FISH AND WILDLIFE

OFFICERS
ANNUAL MEETING

ENERGY AND
NATURAL RESOURCES
Fish and Wildlife Division

PROCEEDINGS OF TliE 1981

FISH mu WILDLIFE
OFFICER ANNUAL MEETING

EDMONTON, ALBERTA
MARCH 19-20, 1981

ALBERTA ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

FISH AND WILDLIFE DIVISION

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AGENDA

THEME:

LOCATION:

DRESS:

CHAIRMAN:

March 19,

8:00 a.m
8:30 a.m
8:45 a.m

10:15 a.m
10:30 a.m

1:00 p.m

2:00 p.m

2:45 p.m
3:00 p.m

7:00 p.m.

1981 ANNUAL FISH AND WILDLIFE OFFICER MEETING

Resource Management Through Professional Enforcement

Section A B, Ballroom, Convention Inn South
4404 Calgary Trail, Edmonton

District Officers - Full Uniform Regional Officers - Optional
Dennis Urban, Fish and Wildlife Officer, Evansburg
1981

- 8:30 a.m.

- 8:45 a.m.

- 10:15 a.m.

- 10:30 a.m.

- 12:00 p.m.

Regi stration

Bob Adams, Director - Opening Remarks
Hon. J. E. (Bud) Miller, Minister - Address
Fred McDougall, Deputy Minister - Address
Gordon Kerr, Assistant Deputy minister - Address
"The Foie of the Enforcement Officer"

Coffee Break

Bev Isaacs, Coordinator Law Enforcement Program
"Human Relations and Enforcement"

Lunch - Uniform Measuring - LaFleche

- 2:00 p.m.

- 2:45 p .m.

- 3:00 p.m.

- 4:30 p.m.

Cal Brandley, Agricultural Law Solicator, Lethbridge
"Access to Public Land"

Jack Bales, Communication Director for Department -
"Public Relations - What it really is"

Coffee Break

Jim Vaught, Chief of Law Enforcement, Game and Fish
New Mexico - "New Mexico's Undercover Operations"

Supper Banquet, Section C S D, Ballroom
(Cash Bar to open at 6:00 p.m.)

Grace - Marv Doran, Fish and Wildlife Officer,

B1 ai rmore

Guest Speaker - Jack Shaver

"Wildlife Law Enforcement 0 Past, Present, and
Future"

Presentation of Awards - Bob Adams, Director
Slide Show - Rick Servetnyk, Fish and Wildlife

Officer, Elbow Jack Morrison, Regional
Officer, Calgary

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MARCH 20, 1981

8:30 a.m.
9:00 a.m.

9:00 a.m.
12:00 p.m.

Plenary Session - Formation of Workshops

Workshops:

1) Nighthunting

2) Commercial Fishing

3) Special Investigations

4) Operation Game Thief

5) Officer Safety

6) Communicating with the

Chai rman

- Chuck Scott

- Gordon Lee

- Len Cormier

- Syl Pompu

- Lew Ramstead
Publ i c - Dean Watki ss

Lunch

1:00 p.m.
4:15 p.m.

4:15 p.m. Plenary Session - Discussion of Workshops (30
min ./workshop)

4:30 p.m. Bob Adams - Closing Remarks

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
University of Alberta Libraries

https://archive.org/details/proceedingsoffis1920fish

1

Opening Remarks
Mr. R. J. Adams, Director
Enforcement, Liaison and Standards

Good morning everybody. Welcome to our annual meeting. To get things started,
I think what we should do first so that the Minister and the Deputy Minister
as well as Gordon and myself have an idea who some of the new faces are we
would like to ask you to stand up and introduce yourself starting with Tom
Smith, the newest of the outsiders. Tom, could you start it off? Thankyou.

At the back of the room we have a few people as well, from our communications
group. Jack Bales and Joyce Bourgeois and also Grant Campbell, for those of
you don't know him, who is the Director of Program Support, Kathy Hutchinson
who works in the Edmonton office. Bob Stevenson and Brent Shervey at the back
of the room. V/el 1 , I'd certainly like to welcome the Branch Directors, and
especially the Regional Directors. This is possibly the first opportunity
that they have had to come and see all the officers together and have the
opportunity to see exactly what you do. It's been said many times in the past
and I would like to reiterate it at this time, this is your meeting. It's
been designed the last two years specifically with that in mind. The program
was developed basically from input from you people and you will be conducting
it. I would certainly encourage 100% participation from each member. With
that then I'd call on Gordon Kerr to introduce the Minister and the Deputy
Minister. Gordon?

2

Address

Hon. J. E. (Bud) Miller, Minister
Public Lands and Wildlife

Thankyou very much, Bob. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Before I get
around to introductions there is one request I would make. I know that I’m
not going to remember all those new names that I heard this morning and we had
a name card in the booklet that was handed out. I suggest, perhaps, for the
sake of some of you who don't know each other as well. Perhaps we should wear
those at least for this morning and give each other a break. I notice there's
some with them on and a lot of them not. I'm certainly pleased to be able to
join your meeting this morning. I hope to be able to stay a good portion of
the day and if a few things break in the right direction I will be here this
evening. At this time I am very pleased to be able to introduce to you our
Minister, Associate Minister of Public Lands and Wildlife, Mr. Bud Miller.

Mr. Miller?

Mr. Bud Miller, Associate Minister of Public Lands and Wildlife.

Thanks very much, Gordon. Ladies and Gentlemen. It is a pleasure to be here
this morning even if it is a shade early for my executive assistant and this
is why we are a few minutes late. Not only was he a little late getting in
but he also got lost coming over here. He denied it but this is the first
time I've ever had to detour around by Camrose to get to the Convention Inn

South .

3

But, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to just say a few brief words. It's
the second opportunity to meet with your group, I think it was a year ago
right about now when we met over in the Edmonton Inn and had a most delightful
discussion. I hope that we might be able to have the same today.

As you are probably aware it's been two years just about to the day since I
was offerred and assumed the post of Associate Minister in charge of Public
Lands and Wildlife and I feel that in these past two years we've made a great
many accomplishments which we tend to forget in our everyday duties.

I can't help but think and I happened to be out in B.C. yesterday and we vvent
from Vancouver up to Whistler Mountain and on the way up we passed the army
trucks which were holding their maneuvers. These trucks are of second World
War vintage. There is not a truck in the whole bloody works which was later
model than 1950 and the army are still the same old army as ever. On the back
of one of the trucks some wit had taken a pencil and on the dust had written,
"Don't laugh, we're protecting you from the Russians". But, even though we
are not moving as fast as you might like us to move at least we're moving a
little faster than the Canadian army are.

I would like to just relate a few things which v/e have accomplished and I
don't know how many of you were able to read this article in the Sun which was
written by Gary Cooper quoting Bob Scammell, who is as you know, past
president of the Alberta Fish and Game Association. In this article he makes
the statement that neither Miller nor McDougall are rated by Fish and Game

- 4 -

people as even mediocre anglers or hunters. Fred hunts a bit, I don't hunt at
all and I don't think that this should matter that much. As I was telling
Fred, don't get too concerned about it. I've got a good friend that sells
brassieres and I don't think he ever wears one. But I came into this job not
being hampered by knowing that much about it and I hope I have been able to
give you people the impression that I am prepared to listen and act on your
recommendations.

To recall some of the things that we have accomplished I think one of the
major things that has been a tremendous success is our regionalization aspect.
In the past three or four months we have been able to officially open three of
our Regional Offices, one in St. Paul, the office in Rocky Mountain House and
the office in Red Deer which we just opened last week. In my opinion and a
lot of the people who are associated with these offices, we are very enthused
about the positive aspects which are coming out. We think that within the
Wildlife Division we are going to see greater cooperation between the wildlife
officers, the biologists and the habitat people. We think that the decisions
which are made out in the field where your people have a direct input are
going to be able to have a direct impact on the policies which are adopted and
your recommendations are the ones which we will use in setting our hunting
regulations and other matters which affect the Wildlife Department.

I think that some of the advances which we have made have been tremendous. I
think of the pheasant population where we've increased the number of pheasants
we are releasing from thirty odd thousand two years ago to seventy-seven
thousand this past year, our deer and big game populations are increasing
dramatically throughout all of Alberta. We have a very extensive fish

5

hatchery, fish rearing and fish stocking program which I think you will see
enhanced tremendously in the next few years. I think that all of these are
facts which you can use when you are out in the field and during your public
relations because as I understand it, approximately 60 to 75% of the work that
you people do is directly related in Public Relations and dealing with the
public. I think it is often overlooked, it's a tremendous job which you
people do in getting the message across about what a valuable resource our
wildlife is to the people of Alberta, not from a hunting aspect entirely but
also from a visual and a tourist aspect as well.

I don't know how many of you are aware that this past few months that we have
instituted a study of the department. We have hired an outside group who are
the Sage Institute and they're conducting a review as to how we can better
handle our wildlife population, how we can better handle our authorizations,
how we can better deal with the public. I know that some of you people have
been interviewed by this group and you've made your concerns known. I think
its important to recognize the fact that the Department isn't perfect. We're
prepared to look at new ideas. We're prepared to look at things that you
people find out in the field that we don't find up here in Edmonton. We're
interested in the morale of the officers. We're interested in your opinions
as to how we should handle transfers, how we should handle promotions, how we
should deal with authorizations, how we should co-ordinate activities not only
within the Regions but with the Wildlife Officers who are out in the field,
and their dealings with the Regional Office who in turn deals with us in
Edmonton. I think its' extremely important that the opinions which you people

- 6 -

are able to gather out in the field as you are able to meet with the hunters
and the general population, the school children, and how they should be
co-ordinated into the regulations which we are putting forward.

We're going to have some increase in staff, not as much as we need to do an
adequate job. We're hoping to improve the communications aspect. We've got a
new Hunter Trainig Manual which is available to the general public, and
believe me its the best in North America. Red Hasay and his fellows just did
a tremendous job in preparing this manual. Even though we take some flack
from people we take that in stride because its the best manual you'll find
anywhere .

Last year we had a problem when I met with you people and you had a concern

about the Found Dead Wildlife Regulations. I believe that during this last

%

year we dealt with, I believe pretty close to a thousand applications to keep
dead wildlife. For all intents and purposes, its been a tremendous success
from the public's point of view. You expressed some concerns which were
valid, the last time we met. Most of those concerns are still out there, but
from the public's point of view its a very positive step and very much
appreciated.

I would like now to deal with some of the things that haven't been dealt
with. We've got the positives but we've also got the negatives. I've had a
chance to meet with Lou Ramstead one evening and I've met with other Wildlife
Officers, Bill McDonald, the Regional Directors, Chuck Shipley, in regards to
sidearms. I know that its a concern that a lot of you people have, that you

7

would like to be able to carry sidearrns. I just don't think, in my opinion
that the people of Alberta, the Legislature, are ready at this time are ready
to pass an Act which enables you to carry sidearrns, I think the time might
come when the public will generally say "yes they should". But the opinion is
out there right now that we have one police force here in Alberta and that
your job is not only as enforcement officers, but a public relations officer
and that the policing, the carrying of sidearrns is generally thought to be
with the R.C.M.P. I might be wrong on this and I wish you v;ould tell me, but
the impression I get from talking to my colleagues and from talking to people
in general. They don't think that at this point in time that you have to
carry sidearrns in order to do your job effectively.

We're aware that for dangerous wildlife, yes, some merit in being able to have
a sidearm locked in the Regional or District Office which could be available
but to be used only in dangerous wildlife situations. We think that this is
very valid, to be able to have this aspect of it. But to be able to carry a
sidearm to do your duties overall is something we don't think the public is
ready to accept. In my opinion, from talking to my colleagues, they don't
feel that its necessary at this point in time.

I've laid that out, and I know that you must have other concerns and I'll try
to answer them to the best of my ability or if I can't, Gordon or Fred or the
other staff in the Department here at Edmonton are there to do that.

- 8 -

Ladies and Gentlemen its a pleasure to join you this morning and I would like
to hear any comments which you might have, or which you are hearing in the
field so that we could be aware of your concerns. Thank you very much for
inviting me to be here. I hope the convention will be successful. I think
that its a great idea for you to all get together and exchange ideas and I
wish you every success. Thank you.

Gordon Kerr; Ladies and Gentlemen, the Minister has been good enough to
invite your questions and we'll certainly invite you now to make any comments,
concerns, questions which you might have. Sounds like you really sold it this
morning. Not a question in the crowd.

Yes, Marv.

Question: inaudible

Associate Minister: Thank you. I'm glad you brought that up, because I
haven't heard that before. Why do they feel you should have a si dearm? -
Response inaudible. Do they feel you should have a sidearm for your own
protection from other people or do they feel you should have it to protect
yourself against wildlife?

Response inaudible

- 9 -

You as an individual, when you go up to a car, does it bother you that you
don't have a gun with you? Is that in the back of your mind? It's something
like I used to play hockey, and when I was young it didn't bother me, but when
I was married and had a family, before I'd go into a corner I'd start to think
what would happen if I broke an arm or a leg? Who will feed the cows in the
morning? It reduced my effectiveness. Do you feel that your effectiveness is
lessened by the fact that you don't have a gun v/i th you?

Response - inaudibl e

Minister: As I understand it, there were two people shot down in the United
States (Wildlife Officers) and they were carrying sidearms. I know this is a
unique situation but if we were to suggest having sidearms the public would
come out with "well these two down in the U.S. were carrying sidearms and they
were shot". So that the other side of the coin as it were.

Response - inaudible

Minister: The only thing I would say in rebutall is I know that the police in
England still don't carry sidearms to the best of my knowledge and they work
on their reputation as such. I know we have different circumstances here and
that's not relevant to the point you suggest.

Question - inaudible

10

Minister: Generally speaking, I think that the Fish and Wildlife Association
supports you in this in a general poll taken. It's just that the reaction I
get is from people who aren't actually hunters, in many cases and in talking
with my colleagues in the Legislature.

Response - inaudible

Minister: I appreciate the fact that this is something that is discussed out
there and that they are mentioning it to you ahd bringing their concerns
forward. It's something I haven't been subject to from other than the Fish
and Game people and they've never really stressed that as much as they have
Hunter education and first time testing. Those are the prime topics right
now.

Response - inaudibl e

Minister: I think that perhaps we should get their opinion on it. I think
that's something that we've really been remiss. I've more or less heard it
continually that we've got one Police force we don't need another sort of a
thing. I think thats really valid and I will have someone contact the
R.C.M.P. to get their reaction if and when you people were to be allowed to
carry si dearms.

Question - inaudible

11

Minister: Yes, its interesting you make the observation that people generally
think that you are carying si dearms as such. I believe the point we all
should remember is the visual aspect of carrying a gun. When we were down in
New Orleans, everybody down there seems to be carrying a gun, and this is very
visual. Not being used to it, I was struck by the fact that they seem to be
over anned. They pack at least one gun, sometimes two, a baseball bat for a
billy club and they're out there and as much as saying "By God, I'm going to
hammer you". We've more or less taken the soft approach with people. You've
been able to give the impression that you might be armed. But if it was
visual, would your effectiveness as a public relations officer be the same as
it is now, or would you lose some of that? Would people be as free to sit
dov^n and visit with you, or would they be more or less looking at your
si dearms with a different interpretation of what your role is as a wildlife
Officer if you're packing a gun as if you weren't packing a gun? That's one
of the concerns we have. In regard to whether an Act is necessary or whether
it would be legislation, I think that when the regulations were put through
Cabinet for approval, they would be given a preetty damn rough ride at this
time.

Question - inaudible

Minister: The concern I have when you asked, the R.C.M.P. carrying a sidearm
isn't offensive to any of us because we look upon them pretty well strictly as
an enforcement type of officer. We don't, and the people of Alberta don't
look upon you strictly as enforcement officers. They look upon you as being
public relations, interested in wildlife, and public relations in such a

12

tremendous part of your job. I look on the enforcement aspect as being
secondary to it. If you're going for a cup of coffee packing a gun are you
going to be as acceptible to that fellow sitting across from you as you are
right now? This is what my concern is. Will your image improve or won't it
improve when you're packing a gun?

Queston - inaudible

Minister: I think that public relations is dealing with people on an everyday
basis. I think that you're the most effective officers that we have out in
the field. You have a good working relationship. You work with the people
that are out there, the farmers, the Fish and Game Association, the hunters
and co-ordinate the hunting activity which is carried on. As well you have an
educational aspect where you're going into some of the schools talking and
giving the young people some idea of the responsibility they have to assume if
they're going to be hunters or fishers. And this is what I think is an
extremely important part of your job. I think most of you are doing an
excellent job, because the opinion of the people in Alberta have, and
specifically rural Alberta, is that you are great guys and you're doing a
great job. As long as you have that attitude out there where the people
respect your position where they respect your uniform your job is going to be
a lot easier than if you're out there hammering everybody. The hammering
aspect, I know its necessary, I know that there are people that you've got to
take to court. But when you go to court we want to win. It's important that
you have this image out there and you've got it. If packing a gun would
enhance it, maybe we should look at that. I'm not too sure in my own mind

that it will .

- 13

Question - inaudibl e

Minister: I think we should look on this as we are working together. Not you
against me or me against you. We've got to work together where I'm in the
legislature working on your behalf and you are in the field working on my
behalf. This is an extremely important topic and appreciate the comments
which are coming forward. It's something we have to look at and get out on
the table and this is why I'm so pleased that so many people are coming
forward with their ideas.

Question - inaudible

Minister: I appreciate that but I would hope that you people in your
respective areas would make contact with your local MLA and work with him.

Not only on this concern but on other concerns. A lot of those fellows out
there are just as concerned about when the season opens or closes and they get
as many complaints as you fellows do in many instances. If you're
communicating with your MLA and say "Look, lets sit down and have coffee
together and that part of the communications aspect. I would appreciate it if
when you go back home phone your MLA. Tell him who you are, v/hat you're doing
and express your concerns because I can't do it all in the Legislature. It's
got to be those fellows helping me. You can't do it all out there either.

They should be aware of your concerns. You should be aware of what they are
hearing from the public. Lots of times these judgement decisions aren't black
and white, there is a grey area. We found that last year when we established
hunting regulations. Not everybody's happy with them. Not everydoby is happy
with our authorizations and its best to get it out on the table.

14

Question - inaudible

Minister: With regard to problem wildlife, I believe we were talking about a
shotgun type of weapon?

Response inaudible

Gordon Kerr: Just to follow up on Lou's remark, I think we are finding it
necessary to cut off the discussion and I appreciate very much Mr. Miller's
willingness to interact so very much with you. As Lou suggested and as Mr.
Miller said, he is quite prepared to meet with a representation of staff to
discuss this problem and no doubt others. Rather than pursue it farther
today, perhaps that is the course that we should try to follow.

15

Address

Mr. Fred McDougall
Deputy Minister

This first point with regard to Coopers Column - I am very pleased to note
that some of the wildlife writers at least in Alberta, have established
hunting ability as the criterion for the success in the Deputy Ministers job.
To the few of you who know me know that I have hunted since I've been about 15
years old and I tend to agree with Cooper, I'm mediocre at that sport. I
think the reason I'm mediocre is I don't get enough time at it so Mr. Miller,

I know you'll be pleased to relieve me for about an additional three weeks
next fall. We'll put Gordon Kerr riding the desk and I'll see what I can do
to improve my capability in that area.

Looking back over past Deputies though I must say that things look great for
the Wildlife division because when I look over the last five years. I've
hunted more than any of the others. Going on to Fisheries, which is one area
the Minister did not stress, I think there has been some very positive
developments in that field as well, of course, we had the select committee
report this year which recommended a major advance in our Fisheries management
programs both sport commercial in the Province and I'm please also, of course,
to remind you that the Alison Group Creek Station is under construction now
proceeding very effectively and quickly towards completion and that together
with some improvements that Sam Livingston will bring a much improved fish
stocking program to the province in the near future. Beyond that as you know.

16

so I think its just a matter of time before we see another major facility
established with respect to Fisheries.

I think one area the Minister mentioned that I'd like to re-emphasize is the
communications and when we talk about officer safety I appreciate and agree
with the point that you raised last year at the Edmonton Inn whereby good
communication systems is perhaps as important or maybe more so than si dearms
in terms of officer safety as well as in terms of improving the effectiveness
of yourselves in the field. We appreciate that point, we've been pushing the
communications aspect of it. I'm sorry to report that there's not going to be
a major improvement in this years - the budget will not allow a major
improvement this year, but I want to promise you that this is an area where
you have our whole hearted support and I really do believe that the budget
next year will bring major communication systems improvements to your
Division. I think that will help a great deal.

The other thing I'd like to mention with respect to the Fish and Wildlife
Division generally - it is my perception that the back-up support -
administrative support to officers in the field, in the Division is poor and I
think with the regionalization, the regional directors have identified this
problem and I'm optimistic that some very positive suggestions and solutions
will be coming forward - I think one of the advantages of regionalization is
that you now have representing you, from the field, senior management people
in the Division, in your regional directors, and working through them and
through Grant Campbell, who I believe has simply been over taxed, we've got to
accomplish and achieve some major improvements in administrative support

17

systems. By that I mean such things as office facilities, warehousing
facilities and there is a reasonably good warehouse program, but the equipment
supply -- all of those aspects of back-up support, increased stenographic and
clerical assistance. All of these areas in my opinion are weak. The Regional
Directors have generally identified we've got to put a lot more emphasis in
that area.

I think there are some changes needed in head office in Edmonton so that your
administrative needs and requirements can be more effectively, efficiently and
more quickly dealt with in a positive way, and I think that you'll see some
emphasis in that area over the next couple of years - it won't happen
overnight - but I think if there's a weak spot in the adjnini strati ve support
system of the department, it's in this area.

I think aside from that I will re-open the side-arms thing just for a moment,
as much as I hate to take more time. I would just caution you that with
respect to side-arms, its not just the issue of side-arms, its the issue of
what you're going to do in the future, what you're going to be in the future.
So when you're talking sidearms, don't just think in terms of sidearms. Its
the image that you want that's going to determine really what your role is
going to be. If your role in the administration of the Fish and Wildlife
Resource in Alberta is going to be primarily enforcement, with emphasis on
enforcement, so be it - that won't be my decision to make - it'll be yours and
the Ministers and the Cabinet and the Legislature. All I'm saying is that
whatever way it goes, it's going to set a direction which is going to be
irreversable once it's done and which is going to bring along with it all the

18

associated changes that that will necessitate in terms of administration,
training, and control over your own activites. So as long as you look at that
issue in its broad context, which is what it is, look at your image, look at
what it is you want to be in the future, how you want to be perceived in the
future, how you want the division itself to grow in the future, because if in
fact the role of the officer becomes enforcement to the point of excluding the
ability to do other things, that will have an impact in terms of officer
staffing. If it's necessary in terms of technical work, to go to non-officer
technicians, so be it, but the sidearm issue is really in my view a
crystallized point at which one can focus, but it really in itself can't be
looked at in isolation. It has to be looked at in context of your broader
role in society and in the department and will affect officer staffing in the
future, it will affect really the whole structure of the field organization of
Fish and Wildlife Division. Whatever decision comes out of it. So I'll just
leave that with you, I just want to be sure that when your looking at that
issue, you're not looking exclusively at the narrow issue of whether or not
your going to carry a gun. Its the entire broad spectrum of really what your
going to be doing in the future, how your going to be perceived in the future,
and how in fact the field arm of the Fish and Wildlife Division is going to
develop in the future. That's all I have to say. Thank you very much.

19

The Role of The Enforcement Officer
Gordon Kerr, Assistant Deputy Minister
Fish and Viildlife Division

I've advised Dennis that we'll probably save some time here. I want to than'K
Fred for his comments, I think his last comments particularly are relevant. I
suspect you all know that I'm Gordon Kerr, for those who may wonder about
that. Thought I'd introduce myself and save a minute there. I find myself
somewhat between a rock and a hard place, between a rock and four or five hard
places when we talk about my subject. The role of an enforcement officer, as
its entitled. What should that role in the future be?

