To the Honourable Geoff Plant, Attorney General
PO Box 9044, Stn PROV GOVT
VICTORIA, BC,
V8W 9E2, Canada
EnquiryBC@gems3.gov.bc.ca
Date: 31st January 2005
Dear Minister,
Re: The necessity of amending Section 1(2)
and 11(a) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act in
order to clarify the intent of the legislation.
I am writing you as I have grave concerns
pertaining to the administration of justice using the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. I am asking that your
office look into this matter with a view of amending said
legislation so as to prevent the kind of happenings I am drawing
your attention to below and which brings the administration of
justice into disrepute. This pertains to an action under Sections 1
(2) and 11 (a) of said Act by the BRITISH COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR THE
PRESERVATION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, hereafter called BCSPCA. As the
courts now interpret said legislation it defeats due process and
gives to the policing agents arbitrary powers against which
defendants of little means in a small town are essentially helpless.
To put it plainly, the court, unwittingly, has legitimized what is
in essence small-town terror, in which officials can exercise
questionable judgment to the detriment of citizen against which they
have no recourse. As in the case in question it leads to more than
wrongful conviction and grave injustice. It also imposes great
public costs, without fulfilling the goal of the legislation. None
of this can be in the public interest. It also raises the question
to what extent legal zeal shall be allowed to override basic
morality and elementary decency.
The tragedy I am referring to can be followed
up in detail in the records of the SUPREME COURT of BRITISH COLUMBIA,
between: BRITISH COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS and: HEATHER GRAHAM AND RONALD GRAHAM, No. L
032120, Vancouver Registry, as well as in the records and
transcripts of Regina v.
Ronald and Heather Graham, Crown File No. 26668 in Port
Alberni. There is additional material available in support of the
Grahams.
The Grahams are an elderly couple of retirement
age, living in great rural poverty and most limited income in Port
Alberni. Their passion was dogs shows, in which Mrs. Graham won some
522 awards registered with the Canadian Kennel Club. Their operation
had been inspected by the BCSPCA on numerous occasions without any
request for change. However, relationships did sour – no small
matter, Mr. Minister, in a small town! Mrs. Graham, aware of the
couples age and infirmities, was winding down operations when on
April 15th 2003, they were suddenly raided by the SPCA
and charged under federal as well as provincial legislation in
criminal and provincial courts. The raid was televised and reported
on in print with the Grahams accused of running a puppy mill (a
charge denied by the judge presiding over Regina v.
Ronald and Heather Graham), while the Grahams were pilloried
publicly and repeatedly juxtaposed on TV to filthy dogs that did not
belong to them. The RCMP was part of this unseemly spectacle,
although it was also the RCMP that deserves some praise, as it was
Constable Shaun Clark who saw to it that Mrs. Graham was properly
hospitalized when she broke down over the public abuse she had
suffered as well as the loss of her dogs to which she and Mr. Graham
were closely attached. The Grahams cashed in their small RRSP to
defend themselves, which, for that year, raised their income above
the limit to receive legal aid. The Grahams went into debt with a
“loan to payday” lender, as they could raise no loan with regular
banks. This money also ran out and they were faced with two said
court cases without legal representation. As a neighbor I was asked
to help out, but which disqualified me by the rules of the court to
be material witness for the defense. My professional and academic
expertise does cover the matter of health and animal behavior and
well-being, in addition to which I have kept and trained dogs for
two decades and had then known the Grahams as neighbors for some
eight years. The Grahams were thus deprived in court of both, legal
and material expertise. In reviewing the Crown’s material against
the Grahams I was not merely appalled at the lack of professionalism
as evidenced by a plethora of errors, but by the fabrication of
evidence. I damaged the Grahams’ case by pointing out to the Crown
that their its was based on a remarkable spectrum of false
witnesses, questioning whether it was in the interest of justice to
proceed with such flawed evidence. I was assured that my findings –
dismissed as mere “theory” - could be tested in court. However, they
were not! Crown counsel ably avoided the incriminating evidence,
thereby protecting his witnesses against perjury. Clearly, by this
very action, he agreed with my findings that his witnesses had
presented to the Crown false witness in order to incriminate the
Grahams. We were promised a fair trial, but such was not the case,
as not even the veracity of witnesses could be tested, in large part
due to my ignorance of court procedures and the refusal of Crown
counsel to allow me to introduce corrective measures. As a senior
scientist I had never cross-examined a witness in my life let alone
acted as an advocate in court (though I have acted as an expert
witness in cases here and in the United States). When I pointed out
to the judge important background matters, Crown counsel reminded
the judge that my evidence must not be taken into account under any
circumstances, an indication that judgment could not be equitable if
what I spoke to was damaging to the Crown’s case. The SPCA’s own
veterinarians reported that the Grahams’ dogs were healthy, as also
attested to by the Grahams’ veterinarian. However, technically, if
the animals are healthy then the environment they live in is also
healthful – no matter how unusual or even obnoxious it may appear to
us. And on this matter, Mr. Minister, based on decades of academic
and professional work, I am the judge. And the Grahams did keep
their dogs, in large part due to rural poverty, in admittedly quite
unusual circumstances. The attempt to criminalize the Grahams
failed, but they were convicted under provincial legislation, fined,
deprived of their animals and are exposed now to court-sanctioned
loss of elementary privacy. I had warned in writing Crown counsel
that he was heading for wrongful conviction which, in my judgment,
was achieved. A private person, distressed over the perceived
injustice, financed legal counsel to examine possible appeals and
handle the case in Supreme Court. An appeal on procedure was not
possible; an appeal on substance was not allowed. It is important to
note that all the false witness we pointed out is part of the sworn
affidavits submitted to the Supreme Court by the BCSPCA, and exposed
as such in the counter affidavit submitted by the Grahams to Supreme
Court plus exhibits. Such material was, to our knowledge, not
examined by a judge of the Supreme Court as the Grahams were
counseled to settle out of court. There are also the transcripts of
Regina
v.
