B.C.’s top court has dismissed an appeal by two animal rights protesters convicted of breaking and entering with intent to cause mischief.
“The motive was obvious, to obtain media attention regarding the conditions of the animals, because they believe those conditions to be cruel,” B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Susan Griffin wrote in the unanimous Jan. 12 decision.
Amy Soranno and Nick Schafer told Glacier Media in November they were ready to take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada if they were to lose their appeal.
On Nov. 23, B.C. Court of Appeal judges heard the case, which involved filming conditions at an Abbotsford hog farm.
Both received a 30-day jail sentence in October 2022, but both were granted bail pending their appeal. They wanted the three-judge panel to set aside their convictions and schedule a new trial.
Soranno and Schafer participated in an animal rights protest during which, as part of a large group of protesters, they broke into and occupied a hog barn at the Excelsior Farm in Abbotsford, B.C., for several hours on April 28, 2019.
“The protesters demanded that media be allowed to tour the barn. This was arranged, and after it occurred, the protesters left the barn and were arrested,” Griffin wrote.
“They argue the trial judge was wrong to exclude certain evidence of mistreatment of the pigs, and erred in his instruction to the jury regarding expert opinion evidence,” the decision summary said. “The evidence of animal mistreatment was irrelevant in determining whether the protesters had disrupted ‘lawful’ activities. This evidence was irrelevant for all other purposes raised by the appellants.”
Griffin further said the trial judge should not have put expert opinion evidence regarding general biosecurity risks before the jury or ought to have given a limiting instruction regarding the evidence. “However, the error in allowing the jury to consider this evidence was harmless.”
Griffin said the pair's argument appeared to be that they should have been allowed at trial to explore the issue of a mischief defence because they were exposing allegedly unlawful activities at the hog farm involving the animals.
She said the heat of a trial might have led to some submissions before the judge not being fully fleshed out.
“But surely by the time of the hearing of this appeal the appellants ought to be able to specify what laws on their theory of the case may have been broken by the owners of the farm,” she said.
“I do not accept that the appellants were entitled to go on a roving commission to try to find out if some illegal acts happened on the property,” Griffin said.
Outside court on the day of the appeal hearing, Soranno said the purpose of their actions was to expose conditions at the farm.
Ray Binnendyk, one of the farm's owners, defended Excelsior from past allegations when he testified in October 2023 at a session with the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food.
Binnendyk told the committee “false accusations online had a significant emotional impact on our family” and that “the perception that people have about us has all been spread by lies and stuff that are not true.”
With a file from Stefan Labbé