I would like to start my comments, by suggesting that I find myself in a
little bit of a dilemma as to whether I should be speaking of the role of an
enforcement officer or the role of a Fish and Wildlife Officer, because I do
not believe that those two terms are interchangeable. I think it perhaps is
just a case of semantics, oversight or whatever, but my address was to be on
the role of an enforcement officer, and rather should have said a Fish and
Wildlife officer. As you look across our Division, you'll find that nowhere
is there a classification title "enforcement officer". Also nowhere is there
a working title "enforcement officer", I could have possibly two or three
options like I could choose to suggest that we don't have any of those types
of officers, and therefore I don't know anything about them and shouldn't
comment on it, I could take the option that yes we do have enforcement
officers. If I take a narrow definition of the term enforcement, then my task

20

would be very easy, because obviously your job would be to enforce the laws
and thats the end of the story. I'll choose to take a third option and decide
to consider it an oversight in the adgenda and talk about the role of an
Alberta Fish and Wildlife officer - part of whose job is to enforce the law.

I think that I can't discuss the role as I see it today, or as I see it in the
future, of a Fish and Wildlife officer, except in context with the entire
Division. It has to be placed in context because we're here for a purpose,
our purpose being to manage Fish and Wildlife of all kinds throughout the
province for the benefit of people. We don't manage Fish and Wildlife for the
benefit of the fish or the wildlife, we manage it for the benefit of people.
Although I won't go into the details, I think it would be a fairly easy task
to argue every one of our activities on the basis of the benefits to people,
all the way from grizzly bear protection and management to Peregrine Falcons -
you name it.

Lets take a quick look though at what a Fish and Wildlife officer used to be.
If we went back to when the first one was hired, we would find that his
purpose was for the protection of wildlife or fish, and again to save some
time. I'll just emphasize again, that when I speak of wildlife, I include fish
and being wildlife, so if I miss mentioning fish I hope those people with that
particular responsibility don't feel offended. But in times past, our
objective was to go out to determine and safeguard against the
over-exploitation or over-use of wildlife resources. To monitor what was
happening in general terms in wildlife populations, were they increasing,
decreasing, staying stable - or whatever -- we weren't faced with intensive

21

industrialization, there weren't the habitat losses, the pollution problems
that we have today. And so it was a relatively simplistic exercise. Fish and
Wildlife officers, although not even they knew that at the time, were in many
cases seasonal employees. They existed for the time of the hunting season,
perhaps the trapping season, they came and they went - but they didn't have,
in some cases, a full time job.

Over the last twenty years, that situation has changed pretty dramatically.
We've seen human population increases, industrialization, in the minds of many
people in this room, they can recall when great tracts of Alberta were
completely inaccessible. That hardly can be said anymore. And so the need to
become much more sophisticated in what we are doing has certainly come along.

I think that its become obvious that we have developed new kinds of expertise
over the course of years, we've acquired individuals known as biologists,
technicians, hunter- traini ng officers, public information officers, computer
programmers, etc. etc. Now those have been necessary to cope with the more
complicated society in which we live. We've had a problem though, in how we
put those expertise groups together, and the problefii is that they weren't
together, in fact they were isolated, one from the other and the integration,
coordination between them left a lot to be desired.

That brings us up to 1979, when we had five branches that were autonomous
units from the top to the bottom. From Edmonton to the farthest staff member
of our branch in the field. And so we've, in 1980, concluded that there was a
need to restructure the organization to reorganize how it reports, how it

22

coordinates, and we brought about regionalization. Certainly we're not all
the way there yet, but we're a long way there, we have five regions, we have
five branches, perhaps there's some difficulty in yet understanding and
practicing how all those entities interact with each other. But we are
getting staffed up, we're not complete and as Fred McDougall has pointed out,
we have some major deficiencies in areas of administrative delivery.

Positions particularly, like administrative personnel at the regional level,
but we are moving in that direction and I think that we will be able to
respond more positively, more quickly, and I think both of those are very
important, both to respond positively to whats going on and quickly to whats
going on, and thus become more effective in the management of Fish and
Wildl i fe.

To many it may seem that we're really not doing anything very different in
1981 than we were doing in 1979. But from where I perceive it, we are, and I
think soon, from where you perceive it, we will be as well. I should mention
that it had been my intent to hand out a documentat this meeting, I have it
here, but it's hand written. It will be typed up and it will be sent out.
You're tapeing the session and we'll get an adlib version of this document. I
would ask you to not take it particularly literally, but I ask you when this

arrives to take it literally, because I've written nothing between the lines.

I've tried to be completely clear and that's maybe a problem. But what I've

said here doesn't have any riddles in it, at least not intended to have any

riddles in it. What it says is what it means. So when you get this I hope
you will read it in some detail.

23 -

I'm going to show you a conceptual view of our communications structure pretty
shortly, that has not been seen by anybody in this room except me. Why I
wasn't at your Smoker last night, I was home writing this talk, this drawing,
that chart. And so I stand some risk of being over-ruled and I stand some
risk of getting your wrath, but I'll take that chance.

I should point out that in the past, the direction to district officers has
come fran a regional Fish and Wildlife officer, and that is how it still is
and thats how it will remain. That the work direction of the districts will
come from regional officers. There's a little change from that point, that
the work direction of a regional officer will come from a Regional Director.

We know that those people are on deck, they're out there in their regional
offices, and they are the people who are required, not because they want to
particularly, but they're required and held responsible to coordinate the work
of the districts and meet the needs of t[ie Division, and it will be that group
of people from whom regional officers will get their direction and regional
officers will be evaluated.

In the effort to try to explain communication and supervisory channels, I
guess we can call them, I had suggested to me that we should talk about a one
window concept and it struck me as a very useful means of trying to describe
what we're talking about. When we talk about a district office, if you could
view that as the public's one window to our Division, that's the one place
that the public in your district comes to. To ask their questions, and to
find out the answers, to buy their licenses, to do a great number of things.
The district office and therefore the district officer is our one window at

- 24

the field level to the public. That public can be a variety of interest
groups; from trappers to hunters to naturalists to the local MLA, and I want
to stress upon you that you are the one window, you are the representative,
you are Mr. Fish and Wildlife, the entire Division at the district level.

Our regional office is Mr. Fish and Wildlife, Regional Director, at the region
level, and its through the Regional Director's one window in which you
communicate to Edmonton. I'll come back to elaborate a little bit on what I
mean by communication; there is formal communication, informal discussion,
there's all sorts of forms of communication - but for the sake of emphasis, I
will include all at this point and suggest to you that its a one window
communication from the region to Edmonton. I have the unfortunate or
fortunate, whichever way you want to look at it, task of being the
representative of Fish and Wildlife at the provincial level. When the
Minister is dealing with lands or Fish and Wildlife, or other Ministers of
Forestry and so forth, his one formal window to the Fish and Wildlife Division
is through my office. Sometimes thats fortunate and sometimes its not, but in
any event thats the way it is.

The window then of our Divisional staff to myself is pretty direct, only we've
got a unique kind of window in Edmonton - its got five panes - I suggest that
there's two meanings to the orally spoken word "pane", but I'm talking about
window panes, not pains in the wherever you want to have them. But those five
panes in that Edmonton window are represented by five Branch Directors. They
are in effect myself. If you could take five people at director level and
myself and mass us all together you'd get one person, and that has

25

to be because a Branch Director is in fact an arm of the ADM its an arm of the
ADM office, whether I'm in it or anybody else is in it. And those branch
directors are given certain program policy, certain program authority, they
have responsibility where they have to have the authority to back it up. We
are attempting to define more clearly as we go along just exactly what each
Branch Director's role is, but what his role is defined to be is what he has
authority in regard to. And it is through one of those five window panes that
the Regional Directors communicate with me. I know our time is short. I'm
leaping through this written thing and I've probably lost track of where I
am. But I think probably it's an appropriate time to try and show you
graphically what I've said. PAUSE

Can everyone see that from where they are? I know its in the shadow of this
hood in the top but hopefully you can see it.

I'm not sure if this thing we have on the board will fly, crawl or swim, but
being that it could be fish or wildlife, maybe it could do all three! I know
you at the back will not be able to read it so I'll describe whats written
here. On the far left, my left at least as I look at it, your left too, I
guess, is representation of the office of the ADM, and of course attached to
that office is a small staff to complement, of secretarial staff, and
executive assistant. This hopefully represents or can be understood to
represent the five Branch Directors in one window. The only way I

26

could quickly draw it up was to draw a circular window. I tried to draw a
symbol like the Chrysler symbol with five sides but I wasn't a good enough
artist so I draw this out and we have a Director of Habitat, Director of
Fisheries, Director of Wildlife, Director of Enforcement and Director of
Program Support. These little appendages up here represent the Edmonton staff
of a Branch and I have taken here Program Support with a line coming out.

This might well represent Extension Services and this one Barry Breau's shop
and those areas. Up here we have Habitat; this might well represent Ken
Crutchfield, perhaps Bruce Stubbs and their associate people. There are, of
course, other branches with Edmonton staff but rather than clutter this up I
have left them off but you should realize that they are there.

In the center we have a representation of a Regional Director's office and
with a Regional Director he has, what some people have called Regional Section
Heads, otherwise known as Regional Officers, Regional Biologists, Regional
Habitat persons and so on. This group here hopefully can be interpreted as
representing those Regional Section Heads or Regional Staff specialists, again
with one called "program support" who we would otherwise know as a Regional
Administrator and support staff, a Habitat Biologist and support staff.
Fisheries, Wildlife and a Regional Officer. There is a unique change in this
system- from that. You will notice that the Regional Officer has a line coming
from that position out to the District Officer. Whereas there is a whole
mass of lines here, there is only one out there.

I would like to go back to the left and run through it. If there is something
coming down the system starting from the left, perhaps the directive of the
Minister, everything is cooking along as it should. It hits my office after

- 27

coming through the Deputy Minister's office. If it is - let's just take one
at random - a fisheries' concern, that will go to the Director of Fisheries
for his attention to the matter. It may end there depending what the topic is
but if it has a field implication it will go to a Regional Director who most
probably will direct that to his Fisheries' crew. But again, depending what
the subject is, it may have a District application rather than a Regional
Fisheries Biological type ramification. It might go also to the Regional
Director, Regional Officer, sorry and on to the district level.

It is a fairly formalized long drawn out chain of communication but in reverse
it is also true. There are concerns of Regional Fisheries people. District
Officers, Regional AdiTii ni strator and so forth. We expect those communications
to be coordinated and pulled together by a Regional Director because he,
whether we will want to accept or believe it or not, is really the only person
who has all that multi-faceted perspective of what is going on in the region.
He can put that problan in its regional perspective and channel it up to the
appropriate Branch Director for an answer, solution or his recommendation, or
whatever the case is. And that Branch Director can put it in Provincial
perspective and pass it on to me and I will worry about the chain from there.

Well that is a formalized sort of review and there are lots of holes in this
system. If you were closer to it, you people at the back, you will notice
there is a hole right in the middle of that and there is a green line running
from me to Regional Director which is intended to imply that there is a
communication link possible between the Regional Directors and myself and it
is direct. There are all sorts of matters that need to be dealt with

28

quickly. We can't afford to lose a week in the postal system and our courier
systems are going from myself to a Branch Director to a Regional Director,
you'll lose a week in the process. They have to go direct and in many cases,
hopefully all the cases as are required, copies of that communication or a
second communication will go to the Branch Director so that he is in the
picture. He is not sitting out there in isolation not knowing what is going
on .

I would expect that, depending on the kind of communication it is that it will
get out to the Regional Director, he will deal with it as it needs to be dealt
with, it will come back, it might come back through a Branch Director and most
probably should. He is plugged in, he is aware and now he is getting the thing
back and he can put it in provincial perspective for me. Because the fact is
that one guy, I don't care if it is me or anybody else can simply not deal
with all the activities and concerns of Fish and Wildlife Resources of Alberta
and I am not even prepared to even try. It is impossible, that is why we have
370 people in this Division because one person can't do it.

There are other forms of communication that might come direct, depending what
they are, and they will come back through this hole in the middle and back
direct to me and perhaps no one in the world will know of that communication
except the Regional Director and myself. That opportunity has got to exist.
You will also notice that in this overall window frame there are some other
holes and they occur all the way around the frame. I am hoping that that can
be interpreted as representing the informal communication because there is no
way in the world that we can operate by having these staff in Edmonton and

- 29 -

Regional Directors unable to communicate direct with these people out here and
their respective staff. I don't see any problein at all, in fact I encourage
it to have discussions, communication, telephone calls asking questions and so
forth direct from myself to a District Officer, from Bob Adams to a District
Officer, from Dave Neave to a Regional Habitat Technician. If we need a quick
answer or just want to bounce an idea around that should happen and the system
shouldn't prevent that and it works in reverse too. That the field people
might communicate direct to myself or to the minister but I would ask both
ends of the system to very clearly review in their mind whether that is the
best way of communicating, whether that is the proper way of communicating,
whether that it addresses a formal concern or informal concern because that
can become damaging when you start bypassing people and they don't get plugged
in. There are some ways of safeguarding against that that certainly if I was
to find it necessary to communicate to a District Officer about a habitat
concern I would be remiss if I didn't, after having done so, advise the
habitat people and the Regional Director of what had taken place. They may
get filled after the fact but at least they're filled in. I think that is
what sort of communication links that we have to be ever conscious of. I will
come back to that chart in a moment and point out one other factor that I hope
is depicted by it.

As I said I couldn't talk about the role of a Fish and Wildlife Officer in
isolation. I had to put it in context of the Division. I have stated that
the Regional Director represents our Division at the region and I have stated
that our District Officer represents our Division at the district.

- 30 -

I think it is absolutely essential that if we are going to be able to respond
quickly and effectively through the concerns, that our District Officer knows
everything that is going on. That may be a tall order to know everything that
is going on but as much as he can be he should be aware of those things. It
is impossible for him to do everything or her, I guess. We will soon have our
first lady Fish and Wildlife Officer and I will have to be careful now how I
state these things. But a District Officer cannot do all the jobs that need
to be done at the district level, it is impossible, just as impossible it is
for a Regional Director to do it at the region or myself to do it at the
province. But they have to be aware of what is going on. It is essential
that those programs being delivered in a district are made known to the
District Officer and he be involved in them if at all possible. But it’s
going to be a few things hitting the fan, I can assure you, if we are having
pheasant releases in a district and as a District Officer and he doesn't know
about it; we're stocking fish in his district and he doesn't know about it, if
we're implementing habitat projects in his district and he is not aware that
they are happening, if we are monitoring dieoffs from pollution and so forth
in his district and he is not aware, that is a problem and that cannot be
accepted .

Looking a little at getting down to the real nuts and bolts of what I was
supposed to talk about, I said an officer has to be aware of all the things
but he does have some priority duties that he has to deliver. Those are
things he has to do, they are unavoidable. The public demands them, the
public expects them and we expect our office to deliver them. There are
matters of public safety, a maurauding Grizzly Bear, a rank Moose or whatever

31

it is. That is something that causes the priority bell to ring, the officer
has to respond. I think much like a fireman sitting in a fireball in November
who's making toys for Christmas and great, that is a real contribution to the
cause, but when a fi rebell rings he drops it and he goes to the fire. And
that is the kind of thing that officers have to understand, I think other
people in our Division have to understand that v/hen you get a complaint of a
maurauding bear you don't keep counting sheep on the mountainside, you go and
handle the bear.

Vihen you get complaints of enforcement, law violations, it is expected that
the officer responds. Problem wildlife cases where people are having crops
flooded, their ornamental trees cut down may not sound too crunchy but it is
prettry crunchy to the guy who owns the tree. Those things have to be
responded to, they cannot be put off for 6 months. When we set seasons for
Alberta, they're done with a purpose.

We'll still have the need for officers as we know them today but they will be
working at a subdistrict level possibly. That is projecting a long way down
the road but I suspect that is the route we have to go. What I find
encouraging is that you really don't change the basic structure of the
organization in getting to that end. The District Officer is in fact the
operations coordinator of our districts. He is the operations supervisor of
our districts and the districts are Division wide in their concern, therefore,
so is the Regional Officer Division wide in his concern. I don't want to
suggest to you that we are all going to become generalists, I don't think that
can happen. I suggest it to you that there are priorities that need to be

32

responded to at the district level, matters of enforcement, public safety,
crises die off like pollution cases and so on are things that ring that bell,
things we have to respond to and those are the priority duties, at this point,
of an officer as they arise but all the rest of the Division too is his
concern. And between the time the bells aren't ringing he can be involved in
anything of the Division and should be aware of everything within the
Division. I hope I have clarified something rather than confused it but I'll
leave it there and I wish we had more time because I'm sure we would get some
comments but maybe I will try to handle a couple. Thank you.

Questi on - inaudibl e

I think both those activities of guiding a little old lady down the street and
to catch a fish, I think as you said, is something that is a desirable thing
to do. I guess, I have had difficulty giving it a high priority in terms of
other things. That would be a case where I think an officer might well call
upon Edmonton to try to deliver a program in your district on angler training
or perhaps a hunter training course and ask the instructor to try to emphasize
the fishing part of that hunter training course. I think probably the more
urgent public need is to put a stop to the illegal trafficking of fifty deer
carcasses and hopefully though we would be able to get public information out
that would describe what is going on, what are the consequences of that
illegal activity and the fact that we have successfully ended that operation.
There is a lot of public relations benefit to be gained both frotm the little
old lady and angling exercise but certainly the more priority pressing need is
to end that illegal operation.

33

Public relations I think is something that we will hear about from Jack
Bales. I know as a topic I have a little bit of difficulty trying to
describe but I think the term Public Relations is very badly used, it is
mi ssunderstood whenever there is a problem in industry and their public
relations spokesman speaks I know he is covering up and I know he is full
of baloney and I don't believe a word he says and that is unfortunate but that
isn't what public relations is all about. I will leave it to Jack Bales later
in this meeting to perhaps elaborate as to what it really does mean but I
think the key thing is that we always talk according to the facts. There is
little gain in coverup. You will not convince anybody by telling stories that
they already know aren't true, you might as well tell it like it is.

Question - inaudible

Well I think certainly the image of our outfit is enhanced if the people can
get to us. When our office is closed obviously they can't get to us. As Mr.
McDougall pointed out, one of the short falls he sees in our outfit is in the
administrative delivery system, clerical staff, and so forth. I guess, it
could be said that in budget approval to this point there will be some I think
reasonably significant gains made in district and field clerical staff. I am
sure that everyone will suggest that it isn't enough but there are some gains
made in that area in this coming year and hopefully some of those half closed
windows will become fully open in 1982. I don't know about you guys but I
need a coffee and I'm going to try to be around for awhile. Yes, Fred?

34

Question - inaudible

Mr. McDougall: One or two things I think should be said here. One, the point
about the offices that have to be closed a good part of the time is a valid
point and we obviously need to do something about that but we talked earlier
this morning about the image of the officer and I think generally it is
positive. The image of the Fish and Wildlife Division, as an aggregate, is
not all that positive and you may want to ask the Minister about this but at
the political level, at the MLA level, not a hell of a lot of support for
expanding the Fish and Wildlife Division budget and staff, to be blunt. It’s
tough. We tried to get some additional officers this year and we were largely
unsuccessful. A good part of that is because there is a reluctance of the
people that count right now, the elected representatives, the MLA’s, to put a
lot of resources in here. Now, I believe they're needed but to be blunt,
there are a lot of people who don't share that opinion.

Let's assume though that we turn that around and let's assume that there are a
lot of additional resources made available to Fish and Wildlife Division and
let's assume that a lot of those resources go into an improvement in the
District Office establishment which I will hope will happen. Now there's a
fundamental question you should all think about. There are some delivery
things needed here that the province of Alberta, at least in my opinion, needs
more work in habitat, fisheries and wildlife. Now, who in the hell is going
to deliver those services in the field. There are options here to us. You
don't right now have the staff in the field to do it, what do we do? Do we
add technicians not officers, technicians here or do we add staff in districts

- 35

at the officer level to carry on that work that is going to have to be done
and sooner or later these budget resources will be made available, maybe a
year, three, five but the need is there. Eventually, priority is going to
come along, funds and staff are going to be made available. Now, you think
about where you want that to go. The organization right now is structured
along these lines. If an officer is going to be totally enforcement oriented
and that is going to be the role of a District Officer, enforcement, fair
ball. Then we do our habitat, fisheries, the technical work, the management
of the resource will be done by technicians operating either here, hope to God
not out of here, but out of here and that's how it will happen. Go into this

thing with your eyes wide open, it that's where you want it to occur, here, we

look at the officer then as primarily enforcement. If we want the officer to
take the broad role that Gordon has described in terms of management of
resources and enforcement then you will have staff added at district levels,
some of them technicians, some of them not with an enforcement orientation to
do those other jobs. But, I mean you might as well look at this thing with
open eyes. The job is going to have to be done. We need to do work in
habitat, fisheries, wildlife resource management. That need is there. Now
it's to a large measure how you people perceive and develop your own role

where that work is going to be centered, out of the districts or out of the

regional offices. That is all I have to say, thank you.

- 36 -

Mr. Adams: Just before I thank our three speakers here this morning I would
like to just relay one thing that was brought to me from Dr. Summers from the
Chairman of the LDIP committee and as far as I'm concerned it's about the
greatest tribute that anybody could give the Fish and Wildlife officers and I
think that comes from the dedication you have and the way you handled yourself
in responding to problem wildlife matters. At the last problem wildlife
meeting of the Problem Wildlife Committee Dr. Summers made the recommendation
that all problem wildlife matters, all LDIP claims, be handled solely by Fish
and Wildlife and take everybody else out, because Fish and Wildlife officers
were the only ones that responded immediately and had a report that could be
read. So I think that is one hell of a tribute to you people and with that I
would like to thank the Minister, the Deputy Minister and Gordon for their
address this morning and I would also like to ask them to stay with us for the
rest of the program. I know they can't for all of it but certainly for as
much as they can. Thankyou very much.

Chairman: O.K. we will break now for about 15 minutes. We would like you to
come back at about quarter to if we could.

- 37

HUMAN RELATIONS AND ENFORCEMENT
Mr. B. Isaacs

Co-ordinator, Law Enforcement Program
Calgary City Police

Chairman; Mr. Bev Isaacs is the gentleman which I would like to introduce
today to you people. He is a very experienced fellow, he started with the
Calgary police in 1961, he went immediately to the street, seven months later
somebody discovered that he hadn't been trained and he said he went downstairs
for a two week course in the bottom of the city police building and that was
mainly because they discovered he had an empty holster. Seems to be a touchy
subject today. Mr. Isaacs has worked in many different aspects of police
work. He has worked with the tactical squads, explosives, demolitions,
diving, staff development and he is presently working with criminal
investigation section in B district in Calgary. Mr. Isaacs is also a Director
with the Sage Institute of Calgary. It is a management consulting company.

Mr. Isaacs' specialty is organizational behaviour and design and this also
encompasses adult education and Mr. Isaacs is speaking to us today on human
relations and enforcement.

Presentation inaudible.

- 38 -

Speaker Unknown: Cal Brandi ey has a degree in Agricultural Economics,
University of Utah, a Law degree from the University of British Columbia. He
was raised in the Stirling area of southern Alberta and is presently a
solicitor with the Alberta Department of Agriculture. Cal owns farmland in
Stirling and has a ranch in the Pincher Creek area. His job covers the entire
province of Alberta. He has people working underneath of him. Today he is
toing to talk to us on access to public land. I think it's an interesting
subject, one that is being dealt with quite a bit in the last while and will
be in the future, so I'd like to introduce Cal Brandi ey.

- 39 -

Access To Pub! ic Land
Cal Brandley, Solicitor
Alberta Agriculture

Some day I'm going to start a club and the basis for the club is going to be
on two grounds - one is that fat is beautiful and short is great. A podium
like this makes me feel that I've got problems,

I am told about a deal that happened the other day. A lawyer got on the bus
going from Calgary to Edmonton. It was one of these express buses that go
straight through. Every seat was taken and he found he was sitting next to a
Fish and Wildlife Officer. All the Officer wanted to talk about was
conservation and the lawyer wanted to talk about legal principles. Finally,
the lawyer said "look - you and I have little in common yet you and I are
stuck together for three and one-half hours because this bus doesn't stop
anywhere and every seat is taken, so why don't we think of riddles to pass the
time away?"

