SALT SPRING ISLAND – On an island that proudly features a rooster crowing contest at its annual fall fair, real roosters have ruffled enough feathers in the community that the issue has landed a local couple in court.
Following a three-year campaign of complaints by the neighbours of CJ McNichol and Alia Elaraj to silence the couple’s roosters, the Capital Regional District is now asking a judge to rule on the matter.
McNichol was initially charged with seven counts under the district’s Animal Regulation and Impounding Bylaw because his rooster disturbed his neighbours. Two charges have since been dropped.
The couple have expressed frustration that the complaints continue despite spending “thousands of dollars” on mitigation efforts. They built a new, better insulated coop away from the property lines, tried rooster collars, blacked out the coop and swapped out noisier roosters for ones they hoped would be quieter.
“We’ve already been told that nothing we do is good enough,” she says.
McNichol and Elaraj live on one acre in an area of similar properties zoned rural. Agriculture is a permitted use under the local land use bylaws, which was part of the property’s attraction. They keep Sebastapol geese and currently have 20 heritage Silverudd hens and three roosters.
Elaraj believes they are being singled out.
“We’re not the only people with roosters on our street,” she adds.
Pecking order
In the last three years, the BC Farm Industry Review Board (FIRB) received three rooster-related noise complaints, all of them from Salt Spring. This comprised 25% of all noise complaints over the period, with the rest related to helicopters, wind turbines and other mechanical noises from farm operations.
FIRB chair Peter Donkers dismissed all three Salt Spring rooster complaints because the farms in question were classed as hobby farms. They didn’t meet the threshold to be considered farm businesses, a prerequisite for proceeding to a FIRB ruling.
Donkers recommended the complainants pursue common law remedies or take up noise complaints with the local government.
This provides little assurance for hobby farmers like Elaraj and McNichol. One of the FIRB decisions was for a complaint filed against them.
Elaraj admits they don’t have farm status yet, because of the high sales threshold for a one-acre lot.
“We would need $10,000. How do we get to that mark?” she says. “I’ve been hesitant to continue to invest in our birds, because this has been going on so long. It’s really hard to think that, at any time, your livelihood could be taken away by complaints.”
The BC Ministry of Agriculture notes that the Farm Practices Protection (Right to Farm) Act only provides protection from nuisance lawsuits from neighbours for farms located outside of the ALR on land zoned for agriculture.
In a statement, the ministry says: “These farms must still comply with local government nuisance bylaws. All farms, no matter the size, should practice ‘good neighbour farming’ and are expected to make changes to mitigate issues if a complaint is made, even if they are following normal farm practices and are in the ALR.”
On Salt Spring Island, zoning falls to the Islands Trust but nuisance noise falls under the jurisdiction of the Capital Regional District. This division of responsibility can be confusing to residents and Islands Trust bylaw compliance and enforcement manager Warren Dingman says they have received complaints about roosters.
In the last three years, there have been two from Salt Spring and one from Mayne Island.
CRD staff declined to answer questions about the number of complaints it gets while the matter is before the courts, but McNichol says the complaints against them “would be in the hundreds.”
Who rules the roost?
After FIRB quashed the Salt Spring rooster complaints, the matter was taken up by the CRD. In 2022, hobby farmer Ashleigh Roslinky challenged her tickets in court.
“She was allowed to go in front of a judge and dispute the tickets,” says Elaraj. “The judge told the CRD legal to tread carefully on people’s rights.”
McNichol says he received the summons to court before they could mount the same challenge and he suspects that the CRD is using this to set a precedent.
Rather than walk on eggshells, the couple decided to go public about the issue following their first day in court in January, and this led to an outpouring of support. Coined “rooster wars” on social media and in the local newspaper, the Poultry Club of Salt Spring has taken up their cause and launched a Save Our Roosters campaign.
“That’s when this started to take fire, because I think people were recognizing, finally, how dangerous this type of ruling could be for the rest of the community,” says McNichol. “This topic of gentrification and trying to strip farming rights is not an exclusive thing. It’s happening across the province.”
CRD chief administrative officer Ted Robbins said in an email to a Salt Spring Poultry Club member that the CRD “respects the rights of all residents in our Electoral Areas, and we strive to find collaborative ways to resolve issues before they escalate.” He added that enforcement measures were pursued in this situation when mitigation proved unsatisfactory to all parties.
McNichol is concerned because Salt Spring’s farming community falls under CRD bylaws set by urban Victoria standards, instead of being more closely aligned to a farming district like the Cowichan Valley.
“I’ve got a Freedom of Information request in to connect the dots,” says McNichol, who adds that after the first day in court he was handed three additional tickets for offences from last September. “There’s a general concern around why the CRD is handling this the way it is and where they’re going with it. People would like some answers.”
Originally scheduled to last one day in January, the trial ran over and is set to resume on March 25 in Victoria Provincial Court. After initially representing himself, McNichol has now retained a lawyer thanks to funds raised by the community for his legal defence. If found guilty, he faces up to $10,000 in fines.
Salt Spring Island Farmers’ Institute president Terry Clement said the board heard from McNichol and Elaraj at its March meeting and subsequently discussed the issue.
“Unfortunately, the Farmers and Womens Institutes Act does not provide any mechanism whereby we can take an official position,” said Clement.
Nevertheless, the institute’s board intends to pursue some broader issues with other organizations that can. These could include: What constitutes farming? Where can farming take place? And what reasonable expectations property owners living adjacent to a farm should have.
UPDATE: The March 25 court date was adjourned; a new date has not yet been posted.
Haskaps hold potential for northern growers