in other walks of everyday life in Canada, and maybe the world over. In this country, that political process needs to be changed. It is dangerous.

It is fundamentally wrong and dangerously arbitrary. Without concerted opposition, the political process that allowed this to happen can most definitely be used again. Not sometime, but almost immediately. Our political system has flaws that allow this type of manipulation. Our politicians are human, and weak. They have been duped by fear. Or they are inexcusably negligent.

For several years, the activists, with their mislead supporters have been intent on destroying any occupation, business, or pass-time that involve animals. Their confused goals go far beyond hunting and fishing. They are the well-funded, very politically intelligent cultural exorcists, and so far, quite effective in swaying public opinion. They oppose death, and if they could influence God, they surely would do so.

The fact that we are here today is the very proof of their persistence. Today, we are seeing, hearing and feeling the consequences of their strategic influence. For some of us, we now wonder if we can survive beyond June.

Mike Harris has allowed his government to be influenced by these special interest groups whose focused purpose is to eliminate entire industries and ways of life. Mike Harris has failed in his role as a leader fostering the well-being of Ontario’s people.

If Harris’s Ontario Progressive Conservative party was a parent, the majority of our society would consider them either abusive or negligent. His baby sitter, the Minister of Natural Resources, is just as cowardly and negligent in the political sense.

Last Friday, Mike Harris and John Snobelen abandoned you and your family. Without warning, they threw away a good part of your business. They took away your independence as a small business operator. Both the Premiere and Minister ignored your dreams, your years of struggle, and your night-time worries. His ignorance allowed him to throw them aside with as much care as he would use throwing out his used toilet paper.

Mike Harris’ government’s irresponsible decision on January 15, 1999, he has shown himself and his administration as a cowardly victim of influence, offering you up to the animal rights groups as a bloody sacrifice to appease their misdirected idealism.

If there is a solution to the problems we all face tonight, it is through a tightly focused well-thought set of strategies. It is not enough to think of the issues of bear hunting as the major problem to solve. The problem is much deeper. We must gather a solidly founded group that makes a long term, probably life-long commitment to counter offensive Cultural Exorcist activities.

The general public must be consistently educated with sound logic, and with reference to established law and in the principles of freedom. We must expose that destructive thinking as truly discriminating and prejudiced, as we would if we were the victims of a hate campaign. In fact, we are.

In reality we are those victims. For many of us, our businesses are more than occupations, they are the means to a way of life; a means of personal expression and a sense of identity.

When an individual or a group takes action against another, and in that action, seeks to change how others see him, or prevents him from expressing things that in his own heart, are right for him, then those that seek to destroy him are fundamentally and willfully wrong. I propose their actions violate our fundamental Canadian creeds.

The principle of sacrifice is a common theme in many cultures. There is nothing inherently wrong in the practice of hunting. As hunters, and providers of hunting experiences, we express, or allow others to express or learn discover personal and traditional identities in terms of human history and tradition. In my beliefs animal death is a sacrifice ensuring the last true independence. It allow me to nourish myself . It allows me to link myself with my friends and family through food. Willfully eradicating that form of expression is to deny that long history of the human being and his interaction with his environment.

The animal rightist seeks to break those links with our fathers and grandfathers, because they themselves have become lost in a world of broken relationships. The danger is that they intend to have us suffer that same loss, to become separate from the nature that we are.

We must recognize that they want to us to die, and with us, the link that actually allows us to understand human will responsibility and consequence.

If there is a hideous evil in our midst, it is their focused objective to eradicate heritage, and identity. Sadly Mike Harris and John Snobelen have become their unwitting victims, or more horridly, their accomplices.

Tonight, I ask you to counter that offensive evil, and with me, accuse our politicians and lawmakers as assisting this evil.

The process leading to last Friday’s decision is arbitrarily emotional, without sound rationale, politically negligent. Upholding that decision mocks the process of valid representation and seeks to thwart intent of our laws. The decision must be rescinded.

Lark Ritchie. Porcupine, Ontario.