The OSPCA defends itself against ‘slanderous’ posters
and unfair characterizations
Characterizing investigators as knowing nothing about farming is unfair, says inspectors

by DON STONEMAN

In a wide-ranging, three-hour interview with Better Farming in the Ontario SPCA’s impressive headquarters in Newmarket in early March, chief inspector Mike Draper disagreed strongly with many farm criticisms leveled at the OSPCA, while explaining that a long-term commitment of government funding is needed to improve animal welfare enforcement.

Accompanying Draper in the interview was inspector Jennifer Bluhm, who heads up the Bruce-Grey SPCA branch in Hanover and reports directly to Draper. An animal owners’ group has placed posters in stores in Grey and Bruce counties frequented by farmers to solicit funds for suing the OSPCA.

Draper describes the posters as “slanderous,” but says the OSPCA doesn’t have $100,000 to spend on a lawsuit. Bluhm agrees that some of the resentment she experiences in Bruce and Grey may be because she is the replacement for a previous SPCA with a local board, that was disaffiliated by the OSPCA.

Draper disagrees strongly with Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC) executive director Crystal Mackay’s assertion that the province’s animal welfare system is broken. “We agree that there could be improvement,” Draper says. The OSPCA and OFAC have asked the provincial government to bring Alberta’s model of animal welfare policing to Ontario with funding from the province. The OSPCA would hire more staff for policing. OFAC would get a budget from the province for welfare extension work on farms.

Draper says the alternative Manitoba model handles only 2,000-3,000 distressed animal calls a year and Draper doesn’t think it is “a good model.” Part-time veterinary practitioners handle complaints and inherently have a conflict of interest. “How do you investigate people in the community when you rely on them for funds?” There is no provincial SPCA in Manitoba.

Both Draper and Bluhm say the story about humane society involvement in shooting a boar, published in the November 2003 issue of Better Farming, has caused grief for their agents when they go on farms. Farmers grow irate when she investigates a cruelty report, says Bluhm, who complains she has been assaulted four times.

Draper says that large commercial operators “are not the people who are calling and talking about our perceived problem.” However, commercial farmers contacted by Better Farming have refused to speak on the record for fear of drawing the attention of Ontario’s humane investigation officers.

The OSPCA has been financially troubled in recent years. While a sign in the OSPCA headquarters claims the organization operates on donations only and correspondence from the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA makes the same claim, Draper says the province actually provided $1.8 million to cover a recent budget shortfall. He says costs are up and revenue from bequests is down.

Auditors Grant and Thornton prepared a report on OSPCA operations last year for the provincial ministry of public safety and correctional services. Neither the minister’s office nor the OSPCA would release the report to Better Farming.

Draper says the OSPCA and the province have a five-year-plan in place that includes annual provincial funding, In future the OSPCA wants the province to fund “investigative services,” which in 2004 amounted to about 72 per cent of the OSPCA’s $11.9 million budget.

Last year, when dismissing cruelty charges brought by the Hamilton-Burlington SPCA, a judge criticized that group for writing “flowery press releases” to solicit funds. “They (Hamilton-Wentworth write their own press releases,” Draper responds.

An OSPCA press release dated March 8, about a puppy mill raid near Ripley in Huron Kinloss township, also describes how to donate money to the OSPCA. It explains: “The Society is a registered charity, relying on donations to fund animal protection, care and rehabilitation for all animals, government and industry advocacy and public education.”

Anti-meat and anti-dairy comments
For her part, Ontario Farm Animal Council executive director Crystal Mackay questions the value of OSPCA advocacy and educational programs run outside of investigations. She describes humane education as “extreme animal welfarism by definition.”

“That is out in left field,” Bluhm says. “To treat animals humanely is not extreme,” Draper suggests. Humane education focuses on elementary school children and is geared towards protecting children against dog bites, Draper says.

Better Farming pointed Draper and Bluhm to the OSPCA’s humane education resources, which reference the “Sowing Seeds Workbook” five times.

The workbook claims for example that: "the vast majority of farm animals are raised under abusive conditions characterized by severe confinement and deprivation."

But, says Draper, the workbook “is not a cornerstone of our humane education program. This is not the message that we are portraying in our humane education.” The OSPCA neither promotes vegetarianism nor asks perspective employees about whether they are vegans, Drapers says. The question “is off limits.”

“We get as much criticism from the animal rights community as we do from the farm community.”

Statistics from 2003 and 2004 show a sharp increase in charges laid, warrants issued and orders issued while there was only a marginal increase in the number of complaints. Draper credits better screening of nuisance calls, increased use of search warrants to help abandoned animals and “non-intrusive” warrants to seize records from vet clinics.

As to publicity seeking, Bluhm asserts that the OSPCA does not conduct investigations in order to raise money. “The cost of doing an investigation is far more than you get from an investigation. We don’t call the media out to a scene,” she says.

Better Farming has received numerous complaints about the actions of individual agents. But Draper says he oversees agents and makes sure that “they are acting appropriately in their investigative capacity.” When a written complaint is filed, a committee examines the agent’s actions, Draper says, and sometimes the investigative status of an agent is suspended.

Qualifications for an investigator’s job with the OSPCA include “a mixture of life experience and other employment. I don’t know how anyone can argue with that,” Draper says. “We don’t take everybody off the turnip truck with grade 12.”

Bluhm says agents are unfairly characterized as “knowing next to nothing about farming.” Many investigators come from a farm background, she says. “I met my husband on an agricultural exchange.”BF