The Fish and Wildlife Officer said thats alright. The lawyer being an
enterprising type said why don't we put a little money on it. Well the Fish
and Wildlife Officer said thats alright, but you're about five times smarter
than I am. And as a general rule you'll find that most lawyers will admit
that they're about five times smarter than anybody else. So he said yes, I
guess so, so I'll tell you what I'll do. If I miss I'll give you $5.00, if
you miss you give me $1.00. So the lawyer thought this is like leading a lamb

- 40

to slaughter and by the time we get to Edmonton, I'll have that man so
indebted to me that he'll have to work every weekend for me to cover his
indebtedness .

The lav/yer said, just to be fair, you go first. The Fish and Wildlife Officer
said "What has five legs and flies?" The lawyer thought for some time and
finally said, I don't know, here your $5.00, to which the Fish and Wildlife
Officer replied, I don't know either, here's your $1.00 back.

I appreciate whom I'm talking to today and I'll try and govern myself
accordingly. What I'm going to talk about today is relatively simple but I'll
make it as difficult as I possibly can. Lawyers have to do that, if they
didn't you know you wouldn't need one so we'll start on that premise. I'd
like you to ask questions at any time as we go along. I think that some of
the suggestions or ideas that I have I might be in a club of my own, however,
until I'm proven wrong I'm right. Now, I would like to discuss this with you
people, I feel it an honour because few people are on the front lines in the
field of extension. You're dealing with the public and they're not the
easiest people to deal with. I tell my wife often, the more I'm around people
the more I like horses, but I don't know, it's not all wrong, you know and
I'll bet you feel the same way a lot of times. So we'll take it from that.

My job is to tell Albertans what the laws of Alberta are and I think the more
they understand them the easier it is to enforce them because the day of our
fathers when the people used to say thats the law and our fathers said thats
it, thats gone. I think people have to see the reasons for laws now and what
they're trying to accomplish before they respect them.

- 41

I'm a little uncomfortable in this audience with uniforms. While I was
attending school in Utah, I was quite amazed down there that during the
hunting season, you know, everybody just puts up the sign "gone hunting", you
know. The banks close down, the doctors' office, the lawyers' office and
everything else. But I saw some research the other day that was rather
interesting which they did in the city of Salt Lake. It is now the status
symbol that during the hunting season you get in a four wheel drive and in the
back window you have a hanger there and you have a lariette and a high power
rifle in view of everybody. What they did, they went to five locations in
downtown Salt Lake during the traffic, during the peak traffic time and they
went with the four wheeler with nothing in the back window and they worked
until they got in the front line right next, they were the first car and

they'd wait until the traffic light changed, until the red light changed to

green and start their stop watch and see how long it would take for the car

behind them to honk. They found that it was approximately 3 seconds the

interval between when the light turned red from red to green and when the horn
had honked behind them. But with the high powered rifle in the back window
and lariette the time was extended from three to twelve seconds. So, I'm a
little cautious of uniforms and if I'm a little gun shy today please have a
little sympathy with me.

I'd like to give you some background, we could jump right into the subject,
but I'd like to give you a little background because I think the more
background you know the more you'll understand why some of these changes are
or why some of these interpretations are and you won't feel so inclined to say
that sounds stupid because often times something taken out of context does

42

sound stupid. Now, the laws that we have in Alberta are there's one called
Common .

Inaudible Portion of Presentation

It's in the middle of winter and it's forty below and there is a great big
snow drift across the road but I could pull on your land and get back around
and back on the road again and recede there, I can do that. That's as of
necessity. Now there's been exception to these two rules and it's the Petty
Trespass in Alberta but it only refers to bring in action for this $100.00
fine. It does not cover the general law regarding trespassing. In fact, the
case in question which I have talked about, the Cardinal case, the judge very
clearly says that petty trespassing only refers to the Petty Trespass Act. It
does not change the other law. If it were going to change the other law, why
then they have to spell it out and they have not spelled it out. So now
there's the situation.

Now that's the Court of Appeal of Alberta a recent case just a few years ago,
it happened in '76. What it was, you know. Cardinal shot a moose and a calf
and a cow on some private land. He said well, I have a right under the
Natural Resources Act, which says they can hunt for food on designated land or
more or less where they have a right to which on this land they didn't have
that right and so they were convicted. Then they brought up the conclusion,
oh, but you didn't have no trespassing signs up. So, therefore, we have a
right to come on the land. And the judge categorically said, a hunter has no
more rights than a trespasser. An even greater restriction on him, he cannot

43

hunt or even be on the land if it is occupied land under your Section 20. So,
there's the situation there. Now that Wildlife Act, though is kind of
interesting. I don't hunt; I don't get a kick out of hunting. I like to see
... I've got quite a few pheasants, ring necked pheasants, or whatever you
call them, Chinese pheasants, I call them - I know that's the wrong name, but
anyway you know what I'm talking about. I think they're so beautiful, in
flight or when they're on my land. Dead they look so helpless, I don't get
that kick out of it.

Anyway I got a good friend who is a lawyer, now a judge and he's a pretty
smart fellow but he's the type, you know that if you go to pay for something,
you know, he will always out fumble you, he will always let you pay the bill
and he always thinks he's quite smart. Anyway we're down on my farm, not only
that, we're in my car, now here's kind of a crazy thing, I don't hunt and yet
I'm taking him around on my farm, in my car to hunt. I tell I think I know
where some birds are. We stop, he walks over there and sure enough, about
nine big cocks flew up and it was, incidentally, during the hunting season,
let's get that in. But anyway, I don't want to incriminate myself here, but
anyway he shot and got one but he missed three other shots. Can he do that?
I'll take that back. He shot once. Alright, anyway. If he had of shot
again. I'm sure he would have missed, let's go that way. Anyway, he said,
"Let's go over and shoot over there." The next land. I said, "No, we can't.
There's no trespassing signs up there". "Oh, hell" he says, "Your neighbor
won't bring an action against you, will he?" Now you look under this act, you
see there is a section under this act that says, if an action is to be brought
under the Petty Trespass Act the fellow has to lay the charge himself. You

- 44

know, if somebody is hunting on my land without permission, the land which I
live on, I just notify you, don't I? Or notify a policeman who is an
ex-officio officer under the Wildlife Act and you lay the charge if you think
there's grounds or is justified. But under this act, you see, the person
himself must lay the charge. Incidentally there is also self arrest under
this one. If I'm big enough, it says here, I can just pick the man up and
take him to the nearest magistrate. You see. Section 5 says a person found
committing a trespass to which this act applies may be apprehended without
warrant and by any peace officer or by the ov/ner or occupier of the land on
which the trespass is committed or the servant of or any additional authority
... anyway, and may be forthwith taken before the nearest magistrate or
justice of the peace to be dealt with according to the law. When you're like
me, you don't do it. You phone the police. I'm not going to do that.

Anyway, this fellow .... so I said, "you see, he put up those no trespassing
signs and I don't know, he's a man from Calgary, came down to the Lethbridge
area, bought this land in the Stirling area and he's gone back, put up the no
hunting signs, no trespassing signs and went back". "Oh, hell", he said, "Who
is he?" I told him. I know him. He's the type of guy who knows everybody
but whether he really does or not, he'll try to bluff his way through, you
know. But anyway, we go over on this land and we drive down across this field
about where we think the birds are and we are just sitting there trying to
figure out where those birds landed and where they might be by now. What the
deal is when we went over there, when we got to the gate of my neighbor's, you
know you'd think he'd get out and open the gate, wouldn't you. It was my car,
you know. I'm taking him hunting but he sat there. I got out and opened the

- 45 -

gate, then I said would you mind driving through? He said o.k. but then after
he drove through, I got back in on the passenger side. So, we drive down the
field - we're trying to figure out where these pheasants might be. I looked
through the rear view mirror and here comes a truck and its churning up a lot
of dust. I'm so pleased with myself; it's the hardest thing I've ever had in
my life not to laugh out loud because I was so pleased, this know-it-all is
finally going to be put in his place, you know. And the old truck pulled up
right along my car. The two guys eye balled each other. Yeah, what do you
think happened? Look at number four and see if you think I was all dumb in
what I did. Yeah, I got him haven't I? Guess what happened, though. I'll be
damned the two did know each other so. All my work didn't do a bit of good.

But anyway, there's the Petty Trespass Act but don't let that Petty Trespass
Act throw you off on the law of trespassing. It only refers to bringing an
action against a person where he's done no damages and where he has left when
you asked him to leave. So there's no offense, there's no civil action,
there's no offense under the Criminal Code. O.K. Have you got those two
straight? Trespass is a fining effect. Whether a person is or is not a
trespasser is a question of fact which should be left to a jury or a judge or
a trial to decide. Anyone who may sue the very essence of trespass is the
interference with position. Mow, let me go over crown lands once more. This
is my humble opinion. Until you prove me wrong. I'm right. Maybe you can
prove me wrong, but this is the way I see it.

Actual possession of crown land with the consent of the crown is sufficient to
entitle the party possessing it to maintain trespass against persons who have

- 46

no title at all or who are mere wrong doers. Legal title to land is not
necessary to maintain trespass against a third person and that's the Brian and
Rose case which is the Supreme Court of Canada. In an action for trespass the
essential element is possession but the possession should be established and
in the case of Crown land there is another element to be considered. The man
in possession must be something more than a mere intruder or squator if he is
going to be able to succeed. In an action against the trespasser he must be
there with the privity of consent of the Crown, in other words he has to have
a lease. Thus, the leasee of Crown lands can bring an action against a
trespasser damaging those lands. He cannot however post Crown lands with no
trespassing signs and have a trespasser fined for merely being on the land
when he had no notice not to be there. The Petty Trespass Act does not apply
to Crown lands but all other remedies via damage, an injectment are open to
the occupier of Crown lands against a trespasser. And that, I humbly submit
to you, as being the law.

In summary, of the first part I would like to say this. Number one, a
trespass is committed when one enters another's land, that's a trespass. Two,
where the land is damaged by a trespasser an action for the actual damages can
be maintained against the trespasser. Three, it does not matter whether the
damaged party has title to the land or merely has possession to the land.

This applies to a party who has a Crown lease. Whether one actually
trespasses on the property of another is a fining effect. Five, lawful
justification will allow one to enter upon another's land without trespassing,
a) actual necessity, public or private is a complete defense. Six, a land
owner can prevent a danger from coming on his land and his diversion does not

- 47

create a cause of action. In other words, if I can see a herd of elk coming
on my land I can divert and let them go to the neighbor's land and the
neighbor can't sue me for the damages those elk did. However, there is a
qualification to that. I have had people say I'd sure like to meet a one
handed lavyyer and I thought maybe they thought I had my hand on their purse or
something and what the deal is they say, no you lawyers are always saying on
this hand it's this but on the other hand it might be something else.

Let me show you this fine qualification and I got a Supreme Court of Canada
case to back me up on it. It says if those elk, and it didn't say elk, but
this is water but the same analogy. If those elk, if those hundred head of
elk are headed towards my hay stacks, I can chase them away and chase them
down the road and they go in the next gate in my neighbor's hay stack, that's
alright. My neighbor can't bring an action against me. If the elk are on my
place, though, then I can't chase them off my place and put them on my
neighbor's. Do you get the fine distinction? You can prevent damage from
coming to your land but once damage is on your land you cannot then divert it
to your neighbor. Those are the cases that you wonder about and there the
ones that show you problems. Incidentally that Petty Trespass Act is also
contrary to what the common law says because if you look at Section 8 there it
says that if you're on land with an honest mistake. See, ordinarily trespass
says that when you are on another person's land you're a trespasser, period.
That Section 8 says, if you think you have a real cause .... I'll give you an
exampl e.

- 48

I went on a person's land one time and it said no trespassing. The real
estate man had told me Cal are you interested in buying a piece of land. I
said yes. I'd like to buy and he said so and so's place is for sale. Why
don't you go out and look it over and see what you think about it; maybe
you'll bid on it. I went out there, I saw the no trespassing signs, I walked
all over the place and the owner came and he said look those say no
trespassing and he brought an action against and tried to have me fined.

Well, I just had the real estate man who had listing on the land who told I
could be on the land and that they said was a good enough excuse. In fact it
didn't go to court but it was going to, but he laid the charge and then
withdrew it. Anyway, there's an honest mistake as to a person's right to be
on the land is a defense to an action of this act but as before stated it is
not a defense to trespassing generally. Now, this act has changed things
around considerably. We got the Wildlife Act, then on your occupied land
which you are with.

Now I don't know how you feel about my interpretation but let me go over it
once more. On Crown land, it would depend on the lease. The presumption is
that when I have a piece of land, when I have possession of a specified area
of land, the presumption is that I have the right to quiet enjoyment unless
the lease says to the contrary or unless some act says to the contrary. I
cannot find any act which says to the contrary that I do not have the right of
quiet enjoyment. With one exception, under the Public Lands Act, Section 4,
says it that all bodies of water, and water courses, etc., are now owned by
the Crown. If somebody is walking down a river or stream that passes through
my place, or walking along that stream I cannot bring an action against him

- 49

because the crown has not given me the right to possession of that stream.

Now I am reparian land owner and that means I have a right to water my cattle
in that stream. They can't take that away from me. But it doesn't give me
possession of it, however, if the trespasser has crossed my land to get to the
river, then that's trespassing but if he walks down the river bed and what is
the river bed? It's not the high level mark or the low level mark but what it
is and we have a Supreme Court of Canada case that says you look at the
vegetation along the side and you see from the vegetation, the different types
of vegetation. Vegetation will grow outside the water and one that will grow
under the water and you look at the vegetation mark and that's the way you
determine what the bed of the river is. As long as they are there I can't do
much about it. Yessir.

Question - inaudible

Did you hear? That was a real good case. Two years ago I would have told you
a different answer than I'm going to tell you now. What the deal is is that
the man's title said he owns up to a river and all the land up to the river
except that covered by water. Does he own the bed, then? Well, the act says,
the Public Lands Act, says that all those beds are now the ownership of the
crown but this other seems to be against that and there is an exception under
the Public Lands Act that says except if something is specifically granted but
in a case in Milk River, Madge versus the Town of Milk River, the Town of Milk
River versus Madge, the Supreme Court of Alberta said it's got to be a
specific and if it just says the land not under the water, that isn't a
specific area and therefore the Crown can take that. So the Public Lands Act
is pretty well supreme.

- 50 -

Question - inaudible

Do you know of any titles where they still specify land under the water? Yes,
there are some. There are some early, early ones that were granted. We see
them about once a year or something like that and what it is it‘s land that
was bought before 1900, not always but usually, before we became a province
and they bought it from the Dominion Government. Or they might be lands that
are special ... this Madge case in Milk River ... was land that was purchased
from the Hudson Bay Company and this was an exception that was given to the
Hudson Bay Company in their land. Yes?.

Question - inaudible

Gosh, you guys. I just came here to be nice. How come you're so tough? What
the question is, is can you fence across a stream? In fact we had a case, I
got the Minister of Agriculture phoned me one day and he said you know we
haven't had to worry about fences across streams because usually we've just
been dealing with rivers but now that they can use these little dinghys we got
some guys around the Pincher Creek who were going down the stream and there
was a little bit of an eddy there and all of a sudden and guy's fence came up
and the fellow got tangled up in the fence pretty bad and is there an action
there? Can they bring an action against the crown? Well, the whole thing is
that's their property, that's the crown's property but I think, here, you have
to use a little reason and say but look at the two sides. Are fences put up
just to catch these guys that are exploring and doing their own thing or are
they put up to keep cattle off the highway so that it is safe for people to go

- 51

down highways? And how many people go down highways and how many people are
in dinghys? So there's sort of what you have to look at. I think the courts
would go along and say that you possibly can. But if you want to really be
safe I'd give some warning, you could give warning. If it's a pretty good
stream you should give warning upstream. Put a sign up or something, maybe
put little red flags on the fences across and all the rest of it. You got to
do what the reasonable man would do and what's the reasonable man, what a
judge decides what the reasonable man would do. And sometimes, they change.

Question - inaudible

O.k. Is it trespass if you cross against a piece of land that people have been
crossing across for years? In Ontario, if you have crossed across a piece of
land for ten years then they cannot stop you from continuing to cross across
that land. It is prescription rights. In Alberta, we do not have
prescription rights. So therefore, you do not gain access to that unless
adverse possession, is a new clause that just came up, and what adverse
possession says if you have had absolute and complete ownership or control of
a parcel of land for ten years then that person can bring an action and get
permission to continue to cross it. I'm always having farmers saying a
neighbor of mine keeps crossing across the corner of my land. I ask him won't
you please go around, he never does. Could I turn harrows upside down on the
roadway? Mo, you can't do that. Since 1974 we have an occupier's liability
act. Now this is a duty on the land owner and if you have some land in your
control from the government, if you're responsible for it you're subject to

- 52

these rules and so is any land owner. And what it says, it says there are
three types of people that will come on your land.

Number one, a trespasser. You can do nothing to him that is willful or
reckless. Willful means I did a certain thing to get a certain result and I
got it. In other words, you can't dig a pit and put some slight covering over
it and hope the guy drives in it, you know. You can't do that, that's
willful. Reckless is you have something that's really dangerous but you say,
ah hell, I don't give a damn if he gets hurt so much the better. You cannot
do that even though the guy is a trespasser and not supposed to be on your
land. That' s one.

The second person that comes on your land is a visitor. That's somebody who
comes on the land and somebody you wouldn't mind being on the land or if
you're coming on under a right under your act you're a visitor. What does he
owe you? He must warn you against known dangers. He can't just put up a sign
enter at your risk. What about if you come on and his dog takes to you? Can
you bring an action for him against his dog if he doesn't warn you that the
dog bites? Well, you allow a dog one bite. I'm afraid it's the law of
negligence. Dogs don't ordinarily bite, do they? But if you got a biting
dog, now that reasonable man changes, doesn't it. You've got to take greater
precautions and you have to warn people about that biting dog. It's a small
world, it's interesting how things are. I had a fellow come in to me. He
said I've got to go talk to a guy quite often because we are having trouble
with him and I'm afraid to get out of the car because he lets these big dogs
out. He said I sit there and he sits in the house. What can I do about it?

53

So, I gave him a suggestion.

About a week later, I had a guy stop me. He said, say a certain inspector
comes out to my place all the time and I turn the dogs on him. Is that
alright? It's king of interesting, you kind of get caught in the middle. But
the whole thing is, o.k. that's a visitor.

Now the one you worry about are the children. This is under the Occupier's
Liability Act. This is the onus on the land owner or the one who has
possession, control over the land. The third one is a child. You must warn
them against dangers you know or ought to have known. That's a pretty high
onus but the act does go on to say, however, if the child can comprehend the
danger then some of the liability is limited. There is no use putting up, if
you have a fishing hole where everybody swims in and it's really dangerous,
it's got steep edges and all the rest of it. To put up a no swimming sign and
a five year old child gets drowned, that doesn't help you very much, does it?
Because he probably didn't even read. But if it is a seventeen year old kid
and you're an infant until you're eighteen. If it's a seventeen year old
child that's probably sufficient warning. So, now let's go back.

No, not if his lease specifically says that unless, and I got to put that the
other hand, you know. On the other hand, there's the doctrine of Astople, and
what the doctrine of Astople means is that if he is supposed to be off at a
certain date, but for the last ten years you have allowed him another three
weeks or a month to get off there, then the courts might say sure you have a
right to put him off at that particular time. However, you might be stopped

- 54

from using that claim. You've stopped yourself by allowing him in the past to
do it so many times. But in the first instance, or anything when the lease is
expired, it's expired, period.

Question - inaudible

And, when he signs that lease what the question is, are there restrictions in
the lease? Is he subject to those restrictions? Yes, you bet he is,
certainly. That's the conditions he took it under. This other was an over
hold, basically where you might be stopped from using the exact period.

Question - inaudible

Sure, after that he's a trespasser. But, you've got to give him a reasonable
time to get off. However, if it spells out in the lease that on a certain
event happening he must be off, that's it.

Question » inaudible

No, he's a trespasser after the dates that his lease expired.

Queston - inaudible

That's exactly the same; the two are interchangeable. The question is
peaceful possession or quiet enjoyment; they're the same, they're
interchangeable.

- 55 -

Question - inaudible

No, now you are putting a restriction on me. What the question is is that he
has a lease to put cattle on this particular area, but in the lease there are
also exemptions and saying other people can come on, certain classes of other
people. Now, what the deal is, he can keep the general public off his land,
but he cannot keep these people who are in the restrictions.

Question - inaudible

He could keep you off, if you're Joe Public, he could, yes. Hear the
question? What it is is, you know, if they're certain restrictions, certain
people that can come on but if you're not mentioned, can you come on? I say
no, unless, and you'd probably come on because of your act, you see. So,
you'd have a right if you're overgrazing that you have a right to count the
numbers. Good. Probably, I am too. The gentleman tells me he's confused and
maybe if I do nothing more than raise confusion. I've accomplished what I've
set out to do here today. Go ahead.

Question - inaudible

Now, what the deal is is that am I saying on special areas land, can lease
holder keep the people off? Yes. If his lease does not say that he does not
have quiet enjoyment. He can keep other people off. Now, there's certain
people come on because of a right and that's under your legislation, you can

- 56 -

come and certain other people can come on too. A lot of agriculture
inspectors can come on too. But, that's what I am saying. I'm saying if you
have a lease of quiet enjoyment, you can keep other people off the land.

Look, I have a government office. If somebody comes in my office, and are
absolutely intolerable I can ask him to leave. Can they say the hell, this is
government property, you can't make me leave. I certainly can. It's an
inherent right that I have quiet possession of an office; that's my office and
I can put people out who I want to. However, I usually tell that to people
who are smaller than me. I think my time is up. I would just like to
conclude with one thought; I'm sorry I can't answer questions - I can answer
after if you would like to. I just want, with what I've told you, I would
like you though to take a little precaution because a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing. Maybe I can best put over my point by telling you this
story. This Jewish gentleman was standing on the street and a man from the
sidewalk just walked out and with one solid blow to the chin and another the
poor old Jewish gentleman was down on the ground. But a police officer was
standing right there and he said why did you do that. Well, the fellow said
he represents the race that killed Jesus Christ. Well, the poor old Jewish
gentleman, by this time, is back on his feet and he kind of shakes himself.

He said, just a minute, that was never categorically proven and anyway that's
nearly two thousand years ago. Oh hell, he said, don't give me that guff. I
just heard about it yesterday.

- 57

Thankyou very much. Cal. I think you've enlightened us on a lot of subjects,
one that's near to a lot of us. We invite you to stick around for the rest of
the afternoon to partake and maybe somebody will get a hold of you and ask you
some more questions.

- 58 -

Speaker Unknown: I would like to introduce the next act, Mr. Jack Bales.

He's the Communication Director for the Department and has been for the past
three months so he is fairly new. Let's be easy on him. He came to Alberta
from Alaska where he was with the National Bank of Alaska. He has worked
eighteen years in public relations with the Ford and Chrysler Corporation in
Oklahoma and he is accredited by the Public Relations Society in the United
States which, he tells me, allows him to put a little APR after his name, so
you'll know what that means. Jack is originally from Ontario, then he left
Canada in 1960 and has just returned to work here with our Division. So, I'll
let Jack take it from here.

Public Relations - What It Really Is
Jack Bales, Communication Director
Dept, of Energy and Natural Resources

Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I have a few notes here I thought I
would read to you. I used to write speeches for a living for five years at
Chrysler. I hate to give apeeches, I mean, I am already wringing wet and I
have just walked the length of the room. But, as a job to do for other people
it is a great thing to do. You have to bear with elderly people. They have
to get their glasses out first so they can see what it is they got in front of

them. When you are like I am you have to have the kind that allow you to look

down and see the paper and look straight ahead and see everybody else.

I'm going to say first of all, since I was asked to talk about Public
Relations and what it means to me and possibly exchange with you a few ideas
of what we might do in the coming years, whatever period of time I have left
to work. I'll give you a statement that I heard years ago. The trouble with
Public relations today is (I'm altering it slightly) essentially the same
problem that the happy hookers face at the Holiday Inn. There are too damn

many amateurs in the business. My job is to talk to you today for a short

while and, or hopefully, you will think it's a short while. Yours is to hear
what I have to say. Hopefully, we'll both finish at the same time. If you
have finished before I have if one of you would just hold up your hand and
deliver us all from the miseries, it will save us a lot of trouble.