Ronald and Heather Graham. There is, therefore, extensive
documentation in your hands. Mr. Minister, may I suggest that we are
dealing here not merely with a miscarriage of justice, but with a
scandal.
All this could have been avoided had the BCSPCA
acted as – upon plain reading of the legislation and as interpreted
by independent counsel and by lower courts – due process demands
under Sections 1(2) and 11(a) of the Act, namely, that the
investigating officer supply the Grahams with a notice detailing
what was wrong with their setup and demand due attention to matters
raised in a reasonable time. Such never happened. The Grahams had
been assured by too many previous SPCA inspections, and no
reasonable person could have foreseen that the SPCA found criminally
objectionable what it had approved for 13 years.
Mr. Minister, the Act needs clarifying via
amendments, because as it now stands it allows capriciousness,
questionable judgment to supersede elementary justice, let alone
common decency. And such is offended by attempting to criminalize
unfairly essentially helpless citizen over an utterly pathetic
triviality. And please consider the cost of it all to the public,
not only the court costs, but the long term costs to the public of
depriving impoverished elderly people of their means of existence
and their chief enjoyment and social standing in the twilight of
their life.
Sincerely,
Valerius Geist, PhD., P. Biol.
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science
Appended electronically: Graham’s Supreme Court Affidavit
Re: Section 11 (a)
cc. Gillian Trumper, MLA
Ken McRae, Mayor of Port Alberni
Judy Stone, President, Animal Advocates society of BC
April 2/04
For six months, from November 2003 to
April 2004, AAS defended Craig Daniell's cover-up of
egregious corruption and cruelty by employees because we wanted to
give him a chance to clean the SPCA up. To expose what we knew
would only have weakened the SPCA . We told Mr Daniell, at that
time, the new Manager of Cruelty Investigations, that we wanted a
financially strong SPCA so that he had the money to start to
prevent cruelty.
We begged the SPCA, beginning five
years ago, to reform, warning that it could collapse if it didn't
because the internet was going to prevent it from fooling the
public any longer. It was so flagrantly
corrupt and there was a growing body of astute and connected
critics that were not going to go away and that only honest animal
welfare could save it.
By our charge of corruption we meant
ethical corruption, but the corruption that the media and the
public can easily understand is financial corruption and that was
exposed within months of AAS beating off threats by SPCA lawyers,
who tried to scare us into removing references to corruption from
our web site, by the revelation of the Vancouver SPCA's CEO's
$204,000 secret salary.
The release of the Community
Consultation Report in November 2001 was a moment in time when the
SPCA could have chosen to straighten up and fly right, but it
chose to overlay the status quo with bigger and better P.R. and
more money spent on the fact cats at the top, instead of better
animal welfare.
And since November 2003, when it
ramped up the PCA Act and began making media-attending seizures,
in the process inflicting distress and cruelty on many of the
seized animals, the SPCA has worsened.
I think there is still a bit of time
for it to save itself but it will take vision and imagination and
there appears to be none of that at the SPCA.
For six months, from November 2003
to April 2004, we defended Craig Daniell's cover-up of
egregious corruption and cruelty by employees because we wanted
to give him a chance to clean the SPCA up. To expose what we
knew would only have weakened the SPCA . We told Mr Daniell, at
that time, the new Manager of Cruelty Investigations, that we
wanted a financially strong SPCA so that he had the money to
start to prevent cruelty. But the scales were dropped from our
eyes when in April 2004, Mr Daniell hammered small-scale Lhasa
apso breeders, Ron and Heather Graham of Port Alberni, to a
pulp. The Graham's dogs were all healthy, lived inside the
house with the Grahams, produced one or two litters a year and
had won over 500 ribbons. Craig Daniell is responsible for the
financial ruin, the psychologically-destroying public
vilification, and the ruin of the Grahams' lives. The buck
stops with him.
He permitted the juxtaposition of
photos of severely neglected dogs with press releases about the
Grahams. He permitted TV to do the same. He allowed the media
to attend the seizure. He allowed the Port Alberni to put the
Grahams' dogs into its chronically diseased pound where two of
the pups died of SPCA contracted parvo. He allowed the Grahams
to be criminalized in court and disgraced in their community. He
tried to sue the Grahams, whose only asset is their tiny, rural home, for
over $100,000. And just what was the dreadful cruelty the
Grahams were destroyed for? The Grahams kept some of their dogs
in crates overnight (while some slept on their bed), and put
dogs in crates when visitors and clients came so that the noise
wasn't deafening. Millions of people put small dogs into crates
to sleep, and the SPCA keeps dogs and cats in "crates" 24/7 for
months. But it made great TV because the SPCA raid caught
Heather in bed and some of the crates still soiled. When
Heather tried to let the dogs out to relieve themselves and to
bathe any that had soiled overnight, as she did every morning,
the SPCA stopped her. With the house full of noisy strangers,
and locked into their crates for hours, all the dogs soiled
themselves, and then the SPCA took photos of that and used the
photos to convict the Grahams of cruelty and demonize them in
the media.
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