Cocksure court naysays rooster

Salt Spring Island farm organizations are protesting the August 22 conviction of a local resident for keeping crowing roosters.

Neighbours’ complaints that roosters kept by CJ McNichol and Alia Elaraj on Salt Spring Island were a nuisance resulted in bylaw enforcement officers from the Capital Regional District launch an investigation of the couple in 2022. A total of 56 recordings of the vocal roosters were made as evidence of the annoyance neighbours were experiencing.

McNichol was originally charged with seven counts under the Capital Regional District’s Animal Regulation and Impounding Bylaw, but two charges were subsequently dropped.

The remaining five charges resulted in the recent conviction in provincial court, which will result in sentencing August 30. CRD is seeking a penalty of $1,000 per count plus $2,000 in costs as well as a year’ ban on owning a rooster.

The fines are in addition to $30,000 spent to date on legal fees, as well as expenses modifying the roosters’ living arrangement.

Describing local farmers as “stunned and disheartened,” Elsie Born, president of the Salt Spring Island Poultry Club, said McNichol’s conviction is a blow to right-to-farm principles.

“For years, we’ve heard rhetoric about the importance of local agriculture, of supporting farmers who provide food for our tables and care for the land that sustains us all,” she said in a letter endorsed by the agriculture committee of the Salt Spring Island Farmers Institute. “But when push came to shove, and our right to farm was challenged by those who find our way of life inconvenient, the court decided that we were the ones who had to change, not the people who lived next door and didn’t like the sounds, smells, and realities of rural life.”

Complaints about roosters on Salt Spring have been dismissed by the BC Farm Industry Review Board in the past given that the farms were deemed hobby operations.

However, Born maintains that every farm counts, and if hobby farm roosters are silenced, those on larger operations could be next.

“The court may have spoken, but we can’t afford to remain silent. This ruling has put every farm at risk,” she writes.

An open house is planned for September to discuss the implications.