Ostrichgate: The Day the Warrant Died

A 30-day warrant to search expired October 22. The Supreme Court’s stay is still in force. So why is CFIA still occupying the farm?

On September 22 2025, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) arrived at Universal Ostrich Farms (UOF) in Edgewood, B.C., with a warrant to search issued under section 41(1) of the Health of Animals Act. The document, signed on September 3, authorized CFIA officers to enter the property ONLY between 6 a.m. and 8:59 p.m. from September 22 through October 22 2025. It allowed them to search for, seize, and “dispose of” animals or things connected to the Notice to Dispose dated December 31 2024 and amended January 27 2025. The warrant’s power therefore depended entirely on that Notice. Once the dates passed, its entry authority expired automatically.

BUT WAIT… 2 days Later The Supreme Court Steps In

Just two days later, on September 24 2025, Canada’s Supreme Court intervened. In response to an emergency motion, the Court ordered:

“An interim-interim stay of the enforcement of the Notice to Dispose dated December 31 2024 is granted pending the decision on this motion and the application for leave to appeal.”

The Court also directed that “the respondent shall maintain custody of the birds … and the applicant shall not interfere with the respondent’s custody …” and set an expedited schedule for filings.

This order froze any enforcement of the December 2024 Notice to Dispose until the Court rules on the leave-to-appeal request.

From that moment forward, every enforcement power that relied on that Notice, including the disposal language inside CFIA’s warrant to search, was legally suspended. CFIA could keep custody – legal control over decisions about the birds – but could not destroy, move, or “dispose of” them.

When CFIA began executing its warrant that morning Sept. 22, 2025 , officers ordered farm owners Karen Espersen and David Bilinski, and Espersen’s daughter Katie Pasitney, to leave the ostrich pens or face arrest. Bilinski complied and stepped back. Espersen and Pasitney negotiated with both CFIA personnel and the RCMP and were told they could finish feeding and watering the birds. Minutes later, after being guided out of view of supporters, both women were arrested, processed off-site, and released the same day under conditions forbidding them to enter the pens. Those restrictions remain in place. Since that date, none of the owners have been allowed to perform direct daily care for the birds.

While the arrests were taking place, CFIA agents cut the wires to the farm’s surveillance cameras, disabling every live feed that would have shown what occurred inside the pens after the owners were removed. The warrant they were executing authorized a search, not the destruction of property or the prevention of oversight. Under Canadian law, interfering with cameras that are not evidence of a crime constitutes an unreasonable seizure under section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and an abuse of administrative power under the Health of Animals Act. Nothing in the warrant listed those cameras as items to be seized. By disabling them, CFIA prevented the owners from observing or recording what was happening on their property during an operation already under dispute and later stayed by the Supreme Court. In legal terms, that act was not inspection—it was obstruction of oversight.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE…Doesn’t Cutting the Cameras Slice Right Into the Canadian Bill of Rights? … Now Featuring Unauthorized Amendments to the Bill of Rights by the CFIA. Seriously WHO do these people think they are? Better yet who do they think we are? (WHO in caps on purpose, they are unelected unaccountable foreign entities)

CFIA’s decision to cut the surveillance-camera wires did more than destroy property — it violated federal human-rights law. Under the Canadian Bill of Rights (1960), which still binds every federal agency, Canadians are guaranteed the enjoyment of property, security of the person, and the right not to be deprived of either except by due process of law. The Bill also guarantees equality before the law and the right to a fair hearing when the government acts against you.

By disabling the cameras and removing the owners, CFIA deprived Universal Ostrich Farms of both property rights and due process. The cameras were the owners’ only means to document what federal agents were doing on their land. Interfering with that oversight denied them equality before the law and a fair hearing, since they could no longer gather evidence to defend themselves.

