Copy and Paste Governance
The Real Virus Behind Canada’s Ostrich Cull
It is tempting to see the B.C. ostrich story as another rural tragedy, a few hundred birds, a heartbroken family, and a bureaucracy too stiff to bend. But that is just the surface.
Look closer and you see the same infection that is eating the country from the inside: copy and paste governance.
Every agency, every ministry, every lobby group runs on the same script. Press releases and protocols are cloned from somewhere else, recycled without thought or context.
The CFIA did not actually investigate the Edgewood farm’s recovery. They copied the international “stamping out” clause from the World Organisation for Animal Health and ran it like code: virus detected, cull all, claim victory. The Agriculture Minister copied the CFIA’s talking points, muttered a few lines about “process,” and disappeared behind the curtain. The poultry lobby copied their own playbook, protecting their export certification and market stability, and cheered the consistency. And the press, most of it, copied the press release and moved on.
No one asked the basic question: were the birds still a threat?
Two ostriches tested positive eleven months ago. The rest lived through the winter healthy. No new cases. No fresh tests. Just a rule that says, once infected, always condemned.
That is not science. It is paperwork.
But the paperwork matters more than life. A single exception could complicate trade renewals with Japan or the U.S. It could force the CFIA to admit that its one-size-fits-all policy does not fit free-range or research operations. It could expose how lobbyists, not virologists, write the rules that decide who lives and who gets a bolt gun.
So the Supreme Court stayed out of it. Easier to let the lower ruling stand than risk a precedent that might make the system think for itself.
And now we have a national agency guarding “biosecurity” while it kills healthy animals on camera, and activists screaming “government cruelty” because they can sense the rot but cannot name it.
What is dying here is not just a flock of ostriches. It is the idea that governance should involve judgment, context, or even curiosity. We have replaced thinking with templates, and it shows.
Because the real virus is not avian flu.
It is the cut and paste culture that has turned common sense into contraband.