- 60 -

Public relations, what is really is. I'm not sure whether Judy Carss dreamt
that one up or I did; I'm just not sure which one of us did. But anyhow, what
it really is and hopefully I'm going to say what I think it realy is, o.k.
before the day is out and then you can get your chance to critique is how it
goes, I gather. It's a general title permitting the speaker to talk about
anything from sex to the twenty- first century and since, in discussing the
happy hookers at the Holiday Inn, I've already covered most of what I know
about sex, I think I'll move on to the year 2000 which, I think, public
relations is very much involved with.

I scrounged around for awhile in the attic of memory for topics that I thought
might be of interest to you, particularly with your rear ends welded to the
chairs at this time of day. That man's a tough act to follow and 2:00 in the
afternoon is a tough time, you know, you haven't got to the coffee yet and the
cocktails are still a couple hours away. Boy, that's rough! But he did come
across a suggestion for two subjects that are kind of thought that we might
look into. Someone wrote to me about this meeting and about you as people and
said two things. I believe they want to know how to establish an identity
with the public and I had someone ask a few people here today and that did
come out in what was said and they want to know how to get newsworthy items in
the news and I didn't see that again in the ten little slips of paper that I
got, but that's one that everybody wonders about, so I suspect there are lots
among you that are worried about that particular subject too. Well, that
makes the speech a little easier. Let me look for a minute at establishing
identity first.

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Fish and Wildlife Officers have been around for many years so I gather. You
already have an identity so that takes care of that. I think pretty easy,
almost anybody could do a public relations job. The identity exists already.
Or did I hear earlier this morning when I was here that some of you are
perhaps not happy with the present identity. I got that impression. I sat in
the early part of the morning. As a matter of fact, what really gave me that
impression was when you nailed Mr. Miller to the wall when the poor fellow was
only going to talk for ten minutes. But that's another topic. We'll get into
that again in a second. How do you get news worthy items into the news?

Well, a one liner answer would be you do something newsworthy. Right? Now,
that seems self-evident, but on the other hand a lot of people don't
understand that. A great many people, a matter fact a lot of people in public
relations don't understand that. But if you do something newsworthy and
Trudeau doesn't get crushed under his most recent block of socialism on the
same day, it's probably going to get in the news. Right? It's almost that
simple. I've noticed since coming to Alberta that there's a tendency for
employees to argue with their bosses in the newspaper. As a matter of fact, I
think there's an expert on that in this group probably. Now, that's always
news. It always gets printed. I mean we can read the newspaper every night
and see examples of that. It doesn't have to be Fish and Wildlife, you can
choose almost any agency you want to name. And one of those people would be a
good speaker on that subject next year because that person has learned,
perhaps, horribly from time to time, but they have learned how you get news in
the newspaper. You do something newsworth essentially. I'd like to take
maybe ten more minutes of your time to explore those two thoughts. I think it
would be fairly well invested time. I'm going to take the last one first

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because it's easier and the second one is quite philosophical and could be as
rough on the audience as it is on the guy that's saying it. I don't want half
of you to walk out so I'll leave the rough one until last.

How to get newsworthy items into the news. First recommendation: Ask a
professional for help. I mean if I need information on Fish and Wildlife
matters I don't invent the world, I go ask somebody that knows what it is
they're doing in that particular area. Now on the subject of getting
profesisonal help in public relations in getting in news in the business the
person of Fish and Wildlife at the moment is Joyce Sears Bourgeios. Would you
care to stand up so we can all see you in case they don't know who you are,
Joyce, Ok, thats Joyce. She's one of those liberated girls with a double
name, you know - Sears Bourgeois. And her telephone number is 427 7003.
Anybody has what they think is a newsworthy item that they'd like to get in
any form of news media, be it t.v. radio, magazines, whatever, and if you're
not sure what the next step is then call Joyce and she'll either do it for you
or she'll tell you how to do it. It's quite a bit more effective for people
like yourself who are expert in a given area to do the work yourselves, but if
you need some assistance on how you go about doing that, Joyce is the person
to ask. If you want you can send her the item and let her put it in news
style and let it get cleared by the legion of folks who must clear everything,
it seems, especially at head office and send it out. One news that is really
true news that sometimes won't work because time doesn't permit. But usually
if you've got a hot news item on your hands it's a good idea to let Joyce of
myself or somebody in the public affairs office know because you could be
doing something that either conflicts with, or enhances something , say, that

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Mr. Miller is doing or that Fred McDougall or Gordon Kerr and if we know about
it they won't get caught short and there's nothing more embarassing. I
suspect that some of you have had that experience in having someone say "I
notice in the paper that they chewed a hunk off Fred McDougall?" and
everybody standing around has to say "I guess I didn't read the paper on
Sunday.". Now, it really is most embarassing and you haven't got an answer
and you haven't got a suggestion. Nothing is more embarassing than making
news in Frozen Earlobe, Alberta and then finding that you've attacked the
thinking of your boss, or worse still the thinking of the premier in public.
Since the Premier is not known for being a mild tempered man it's just as well
not to do that unless you did it on purpose, then that's a different thing and
God Bless you all, you know. Now for a few helpful 1 hints if you're doing
your own thing.

If you want to get something that you're doing in the media the thing to do is
to read the media that you're interested in getting it in and find out what
kind of things they print or put out for viewing. And I don't mean just once,
I mean study it over a period of time and see, because most media have an
editorial direction. There are certain things they like to do, certain things
they do very easily and it's a good idea to study what it is that they want
and then give it to them the way they want it. Say the same story that you
want to say, but say it to them the way they want to hear it because most of
them are very overworked, you know, we all think we're overworked, but most of
them are overworked. And if you have shortened up the span of time that it
takes to use the material that they got, they will take advantage of that and
they'll remember you kindly and the next time you send them something they'll

64

probably print it for you. I say print, forgive me for that, I'm just saying
print because it saves me saying t.v., radio and all that stuff. I'll say
print. Do it in their style, for their readers. If they've never printed a
story like yours the chances are they're not going to start now so you might
save yourself a whole lot of trouble, unless you really got something
newsworth. Keep it simple, I still use U.S. terms, the Wall Street Journal
instead of the Financial Post, but the Wall Street Journal is written to a

nineth grade reading level big shots that run this outfit, run the nation

they're reading the Wall Street Journal. Don't make it a master's thesis
because it cannot be printed by the average media. If you're writing a
master's thesis then get printed by people who that, ok.

I don't know how many of you know Mike Day whose Mineral Resources, I think
he's ADM, I'm not sure, but Mineral Resources, he's British and like so many
British, he knows so much about the original language you know, and he was
editing a copy of mine the other day and he had removed the work out from an
expression I use range out and he argued that out was superfilious when used
with range that range means out range. I argued that this wasn't an english
class, dammit, and what I wanted to do was get a piece of news copy out which
he replied "now, now" and I can't do a British accent, they had me in Texas
too long, "now, now I'm really just for accurate useage. You may use if you
wish buggered off, just so long as you punctuate it properly." If you haven't
had any experiences with him, try it sometime. The guy is fantastic.

Third point, and if its possible if you're dealing with a news person call
that person and ask them to do the story. Have them come and talk to you

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personally. Ok, first of all you don't tell them more probably than you would
tell them if you wrote it yourself and besides, they know how to write for
their media. They'll save a great deal of wear and tear. Then just ask them
to send you a copy and from then on use that as your learning experience you
see. Not a copy of the newspaper that they ran your article in, I mean a copy
of the release so the guy knows that you're looking for their personal flavour
in writing. Don't ever ask a newspaper when they're going to write the piece
of newscopy you gave them. Don't ever ask them when it's going to run. Don't
ever phone them and say "Did you use it?" because that implies you don't read
their newspaper and your too damm lazy to read their newspaper and you want
them to and the worse thing of all, you see, is send me fifteen copies of it,
you know, instead of going and buying one or and making xeroxes of it. Ask
them to send copies, it happens all the time. If you want to see a reporter
get torked or an editor, worse still, get torked try that on them for size.
Don't say more than you absolutely have to, edit your own work and then have a
typical reader look it over. This is something that hardly ever happens with
P.R. people either. Have a typical reader look it over and see if they can
understand it. Oh, dear that's distressl You know, you think you got it
down, absolutely bright, you know, and then somebody reads it and they got
fifty-two questions to ask you about what you meant and you know there's
something wrong the way its written. Always look at the first few lines. Do
they answer who, what, where, why and when. Don't put the important stuff up
in the last paragraph. When editors cut copy they work from the bottom up and
if you put the brains of your article in the last paragraph it's going to get
its' ass chewed off if the guy's short of space, ok. And if he's not short of
space, you could send him your biographical sketch and the history of your

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kids and he's going to print it, you know. But most of the time they're short
of space.

Lastly, make sure it's news, make sure it isn't just you wanting to see your
name in print and if empires fall on the same day that you send the thing out,
don't be too disappointed if your article on bees wax doesn't hit the front
page. There's news, and then there's news. Later this year I'm hoping. I've
recommended at one point that we do some classes in public relations and make
them available to anyone who's interested. I'd love to come to the field and
find out how life really is out there and to do some teaching in the whole
subject of public relations which I find kind of and increasing number of
people are interested in. So maybe we'll meet again in a learning situation
to discuss it further.

Now, lets go to the subject of establishing identities. This is one that goes
against about 80% of thinking in the subject of public relations it seems
like. Public relations people are not in the business of making identities.
Public Relations profesisonal could tell you how the public sees you, a realy
good one could tell you how the public views you. What the average citizen's
thinking about you although most people don't want to hear that kind of
thing. They want to tell the world how great they are, not hear any feed back
about how bad things may be. A public relations professional normally knows
how to tell your good story most effectively when you've got a good story to
tell but public relations people cannot make identities. And I had a little
trouble with that in the cards that I distributed, becasue there is some sign
that among you there are people who want a new identity as though it was white

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wash that you spread across what presently exists and now there will be a new
face, ok. Some of us old timers in public relations use to try to do that
kind of thing, Nixon had a lot of them on his staff, and the few survirors of
that witchcraft period now apparently work for the multi-national oil
companies. But most of the true P.R. professionals agree that any group such
as Wildlife Officers has an identity with the public. They have public
relations, in other words, whether they want to or not. And if they're not

satisfied with that identity then they're the only ones that can change it.

To change how you are perceived you've got to first change yourself, as
survivor of two marriages, seven children and ten grandchildren, if you want
to look different as the old man you sure gotta change, and one of reasons
that I don't look any different is I've never been able to change and they
still think I'm an idiot most of them. Friendly idiot, good to be with but
you know, not great shakes as the old man.

First you've got to agree on how you want to be perceived by the public and
that's going to bring up the subject again in a second, another diversion I
guess. And then you've got to live like that, so to speak, and when the
public begins to perceive you as you want to be perceived then you can call
the public relations and tell them the story. Now it's news and now it's easy

to place. For example, I see one group while this happened this morning and

you all were sitting here through it. You were the participants. I see one
group of Fish and Wildlife people who want to be perceived as naturalists, as
friends of animals, birds and man as helpers, ok. And I see another group
that wants to wear six guns and dark glasses and be enforcers, or cops I guess
would be a better way of putting it and I don't know which one makes sense.

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Nobody shot at me recently, so you know I'm not arguing about the guy that
want to carry the gun, nor have I recently had to go down a dark ally or tell
somebody to get off a hunk of public land. So I really don't. I'm not taking
sides.

I don't know which ones' right or wrong, but there's, in this room, never mind
all the rest of the people that are involved with Fish and Wildlife, in this
room there's a ISQO split on your self perception. So that's going to mean
that the public is equally confused because you have public relations whether
you want to or not. It exists right now and each and every one of you who are
furthering it or reducing it or whatever way, ok. If you'll be patient with
me let me be very serious about that for just a second. I mean really
serious. Maybe even a bit of a risk taker here in front of you and your
bosses, I think there are some of them there and my clients cause you all are
that and God and everybody. Thank God Fred McDougall's gone home. That
thing, you all saw that thing. I'm sure.

The article in the Sun. Mr. Miller talked about it I guess and I had to leave
before Fred really got rollin' but suspect he probably referred to it too. It
tells me that the renewable resources department of which you are a part has
an identity problem. A very serious image problem and that image problem in
this P.R. guy's mind in any event and just three months of experience is
largely self generated. It's coming from the inside, not the outside. The
Divisions of Renewable Resources appear to the general public to be divided,
indeed, and I'm not really being funny about it. They probably shouldn't be
called Divisions, because that word in itself is part of the problem. I don't

69

think I've got enough years left to get that solved, but anyhow. Division.

They appear to be confused about their roles, in constant conflict over who
controls what, who gets the money, who has the biggest staff, the biggest and
best programs and frankly my limit of exposure back here in Canada with
Canadian public in general, I don't think they give a damn. I really don't.

I think the people who pay our salaries want to believe that we in Renewable
Resources enjoy our jobs like serving them and know what we are doing and know
all of the things we do how they blend with what everybody else is doing in
order to get the greatest goods for the greatest number of people. That's
really what a tax payer wants for the tax dollars. Now you tell me whether or
not we got an image problem. And that isn't just one Garry Cooper, you know,
thank God, but anyhow that's not just one Garry Cooper that's a whole bunch of
people. He's writing to an audience he understands and he's getting input
from that audience as well as giving them input.

Ok, frankly it's my perception and one shared I think by a lot of people that
something is very much wrong with the internal psyche of the Renewable Rources
Department. And maybe it's all over the place, I don't know, but internal
psyche and yet when you have the opportunity as I had, thanks to a really
sharp boss. I'm talking to the two men responsible for setting the courts,

Mr. Miller and Mr. McDougall and then with the four men, and this all happened
in the first two days I was there, ok, then with the four men that have got to
steer along that course, Brennan and Kerr and Cook and Pacquin, I guess all
names familiar to you, you know, guys that you'd seen, it really becomes very
puzzling trying to figure out why things are going wrong. These guys, they
have what they call a brown bag lunch, I don't know whether any of you've had

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to sit in on it or not but pretty fascinating. They have a brown bag lunch,
they bring their lousy, smelly sandwiches and they sit down once a week
together and one of them gets to nominate subject, name the subject, and they
brain storm for a couple of hours. Fascinating to listen to them. You would
wonder how anything could go wrong when you've heard what they have to say and
I've now got to sit in on two and they're really boring, I mean I want them to
take it out where you people are so you can hear them too because there's a
communication gap there somewhere. The words' not getting out somehow, and
I'm not sure just exactly whats causing it. But when you hear them you wonder
what the hecks wrong here. What could go wrong.

They have agreed on where they want the department to go and why they want it
to go there, they've agreed on a course for getting there and it's a very, to
me a very exciting, challenging course. Maybe if I was out where you were it
wouldn't be I don't know, but I mean to me I like somebody to know what the
hell it is they are going to do and what my part of the action is and these
guys seem to know. Yet for some reason they are being attacked from the shore
line. As a tax payer I resent very much the waste of time and money and if I
were an outside taxpayer I would probably be appearing at a very nasty frame
of mind in public meeting demanding to have something changed. And there is
lots of that going on. As an inside tax payer and as a public relations
professional I find myself wanting to gather everybody together, all employees
and asking them why we are in that mess. I don't think anybody has done that
yet as part of what I am recommending what they do this year and public
relations plan, is that they ask you.

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That really takes guys cause you are apt to tell them and we just did that at
the National Bank of Alaska. The management said they are probably not paid
enough that's where all the trouble is and if we ask them what they want and
if they want more money, if we don't give it to them, they are going demand a
union. Oh they were so far off, it was like they were talking about somebody
else's company. That is not what the people wanted to know at all money was
sixth on the list. Five other areas, and everyone of those areas they were
already spending all the money that had to be spent. All they had to do was
change direction a little bit. And when I left Alaska they still hadn't
changed and I woundered why the union had won the second attempt. You know,
boy, it just makes you, people won't hear when things happen like that.

Here we are, this is my personal feeling, there are only three months
experience so there are plenty of people in here can say that guy crazier than
hell. Here we are with a flag that says "God and Motherhood" and
"Thanksgiving dinner" and you are working with forest, land and birds and
fishes and big and little beastlys, and we are quarreling around like a bunch
of constipated cats in a smelly sand box. Man, I don't understand it. I
really don't. We are all making a decent buck. I know we are not making as
much money as we want. But I don't believe it is going to happen, I mean not
immediately anyhow, I mu-stn't turn myself off completely. We got rather
excellent budgets. Not perfect, but they are not bad. We are not being
starved out. There is talent to burn around this place and all
you got to do is just roam around a little while. That's where I would like
to come out where you people are and see what happens where the action really
is. Our leadership, I think is good, nobody said it was perfect. Churchill

72

died a long time ago. But it's a, you can tell how old I am. Okay, none of
us is trully overworked, there are days when I think I am, but I am still
alive and well and fairly good condition. What the hell else do we need.

And yet here we are spending and know what I said spending, not investing we
are spending forty-five minutes trying to discover how we are to establish a
favourable identity with our public. As Pogo once said "We have the enemy and
it is us". It is our job. What I've just done is be a true public relations
person. At some risk of my own hind right here in this room, I have told you
how, I think, many of your publics are perceiving it.

Telling the public you have changed wouldn't work worth a damn unless you
really have changed. And when the Fish and Wildlife officers really are as I
think they should be and as I think that they probably you know just maybe you
are and you don't believe you are. Maybe that's what it really is, but a
vital functioning part of a active integrated renewable resources management
team, those are Fred McDougall words, you will see them again, time and time
again. Then telling the story effectively wouldn't be terribly difficult
because it really will be good news and there will be a lot of people wanting
to hear it. I got a date with Mr. McDougall on March 27, to tell him how I
see public relations helping him achieve that goal. I am going to carry in
with me a rather lengthy document, that's the thing I was holding up there a
while ago, I wouldn't put you through that, but anyhow. A plan that stretches
over three years. It is a little bit different, in that it is almost totally
internal .

Because I will use Dow Chemical as an example, Dow Chemical Corporation is the

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only corporation that I know of that has no paid public relations people.

Okay, Dow Chemical has 3600 employees that are their PR people in one plant,
that I know of. They start internally and then the employees tell the outside
world. So the program I am going at is somewhat the same way although I am
not as bright as the guy that put the one together for Dow, but I am going to
steal alot of good stuff from him. Writers are like that, and idea people are

like that. They go borrow everybody else's idea and put their name on it,

make it sound like their idea. My program will not promote the self serving
images of individual divisions. I didn't go and do that. It wouldn't rave on
about the production of a thousand pamphlets. Because until they believe you
it doesn't matter what you say in print. Until you really believe where you
are coming from. It fails to suggest that God speaks to us from the forest or
from a fishing hole or the fence line on public land and it has little room in
it for people who want to become film stars and films to largely by their own
families. It is a plan that I want to begin with research. I love to do
because I don't have to get up in front of groups and sweat. To determine
what is right and what is wrong. Then I want to go on and remedy the internal
elements first, which I think are very very significant. I want to talk with
the internal people. I want lots of people talking with the internal people
first before they try to talk external and then after we got the house cleaned
up, then we go out and invite our guests, the public that we serve, to come

and join us in an active, open discussion again.

Active integrated journey into the world of renewable resources. I would like
a few Fish and Wildlife officers, everybody that would like to, in joining me
in that kind of a change process and that is a very difficult process. It

74 -

takes years to do. I only got ten working years left. And I would like them
to be the most fun that I have ever put In. Fish and Wildlife are the best
bunch of clients I have ever had. We have alot of fun with Fish and Wildlife
people with head office, I am sure that Joyce could sit out In the field
occasionally and she tells me It Is more fun out there. Alberta Is a
fantastic place to Invest 10 years. I love It. I used to love It years ago
and I love It more even now. And In my view Canada 1s one of God's most
significant works. This Is a great nation, with tremendous future. I am
really pleased to be part of It. I am pleased to.be part of what you guys and

girls do for a living. Sorry I didn't mean to be sophistic. I would

entertain any questions or any amount of discussion and It must be obvious to
you that I am a bit of an agitator, and I would be glad to agitate with you.

I know there are some of you out there because I heard you working the lawyer
over real good.

How about questions do you have any? If you haven't you are going to get to
coffee 15 minutes early. Yes sir. Don't put good stuff in the last half, get
In up front. Oh!. That is what I told Mike Dave too, but he is still at it.

Maybe, and you are doing a fair amount of that? You quit right. One way to

recommending we try out that, if you prepare a regular column on the
activities on the Fish and Wildlife department and you ask your people to
contribute to that column so that It Is technically very accurate stuff, okay,
but at head office we put the stuff together and we even, either have it
typeset or photocopies or whatever, but we send it to them free of charge a
very well written column. Let's say maybe even once a week. It is awful for
the editor not to go ahead and use it, now he may not use it, but on the

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other hand if readers fifty miles away in another town or talking about
something that they read in that article, and his paper is not carrying it,
the pressure get on him that he got to meet the needs of his reader. But we
are talking about doing a series of, actually a column, okay, hope he is not
in the audience, but until Bob started to beat us all around the head we were
going to hire him to do it for us but we are not too sure it would be a smart
move. That is one way of getting around that, but the only other way you can
is to really write the copy tightly, don't ever write a headline. If you
write a headline you will turn nine editors out of ten off. Off, you know,
cause they want to write their own headline. That is how they make the thing
slightly different then everybody else's, cause in the headline they will
quite often they will use the same copy that the guy next door used, but if
they can just change the headline on the first paragraph, they are okay. It
is quite common for people to write headlines when they send out news releases
and that is not a very good idea. I recognize a small town you don't have to
do some of these things like always give them a person a call, so that they
can get more information. A small town there are going to know where you are
and they will come find you if they need addition information. But one thing
you really should try for is, if you can get your story on a single page
double spaced with wide margins, you may not have told the whole story, but
the exercise of getting as much as that story as you can on to that single
sheet of paper is good for a mind anyhow and if they want more they will come
and ask you. And your chance is about 90% of it being used if it on one page.

Yes sir.

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You got to have good rapport with the newspaper guy to get that done. Cause
most of time they would you know they really shine away from that, but if you
have a very good rapport with your editor you can do that. I wouldn't dare do
that in Edmonton, I would be the subject of the next article.

Yes sir.

And there are times when you sure don't want confusion. I think you just need
alot more visablity and that is one of the things that Joyce was charged with
getting for you is as much identity, visability as we can get. You will find
that Joyce is really great at taking people's ideas and running with them.

Any of you want to feed ideas out to Joyce please do so.

I want to read you one of these cards that I got this morning. This is pretty
good Public relations is, I don't know who wrote this but, if the author wants
to hold up his or her hand. Public relations is a complex variety of methods
used to relate, justify and support various ideas to a maximum number of
individuals in an efficient a manner as possible.

That is not bad, it isn't as far off a normal public relations definition, but
I probably ought to read you one as a closer.

Just read you a definition. Public Relations Cousul tants I don't know whether
you know the reporting line but, I work for a Public Relations Bureau which is
part of Government Services, I think, it has a bunch of, I still haven't
figured out the government system, it has a group of PR technicians on their

77

I forget thirty, fourty, fifty, in there somewhere and they assign people to
Divisions almost as a reporter covers a beat. In our case, in our section, in
Energy and Natural Resources we have five people and one covers Fish and
Wildlife, one covers Forestry, one covers Public Lands, and so that I wouldn't
look like I am not busy I am also supposed to boss everybody else, but it
doesn't happen too often. And one of covers Energy Conservations. That is
because the Premier is the PR man for Energy with out the Conservation after
it. Premier and Mr. Leach look after it. My sole role to date has been to
laugh at Doctor Barry Melon's jokes on appropriate occassions and occasionally
give him the wisdom of the ages of my thinking cause I think I am a couple of
years older then he is. But the word is out that that is going to change and
that fairly shortly we are going to do some public relations work on the
energy side.

So we are a unit, a communications unit, out of the Public affairs bureau. We
have a lot of technicians behind us. We can produce magazines and films, and
audiovisuals of various kinds, newpaper articles and feature articles and what
have you. We can do alot of things for you if you come to us with an idea
that merits us working with you. Public relations consultants work to access
to evaluate opinions held by one or more of a client's public's and to
interpret their findings to management. The consultant then assists
management in formulating plans to change or improve public opinion. But the
first role is, if we are really doing the job the way it should be done, the
first role is to tell you what is wrong and that takes research. Now research
is one of those things that government likes a whole heck alot because it is
tough to explain why you spent the money. I think that is what the reason is.

