Animal shelter a victim of 'vile' social media attacks

After years of social media attacks and an increasingly poisoned relationship with city council, Rainbow District Animal Shelter wants to set the record straight.

In an interview Monday, Richard Paquette said his family's business has been subjected to “vile” attacks on social media for years, with unproven and outlandish accusations that have been planted in some people's minds as being true.

He's speaking out now because city council will be deciding Tuesday on some key resolutions on the future of animal control in the city. While Rainbow supports many of the revisions, Paquette said it would be a huge mistake for the city to bring bylaw enforcement in-house.

He said six of his staff would lose their jobs, and the city won't be able to cope with the new responsibilities by adding some part-time hours to their existing bylaw staff. His six officers handled more complaints last year, he said, than all of the city's bylaw staff combined – about 2,800 to 2,100.

"It's a 60-per-cent increase in their caseloads," he said. "This is all going to blow up in their faces a year from now. Next thing you know, it's going to be another $250,000 to hire all six FTEs they were supposed to.

"Even if it didn't mean I'll have to lay six people off who wouldn't be able to go downtown to seek better jobs, they're gutting animal control. And that's not what the public wants. The public wants wants more people out on the road."

Paquette said his relationship with city council has been poisoned largely by anonymous and “vile” attacks on social media.

"A lot of it has been personal demonization,” he said. “That we're greedy or evil, that we're monsters ... Social media is as much of a curse as it is a blessing."

While the shelter has been accused of many things, no one has ever offered any proof, even in the age of the cellphone, when discreet and incriminating videos or pictures can be taken. Yet those attacks have tainted how some people view Rainbow.

“None of those allegations have ever been proven,” Paquette said. “Many of them have been investigated by the authorities and found to have zero merit."

Being the city's pet police doesn't win them friends when it's time to enforce the pet bylaw, he said. It has brought them into conflict with some rescue groups, who often exceed the city's limit of four pets when sheltering animals.

"A neighbour complains, we go knock on a PetSave foster home door, and then (we get attacked) on social media -- 'idiot pound is at my door harassing me about having too many pets,'” Paquette said.

“Well, that's not our fault. We're doing the job that we're contracted to do under the rules the city has put in place. We recommended repealing those pet limits, and we have for a long time."

Another element of enforcing the rules involves disputes between neighbours. Paquette said when they get a complaint about someone allowing a pet to disturb or harass their neighbour, they have to step in.

"They don't like it when we write them tickets or impound their animals when they fail to comply," he said. "Some people have no respect for their neighbours. And those are the people, sometimes, that are on social media bashing us."

Paquette also takes issue with the perception that Rainbow increased the cost of their bid for the contract in 2014, only because no one else stepped forward to bid on the work. Despite what staff said at the time, the new contract included a number of service enhancements, while the shelter was already losing money on the previous deal.

"We lost $18,000 on the contract in 2014 -- a loss,” he said. “We didn't make a dime in profit. We were in the hole in 2014."

Rainbow had been providing the lowest-cost service among the 31 major cities they surveyed, until demands for more services increased a few years ago.

"Between 2009 and 2014, expectations have changed dramatically, as far as what people want," he said. "The city put in a whole bunch of new provisions in the contract in spite of us ... We were bleeding money like crazy, so we knew what it was going to cost moving forward.

“So the price we submitted was more than fair. But that poisoned the previous council."

In the end, Paquette hopes councillors will reconsider taking the bylaw enforcement in house, and will make the RFP process open and fair.

"Let anyone put in a bid,” he said. “Make it fair and remove all the barriers. Because we're more than confident that we'll have the best proposal in that fair and open RFP process."