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October 21, 2010 
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(Mr. Cameron Deacoff is not one of the professionals I am alluding to below as he has been quite professional and consulted me on a request that he received from the Bedford Watershed Advisory Board (BWAB). He is Cc’d for multiple reasons only.)
Since I am not a lawyer, the statements I make are on an informal level only at this stage and may contain typos/grammar. I will also be delighted to meet with you and with the entire HRM Audit Committee, on invitation, since on many occasions face-to-face meetings may resolve long-standing issues.
Following are in no particular order and has very brief archival history as well:--
Enclosed herewith is a 1-page letter of firm commitment (in jpeg format) made by the former CAO of HRM, Mr. George McLellan, in 2002, commitments that have not been kept to the fullest, notwithstanding a whopping multiple scores of my written complaints to Mayor Peter Kelly and Cc’d on occasions to select elected councillors as well.
HRM and the former Halifax County had obtained a portion of my personal and my internationally renowned team’s scientific research of lakes within HRM worth half-to-one (0.5-1) million dollars, pro bono. The combined fiscal value of the research of this society and my personal IP, i.e., intellectual property, of the lakes within HRM is approximately in the three (3) million dollar range if conducted as paid scientist-consultants.
I am not including here those reports and electronic files that I provided the bureaucrats as part of written agreements.
This COMPLAINT, in a nutshell, is about the potential impingement by the HRM (and the former Halifax County) and/or by its hired consultants on our Intellectual Property (IP) rights. IP rights are as normally understood among the international scientific community, and known fully well to anyone who has advanced education from respectable universities worldwide!
Indeed, advanced universities worldwide, which most of us attended at one time or the other, would immediately evict a student (even those carrying out doctoral research) and ban them for years if they `plagiarized’!
We have numerous professors in our team. In addition, I have several professors in my own family and among my close relatives in the medical and the nuclear engineering/physics domain, principally, in the USA and India one of whom Councillor BILL KARSTEN met briefly in 2006 at City Hall.
I will be delighted to provide further particulars of unsolicited requests that I received, verbally as well as by emails, from recent/past professional staff of the HRM (and the Halifax County), asking for scientific and quasi-scientific info on FRESHWATER LAKES. I provided those pro bono under the express understanding that those be utilized for the benefit of the public in protecting our freshwater resources and not for the benefit of hired consultants who do not work for free, to state emphatically! In addition, they were supposed to be returned on my request.
Important:-- But I plead/beg Mr. Munroe that you do not ask for further details unless you feel it is within your mandate to investigate my claims of potential impingement of my team’s and my personal IP.
Mayor PETER KELLY received atleast twenty (20) or more detailed complaints in email and written formats from me which he did not even acknowledge contrary to what a true professional behaves, with just one exception.
Further, I have received over two thousand (>2,000) unsolicited requests via email/phone calls from lake stakeholders and the academia from across Nova Scotia inclusive of from its regular hired consultants and from several present/former professional staff of Halifax, all at arms-length. I assisted them in most instances, and it was all pro bono. The great majority of requests actually emanated post-1996, i.e., after municipal amalgamation.
At times, I had also received requests from a handful of present/past Regional Councillors of the HRM asking for my opinion on water quality issues and I tried my utmost in responding via detailed emails which took multiple hours to formulate most of the time!
My society:--
I represent an international scientific society of four hundred (400) members/associates in Canada and the USA out of whom half are domiciled across Nova Scotia.
The intellectual property (IP) that I refer to above represents partially the IP of my group and partly my personal IP; in other words, it defers in each case.
And we count among our membership some of the leading scientists worldwide who are recipient of the top international awards, especially in the freshwater sciences, e.g., the Naumann-Thienemann Medal (awarded by the International Society of Limnology, SIL), the Hutchinson Award (awarded by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, ASLO), etc.
And indeed, a handful of our members in the USA have also been inducted to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) of the USA which is an august independent scientific body advising the US Congress!
PS: Although I am not as financially prosperous as the rest of my members, my published scientific research has been used by some of the leading Government bodies in the USA, Canada, and even by sections of the United Nations. My personal research has also been `cited’ in massive restoration projects, primarily in the USA, and some of those projects are expected to cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars, each (and I can prove it all in person).
Thank you very much for your inquiry to our office. While we empathize with your concerns, we do not feel they fall directly within the mandate of the Office of the Auditor General. The Auditor General is responsible for assisting Council in holding itself and the Municipality's administrators accountable for the quality of stewardship over the public funds and for achievement of value for money in the Municipality's operations.
Should you feel inclined, an inquiry to our Legal Services for the Municipality could be initiated. You may contact the Director of Legal Services, Mary Ellen Donovan at 490-2468.
Thank you again for contacting our office.
Sincerely,
Pauline Boudreau
Executive Assistant
Office of the Auditor General
PO Box 1749
Halifax, NS B3J 3A5
902.490.8407
This is a quick and somewhat detailed response/comment(s) to your email-response of May 31, 2010 included below following my email. I do indeed thank you though. No response is needed to this email from your office.
At the present time, I don’t plan to approach the legal services of the HRM for multiple reasons a handful of which I will mention for purposes of `POSTERITY’ so that most of the Cc’d recipients, who are `elected representatives of the public-at-large’, are aware of and should do something pragmatic about all these complaints since they may be the ultimate beneficiaries of parts of our vast Intellectual Property (IP) which has received numerous `intellectual citations’ internationally!
Several years ago, I had already met Ms. Mary Ellen Donovan’s predecessor, Mr. Wayne Anstey LLB, which was arranged for by Mayor Peter Kelly (I have kept notes, as always). Nothing pragmatic came of it although Mayor Kelly was sympathetic and said so in a written letter.
I had followed that up with another verbal discussion with Mr. Anstey on continued impingements on our IP rights at which he was, to state bluntly, quite arrogant, alas! I can’t recall if I had taped that discussion since I do tape some discussions and digitize them and store in the Worldwide Web.
I followed that up with a written complaint to the Provincial Ombudsman. The Ombudsman responded stating that `Intellectual Property’ rights do not fall under provincial regulations but (may fall) under Federal regulations.
The Provincial Ombudsman did indeed supply me with an address in Ottawa. But I have not yet followed up on it, primarily, since a well known local lawyer (and a brother of a previous HRM and County Councillor), Mr. Peter McInroy, told me about the intricacies involved in IP cases.
Since then I found (through an IP specialist in Alberta) that the legislation involved with IP rights in Canada is very archaic and eons behind such laws in the USA and Europe.
I decided to wait until the Federal Government passes the IP-law presently on the books. But I read in the media that there is considerable opposition to it (from some of the opposition parties) and that the proposed bill may be watered down!
Important PS: I may indeed consult that leading IP specialist in Alberta after the law is passed in whatever form, though I think the law, as proposed, deals more with `pirated music’ or so!
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