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Consequently there are tremendous number of government programs not just this
government but all governments, tremendous number of programs that are
launched and nobody knows why. They didn't have a goal because nobody knew
what the problem was in the first place. They just produced the program.

When I am going to live and die on I think is whether or not I could sell
research, cause I have written so many newsrel eases I have done so many
filmscripts and I have covered up more dog shit that you can possibly imagine
but people shouldn't have got themselves in that trouble. And I don't want to
do that anymore and if there is not room for research, there is probably no
for me and I will just have to go back to Ontario and be a farmer again, which
is how I started out, still got the farm. Okay, that takes care of me. Any
more questions you want to drink coffee. Getting closer and closer to the
hour when the coffee is served.

Thank you very much Jack.

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New Mexico's Undercover Operations
Jim Vaught - Chief
Law Enforcement
New Mexico Fish and Game

Each agency has a tendency to want to evaluate law enforcement in some type of
terms. They want to talk about citations issued per 100 field contacts. A
number of citations issued per Dodge vehicle, you know. You can use whatever
type of index you want to. Quite often I think that we're talking about
wildlife law enforcement, evaluation of it, we're getting the cart before the
horse, I think that this outfit is a good example of that. I think rather
than talk about how effective we are, how efficient we are and talk about very
sophisticated programs like Covert Operations I think we need to sit down and
evaluate law enforcement in much more practicle terms. My own personal
opinion where I live, I realize is very, very different than Canada. If I was
told that I'd go out and enforce the law in New Mexico and wasn't allowed the
benefit of a sidearm I would tell them to go to hell. If somebody asked me to
assume the responsibility of this many men that were paid to enforce the law
and I was told to do it knowing that these people would have to enforce the
law without benefit of a sidearm I would also tell them to go to hell. But
that's my own personal feelings. Like I said, I operate in a different place
than you do. If one of my leaders in his infinite wisdom stood up here and
told me that the people in New Mexico didn't like the way it looked for us to
wear a sidearm I would also tell him to go to hell.

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We're all involved in wildlife law enforcement. We do it on a daily basis but
do we have an actual understanding what we're dealing with, I don't know how
you perceive wildlife law enforcement, I don't know how it fits into your
program. Someone give me a definition of wildlife law enforcement. What is
it? What is it in Alberta, Canada? Don't everybody hold their hand up at
once. We'll take the short ones first. Come on, somebody give me a
definition of it. You mean some of you people like you're grey headed, some
of you don't have hair. Some of you've been in this business a long time and
you can't even define the damn thing? Come on! All right, if you don't have
a definition, I do. You probably won't find this in Black's Law Dictionary,
you probably won't find it written down any places, books, definition.

Wildlife law enforcement's a management tool by which wildlife is allowed to
exist and propogate as a result of protection. Now, that's not a long
complicated definition, but I think it's a good one.

I find it very irritating when I talk with people that don't understand what
we're talking about, they don't understand the definition of wildlife law
enforcement. A good example of this is the University of New Mexico. I was
speaking down there to a group of graduate students. I talked for about an
hour and finally one of them raised up his little pink hand and says "Wait a
minute". I said all right. He says- "let me get this straight, you perceive
this wildlife law enforcement as a management tool. I thought for a minute
and I finally got through to him. Yea. But why didn't we start on that
ground as opposed to hand up there an hour later. Hell, yes it's a management
tool and a damn good one. It's the oldest management has been used since the
1400's in Europe to protect wildlife, it's a damn effective management tool.

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Ok, I have some slides that I think you might find of interest. I apologize
for not bringing more, I should have. I have a probably what you would find
law enforcement wise very, very interesting subject matters. Reptiles as an
example, raptors, feathers, there's lots of commercialization of wildlife in
New Mexico. If I would have had my head screwed on right, I would have
brought more slides, but we'll look at what I did bring.

(SLIDE PRESENTATION)

Can everybody hear me?

Holler? Now, ok. The second type of law enforcement program we're talking
about is plain clothes. Now, first of all, uniformed officers are, like I
say, they're wrapped in a cloak of security. It's obvious to anyone that this
person's function is enforcing the law. There's no question about his
authority. Our plain clothes officers do not have that benefit. Stan and I
talked yesterday about stopping a vehicle by us a little fireball red light
and no siren. As we unwrap this cloak of protection, as we take this guy's
uniform away, as we take his gun away, he is more vulnerable to many things.
It's not obvious who he is and what he's sworn to protect. Through carrying
an identification badge in his pocket is one of the few mechanisms by of which
he can demonstrate who he is.

I noticed that your vehicles out in the parking lot came in quite an array of
different colors and styles and equipped with varying degrees of emergency
equipment from very, very nice bars to nothing. I feel very strongly about

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these type of things* I would tell you that if you think you‘re professional
enough that you ought to be allowed to carry firearms and wear a uniform then
you damn well all have the ability to get all them vehicles looking the same.
Uniform is just exactly that, it's uniform that does not mean that one guy
with have a bar and one guy will have two red lights, and one guy will have
one red light, and one guy will have no red lights, one guy will have some
decals on his pickup and it will be one color and another vehicle will have,
ou folks run an odd ship.

Law enforcement work, I don't care if it in New Mexico or if it's in Alberta
use to be mundane kind of work, didn't it. I used to ride with the City
police when enclosed in Mexico and his definition of law enforcement, I
thought was a good one. He said it's hours and hours of boredom punctuated
with moments of sheer panic. I like that definition, I always have and doing
wildlife law enforcement type work, particularly uniform work. I know the
feeling that the next angler that you check, and have to listen to him about
well you don't mind checking the license but you won't put any fish out here
for us to catch and whatnot. You feel like you're going to throw up. This is
part of the reason that uniformed officers find plain clothes work and convert
operations intriging.

You people handle what we call "wildlife depradation" , you call it what?
Nuisance animals, problem animals. What do you call it? Problem wildlife.

Do you ever get tired of that, get tired of listening to these people. Yea, I
understand that. This guy that's standing up here, his name is Bill Eshery,
always liked this slide and I named it "Why Me Lord?". Ever get tired of

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lookin' for bullets in these dead animals that's been layin' out there for
three of four days? That's not my idea of a good time. Right?

How many plain clothes officers does Alberta have? Any I mean officially.

One, ok. We have several in New Mexico. We have a plain clothes division.
It's headed by myself. I have an assistant chief and I have a research
specialist all of whom operate in plain clothes. Within each one of the areas
and the state is divided up into four areas, we have a plain clothes
supervisor in each one of the four area offices. He operates totally in plain
clothes and drives a plain vehicle. I don't know totally why uniformed
officers are so taken in by covert operations, I do in part. It's like any
good cop, he has a suspicious nature, he likes to pick things apart, he likes
to know what's going on, particularly when it's in his district, his area, his
province, his state, whatever it may be. I appreciate that and I fully
understand that and I wouldn't have it any other way. But I want you to
completely understand that these types of feelings and this tendency to
uncloth things to see whats in there causes covert operators and supervisors a
lot of headaches. I don't know how many of you have ever had the misfortune
of being in association with covert operations or having to supervise them,
but they're a sonofabitch. They're tough enough on their own without having
your own outfit trying to tear them apart.

I would like to take all the television shows there is about clothed,
unclothed, undercover operations and tear them up and throw them in the
garbage can. They give people a genuine misconception of what you're about,
how they're executed, how they're supervised and what they produce and what

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they are capable of producing. It's like a friend of mine who is a coronor.

He stopped me on the street the other day and he said "let's go get a cup of
coffee." I said "ok". But he said first we've got to fingerprint this
stiff. I said, hey, I said I want to go on up to the academy, I said you go
fingerprint the stiff and we'll drink coffee some other time. He said, "Ah,
bullshit come on let's go do it". And I says "it's not my bag. I ain't into
dead folks." So he cons me into doin' it, so they've got a Joe Blow, a dead
person they cannot identify and he is going to attempt to obtain the
identi ficai ton of this person through fingerprints. So after many different
contortions with dead body, and twisting it around and whatnot we obtained a,

I assume semi-useable set of prints. We had ink all over the mortuary and all
over outselves and all over this stiff and I made some comment to him. I said
"Hey, that ain't the way Quincy would have done it." Well it pissed him off.
You know, and he stood there and he said look, he said if you want to take the
finger prints you take them. You think you can do a better job, bucket mouth,
do it. And he said, I would like to choke Quincy to death. He said I'm a
medical examiner and he said my opinion is I'm a damn good one. But he said
you're just like the rest of the public when you watch Quincy you have a very
distorted opinion of what a medical examiner's capabilities are. Well the
same thing exists with covert operations. If you sit there and watch the
giant tube and drink enough beer long enough you can completely get into
another realm that a person that deals with covert operations on daily basis
won't even recognize, like myself. I watch something like Colombo or Vegas or
some of these other detective shows and I sit there and I shake my head and I
think this ought to be illegal to construe something into something that is
that different from what it actually is.

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Now, let's talk about these operations. We talked about wildlife law
enforcemernt as being a management technique and lets look at these different
types and specific operations and try to understand what they are. Covert
operations is just like uniform work, it's just another law enforcement
technique. It's another tool and it's not any more effective or less
effective, it's not of any more value or less value than most other law
enforcement techniques. But it does have some things that are associated with
it that are interesting and that is that it's dangerous, the person that's
doing it does not have the benefit of this cloak of protection that a
uniformed officer does, he does not have a gun, which he doesn't which you
people don't either. One of the few things that he has going for him is
protection and one of his biggest enemies is detection and I know, or I
suspicion that you people are just like any other group of officers. If you
have a suspicion that something is going on in your, whatever it is, district,
area, whatever you want to call it and if you suspicion that this is covert by
nature involves Fish and Wildlife work you want to be involved, don't you? I
appreciate that feeling, I know that is a very real feeling. But when we're
talking about protecting a plant, or protecting anyone that's working under
cover, keep in mind that detection is his greatest enemy, that if you in any
way, shape or form began to pick at what you suspicion to be a covert
operation, you can uncover it. I don't have the ability and Colombo and Vegas
and all those people don't have the ability to hide one to the degree that it
cannot be uncovered. That's an impossibility, but I think it's a grave thing
when one officer places another in jeopardy simply because of his suspicions.

Don't do it.

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If Alberta chooses to expand its' plain clothes and covert operations don't be
offended when they do it in your area. Don't take it personally. That's not
what it's based on. Thats not what they're trying to get at. They're trying
to enforce wildlife laws just like you are but they have to do it in different
ways. I tell you that and it probably doesn't sit real well. It's hard not
to take it personally, I realize that. A lot of officers think that I'm using
them specifically as examples as being something of a bastard step child,
something less than a first rate citizen when I say there's a, hey, let these
other people do it and don't worry about it. I tell the administration the
same thing. I don't pick on you people as second class citizens. My opinion
is that Covert operations should've been conducted on strictly a have to know
basis. Everyone that knows its strictly a have to basis. If you have to know
for some reason then you will be involved. If you don't have to know and take
it from an old expert, if you don't have to be involved, you're a lot better
off. I wished that many, many times we could conduct Covert operations in New
Mexico where I had no knowledge of them. They're nerve wrecking on a
supervisor, they make grey hairs out of brown ones they're tough to execute
and they're tough to supervise. We'll talk in a few minutes about reptile
study.

If my administration and their infinite wisdom exposed the goddamn thing half
way through a Covert operation, in which I had about fifty thousand dollars
invested, they didn't do it maliciously, they didn't do it intentionally, but
nevertheless they did it. These people that knew this program was going on I
think number between four and six. Five people stick in my mind. Those
people that blew it, say those people, it was one person. That person felt

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awfully bad after he did it. Put this kid in a dangerous position, blew a
very expensive program, blew a program that ultimately resulted in us getting
a very, very good idea of the amount of illegal reptile trade we had in the
state. Luckily it did not cave the entire operation in, but it could have and
after that he told me, he said, jees, I wish that I'd never known about the
Covert operation and that way I couldn't have blown it. I think you people
should look at it the same way. If you don't ever know you're in a lot better

shape mentally to conduct day to day operations than if you do know.

Uniformed officers are hard enough to keep track of. What they can get into
and get out of is amazing. What these plain clothes officers could get into

and get out of is amazing squared. What one of these persons whose working

deep cover can get into and out of approaches infinity. When you're talking
about a person whose operating with his little supervisory contact is a
perfect person that's working deep cover has he's pretty much on his own to do
as he sees fit. This is Charlie Bird. He's a plain clothes operator out of
Alberquerky. If you don't think he can get into lots of bullshit, just ask
the local state policemen. Bird drives like a bat out of hell, he spends more
time being stopped by the state police than he does on patrol. This is one of
our deep cover opporties. This gentleman is into lots of things, drinking
lots of alcohol, smoking lots of dope, there's not much that he didn't find
having a good time at, legal, illegal or otherwise. Lets take a few minutes
and -

Bear in mind these people that are executing these Covert operations and the
people that are supervising them are going through a tough exercise, to say
the least. Not only do they have problems with uniformed officers trying to

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figure out what's going on and admini strators trying to figure what's going on
but they also have to contend with the other departments and probably one of
the toughest groups of people to deal with is fiscal personnel. People that
are in charge of keeping the books. They're one of the toughest groups in an
organization to keep a Covert operation hidden from. If they're in charge of
keeping track of the money and they're a competent employee they're going to
want to know how in the hell that money's been spent and they can smell a rat
a hundred yards away and when you tell them one thing and you're doing
something else it doesn't take them long to become very suspicious. I get a
kick out of everytime I think about fiscal problems and Covert operations I
think about a guy that works for us by the name of Peter Gomez. Peter is a
very, very conscientious person , he's in charge of inventory. When he comes
and inventories you it's policy that you've got to lay everything out there in
front of him so he can look at it. If you were issued a used set of pliers in
1956 and it's on your inventory, he's not going to take your word for it that
you have them in your tool box at the house. He wants to see them. We had
one Covert operation involving a long deep cover plant and this plant had an
insulated camper shell in the back of his pick up. It was charged against
management. This guy on paper was doing radio tel erne try work for game
management to hide him from exposure to take suspicion away from law
enforcement. He didn't have anything to do with us. He worked for game
management. I thought Peter Gomez was going to have a coronary because game
management wouldn't produce that camper shell so he could attach the little
game and fish sticker to it. He went pi urn to the Director and he said those
bastards won't let me look at that camper shell and he said, aw come on Pete
drn't worry about it. Just go in and give them the yellow sticker, they'll

89

put it on and he said that's not what the policy manual says. So it's not
just uniformed officers, it's also the administration, it's also fiscal people
that hiding in Covert operations from is damn difficult.

I don't know if in Alberta there's a monument such as this, I don't know

whether it exists or not but there's damn sure one in New Mexico and it has on

it all the names of the officers that have lost their lives in the line of

duty. Now, I don't know how you people feel about it but I don't think it's a

real neat thing when an officer loses his life because he's investigating a
moose meat selling ring or a reptile case or any other kind of case for that
matter. To me that's not the way the game should be played. Aside from that
I think that the Wildlife Law Enforcement supervisor has a very, very great
and real responsibility to protect these officers from death. I don't know
how much understanding you people have for what we have for what we call
"vicarious liability". That's the liability that I assume as a law
enforcement supervisor. In other words, if you take an action against a
person and the courts rule it to be excessive force, unlawful imprisonment,
malicious prosecution whatever the case may be, then that's called direct
liability. I may be guilty and I may be held liable and accountable for your
actions if I'm in charge of supervising you as law enforcement officers.

That's called "vicarious liability". I, as a wildlife law enforcement
supervisor do not wish to have to assume any liability for losing an officer
investigating a misdemenor crime. That, aside from the very grim part of
losing a human life. I don't want to have to pay that officers' family,
usually these types of liabilities come in six digit figures. We're talking
about in the neighbourhood of $500,000 and up. I'm not going to do that.

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Some of the ways that we try to avoid vicarious liability, specifically
talking about covert operations, is training, training sessions such as this
one, training sessions such as the one that's going to be held by the Fish and
Wildlife Service in June. I don't know, did you law enforcement people get an
invitation to that school. Is Bob here? Ok, I brought one, remind me. It's
a very worthwhile school. If you can see fit to send an officer I think it
would certainly benefit your operation. Most experiences gained in the field
of covert operatons, most knowledge is gained through experience rather than
training. There is some good schools offered, there is a good covert school
offered in New Mexico at the law enforcenent academy but it, as far as
developing lots of knowledge on how to conduct covert operations and do them
effectively and safely it just gets the supervisor started. It's one of those

things about no jobs, no experience, no experience no jobs kind of catch 22

kind of problems. I don't know how you gain that experience other than just
sort of shirt-tail ing it. Go ahead and get started, get your feet wet.

Some of the types of illegal activitiy that we have successfully used covert
operations against, one of them and I think it would work well here is guides
in outfitters. Any time you have anybody that's involved in a
commercialization of wildlife, you're going to have crooks. Maybe this is my
point of view. Are all your guides and outfitters honest? No. I know all of

ours aren't. You don't have any meet selling here do you? Is that right,

amazing. Covert operations can be successfully used against meet selling
operations. This is a part of commercialization of wildlife that you probably
don't have and that's illegal reptiles. Any time you put a rare endangered
stamp on an animal you increase it's value. We have successfully used covert

operations against reptile dealers. How about falcon. Is it legal in this
provice? Is it going to be? Who said no? It's going to be, is it not?

Certain groups of people, Falconers is one of them, are almost impossible if
not impossible to run covert operations against. These people, they've been
around the mulberry bush before. They know how the little games are played.
They're not fools. They know who lives in their ranks. They know them very
well. It's next to impossible to penetrate with an outsider while reptile
dealers as an example on the other side of the coin are very, very easy. They
haven't been worked many times. They don't know the ins and outs of covert
operations. This is a slide taken on one of our co-water studies. Some of
the research that we have done using covert operations are sort of long and
complicated and hopefully, if I get to feeling better we can talk about them
tomorrow at some of your committee meetings.

This particular slide was on one of our co-water studies. It involves plain
clothed officers checking anglers in order to determine violation rates. One
of the few mechanisms by which I think law enforcement can be evaluated,
officers activity can be evaluated law enforcement techniques can be evaluated
by studying violation rates and how they vary from one area to another. Who's
got some extra water? Like I said, hopefully tomorrow we can sit down and if
any of you have any questions about these law enforcement covert operations as
far as research goes, we can sit down and go over the in and outs of how it's
done, what it accomplishes and whatnot, but there's no use going into it now.

It does take a very lengthy explanation. This is a slide of the operator that
did a poaching study. There again if you want to talk about using wildlife

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similations in order to estimate loss, I'd certainly be glad to stay tomorrow.

I talked with some of your people about women officers. This is a lady by the
name of Ellen King. She's a princess of a person and a helluva good officer.

(SLIDE PRESENTATION)

Right after the arrest of the owner of this vehicle this investigation took a
little over a year to execute. Dominique was the plant. He was a college
student. We got into some problems, none of which couldn't be overcome. The
example of using a undercover operator that's a college student. We may also
use officers from different jur isd ict ictions or members of the public. This
gentleman that did the poaching study was hired under a special services
contract for a year and he was hired basically because of his poaching
abilities. The vehicles we use vary from old game, the proper vehicles
repainted. Those confiscated from their outfits such as drug enforcement or
in the case with the reptiles many cases its very beneficial for them to use
their own vehicles and any time that we can conduct investigation using their
own vehicles we certainly lean towards those directions. That's all the
slides I have. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be feeling some better. I want to go
back to bed now and lie down and see if I can get over this. I'm tired at
going to the bathroom at both ends. I take a drink of water and it comes out
cold. I think the man that talked about the shotguns this morning may have
given it to me.

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Speaker Unknown: Before you run away Jim we would like to thank you and we
have a book here. It's the limited edition of our Alberta Conservation Hunter
Education Program. It's the hard back edition and we do thank you and
hopefully tanorrow you will be feeling better and we'll get you a cork.

Dennis we'll turn it back to you.

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Officer Safety
Lew Ramstead

Ok, we started out this morning with sort of a brainstorming session in the
officer safety workshop and what we had the officers do was divide up into
groups of five, we had four tables, put down all their ideas. We came up with
28 points initially, and from that 28 points we through trading, bartering and
different methods of discussion came up with the final tally of ten concerns
that we had in officer safety and we, from that point categorized these and
there again we had a trade off in deciding which rated priority won and so on
through to number 10 position. The 10 categories that we came up with are as
fol 1 ows:

1. Communications - and that is a mode of electronic equipment and devices to
meet all needs of Fish and Wildlife at a 1980 standard. By this we mean
24 hour example of this would be 24 hour communications, accessibility to
CPIC to find out what type of people we're dealing with when we stop them
and any other type if information that is necessary for a Fish and
Wildlife officer to do his duties out in the field. The way it stands
right now that after 4:30 we haven't or into the evening we haven't got
communications to find out what's going on and also when you're out on
different types of patrols.

2. Officer and Vehicle Equipment and Use of - by this we are meaning totally
what is required by a Fish and Wildlife Officer to do his duty and that is
the supplying the proper equipment that is needed to do the duty of the
Fish and Wildlife Officer and the training and the use of that equipment
by the officer, firearms, boats, skidoos, any type of equipment that we
need to effectively do our jobs as Fish and Wildlife Officers and the

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proper training and knowledge to effectively use this equipment that is
given to us and therefore, make our jobs a little bit easier by doing this
type of work with the proper equipment and training.

3. We had it down first as man patrol, we've changed that to two person
patrols and I think that one is fairly self explanatory in the fact that
we feel for safety that we should and must have two persons on the patrols
because of the situations that arise.

4. Human Relations and Authority Identification - by this we mean personal
and interpersonal development and proper guidelines to our authorities and
identity enhancement. There seems to be some problems in the fact that we
have with relating to ourselves and to knowing what our authorities in
certain instances, I suppose is the proper way of putting it and getting
the knowledge of this by way of training and guidelines as to where we're
going and what we should be doing properly so that we don't get ourselves
into a situation that causes us problems in the line of safety and
problems in the line of safety to other people.

5. Problem Wildlife Control - by this we mean supplying the proper equipment
as needed for work in problem wildlife, the training in the use of this
equipment as well as having enough personnel where we're going into
different situations, examples being bear release. We don't feel that
there should be less than two trained persons around when we're handling
these types of situations. It's well and good to say two people, trained
people because if you come into a situation like this of releasing a bear

96

going to do any good if the other person doesn't know what to do, we're
putting him in a bad situation and putting ourselves in a bad situation.
Another example is the explosives, handling and useage of explosives, all
types of firearems through to and including tranquilizer guns, the useage
of these guns, the times and places where they should be used for safety
and the total ball of wax in using this type of equipment in the safety
features.

6. Effecting a Safe Arrest and Search Procedure - by this we mean the

execution of an arrest or search, how to approach vehicles properly, how
to carry ourselves out when we are effecting arrest, when we do effect an
arrest we are responsible for the safety of that person being arrested as
well as ourselves and anybody else that comes in contact with them.

Example of this is handcuffs, the useage of handcuffs, how to put a set of
handcuffs on a person and once we've got those handcuffs on that person
we've got them in custody his safety and protection. Example there again
would be double locking a handcuff so the guy can't injure himself because
if do we are responsible for him and there again putting a person into a
vehicle once you've got him under arrest. We have to have some more
training, some training in this type of thing. Some of us have been
fortunate enough to have this given to us since the issue of these pieces
of equipment. There are other people that do not know and I think that we
pretty well have to standardize something like this in getting some
guidelines in the proper and safest methods of effecting a search and

arrest.

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7. Physical Fitness and Self Defence - by this , I think it is pretty well
self explanatory but whether we want to admit it or not we've got to be
physically fit to be able to maintain ourselves in a safe manner and in
physically fit with a little bit of self defence. If you're physically
fit then we can be shown how to take care of ourselves in a lot saffer
manner for the safety of the general public and ourselves.

8. Traffic Control - by this we mean road block situations, stopping
vehicles. We need to have some proper guidelines and techniques set out
for ourselves. A lot of this stuff, the infonnation is there in our own
ranks, but I think we have to put it together so that we all know where it
is and some of these different methods that can be used to protect
ourselves and if we have the knowledge of how to handle ourselves in these
situations we're going to be a lot more effective. If we're out there
effecting these duties in the back of our minds all the time, hey. I'm not
just sure if this is the right way of not and we're going to be worried
more about that than doing your job properly.

