Report Card for the BC Ministry of Agriculture

New Regulation	Accomplished or Failed	Comments
Category A Devices
Firing Frequency of once per 5 min's. for single shot cannons	Failed	Langley, Abbotsford, Mission, Surrey, and many more locations report too frequent firings of single shot cannons.
Firing Frequency of 33 shots / hr. for multi-shot cannons	Failed	Surrey and Matsqui report rapid firings of triple shot cannons. Note, one Surrey resident alone recorded 57 violations of propane cannon use!!
Separation Distance, 150M within the ALR	Failed	Sumas Prairie & Matsqui Village report cannons positioned very near a residence. In one case, grower was unfamiliar with new reg's. but moved the cannon?
Separation Distance, 300M to non-ALR homes	No rpts. recorded
Category B Devices
Separation Distance 100 M within the ALR	Failed	Screechers used randomly in a field by a Sumas Prairie grower, often closer than 100M to a nearby residence. Distance guidelines ignored on Matsqui prairie.
Category A & B Devices
Hours of Operation, 6:30 AM to 8:00 PM or dawn to dusk if earlier in the p.m. and later in the a.m.	Failed	Sumas Prairie, Surrey, and Bradner report early startups, before 6:30 AM. Surrey reports cannons booming after 8:00 PM. Seven locations report overnight cannons use. Dawn to Dusk rules not followed in September.
Cannons must be marked with operator's name & 24 hr. contact phone number	Failed	This was not done, and nothing was communicated to the public or marked at the farm gate!
Local contacts must be established for non-resident owners	Failed	This was not done, and nothing was communicated to the public or marked at the farm gate!
A cannon registry be established by the blueberry industry and local governments.	Failed	No such registry was setup or communicated to the public.
New Guidelines to be adopted as Standards
Are these the new standards?	Failed	The guidelines were not communicated to the public as promised. They were not followed by growers during the cannon season. They were not enforced. No facility to fine violators or confiscate devices was set up.
Regulation of cannons to be turned over to Municipal Gov't.	Failed	Not one Municipal Gov't. adopted the new guidelines and inforced them.
A complaint process with phone contact numbers will be communicated to residents via local newspapers	Failed	A complaint process was not set up and communicated to the public.
The available of netting funds for growers near the edge of ALR	Failed	No netting funding was provided.

Final Grade	A TOTAL FAILURE	Implementation of the 2002 Guidelines for "Audible Bird Scare Devices" was a total failure. Was it van Dongen who failed....... yes, he was ultimately responsible. Or did his staff just let him down..... yes, most probably!