In plain terms: the Charter protects against unreasonable seizure, while the Bill of Rights protects the right to see and respond when government acts against you. When CFIA destroyed the farm’s ability to monitor its own property, it crossed from enforcement into violation—breaching not only the rule of law but the very rights that are supposed to restrain government power.

An Inmate may be hurt … September 27 2025

Click above to watch disturbing video…

Five days after CFIA occupied the property, the agency permitted David Bilinski a five-minute, supervised visit to check on Spirit, a hen injured after repeated low-flying CFIA helicopters and drones startled the flock.

Think of it like a messy divorce: the Supreme Court told CFIA it had custody, which means keeping the birds in the lifestyle they were accustomed to … fed, watered, cared for, not just locking out the other “parent.” Yet Dave got the classic supervised visit: he could look, not help. After CFIA had cut the farm’s own cameras, a police officer, almost certainly making an on-the-spot call, filmed the visit at Dave’s request. The footage later surfaced via Save Our Ostriches facebook page; given how tightly CFIA controlled recording otherwise, it wouldn’t be surprising if that decision earned a quiet reprimand later. Click the image above to watch the visit … grab the kleenex your going to need it.

The footage shows CFIA staff in white Tyvek coveralls and masks leading Bilinski into the enclosure. Spirit lay collapsed beside a manure pile, emaciated and visibly dehydrated. A small water dish sat directly in front of her; a feed dish was several feet away (next to another manure pile) —out of reach. When Bilinski questioned why the food and water were separated, no practical explanation was given, in fact they fumble over their explanations. A CFIA employee identifying himself as a veterinarian said her temperature was “38.5 °C,” then admitted it had been estimated visually, not measured. CFIA refused permission for immediate hydration or tubing, suggesting instead that the owners contact a veterinarian in Vancouver, over 500 kilometres away and “continue discussions by email.” Spirit died shorlty after while in CFIA’s custody. CFIA later recorded the cause of death as sepsis; many dispute that, as Bilinski pointed out you don’t need to be a vet to see the poor thing was dehyrated. Why would they need to wait for their vet? The CFIA vet was standing right there…WTF? What a horrible senseless death.

What is happening on the ground does not match the law on the page of the Stay Order …

Click image above to watch the video, thank you Blake Roberts for capturing it on Oct. 1, 2025 (remember the Stay Order is dated Sept.24, 2025)

Since the occupation began, supporters have documented dumpsters entering and leaving the property. Some who followed or filmed were arrested. UOF has repeatedly requested a current bird count; CFIA has refused to provide one. When UOF asked RCMP to launch a drone to obtain an independent aerial count, CFIA refused and reprimanded the officer who had agreed to assist. The refusal had nothing to do with biosecurity, this is clearly all about control.

But Wait Why Didn’t They Launch Their Own Drone and Get a Count Themselves? hmmmm … interesting question … keep reading

Many people keep claiming the Supreme Court’s stay allows CFIA to “continue preparing for the cull.” I for one am saying SCREAMING that is FALSE! Earlier lower-court orders may have contained that phrase. The Supreme Court’s September 24 order does not. Its language is unambiguous: enforcement of the Notice to Dispose is stayed; CFIA holds custody, nothing more. Preparation, movement, and destruction are all enforcement acts. They are frozen.

The Supreme Court’s own case summary confirms the Notice to Dispose had not been complied with precisely because each lower court stayed it, and the Supreme Court then imposed its own interim-interim stay. The Court has flagged the real issues of national importance: how to review policy-based exercises of statutory discretion; whether an agency can treat “may” as “must” when invoking emergency powers; whether fettering occurred; and how emergency orders should be reconsidered once circumstances shift from active outbreak to extended stability. Those are about limits and accountability, not authorization to proceed. Check it out: https://scc-csc.ca/cases-dossiers/search-recherche/41992/ and you be the judge.

So to answer the question above … why didn’t they launch their own drones …

Here is your first clue.