9. All Weather Survival - by this we are referring to the safety of the
officers by way of equipment and training in carrying out his duties in
all types of weather conditions and in all locations by way of equipment
and training in the weather survival situations.

10. Safety of Areas of Gas Works where you have dangerous gas and chemicals.
This is something that's becoming extremely prevel ant throughout the
province from Fort McMurray right through to Pincher Creek. There is

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equipment in Energy and Natural Resources that other Departments have
where they have training in this and we're getting shown this equipment
right now, but our officers are also going into all of these areas.
Therefore, we feel we need some equipment to detect this stuff before we
get into a situation too far on an everyday patrol and training in this
type of equipment.

Those were the ten major areas of concern in officer safety, like I say, there
was twenty-eight to begin with. We've possibly grouped these into too small
an area and we would like to have the opportunity to extend some of these
areas and give our own clarification later but with time restrictions we're
unable to do that on this. We would hope that in appearing through on the
workshop we would be able to expound and expand on these titles because they
are very, very restrictive in what they spelled out and consequently, we feel
that we may have been eliminating some things in other peoples' minds. People
that attended the workshop know exactly what we're talking about in these
things, but if you were at one of the other workshops I think we have to sit
down and write these things out so we can spell them out a little bit more.

Any questions on what we put forth?

Question - inaudible

I personally, have no knowledge of that.

Question - inaudible

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Ok, at present there is nothing on the books on this type of thing but it's
something that can be looked into and I think that's where this workshop can
follow-through on this. Presenting these ideas to see if we can have
something like this put into place. Pete?

Question - inaudible

Yea, ok, Lou Ramstead and I attended a course here in Edmonton with the
Edmonton City Police we have copies of their manual and we hope to get

something put in place and this was the idea of the two of us attending this

course so that we could have something drawn up and put forth as Officer
Safety and a manual of this type for Fish and Wildlife.

Quesiton - inaudible

I think maybe it's one of the situations where we've got to walk, or crawl
before we can walk and until we get this stuff put into place and present it

to head office I don't think we can really comment one way or the other on

this. I have my own ideas as to what could be put forth on this type of
thing, but I think until we get something like this in place I'd be stepping
out of line to say anything.

Quesiton - inaudible

What we're putting forth with the type of course that Bernie and Lou went on
and I think you've attended that one as well, Dave, it's basically fact

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finding, to find out whether or not we can adapt this type of course to Fish
and Wildlife means and if that is practical then a course will be developed
and everybody will go through it and wherever the course is given or can be
given, it will if its a best to take it to the field and give it the same as
we do with the boat course now, in other courses, that's where it will be
accomplished. But until these guys get back to us with a full report on
exactly what the training course is like and how it can be adapted to our
purposes we can't say when or where. Any other Quesitons?

Ok, thank you very much gentlemen. That's the report from the Officer Safety
Workshop.

Thanks, Bernie

Chairman; One thing I'd like to bring to the attention of the chairmen of
these groups is that Bob's requested that they make the recommendations in
writing to him and then they will act on those recommendations from there.

Ok, next I'd like to ask Dean Watkiss to come forward and talk on
communicating with the public.

Chuck are you ready with your presentation. We've got a problem with the
stand .

Ok, instead of Dean we'll have Chuck Scott and their presentation on night
hunting .

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Night Hunting
Chuck Scott

Chuck Scott: Our workshop discussed certain areas in regard to night hunting
problems and the first thing that was pointed out is that there is a large
area of this province generally, south of the Edmonton area in which very
little seems to be accomplished in the way of aprehending night hunters. We
identified a number of reasons for this. The one that really stuck out of the
rest was that there was very little support or enthusiasm, perhaps would be a
better term, shown at the regional level for this type of operation. We
discussed some reasons as to why this happened or happens. One of them was
that large areas of their districts were identified as being mainly Crown
land. You had no complainee, therefore you have no problem. I believe we
reached a consensus that just about anywhere in the province you have deer or
big game you very likely have a night hunting problem.

Another reason for this that was given was that many, many districts do not
have adequate staff. There's very little I can do about that but I would hope
Mr. Adams here would. It was pointed out that one Regional Officer had done a
study of the, I believe, from the work analysis forms in his area, and I may
be wrong on that, he discovered that there were very, very few patrols made in
that region after 7:00 at night. I don't know how you are going to catch
night hunters if you're not out there looking for them in the dark. Another
problem with this apparent apathy or lack of identifying the problem in the
south was that much of the southern area is very heavily populated with deer.
Nobody has to get off a road to shoot a deer at night and it is extremely
difficult to apprehend a person coming along the roads and staying on the
roads. I think that's quite a valid point.

102

We then went into a discussion of methods of attacking night hunting problem.
There are several. The first one we discussed was ground patrols. There are
two types of ground patrols. The first one is where you have fairly good
information such as a hot tip on a certain field. You sit there. It was

pointed out by several senior officers that number 1 would present constraints

on the length of the day we work. It's very likely we aren't going to have
time to just sit there. The other factor that was identified was that in most
instances sitting in fields was an extremely non-productive way of
apprehending night hunters. The second ground patrol method, of course, would
be the roaming patrol checking out dead end roads that lead into fields and
just generally circulating amongst the area, or around the areas where you
possibly have known problems and I think it was the consensus of most of the
officers there that this was probably the very best way of attacking the
problem of night hunting. It was also pointed out the roaming method of
ground patrol that your officer in the district would have to know his area
fairly well, otherwise he probably wouldn't be in the right area. It was also
pointed out that in the fields where this occurs you should know your exits,
your entrances, where the big rock piles are, that sort of thing. It was

mentioned that marked vehicles don't apparently, I think I got a little slow

in taking notes here, but I think I heard something to the effect while I was
writing something else that marked vehicles don't really affect the number of
people we apprehend as opposed to unmarked vehicles. We also discussed the
head office policy of travelling with no lights. I'm going to say a bit more
about that later on. I'll just leave it for not.

103

The second major way of attacking a night hunting problem, is of course, the
old night flight with an aircraft surveillance from the air, officer support
on the ground. I think we probably went at this one backwards, we should have
first of all censused the officers, find out whether or not they felt this was
an effective method and then we should have perhaps spent somewhat less time
on it than we did because we actually ran out of time. However, we did
determine that night flights do have some value. I think the concensus
reached was that they should be used in special areas under special
circumstances, that we should not just as a general rule, make night flights.
We then discussed the proper methods of handling the night flights. Officer
Brown was our guest speaker because he's done a considerable amount of time in
the air and he pointed out if you plan a night flight, having a night flight
during the fall you had better request the aircraft ahead of time. In the
St. Paul Region we generally do this at our pre-hunting season meeting. I'm
not certain whether or not all regions have pre season meetings. The reason
for that being, of course, that if you decide on Tuesday that you want one on
Friday, you're very likely to find that the aircraft is not available because
it's on some type of Forestry project or it's flying a Cabinet Minister or
it's broke down or whatever. We discussed the type of aircraft that would
likely be the very best for this type of use. Officer Brown says, in his
opinion, the best possible aircraft to him would be single engine, Cessna
172. I believe that the use of the single engine aircraft is subject to some
policy. I don't ever recall seeing it, but I've heard the suggestion that if
we fly at night we'd better have two engines. Officer Brown said that in most
instances there would be no problem with a single. The reason I think a
single also, according to Brown would be better than a twin that it's a much

104

quieter airplane and he seemed to think that the night hunters would hear the
aircraft if they didn’t see it. That got us into another discussion on the
visibility of the aircraft from the air being a problem with these type of
operations and there was a suggestion that somebody should approach M.
(INAUDIBLE) more intensively either a triangular pattern, a circular pattern
or whatever and that during that two and one-half hour period a circuit time
of approximately 30 to 40 minutes this would vary would be adequate. We
actually used this in LaBiche and found it worked well.

The other thing Officer Brown pointed out, the night flight was that because
of the short 10 minute response time that your units should never be sitting
in a very field you expect to find your night hunters in because invariably,
these fields are not on the major roads or near major intersections and this
is where you've got to be if you're going to respond in any one of two or
three different directions. I belive it was pointed out that the person
sitting at the end of a dead end road is just about useless. Officer Brown
pointed out that the navigator, once they're off the ground runs the entire
operation. He calls in the ground support when he feels it is necessary.

The other type of night flight that was discussed other than a circuit pattern
was that a sweep of an area could be done two or three units spaced, I think
it was three, spaced roughly , I think it was six to ten miles apart, the
aircraft flying a zig-zag pattern and the vehicles proceeding in one direction
at the same time following along on the ground. I believe this type of
operation was set up last year, but unfortunately it got wiped out by weather

105

of these, on a large scale, a number of years ago. I don't know whether we
just picked the wrong night or what.

The third area of discussion is what is your procedure once you've apprehended
a night hunter. I think this was the most valuable part of the entire
discussion. We had as our guest speaker Officer McKee, who had a considerable
amount of experience and excellent success in this area, and I will go over
the points that he made in his discussion. The first one was, you should
always try and stop the vehicle head to head. I didn't mean in a head on
collision. As you attempt to stop the vehicle you want to suprise these
people you hit your light, your rotary lights on top, your head lights, your
siren all at the same time. He suggested that when you turn those lights all
on and if your headlights light up the cab of the other vehicle at the same
time that frequently you see these people with eyes about that big. I think
it's an excellent suggestion. It was a suggestion made, I believe it was
Officer McKee again in an uncertain situation that you don't know who you've
got or what you've got you should remain in your vehicle and direct the people
in the other vehicle, in the apprehended vehicle with the use of your hailer,
to get out of the vehicle with their hands in the air. He has suggested that
this is very, very effective. He then suggests that you should identify
yourself to them. Fish and Wildlife - Lac LaBiche. The next suggestion was
that all persons in the vehicle be immediately separated and that at this time
you should conduct a body search of these people, to ensure your own safety,
that you should arrest them, handcuff them, and his suggestion was that they
be given their warning of their rights. He suggested that one person should.

- 106 -

if there were more than one involved, that one of them should be placed in the
officer's vehicle, the other one to remain in view in the headlights, one of
the two apprehending officers should keep them insight while the second
officer searches the vehicle, checks weapons and one little point he brought
up, I think it's a good one, that if there is a spot light involved, put you
hand on it to see if it's warm, hot, cold or whatever. Check the knives that
you find in sight for blood or fat, or animal hair. His next suggestion was
that your prisoners should be taken in hand cuffs separately to the nearest
mounted police office because in Lac LaBiche we don't have the interviewing
room facility in our office. Our walls are paper thin and you can hear
everything going on in the building. These people, these prisoners of yours
should be kept separate at all times so they cannot communicate, so they
cannot get their stories together.

There was some discussion on what do you do with the other vehicle. Well, you
have some options: suggestion was made that you should photograph the
contents of the interior of the vehicle from both sides and the vehicle from
all sides. The outside of the vehicle. You should look for blood and hair in
the truck, car whatever it is and the other suggesion was that you could drive
the vehicle and an officer could, there's some discussion that this isn't the
proper procedure. Apparently, there is some written policy that came out some
time ago. I think because it is difficult to get a tow truck in the middle of
night in a lot of areas, maybe that might be your only alternative. Or you,
of course the other alternative is that you could call a tow truck, but you'd
have to sit and wait for it because you probably couldn't find it (inaudible).

107 -

It was discussed at considerable length that you should be very careful with
regard to anything you say to these people, so that you do not make statement
which could be construed later during the trial as to an intimidating, placing
the person in a situation where it might be construed that you were
intimidating. McKee's suggestion was that once you arrived at the R.C.M.P.
office or whereever you were going to interrogate these people, and his
suggestion was your truck wasn't a very good place to do it that you then
proceed with your attempt to obtain statements and there was a considerable
amount of discussion on statements, everybody seems to have his own ideas and
I think the concensus we reached with regard to them was that whatever works
for you is what you should have used. The final two points Milt made was that
you should search these people's residences under warrant immediately
following your interrogation.

I missed one little point here. I've got to backtrack a little bit. At the
time that you reach the interrogation place that while these people are
separated by being in cells or whatever, that you should sit down and
completely document your observations as to what you saw before you forget
it. In any event, if you have wrapped this thing up and released these
people, that is the final time that you have your best opportunity to record
your observations because the next morning you will have forgotten many, many
items and there's an excellent chance that some of these little things you
forget will cost you later in report. The concensus of the officers attending
this workshop think out of all of this stuff on apprehension is that there
seems to be a need for many of the officers and the suggestion was that it was
the younger officers, that their very best tool is something which they are

108 -

perhaps a bit deficient in and that is that they know their powers the the
best way to use them against each other.

We had a short discussion following this on special problems associated with
night hunting. We discussed legislation, was the legislation we have
adequate. There are three sections which, of the Act, which can be used
against night hunters. Was there additional legislation that the officers
would like to see that would help. The suggesiton was made that in case gun
law would be of considerable assistance, but I think we, after some
discussion, we decided that what we would be doing is a helluva a lot of case
gun! aw violations and no night hunting violations and I think they felt that
the legislation we have is not too bad. Also with regard to special problems
was the problem of, and I think it's an increasing one all the time, the
problem of Indians jacklighting. Many of the officers have come up with well
documented circumstances involving Indians jacklighting and the policy, of
course, involving treaty Indians, before you charge a Treaty Indian you must
ask for the support of you Regional Officer and also of Head Office. It as
felt that Head Office was not supporting the charging of Treaty Indians to the
extent that they could be that they would being too cautious. There was also
a bit of discussion that perhaps they are right, that we stand to lose more
than we would ever gain. I believe that pretty well covered our discussion.
Can I answer any questions? Yes sir, Randy.

Question - inaudible

109 -

I personally never felt they were necessary. I think you can, I believe there
was policy written on this that we use them. I sometimes wonder if they are
necessary myself, I don't recall the workshop reaching any sort of concensus.
It strikes me that they were developed for a particular reason. I'm not
certain what that reason was.

Bud Johnson?

Queston - inaudible

It's an excellent question. Bud. Question was "What is wrong with the Treaty
Indian jacklighting if there's no safety factor involved?" Did you want me to
answer that or did you want to know what the workshop discussed? The safety
factor was discussed very briefly with regard to this question with Treaty
Indians jacklighting, and the suggestion was made that the Treaty discharging
a firearm at night while night hunting or jacklighting very likely could be
charged with under the new section in the Wildlife Act but the problem really
was it was very seldom you ever noted the Treaty Indian discharging a firearm
at night. Beyond that I think perhaps a biologist would be the one to answer
your question. I've got about six hands, Kurt?

Question - inaudible

I'm sorry, that's one that I missed in my notes. There was considerable
discussion on that and there was a suggestion that we should ask Head Office
to review this policy in hopes that perhaps one of the better tools we had

110

could become available to us again. Perhaps under certain restraints. My
personal feeling is that Head Office will never tell us to do something such
as drive at night without any headlights. I would point this out in my
written submission to Mr. Adams. Murray?

Quesiton - inaudible

Well first of all, I don't really thing we know enough about the air
regulations as to whether or not this would be legal to operate a helecopter
for this type of thing at night. Apparently, there was a suggeston that any
helicopters operated apparently are allov^/ed only the pilot in. I don't know
for whatever reason. There was a suggestion also that a large light could be
mounted beneath a helicopter that would light up a huge area. I suppose that
would have some value in some situations. I doubt if a helicopter would be,
except in certain extreme circumstances of particular use in actual
apprehension. The other suggestion that wasn't brought up in the workshop and
just occurred to me is that helicopter time is an awful lot more expensive
than fixed wing. We didn't really spend much time on the queston because we
didn't think for whatever reason it wasn't really identified that it would be
particularly effective. I'll put that in as well.

I think maybe I should comment on one thing you did say. Six or eight units
doesn't sound like very many units, but you must remember that those six or
eight units you've got sixteen officers in them who all require two days off
and who are only supposed to be working a seven and one-quarter day and an
operation of that size, a night operation is very, very, very costly in

Ill

manpov/er time. You're suggesting then that we use the helicopter to actually
locate night hunters and aprehend them. I think it would be very difficult to
stop a vehicle if you're using a helicopter in the open country your
suggesting. On roads it might not be. There was one thing that just came to
my mind that was mentioned with regard to helicopters and also to apparently
to some extent with a fixed wing and Wayne has mentioned that a number of
pilots seem to be somewhat concerned about being shot at. I don't know if
that's ever happened. I don't think so. Jim Songhurst.

Question - inaudible

You bring up a good point. The group didn't really identify that one other
than in the discussion in Wayne's mentioning the fact that the navigator
should be in complete charge of the operation once they're off the ground and
you're right. It has been a problem in the past, however, I don't think you
want dead silence why you're doing the flying in at one time I do recall
several officers telling the navigator that he should be doing the check and
only him, talking to the ground units. One other thing I think I left out,
probably because I couldn't write fast enough. Ron did suggest that each
ground unit have a spot light. A moveable spotlight, not a fixed one, plug in
type for signaling the aircraft and that you should signal the aircraft by
shining the spotlight directly at the aircraft and then going like this up and
down. He said it's very, very easy to spot a ground unit that way. He also
suggested that should he be trying to direct a ground unit to a suspect
vehicle it's imperative that he keep straight amongst all the vehicles he can
see down below which one is yours and that you should be able to or you should
signal at his request as you move towards the vehicle. Yes, Jack.

- 112 -

Question - inaudible

Well there was a suggestion that some priority should be given to night
hunting and of course that must come at the expense of some other thing. I
don't think the suggestion was made that you should do nothing but night
hunting, I think the inference was that there's roan for both areas of
operation. There wasn't really much discussion in it. It sort of suprised me
that there wasn't about high use areas and I expected to hear something about
sub-divisions near Calgary particularly causing a problem in operations. I
never heard a word about it and I think maybe there were a number of smaller
points that could have been discussed at length and we just didn't have the
time to do it and I think some of you people are bringing these problems out
now. Did I answer your question at all, Jack? The only suggestion I really
heard out of the south country with regard to problems was the first one that
a lot of Crown land was involved, there was no complainee. The second one was
that most of the night hunting apparently was done from roads. There was no
need for the jacklighter night hunter to get off the road and this made it
extremely difficult to apprehend. I think these are both very valid points.
Kurt?

Queston - inaudible

One thing which rather surprised me was the one you brought up and that was
radio communication. There wasn't a word about it. I think it was the time
factor again.

113 -

Question - inaudible

Did they have oxygen aboard? Perhaps the gentleman from New Mexico would,
would you mind just giving us a couple minutes of your time with regard to
your night hunting? ok. Thank you very much.

Answer - inaudible

The one thing I would wonder Wayne about PWA seeing jacklighters all the time
is how many of these jacklighters are farmers combining? From great heights
your going to have a problem identifying what's actually going on down below.
Daryl?

Question - inaudible

I think maybe this question is important enough that I would ask Mr. Adams if
he has any comments. You would be prepared? Mr. Adams says he would be
prepared to take one to court. I would suggest it better be extremely well
documented. Any more questions?

Thank you very much gentlemen. I think I'll just turn this back over to you
now.

Thanks Chuck if we could ask Dean to come up and present his communicating to
the publ ic .

114

Communicating with the Public
Dean Watkiss

Dean: Joyce Bourgeois was kind enough to give us some little more specific
information as to what the cost was with regards to a 30 second production and
that was about $17,000 and then the airtime itself, preferable for prime time
t.v. which is probably around news time in the evening was about $7,000 so you
can see the cost factor we would have to employ if we were to be doing any
amount of airtime and so we were looking at basically seasonal occurance for
airtime on t.v. People in the larger centres and some in the northern
communities with their satelite they get cable t.v. and they have probably
seen the newest box that they have. Some of them were quite good. C.W.S. or
the Canadian Wildlife Service have short subjects and "Who's Who" on the
Canada Geese and the Caribou which is really nice, they get the good

advertising through the t.v. and I think our group would certainly like to see

some of this being done. Various themes that we could employ is help us to
protect your resources and wildlife is for the people.

Going on into the newspaper and in the advertising in stuff over here, I don't

know whether anybody can read that past the first row but I guess it's

basically for my information to carry me along through this. The advertising,
that we could employ through changes in regulations which is presently carried
out now with season dates both for fishing and hunting. The cost in that over
the year is from, I think approximately $24,000 and that goes province wide
through most of the major newspapers. We could also carry on or extend that a
little bit into trapping seasons and commercial fishing and any other

115 -

commercial activities requiring season dates. Also going in the newspaper
would be interesting items such as problem wildlife. That unfortunate
instance we had in Idaho where the two officers that were killed, various bear
problems and how to alleviate some of the problems people have in camp sites
and outdoor activities if they are involved in bear country. With news or
press releases these are important things that happen right quick. The real
important things, the bear maulings, search and rescue and all these should be
of a positive nature. I guess we're looking for positive exposure to the
peopl e.

We found that problems encountered with these various dealings that we've had
with the news media to try and get a good coverage is that the other agencies
such as the R.C.M.P. and Forestry seem to be reaping all the benefits and we
do all the work and another thing that we've found that we seem to be waiting
for the reporters to come to us and the other agencies seem to be contacting
the news media and having them deal with them directly. So I think there's
too much time involved in getting clearance from our supervisors from the
channels that we have to go through in order to give a news release. We've
sort of arrived at a conclusion in that district people should be able to
contact a Regional Director to get approval from him on a news release and
then he in turn would contact the news media and give them the report that we
had given our Director and then the Regional Director could in turn make sure
he gets the proper information from us before he directs it to the media.

Other things in the newspapers that we never really touched on were court

cases and important ones, such as what Chuck was indicating one night how many

cases where there's large fines, equipments that were forfeited. I think this

116 -

certainly places a lot of fear into a lot of individuals who are out there
doing some night hunting.

Radio, on the air, we didn't get into the cost factor on the advertising,
there again, our budgeting is low. I think Joyce mentioned we had $180,000
and we didn't get into the realm of how much that advertising actually covered
for publications, radio and television and news paper. But we felt that we
could possibly run talk back shows with certain radio announcers, we could run
through seasons, reports on how the seasons are going and various legislation
changes if they come on mid- stream.

The next item that we got into was shopping malls. We're getting into the
items that are relatively beneficial to us and not of a great expense because
that's the whole deal with our public relations and the exposure we're getting
is we don't have enough money, so with the shopping malls we can get
relatively good exposure. I was involved with just one incidence here in
Edmonton, pardon me. Sherwood Park that I was with another agency, the
R.C.M.P. with just a truck but I felt that if we could get some impressive
equipment such as a jet boat and a marked unit and probably two uniformed
officers I think we'd get a lot better response from the people and doing it
on an individual basis rather than with another enforcement agency. Slide
presentations would also accompany the marked units at a shopping centre. We
discussed this quite extensively on a type of slide presentation that we would
use the amount of slides and then we got into the various themes that we would
get into that we felt would be appropriate although there's probably many more
that we could obtain from a lot of other people in this room. But the four we

117

dealt with was Boat and Water Safety. Basically, for the upcoming season that
we're going to be dealing with the boats and water safety.

Enforcement is a vital link in wildlife management. The role of a wildlife
officer and various special projects such as the Brooks hatchery, goose
nesting sites, radio calling on elk and sheep and wildlife is for the people.
So they're quite vast and I think we have enough officers in the field who are

photographers of some sort that have slides that are of a very good quality,

that we could utilize in these various themes. Then we have some contract
money to utilize a group of people to put together a narration or to get the
slides together with some input from our department as to how to set up a good
advertising scheme and Chuck Shipley brought this up. It was about a talking
boat. When I was out at Sherwood Park the R.C.M.P. had a talking car and I
don't know how many of you individuals have seen it, but it certainly is a
crov/d drawer and it really does look pretty out of sort with the flashing
lights, and the sirening and the car is actually talking. I think we could
employ a talking boat, a jet boat that would be really of a benefit to our

organization and talking dealing with the kids and this I think is the

generation that we are, what we are and what we stand for and what we hope to
do in the future.

I had problems in obtaining space. I was stationed in Edmonton for three
years and I had some problems in with obtaining space and equipment for the
sportsman shows that we have here in Edmonton, the Edmonton Exhibition and I
don't know whether we'd had any output down in Calgary as to the Stampede and
other various exhibitions that they must have down there but I think with the

118

talking boat, the slide presentations on boat and water safety could be used
at the boat and trailer show, for instance, at the Sportsman Show with great
response from the people. The two cities, major cities Calgary and Edmonton
have an awful lot of people that don't know who we are, what we are, and what
we do and I think it's about time that we certainly let the masses know what
we stand for.

