Why horse owners have filed a lawsuit to keep a rat-infested B.C. racetrack open

At night, a sea of rats can be seen overtop of horse manure piles. Inside the stables, they crawl atop gates, scurry from stall to stall, and burrow beneath the ground.

That's according to Donna Scrannage, a decades-long horse owner and user of the Fraser Downs racetrack in Surrey, where she says the infestation began about five years ago and has only gotten worse.

"They're in their feed tubs. They're in their water buckets. They're in the stalls constantly," she told CBC News. "They wreak a lot of havoc in there, and it's messy and it's not nice to deal with."

The Fraser Downs is owned by the gambling company Great Canadian Entertainment, which has ordered the stables to shut down for at least three months for pest control. The only problem: the facility is unique in Metro Vancouver, and horse owners depend on it to both house the animals and train them for the upcoming fall racing season.

Horse owners have filed an injunction in B.C. Supreme Court in hopes of keeping it open, proposing alternative rat eradication plans that would allow for continued use of the stalls.

"We've come up with alternate solutions so that our members are not left with nowhere to go; there are no other training facilities in the province of B.C.," said Scrannage, who is also the vice president of Harness Racing B.C. (HRBC), which is leading the lawsuit.

"Our young horses are in jeopardy of not being ready for our fall meet," said Scrannage.

In an emailed statement, Chuck Keeling, a vice president at Great Canadian Entertainment, charged HRBC with attempting to impede pest control efforts.

"We intend to vigorously defend the litigation so that we can ensure the health and safety of HRBC members, our team members, and guests," said Keeling.

Closure ordered

The Fraser Downs is one of two horse racing tracks in B.C., and the only racetrack for standardbred horses.

HRBC says it has paid GCE to use the site over the summer for 35 years. It says 218 members would be affected by a closure of the Fraser Downs, including 75 to 100 people who work there during the racing season. 

In a memo to owners from GCE, now a court exhibit, horses were ordered to vacate the premises by May 9, with the pest control project expected to last 60 to 90 days. HRBC says the closure date was recently moved to May 30.

Scrannage says GCE has suggested the stalls could reopen Aug. 15. The fall racing season is expected to begin on Sept. 4.

Scrannage says horses typically need six weeks of training before the season opens.

"Basically, they're giving us two weeks to condition horses, where normally we would have all summer," said Scrannage.

"If we don't start conditioning young horses July 1, our September start is in jeopardy," she added.

HRBC says dozens of families rely on the income generated from training and horses.

Pest control

GCE did not elaborate further on its pest control plans, but Scrannage suggested it involves poison to eradicate the rodents over several months.

HRBC says it has proposed an alternative plan for carbon monoxide fumigation that would allow for the continued use of some stalls and the race track.

"We can do this and have horses back in the barn within 24 hours," said Scrannage. "Theirs is that you need to be out in 60 to 90 days, but they're not giving us a definitive timeframe."

In a statement, HRBC president Kelly MacMillan said other proposals were also rejected.

"As a last-ditch effort to keep our workers and animals on-site, we asked GCE to keep at least one barn open through the summer months to keep them onsite and continue training, but they rejected this," said MacMillan. "We even asked them to just keep the training facilities open if the barns had to be closed."

Their case is expected to be heard in front of a B.C. Supreme Court judge on May 28.