There is another layer most Canadians never see: the sky above the farm was closed. On September 22, Transport Canada, at RCMP’s request, activated a Temporary Restricted Airspace over UOF: a 0.5-nautical-mile radius to 3,000 feet above mean sea level, centred precisely at 49°51′49″N, 118°09′06″W. The NOTAM text cited section 5.1 of the Aeronautics Act “during police operations” and named the RCMP as the controlling agency. CFIA cannot close airspace; it appears to have achieved the same end by enlisting RCMP to frame an administrative operation as a police incident. Two days later, the Supreme Court stayed enforcement. Yet the sky remained closed and, on October 21, nearly a month after the stay and on the eve of the warrant’s expiry —Transport Canada issued a renewed police-ops airspace lockdown to November 6, 2025 over the same coordinates. Airspace restrictions under section 5.1 are permitted for aviation safety or protection of the public, not to conceal administrative activity from public oversight when the underlying enforcement has been frozen by the Supreme Court.

Time to S#@t or Get Off the Pot CFIA

On the one hand, CFIA argues the Supreme Court isn’t the place for this. On the other, they had the RCMP close federal airspace over a private farm under a police-operations NOTAM—an extraordinary tool meant for aviation safety or national security, not for blocking public oversight. In blunt terms, CFIA s@#t the bed here: you don’t get to say “nothing to see” and then pull a no-fly curtain so no one can see.

If CFIA indeed pushed the RCMP to apply for a no-fly zone over a private farm, then we must thank you, CFIA, for agreeing this is a Supreme Court case. A police-operations airspace lockdown is not a tarp to hide an administrative dispute.

Custody is not occupation. Once the Court stayed enforcement, CFIA’s duty shifted from coercion to care. Whoever holds custody must ensure welfare under the Health of Animals Act and applicable provincial cruelty-prevention laws. If CFIA excludes owners from feeding and watering while failing to provide adequate care itself, it assumes responsibility for neglect. And by 8:59 p.m. on October 22, the warrant’s entry window closed. After that moment, no continued presence could rest on that warrant. As of October 23, the only operative instrument is the Supreme Court’s stay, which continues to bar all enforcement of the Notice to Dispose. Nothing in that stay authorizes CFIA to occupy the farm, to build kill pens, to corral and separate birds, to block independent counts, or to order or renew police-ops airspace closures.

So to be clear… A warrant to search under s. 41(1) of the Health of Animals Act is a time-limited judicial authorization. When its window closed at 8:59 p.m. on October 22, CFIA could not keep relying on it. To continue entry authority, CFIA would have needed a new warrant to search (or a formal variation) issued by a judge/JP, with new dates/hours and reasons. There is no such thing as an informal or self-extended warrant; if one exists, it is in writing and must be shown on request.

The Supreme Court’s stay (Sept 24) meanwhile froze enforcement of the Notice to Dispose. That means any new warrant premised on enforcement (seizure, disposal, corralling toward cull) would conflict with the stay. At most, a court could authorize a narrow, care/inspection-only warrant consistent with CFIA’s custody obligations—not occupation, exclusion of owners, or suppression of oversight.

So if anyone claims “there’s an extension,” the test is simple: show the order.

If CFIA cannot produce a new, dated, signed warrant to search that is facially compatible with the Supreme Court’s stay, then there is no valid extension. And even if a limited care-access warrant exists, it cannot revive the very enforcement the Supreme Court has stayed.

Now, I’m no lawyer and this is not legal advice, but here’s how it looks to me—and your lawyer can advise: the warrant to search expired on October 22, and the Supreme Court’s stay still freezes all enforcement of the Notice to Dispose. “Custody” isn’t a license to occupy the farm, evict the owners, cut cameras, build kill pens, corral birds, block independent counts, or hide behind a police-ops no-fly zone. If CFIA or the RCMP believe they have fresh, lawful authority to remain, they should produce the signed court order that says so. If they can’t, they should GET THE HELL OUT!!!!