Other advertising mechanisms that are of not great expense are billboards.
There's one out here in the hallway, or it was out here. I never noticed it
here awhile ago, but for the lands department we also have one over at the Sun
Building that's portrays through photographs various projects and I understand
that we do have a framework but now we need photographs and with that we come
to a conculsion that we should have one of these in every region as well as
with the slide shows that we could utilize rather than having to ship it all
over the country and having such a long waiting list. We also talked a little
bit about the large billboards. There again getting back to various themes,
help us protect your wildlife, if wildlife ist for the people of Alberta and
placing these in the larger centres again I don't think the expense is all
that great and we get that up on a billboard and somebody driving home from
work continually seeing it every night and I think with that type of feedback
I think it's really good.

We had at one time, weekly reports on fishing success on lakes, road
conditions and it seems to have dropped off considerably so we thought there
may be some possibility of starting this again for example on by calling one
number and that would be 427 FISH that I think people could call into and they

119 -

would be able to get all this information. If not they could be referred on
to the specific detatchment, district office that they would be involved
with.

Other small forms of advertising are pins, decals, badges and signs. We came
to a concensus that we should have Gordon Kerr to appoint a committee to look
into a logo for the deparment. We were thinking about the ram's head with a
fish and this could be utilized on signs entering towns. You've seen all the
signs with the R.C.M.P. logo that they have along with the spinning wheel and
a gas pump. I think this would designate that there is a Fish and Wildlife
office in that specific community. Also we could have signs entering into
different regions such as the Rocky or Peace River regions. Also the logo
could be incorporated into the decal on the trucks and on hunting licences,
other licenses, trapping licesnses that would be an indication that that Fish
and Wildlife has that logo. Also in newspaper articles that people write we
could have the same logo there as well and when they go through the newspaper
they can see the ram's head and the fish. That's just a suggestion. I don't
know what type of logo that we would ever establish but I think we should have
one that identifies us. Forestry has the Beaver and I think we should have
something for our department. Also with the little badges for the kids and
bumper stickers with decals with thevarious theme messages.

Publications in pamphlets we thought that maybe we could elaborate more on the
various pamphlets that we had, greater expanding on goose nesting, beaver
control and bear pamphlets and for dealing with bears in the park. I think
Wayne mentioned it we could try to obtain posters that could be placed in

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industrial camps advising them on what they should do and what they cannot do
in relation to bears. Also a different type of a poster system that we could
place in parks for the people identifying what to do and what not to do and
with regards to the precautions in bear country. And I think that's basically
what we had gone through and if you require any further information the person
with regards to our Department is Joyce Sears. I didn't have her phone number
but I'm sure I can get it for any one of you that requires it and there's a
lot of new things that are coming on stream that looks good for advertising.

I wasn't even aware that there was a communications department within our
department so I'm glad to see that so hopefully we will progress a little bit
farther than what we have been doing because the advertising, the more we can
let the politicians know who we are, what we are and what we're doing the more
the people will know and probably the more money we will ultimately obtain.
With that, thank you.

Any questions?

Question - inaudible

We discussed the equipment, the slow death on the equipment that was utilized
on the Outdoor Sportsman. No we never really got into the actual production
of it itself. Could you

Question - inaudible

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With regards to the outdoor observer, we have tried to bring that back in
now. There was a committee of which Lou Ramstead, Fred Newman, and Jim
Struthers had done a considerable amount of work a couple of years ago. We
brought that back, the badges, the bumper stickers, the posters, etc. There
is a whole package gone over now to Gordon Kerr, Fred McDougall's office for
approval and we plan on writing some of those duties into v/ork plans for the
various Regional Directors in their overall work plan to get that back on
stream and we hope to expand the outdoor observer program into various aspects
of the job and some of the activities where the illegal activities occur and
we can then, through that program pinpoint various illegal activities and if
when you're going to from one geographical area to another where the
activities are different the wildlife species these are different, you can
deal specifically with that through the program but it will take, I guess it's
the old saying that you have to crawl before you walk. Right now we feel we
are in the crawling stage in that but we do plan on continuing it and
developing it. Yes, Marvin.

Question - inaudible

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Syl Pompu

Operation Game Thief

Ok, I guess we better get going or we're not going to finish in time to go
home. The topic that we covered in our discussion group was Operation Game
Thief. This is something that's entirely foreign to Canada. We are familiar
to some extent with practices of paying informants money particularly through
the R.C.M.P. for bringing in information on a strictly under-the-table
situation generally. As Fish and Wildlife Officers we all realize that we
can't handle the situation by ourselves in the field. You can wander around
the bush all you want and you're going to run into a few things but you're not
really going to begin to scratch the surface. So in order to be successful,
one has to cultivate a line of informants. There are a few people who will
come forward and they're actually very few compared to the mass but the ones
that do come are usually for, I suppose a lesser reason for moral grounds for
the greater reason because someone's damaging their property and they don't
really give a darn about the wildlife. They don't want somebody trespassing
on their land.

This is too bad and the people in the United States, I think New Mexico was
the first state to get into the program and actually originated it. They came
up with a situation where they had money put aside which I'll explain later
which was slated strictly to paying informants for information this was on an
advertising basis. They entitle this operation "Operation Game Thief". What
I like about it is they made no bones about what they were fighting. Make
sure I've got the right state here. The little handout they have states the
poacher is a crook, a thief and a cheat motivated my nothing more noble than

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greed. The poacher steals your wildlife and robs you of tax, license and
business dollars. He cheats you out of recreation, your children out of a
part of their future. You're his victim as surely as he robbed your home.
That's not mincing any words. It's kind of nice to see that. We looked at
the situation as how it might affect us, whether we could possibly hope one
day to institute such a program in Alberta. The first thing that we realized
possibly before we even started was that we had a whole long way to go.

I guess the first thing that a person has to do in setting up one of these
things is establishing our need. We all have a gut feeling as though there's
a lot of stuff going on our there that we don't know about. The one man in
the district is something like a pebble in a five gallon can you kind of
rattle around. You don't touch too many places and really we're surface
grazers unfortunately and if we want to really get our hands on the guys that
should be we need this program. But, in order to convince others to possibly
back us people who really count in getting things done, we have to establish
that need and we haven't done that yet. I don't know quite how one goes about
this. I trust New Mexico did it. I believe, and I could be wrong by
simulating offences seeing the percentage that were reported in getting an
idea of really how well people co-operated in bring forth information. I
guess it was quite shocking the amount of -information that didn't come
forward. One of the situations that I saw in Saskatchewan when I was with
them was biologists decided that maybe they ought to jacklight their deer for
specimens and the district officer was not aware of this. They jacklighted
for two weeks and took numerous deer and he never got a report of any
jacklighting at all even though this wasn't a well populated area. So we have

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to have somebody go out and actually get a firm figure on what percentage of
the infractions we are aware of and what percentage are brought to our
attention through any means.

Once we know what we're missing out on, then possibly we can show that our
need Is Indeed there. Once we've established that need, then comes the matter
of convincing. I don't think there would be any problem in convincing the
public because all of you know 1f you go to a party and anybody realizes who
you are you're condemded to talk wildlife for the rest of the night. The
reason for this is because they're very interested In this. They possibly
have a job In the office all day teaching school or what have you and wildlife
Is very, very refreshing and if the need was brought forward and made public
and again In some of the states this was brought forward by saying 45,000 deer
were poached last year in our state this was the number that were taken
legally, people soon became very convinced that something should be done and
even right now I don't feel there' d be any problem in convincing people.
Without this ground work, even though it 1s necessary first, there' d be no
problem convincing them that a program of this sort should go into position.

I guess the main thing is convincing the political end of the stick. Again, a
person has to look at this very carefully and handle it very smoothly. I can
see that we have a lot of work to do in establishing ourselves before we can
hope to do this. In order to possibly establish this in the minds of the
political people, we have to prove to the public that we're totally
irreplacable as far as wildlife enforcement goes. We have to get out there
and spend a whole lot of time enforcing and talking to people and making them
realize that we are the guys that have to do the job and that we are the guys

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that can do the job and once we do this and we thoroughly convince them then
they in turn will turn around and convince the political people. I don't
think you and I can do it but if the public is convinced I'm sure the right
other people are convinced.

Once we have the go ahead on the situation, we have to possibly spend some
time on convincing the public on what poachers really are. The little article
I read you kind of puts it in perspective. We talked about T.Y. spots, the
cost of them and newspaper, if you handle it right is free but T.Y. spots have
got to be the way to go as far as I'm concerned. $7,000 bucks seems like a
lot of money, but we spend a whole lot of money wandering around and
accomplishing not too much sometimes. In the Colorado publication that they
hand out, they again slam poaching pretty hard, they say who are poachers,
poaching is surrounded by romantic myths which just aren't true. Poachers are
not poor people who are merely trying to feed their families, in fact putting
food on the table is one of the least common motives for poaching. Poachers
kill for the thrill of killing, to lash out at wildlife laws or for profit.
They kill wildlife any way anytime and place they can and use the most
unsporting and cruel est methods you can imagine. Poaching rings are well
established and extremely profitable. In a nutshell, poachers are criminals
and should be dealt with as criminals. A poacher would steal your wildl.ife
and cheat your children out of a part of their future. You are his victim,

and again as surely as ? Once we've got the people convinced that the

old dirty rat syndrome for informing on people no longer holds, then we can
swing this program actually into working. Now in our thoughts, the proper
route for this to go is in the special investigator as an extent! on to his

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department, and this would be a great extent! on. We would have to have the
special training, we would have to have staff dedicated directly to this.

There was thought about the phone-out methods, we would have to have officers
manning the phones, with all respect to the clerical staff, or to anybody
who's not an officer, you have to have somebody in there who can define what

is good, what's worthwhile and what's garbage. You have to have somebody down

there who's been down on the streets and realizes exactly what we're up
against. Then he disseminates the information. The way it's done in the

States, is that once a program was set up or possibly in the initial part of

it, thought was given as to how one would obtain money for funding this
operation. The idea of using State funds, didn't really pan out.

It's worked more on a public contribution system. In our situation, I would
imagine we get a lot of support from the Fish and Game people, from various
other groups; I had a ladies institute offer money to us the other day. She
offered money to me - I assume it was for wildlife, and I'm - what I've
noticed in the print-outs from the States that draw envelopes, there's a
provision in some States that if you aren't successful in a draw for a special
season, you can pre- reassign this money to go into a reward fund, and money
from these, all the various areas which was totally public money, not
accountable under the provincial or state system is set aside, actually
invested in banks, and that sort of thing to collect interest, and a fund to
set up in totally developing. The people, or potential informers are just
shrouded in confidentiality. They aren't even handled by name, except maybe
in the most, most confidential confines. They are assigned numbers, possibly
the fellow will be asked to give his favourite number, color, and upon giving

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information, upon the person being apprehended, he claims this reward by being
able to quote these numbers and colours. He doesn't meet you on the street
when you're in uniform, and you say here's your money Jack. It's down in some
parking lot everybody in an unmarked vehicle, just possibly chuck the money in
his window, or totally, totally confidential.

I think we sometimes soft-sell things too much, or feel we don't have too much
to worry about, that we figure alot of times we're dealing with the ordinary
farmer who's pretty good fellow, he just went wrong. I personally feel that
the people in the States are working with possibly some cats that are a bit
worse than we have, but we have some bad critters here too, and things sure
aren't improving. We're getting a lot of imports in here who are pretty good
at home and their morals aren't changing when they hit Alberta. The program
again, v^ould have to be highly, highly professional. I feel that if we set up
the fund, set up the system for reporting, convinced everybody, if we didn't
hold to confidentiality, if we didn't handle the situation when it came up,
things started to go sour, I think the whole system v/ould collapse in on
itself, and we would certainly lose out. In a situation like that I doubt
you'd ever get a chance to try again.

There's a great number of things that could be said, we could discuss the
amount of rewards. I guess that's something you don't even bother doing until
you find out whether its going to go or not. Just as a word. Hew Mexico has a
reward system of $250.00, I guess its the minimum, I think it might be
negotiable. I'm not sure, a minimum of $250.00 for convictions resulting in
big game, endangered species, or similar charges, it goes down to a $100.00

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for lesser offences. As I told some guys in the group, you can sway peoples
morals by money. They won't report for a little bit, but they will report for
a whole bunch. Something like Milt McKee last night when he was in the bar, I
was sitting there having a drink with him, and he kind of took a liking to one
of these little girls in red up there, so he said would you consider making
love to me for a million dollars, she said gee I sure would, he said what

about 25f? - she said I guess not - what do you think we are? He said I've

established what you are we're haggling over the price now. So, in order to
make this thing go, we can't mickey mouse around with little penalties, you

have to be firm, you have to set up, you have to have a high enough reward

system to be acceptable, you cannot offer a guy $25.00 bucks to possibly
compromise himself. As I said before, we can't barge into this, it has to be
set up very carefully, it's something for the future, I think we have to do
alot with our Department, we have to get the special investigator thing really
going, get him set up, that has to be a stepping stone to this. Without the
professionalism, I not shaking cause I'm nervous, my arms gone silly here,
without that professionalism we don't stand a chance.

I guess the conclusion of our group was that such a program would be
beneficial to our effort, but the ground work has to be done properly and
start to be laid as soon as possible. By ground work, I mean starting to let
people know by spots on T.V., that the poacher is not a poor misguided person,
he has very, very well considered his route. You hit the few accidental guys,
but the guy we want is very, very sincere about what he's doing. Probably as
sincere as we are. So there's a whole lot more to say about it, but I think
this is about all there is to say now except for the questions. I think its

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very interesting, it has possibilities, and does anybody have any questions?

QUESTION - inaudible.

Has it been tried in Canada? Yea apparently its being tried right now.

Federal Fisheries in British Columbia - I didn't realize that, its just in the
basic stages is it, or are they actually ready to pay money? OK Ground work
wasn't quite laid properly and its still in a pretty straining development
position.

QUESTION??

As far as I know there are three states involved, there's New Mexico,

Colorado, and Arizona I believe.

QUESTION: {seems like different voice)

Yea Chuck, Federal Fisheries in B.C. are in the process of trying to establish
this type of a program right now - they didn't do the ground work and they
started to get into the program and because they didn't do the proper
groundwork and sell it to the powers that be, they got no support whatsoever,
so they've had to go I understand, to the B.C. Wildlife Federation, which is
something like our Fish and Game Association and have them try and operate the
program for them, and I would' t be a party to anything like that in Alberta.

Go ahead Egan.

(QUESTION) inaudible

130

New Mexico and Arizona I believe, you have to write the citation but the
Colorado one, at least the information I read last night was infonnation,
which struck me at the time as being rather strange, a guy could make himself
a buck or two if he played his cards right, but certainly the only way to run
it is on a citation. Arizona you require a conviction also.

QUESTION - inaudible -- Pardon me?

Yeah - possibly - Jim Vaught would you mind to handle a few of the specifics
to your State? Right now is a good time - One thing I didn't mention - I
should have - I missed it - is one problem I can really foresee, and it hits
absolutely every facet of our work is in order to respond its pretty dog gone
hard on our time slots and with our manpower, it would really have to be
looked at because to be effective we'd have to respond.

QUESTION? Jim Vaught: What was your specific question again?

There's a few of these kind of problems that exist with a program like this,
when we first started, I know my people very well O.K. and I know their
abilities to do things and one of my fears was that these officers themselves
would become involved - in other words, a guy might come across enough
information that he was relatively sure he was going to make an apprehension,
go to some family member, go to some friend, go to another law enforcement
officer and say hey - if you'll call the Zenith number and turn this in, we'll
split it. That was one of my fears. I never have caught anybody doing it, I
have a suspicion that it was done a couple of times. There's a greater

131

problem than that, and that, the officers have a tendency to, if they get
somebody in their hip pocket, somebody thats giving them information in the
past, they have the habit or desire to encourage this person to keep giving
them information and one of the problems we have or had, that was pretty
sigif leant along these lines was the officers, some of them would receive
information on their own and then would encourage this person to call in and
get the money to keep them on their good side, and we've leaned on them quite
a bit and said Look, if we keep going this direction, we're going to get into
the position where were not going to get any information without having to pay
for it. And that money is there and is to be used for rewards, for
information, but don't encourage these people to call in, unless they bring it
up initially. That answer your question? Those are some of the kinds of
problems we have along those lines. Basically, that's a small percent of the
cases, those kinds of things just don't happen much.

OTHER QUESTIONS: One at a time - don't everybody stick their hand up all
together - yes sir? Our conviction rate hasn't changed. We run in the
neighbourhood of 97% successful convictions and our OGT? cases will either be
equal to that or exceed that. If you're talking about numbers of cases, our
numbers of cases on big game, it has significantly increased that, probably
just a rough guess, probably in the neighbourhood of 1/3 of the cases. Some
of its kind of difficult to establish whether or not we would have detected
that crime, if we didn't have Operation Gain Thief. You can't positively say
well we would have found out about it or we wouldn't have found out about it.

132

But just guessing I would say that it increased the number of big game cases
by about 1/3. Pause

Like I've talked with some of you people individually, and talked with you
collectively at the OGT session this morning, this operation is pretty
sensitive, its pretty hot running type of wildlife enforcement. It's not just
another technique that's easily implemented and easily executed. The kinds of
people that we're dealing with here, they come in a wide array of people. We
have paid everything from kids in orphanages to people that have been
committed to the insane assylums, heroin addicts, wives against their
husbands, brother in laws, employees against their bosses, alot of the people
that you're used to getting information from come in a variety of the good
farmer, like I was talking about a while ago, or the concerned sportsman. In
an operation like this, these are not the people that you corrinonly deal with.
The concerned sportsman is giving you that information because he has a vested
interest, he has a desire to see that wildlife maintained for his own use.

The people that we deal with a good percent of the time are not that. They
are criminals themselves, they are people that hang out in these circles that
inform on each other strictly for the money. My way of thinking, the
concerned sportsman and the rancher, they don't have information on the people
that I want information on. The people that I want information on are crooks,
and the people that they associate with are crooks. You have to understand
that the guy you're paying money to is very likely informing on someone that
he steers around with in the same criminal type element. You give him that
money and he goes and buys heroin with it and the next day the informer may

133 -

very easily flip-flop from one to the other. These are the kinds of people
you're dealing with. These are the people that know about crime.

What was your other questions Bob about something? The type of cases that we
deal with the majority of time are illegal posession of big game. You don't
commonly get calls about someone being seen in the field conducting illegal
activity, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. The rule is a case
involving a person that has it usually in possession at his house, and it may
come very quickly, the animal might not even be cut up, it might be still
hanging in the garage. It may be cut up and packaged, and in the deep
freeze. But usually you're talking about possession of big game and usually
its at the guy's residence. We're not talking about a random encounter
between the informant and the defendent in the field. Usually the informant
and the defendent have a very very close relationship between the two of
them. Yes sir?

(QUESTION) Yes, let me tell you how. We have spent alot of time and effort
polishing our peoples ability to procure search warrant with very, very
limited probable cause. There's officers with the New Mexico department of
Game and Fish that teach other officers procurement of afadavits and search
warrants. They teach probable cause, they teach voracity of informants and
how to establish voracity, and how to get search warrants based on very little
probable cause, and this goes back to what the gentleman that was up here
talking before said, when he talked about laying the ground work. We laid
lots of ground work, partly by design and partly by accident that allows this

134

system to work, we have a lot of support from the public and we have a lot of
support from the judicial system, the judges. I've gone in and got warrants
on what I knew for a fact to be not enough probable cause, and visited with
the Judge, and explained to him, establish as much voracity in the informant
as I can.

Inaud ible Portion.

Say what kind of money? $250.00 bucks for a big game case, thats the minimum,
now we have offered as much as $2,600.00 dollars and we offered that for,
there was a killing of five bighorn sheep altogether, and we offered
$2,600.00. The most we've ever paid was $1100.00 and that was a case
involving five head of elk. It's kind of interesting, the program that this
one was modelled after was a one called Crime Stoppers, in Albequerque.

Exactly the same kind of system to pay for information leading to the arrest
and conviction, and ours is modified, it only pays for arrest, it doesn't have
to have a conviction. Kind of interesting, they pay $1,000.00 across the
board for murder and we've offered quite a bit more for wildlife crime.

Yes sir, the gentleman in the back row ---- speak up I can't hear you -
inaudible - No, and I've always suspicioned that it would. I've tried to
build in safe-guards into the system to where that wouldn't happen, to where
we would' nt be paying for every scrap of evidence, or every scrap of
information. It may at some time in the future, but up until now, no. There
was another guy -- inaudible -- Not necessarily on a poster, that's one of the
things I had in my notes to talk with you about. There must be quite a bit of
difference between your media services here and ours. Our media services are

135 -

committed to a certain percent of their time must be for public service, which
is free of charge. In other words, if I go to them and say hey I would like
for you to run this article, or put this on television, as a public service,
they are committed to do that, and the way I understand the public affairs
discussion, that option is not available to you here, but our media are more
than happy to run these things. Usually they don't have enough public service
type blurbs to fill up the time that they are allocated for, so they're
anxious to have them, and the sheep is an example, we ran it every way you
could run it; run it on television, we showed mini-camera of the scene, of
the dead sheep, the location, that kind of thing. Ran it in the newspaper,
anybody that would print it, we gave them the information. But posters - no.

Yes sir? -inaudible- Rewards, you mean rewards - we don't pay out fines.

Some of us pay a few speeding tickets I guess. I don't know I'd have to dig
out some of the material, it's here some place. It would vary from year to
year. Several thousand dollars, inaudible - yea, that would be in the ball
park.. Other questions — yes sir - inaudible - O.K. sometimes these
infomiants are revealed - and through no fault of our own, they reveal
themselves. Keep in mind we deal with a wide array of people, everything from
kids to professional informants. Professional informants are very easy to
deal with, they know exactly what you -need, and when they come to you the
first time, they've usually got it, they've done this enough times that they
know what the officer needs for probable cause. The majority of the people we
deal with are not professional informants. They're crooks, but they probably
haven't had an opportunity to be informants very often, and you first of all
have to establish the relationship between the defendant and the informant

136 -

because usually they're very, very close, in other words, they're going to
have daily contact between each other, and once you establish that, by asking
questions, you know, how did you come across this information, what kind of a

relationship do you have with this person, if we go to him and question him is

it going to leave you in a bad position, how many people know about this
situation -- these types of questions, and these people are schooled by us
over the phone by saying look - you live in a little bitty town, you're fixing
to get $250.00 bucks cash, you've been broke all your life and all of a sudden
you're buying rounds of drinks for everybody down at the bar, you don't have
to be any kind of mental giant to put two and two together and come up with

four. We have had these people get into some tough positions through their

own actions and their own mouth, not as a result of what we've said or done.

One example I used in the committee meeting this morning, and knocking on wood
and keeping my fingers crossed - we've never had one hurt or killed that I
know of. We did have two informants excuse me two defendents that got sent to
the hospital, they loaded up and went over to the informants house, they
figured out who he was and they were going to go over there and do him a job
and he had some of those big red lava rocks that they use for decoration out
in the front yard, and picked up one of these and built a fire to the two
defendents and finally got both of them's head caved in and sent to the
hospital, but as far as getting informants hurt, none that I know of. But
that's a very real possibility. - Other questions? If you've got them ask
them - yes sir? -inaudible- Mone that I know of. But keep in mind, we go to
quite an extensive conversation with these people trying to leave them in the
safest position that we can. Some of these cases that people infonm to us, we
won' t pursue .

137 -

Colorado called up oh I guess a month after they'd had their program and they
said hey - we've got a case here involving a shack job informant, thats
informing against this guy, he's beat her up before when she informed, the guy
had left, and now three days later he's returned and living with her again.
We've got enough probable cause for a warrant, we've got the deer horns and
all this, and the meats there - what do you think? And I said boy your
skating out there on thin ice. I'd be really, really careful, if you know
this guy has beat her up before, and there's very few people know about this
deer, I said I believe I'd put that one on the back burner. I'm not in the
position of wanting to put one of these infonnants in a very compromising
position over one of the King's deer. Some of them you just administratively
have to draw the line and say no, we're not going to pursue this one, but
thats after we've exhausted every feasibile possiblity to investigate it.

Thats the rare occasion, maybe one in a hundred is in such a position that you
can' t pursue it.

This other gentleman had a question here - somebody had their hand up. -
inaudible - O.K. jail sentences are a very rare occasion. Very small
percentage of them involving jail time. One of the common things for a judge
to do is impose a jail sentence, and suspend all of it if the guy comes across
with the fine money. Sometimes, second time offenders are jailed, sometimes
there's deals made between us and the judges. We sometimes select a person as
a target, and we stay with him until we have him where we want him. Example
of this is a guy by the name of B.B. Gonzales, killed enough deer, you
couldn't get them all in this room, illegal, and everybody knew it, we were
severely chastisted by the public for allowing it to continue and we went to

138 -

the judge, and we said Your Honor, what would it take to get him jailed, and
he said you get him in here on two different big game violations and I'll jail
him, and we went to quite an extent to get that done, we did get it done.

Maybe one in a hundred cases, maybe more than that, probably as many as five
or seven in a hundred will receive jail time, but its a rare occasion --- yes
sir?

O.K. to answer your question - none of the names are never put down, that's
not recorded anyplace, that was we can legitimately say in court » no I don't
know. Some of these people we do know. We've never been asked to disclose
one of these informants and had to do that. As far as security in our office
- our office is relatively secure, theres myself and two other officers that
typically take these calls. Our secretary is a very, very competent person
that has been in law enforcement a long time and she knows the ins and outs
and she can talk with one of these people just as well as any officer can.
Sometimes its necessary to go get an officer that can speak Spanish, some of
these people that call in basically can't speak english, so we have to go
outside the office and get somebody to interpret for us. Other questions -
yes sir - inaudible ■> Why would you have his phone number? Oh yeah - these
cases will come to you in different forms. One time you'll get a call and
you'll have everything you need to start the investigation, the next time the
person will come to you and this is common of lady informants, and lady
informants are very, very good. They're in such positions to find out things
that guys just don't usually know about and they talk about them in odd
places. Beauty shops, you can get some tremendous information out of a beauty
shop. But typically lady informants don't know what you need. They don't

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deal with it on a day to day basis either as a criminal or a cop, but they do

know you'll pay them money, they've got that part of it figured out.

Waitresses, overhearing conversation, barmaids, they want the money, and
they've heard about the crime, but they don't know what you need. So very
often you have to cultivate this person, and say o.k. now you go back and
re-enter into this relationship with this person, and you come back with this
information to me. Call me back tomorrow, o.k. and then they'll trot off and
start dragging together what you actually need, what'll do you some good, and
you may end up talking with this person half a dozen times and then the next
call you might just deal with him the one time. But it's always "alright, you
go find this out and then get ahold of me tomorrow" they won't forget you,

those dollar signs keep going by in their eyeballs.

Other questions - yes sir - inaudible - Sure, you can use a body wire, no I
don't like phone taps much, we've used them on occasion, I don't know the
situation here but down there they're perfectly legal as long as one of the
parties involved knows that its being recorded. I've recorded lots of phone
conversations but not usually these OGT kind of calls. My opinion is that
that's a liability there's no use of adding on to it of having that persons
voice recorded and having it available. It's not necessary. No basically
don't do it. Other questions - some of you guys are going to have to have a
cup of coffee, I can tell that you're going straight down hill, me included.
Other questions -

Thanks a lot, I guess we'll turn it back to Dennis.

140 -

APPLAUSE

Thanks Si 1 . Jim I don't
would like your services
Invest igat ions .

know, maybe you want to stay up here, I think Len
again. Len you can go into your talk on Special

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Special Investigations
ten Cormier

O.K. I'd just like to start by saying one thing, we learned something very
important this morning to do with special investigations, we don't know where
we're going, or what we're doing in it. I should'nt say we don't know where
were going, we have no experience in it, we don't really know what we're
doing. It's a wonder that somebody hasn't been hurt out there in some of the
jobs that have been carried out, we have no expertise in our Department in it
whatsoever. We identified some problems, but what it boils down to is those
problems are there because we don't know what were doing. Right now the staff
consists of Stan Webb, later on there will be a Section Head, in special
investigations, there's going to be a change in the approach in the way it was
used in the past. The Department may use other staff that our own Divisional
officers, uniformed officers, may or may not be aware of that will be for our
own good and their own good. As the section develops and obtains a budget, it
will be monitored, when work goes on, uniformed officers may or may not be
used in special investigations. So with that in mind. I'll call on Jim Vaught
to come up. We're really lacking in training, in this field and there's none
of here more qualified to talk about that than Jim. I just have one more
comment before Jim starts for the ones that weren't in our workshop this
morning. Mr. Adams told us that over the last couple of weeks he has gotten
the support of the Minister for the special investigations branch.

Jim Vaught: Its taken me the majority of the time that I've been here talking
to some of you guys on a one on one kind of basis to try to figure out where
you live and the types of problems you're exposed to compared to the types of

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problems I'm exposed to, the different policital are as that we're operating
in, different amounts of support and knowledge that we have in certain fields
varies. I'll speak pretty much in generalities, some about special
investigations, some about covert operations. I'd also like to make some
comments about some of the other things I've heard here today, the public
affairs, the aircraft and whatnot. There's lots of interest sitting out there
and theres lots of ability sitting out there. Theres some things that I think
are necessary to run a very successful law enforcement operation and things
that are absolutely essential.

I'll draw a little diagram. Pause. This little pyramid is very important, in
order to conduct a successful law enforcement operation, you've got to have
four elements; they're absolutely necessary. The one on the left, the S is
support; you've got to have support in your organization from one end to the
other, you've got to have support from the public and you've got to have
support from political - who you call your politicians, the courts, everyone
in the province. The K on the right is knowledge; you've got to be an
expert. There's no place in modern law enforcement for the untrained.

There's no place in 1981 law enforcement for 1930 ideas and procedures. These

two go hand in hand. In order to get that support on the left, you're going
to have to have lots of- knowledge on the right, and thats going to have to
come from a concious effort on your part. The two B's in the middle are for
such things as insight, endurance and ability and they stand for brains and
balls. You've got to deal with intelligent people, and you've got to have
aggresive people to conduct law enforcement. That you have. I would suggest

that if you want to strengthen your position as far as wildlife law

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enforcement goes, that you work on the two outside parts of the pyramid. I
think you have the middle down pat. I think you need to work in the area of
support and I think you have to work in the area of knowledge, and I would
work on that knowledge first and foremost, and I would do it through
training. There's other law enforcement agencies in this province that will
provide training. I don't care if its the R.C.M.P. or the Edmonton P.D., but
there's some people here who have the ability to train you.

You were talking about personal safety, that happens to be a specific interest
for me personally, I teach officer safety, and I teach it not only to our
outfit, but to other outfits. By the same token, in other areas. I'm
extremely weak. I'm extremely weak in areas of civil rights, juveniles;
these are not areas that I typically deal with and I'm very weak in them and I
know it. I try to expose myself to every molecule of training I can get in
these areas, and there are people who are certainly experts in those fields.
They are in New Mexico and they're here. I would ferret them out and I would
make sure that I expose myself to whatever training they have to offer. I'm
glad to see the interest in your special operations division, I see that it's
starting out very small, but there's some thought being put into it, and
that's good. I would hope that in the future you could expand it as far as
personnel and budget will allow.

In New Mexico, we have a plain clothes division that is represented by myself,
an assistant and a research specialist in Santa Fe. It's supported by four
area law enforcement specialists that are plain clothes officers. They're
responsible for supervision of uniformed officers, the coordination of their

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daily law enforcement activities, they're also used for surveillance, for
investigations, and for research. I'd like to expand, just for a few moments
on this research vs. pure law enforcement type operations. Within our outfit,
our plain clothes officers, and/or any covert operators we might have; not
only do they execute operations for pure law enforcement, but pure research;
if we're going to try to enter into an endeavour like the selling of moose
meat, one of the first things we're going to try and do is identify the size
of the problem. You can't justify manpower, you can't justify money being
spent, without information to back it up, and this is one of the ways we go
about it, is establishing the size of the problem with plain clothes officers,
its very, very effective.

Covert operations are tough to say the least, they're not easy, they involve
alot of money, they involve a lot of headaches in the administration, they are
very productive, they can be, they can be done with many different people.

But one of the greatest benefits I feel, if you're going to be looking in
these directions, I would long before I was talking about deep cover
operations, where you're talking about a person in place for an extended
length of time, and I'm talking about like a year to a year and a half, before
you started trying to get into those types of endeavours, I would certainly
encourage you to look at plain clothes officers and have them well trained in
the areas of search and seizure, probable cause, entrapment. These people can
be of great benefit, and they're not near the risk that deep cover operations
are, they're not near as complicated to execute, and they don't have that
sharp hook of very, very, dangerous liabilities associated with them, that
some of these deep cover operations do.

145

I understand your problems with the transformation from uniformed officers to
plain clothes officers. There's probably more fears along this line than
there should be; it can be done and can be done well. You can certainly make a
plain clothes officer out of a uniformed officer, and do it very well. But I
would not encourage in any way, shape, or form, any uniformed officers being
used in any deep cover operation. The risks are too great. You've already
had too much exposure as an enforcement officer, your attitude, your
mannerisms, are established, your ethics are very very different than the
criminal element. You're talking about a great deal of officer stress and
take my word for it, if you're used in a deep cover operation, the mystique
and the cloak and dagger part of it, the part that you find very interesting,
you'll get over that damn quick.

Another area that I would encourage you to work towards, is securing a system
by which you can have some money made available to you for either yourselves
as uniformed officers, or your plain clothes officers, whoever it is, that
they're not closely accountable for, that they can use to tag people along, to
buy information, to move people, to buy them dark rum in the case of the
Frenchman here, anything that is necessary, I feel like that money is damned
sure a necessity for running a good law enforcement program.

We were talking about the aircraft earlier, and we're talking about flying it
at low level and what not, the fixed wing - I don't understand why you do
that. I'm sure you have your reasons. When we're talking about aircraft,
night patrol, my opinion is that we've executed it very well and to give you
an example, when we first started flying night patrol, one night I was flying

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observer, and we had eleven spotlights inside at one time, and that was during
deer season, and that's not people looking for camps or lost hunters, or
whatever they may tell you; its people who are out actively spot- 1 ight ing .
Thats been about six years ago and now its not an uncommon thing to fly three
or four nights and never come across a spot-lighter, except during deer
season, and then they're a little bit more frequent. I'm not saying that
we've done much for the wildlife resource, I have a suspicion that they're
just killing them in the day time instead of at night. But that aircraft is a
damned effective way of working spot-lighters, and like I say, I don't know
the difference why, but we fly at a very, very high altitute, keep in mind the
elevation that your starting at is a lot higher too, like where I live is 7300
feet and when I say flying at 16,000, that's just to get above the mountains.
The mountains go up to about 14,000 feet and we have no problems with flying
high, I wouldn't have it any other way. If they want to fly at 3,000 feet,
they're going to have to get them a different observer, I ain't going.

I noticed a comment earlier about two person units. ^ I understand that you're
fixing to have a lady officer come onboard; gentleman, you're in for a jolt -
there's lots of problems associated with women officers that you probably
haven't thought about, or been exposed to. Our first lady officer came
onboard oh I suppose its been five or six years ago now, and I can look back
and remember the same kinds of comments and the same kinds of attitudes. I've
heard from this group of people here. I don't know all the problems that are
associated with lady officers, but I'm certainly aware of some of them.

You're talking about a difficult factor, being a lady officer, at least in New
Mexico you are, and I would suspect here, it's going to be very similar. Keep

147 -

in mind that this person is going to be subject to an entirely different
pressure from her fellow officers, she is going to be exposed to different
types of reactions from the public, than male officers, and Lord knows, she's
going to need a lot more help than criticism. Both the the proponents and the
opponents of lady officers will be her enemies. The basic red-neck faction of
this group of people that are going to sit there and say this is absurd, this
is idiocy, it won't work, that are going to watch her and give her all the
rope she needs to hang herself with are definitely her enemies. Sitting
around making snide remarks, and sharp comments and letting her fail on her
own is certainly not going to help the situation any. By the same token, the
people that support lady officers, that back them, that see the need for them
are also her enemies, and that was me. I went to bat for lady officers, I
said there's no reason why they can't operate just as effectively as male
officers, and I was not alone, there was a certain group of people within the
department of Game and Fish that had the same feelings that I did, they went
to bat for these people, supported them, and unknownst to us, we were also her
enemy, and I can look back now, and understand some of the mistakes that we
made. Rather than correcting these young lady officers in the same manner
that male officers were corrected, we had a tendency to over-compensate for
them. We had a tendency to not show them the error of their ways early on.
This resulted in one officer being moved several times, being disciplined,
being suspended, the lady officer I'm talking about. Ultimately she was
de-commissioned and given a fate worse than death - she was put into
planning. She didn't stay there for about a year and couldn't fly the mission
and eventually left the department. Part of her problems were certainly her
own. She had a very short temper, she was subject to use excessive force, and

148 -

part of the problems were not of her creating, but they were a creation of her
peers, and that was what I was talking about, about giving them enough rope to
hang themselves, rather than being of some help to them. I would caution you
about sniping at these people, and try to make a concious effort to say
something constructive as opposed to destructive.

What did you finally decide about the driving without lights? This gentleman
back here - I had to step out while you were talking about it - you said you
were going to talk about it later and I was gone when you did. pause.. Good.

We just went through this about two years ago in my organization. You would
think it was John Oil linger himself out there running that spot light, the
kind of reaction that these officers give. There's no extent to what they
won't go to to apprehend a spot- 1 ighter , and that includes running into each
other, into cattle guards, into cattle, off cliffs, I honestly believe that
there's probably been more elk killed by game wardens charging around in the
middle of the night with Dodge pick-ups than poachers bullets ever killed.
Black-out lights, like they used on the W.W. II vehicles, at one time that was
a very common thing. There might not be anything else on that patrol vehicle
that would work, you know, the horn might not work, the siren might not work,
the red light might not work, but that night light would damn sure work. What
this is in the trade, and it has a name, its called an accepted unsafe
practice, and any law enforcement supervisor who is worth his salt is
certainly not going to allow any unsafe practice to be done. Our people are
harped and harped to about things like this. Those night lights are no longer
on those vehicles, and its strictly against policy to drive that vehicle
without lights. And I know the types of reactions these decisions get, I know

149 -

the comments that come from uniformed officers: Well you give us this and you
give us that and you want em caught and what not and then you tell us we can't
drive around with lights. Well that's the bottom line, you're going to have
to figure out some other way to do it. I also understand that officers can
tell you to do things after they're told not to, and I hope that you
understand that I probably operate somewhat less conservat ivly than I teach,
and I'm not saying that I'm not going to drive around without lights. I'm not
going to say that I am. I'm smart enough to recognize that it's going to
happen. But keep in mind that there is no administration that is worth their
salt that would allow an accepted unsafe practice.

Somebody explain to me this media thing and why you're not allowed to use the
television, the newspapers, whatever for public service, somebody explain that
to me. Where's the guy that was in charge of the committee on public
affairs? Go over that with me, I don't understand at all where you're coming
from? pause. . That ' s very interesting - I can see that your hand would be tied
quite abit, publicity wise. In New Mexico, our public affairs division and
the law enforcement division are bound very closely together and like I've
explained to some of you guys, my business is not catching criminals, that's
not my job at all, my job is to deter crime, and I do it by apprehending
violators and seeing to it, if I can that they merely have a chunk of their
Heiny removed in court, but that doesn't do me alot of good. What does do me
a lot of good is the deterrent that comes as a result of that prosecution with
the majority of the people of the State, and I would certainly pursue
developing an allegiance with your public affairs people, and if you don't
have them, see what you can do about getting them. I would think that it

150 -

would be awful hard to conduct an effective law enforcement program without
them, if not impossible.

Yes sir? pause - Usually its the next day. Now keep in mind we build a news
release and send it to each one of the newspapers in the state. Now what part
of that news release they choose to use, I have nothing to do with, no say
so. If I want something advertised, or publicized in a specific area of the
State for a specific reason, I have one of the public affairs people who has
colleagues in these newspapers throughout the State that I can lean on. Do
them favours, and they'll do you favours back. They're always wanting to know
a good newsy item. I encourage slipping them information and allowing them to
get the jump on other newspapers. Unbeknownst to the other newspapers of
course. That way I don't mind going back and asking for a favour later in the
form of hey, would you run this for me, and usually the answer is sure. It's
a you scratch my back, and I'll scratch your back kind of thing. But it
usually comes out pretty quick, and anything thats of interest like OGT cases,
where you're talking about lots of cloak and dagger stuff and paying money and
usually percipitates a pretty substantial fine, they're more than anxious to
run it. Pause.. I can understand that .... .Any more questions about anything..
I'm an open book of knowledge - just turn my pages... probably better that
find I'm full of bullshit right ? Anything else. I thank you gentleman.
APPLAUSE.

Thank you.

151

Closing Remarks
Bob Adams,

Director, Enforcement, Liaison and Standards

The topics that you had at the workshop were very good and certainly the
participation was excellent. The results of the workshop, the problems identified,
the solutions recommended, the five on the workshop chairman I'd like you to put
those down in writing, send them into us. Certainly there's a lot of things that
we can do to inprove the lot for you people. There's many of the things we should
be changing anyway and this will give us a handle on it. Definitely those
recommendations that you had, the concerns that you have will be looked at. We
don't guarantee any results right away. Some of them can't be, some of them will
be, those we'll be addressing. ^

With regards to yesterdays program with the firearms, we found that we have a
problem here. The sidearms obviously we're not going to get them at this time.
That's going to necessitate some more lobbying on the part of the Officer's
Association, on the part of each and every one of you out there and of course on us
in headquarters. I am prepared to do that, but I think we have to change our
tactics. I have met with Pat Long and Earl Dodsworth over lunch. We discussed
some of the ways we'll should attack it. We'll look at that again at another
meeting and they will be meeting with the Minister. I'll be meeting with the
Minister and hopefully we can come up with something. I don't believe it's a dead
issue but certainly we're in a hell of a rut right now.

152

I'd like to talk on Gordon Kerr's address just briefly, and that's the role of the
officer. What I got out of his address yesterday was the primary function of the
Fish and Wildlife officer as it is today is still the enforcement, problem wildlife
and the response to the public complaints. In other words, you must be available
to do those three things. Those are your primary responsibilities in the field and
the response to the public complaints. In other words, you must be available to do
those three things. Those are your primary responsibilities in the field. You
take those away and you certainly lessen your effectiveness. You must be involved
in all of the activities of Fish and Wildlife within the district. That
involvement as I see it and what I have been fighting for is that you are informed
and you are knowledgeable of what is going on. If a program is being conducted by
any one of the other branches you must be aware of it, you must know the results.

If you are available from one of previous three activities, and you can assist the
other branches on some of their programs, by all means we encourage that and it
should be done. You shouldn't do the other things to the detrement to the
enforcement , the problem wildlife and the response to the public. That has to
come first and I believe Gordon realizes that, certainly some of the regional
directors support that. Thats not unanimous and it is not unanimous with the
Branch Directors in Edmonton. There are three in Edmonton that do not believe that
you should be as heavily involved in enforcement. I think we're winning that
battle, at least I hope we are. Certainly the Deputy Minister in his address, he
did state that if we go straight enforcement thats fair ball. We have to decide
where we're going in the long run, not just the immediate future. I see us
continuing our role as being actively involved in all aspects, but that involvement
with the other branches, as I stated before is being knowledgeable, and informed of
their activities so that you can give the public the information they require when

153

they come into your offices.

The enforcement, the problem wildlife and the complaints, the way you have
conducted yourself in the past and in the present has resulted in a very good
reputation for the Fish and Wildlife Officer. Mr. McDougall yesterday stated that
the Officer has a good reputation with the general public, but he said that is not
true for the Fish and Wildlife Division as a whole and that is correct. That is
one of the reasons why I don't think that the Fish and Wildlife Officer's role can
be changed. I think we have to bring the rest of the Department, or the Division
up to the standard of the Fish and Wildlife officer and his performance and not
take him down to the level of performance of the other branches.

The workshops this afternoon, the training courses that were identified, yesterday
as well we heard people talk about the human relations aspect of it. Bev Issacs
who addressed you yesterday morning has been asked by ourselves to come up with a
number of programs that can be given with the various training exercies that we
have in place now. Certainly the dragging operations, the handling of dead bodies,
the stress that you go through as a result of that is going to be built into the
boat course. Some of the things the affect you by wearing a sidearm or carrying a
rifle, let alone using it. This type of a course will be built into the firearms
course. That's been discussed with Red Hasay. He advises me he has tried to do
that for the last four to five years and has had no success. Hopefully, Bev will
have these type of courses available for us to include with this sping's program.

If we can, we also hope to have it available for the problem wildlife centre. So
every course that we develop we will also be developing a human relations type
course and how that affects you as an enforcement officer, the reactions you may

154 -

expect from yourself as a result of some of these activities, I think it's long
overdue and it's a good time now to get into it.

One of the things that's been put to me by the Regional Directors, particularly as
a result of the last go around of transfers and promotions they didn't feel some of
them anyway, that it was handled very well. If you have any concerns as Officers,
you're the ones that are involved, you're the ones that are being transferred,
you're the ones that are being promoted. If you have any complaints with the
system I would certainly like you to get hold of your Regional Officers. If they
don't listen to you then come direct to Jim Struthers or myself. We have the lines
of communications, but as Gordon says, if need be sometimes you have to bypass
that. But if you're not satisfied with it get to them. Briefly, I would like to
state that the transfers, the promotions, are not made arbitrarily by Jim Struthers
or Bob Adams. They are discussed with the Regional Officers, and for the most part
that is done at a Regional Officer's meeting, and each individual and location is
discussed and everybody has input into it. If there is only one district and one
individual involved and particularly, right at this time for expediency sake, we
have been contacting the Regional Officers and informing the individual involved
but certainly we don't make any arbitrary transfers.

One other thing with regards to the transfers, when we send out a list like we did
the last time, we state that there's four places or five places that are available,
a number of you realized, and I would like to think that all of you did, but a
number of you did realize that there would be other vacancies created as a result
of transfers. For that reason we had numerous districts that were asked for.

Thats good, that's the way it should be. In the past, I realize that it was an

155

accepted fact that if you threw your name into the hat that meant you were subject
to being transfered anywhere. That's not the case now. If you're not interested
in going there for a specific reason, we won't send you there. We do maintain the
right that if we feel for yourself or there is pressure from outside somewhere,
anywhere that it's best for you and best for the Division we do have the right to
arbitrarily make the transfer but for the most part, transfers will be made with
input from yourself request as to where you want to go and through the Regional
Officer.

As for next years' meeting, hopefully we'll have another one and I would like to
reiterate right now that we require input from you. We don't want to put together
a program that we want, we want to put together a program that you want. The
program that you had this year was exceptionally good. The workshops today, I
think went very well and we can thank Judy Carss and Mike Melnyk for that. They
argued at the meeting and I argued them down, I didn't think they'd be successful.

I was wrong. They were successful. So input from yourself for next year is a must
and you can start thinking about it now we'll go back to you again through the
regional officers for course material, for guest speakers, we'll go to whatever
extent is possible to obtain what we think is the best for you. We brought Jim in
from New Mexico. I think he had a lot to offer us. For those in the special
investigations workshop this morning, I think they realized why when I got into
Edmonton we cut off all the special investigations programs. We didn't know what
the hell we were doing and until we do we really won't be going back into it. That
will be what Stan Webb and who ever gets the special investigations Section Head
job will be doing. If they can't come up with programs we won't be going into any
part of it. We'll get rid of the section and put them back somewhere else. So

156 -

with that, gentlemen, if anybody has any questions they would like to ask me I'll
answer any.

Yes, Marv,

Question - inaudible

We are ordering the standard millitary combat boot. We were told originally we
couldn't get it, we found out when we sent out the tenders we got a tender on it.
It's half the price of the ones we were looking at previously, it's an excellent
boot. The boots are on order, we're just waiting for the delivery.

Okay, gentlemen, thank you very kindly for your attendance. It's been a good
meeting. Have a safe trip.