in an effort to ensure police accountability, and in 1987 successfully represented Gary Botting in a defamation suit against Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). "There is a growing gulf between the police and public trust, which can only be fixed and crossed with any hope of restoration of faith when the police are judged for their conduct by the public themselves and not by their constant co-workers in the system itself", Christie wrote in a letter to the Victoria Times-Colonist. "The essential ingredient of a society where citizens and police are in agreement on the enforcement of the law is simply that the law applies to police and citizens in equal measure. The police cannot be above the law. With the present system of accountability, that impression is well-founded." Christie also acted in child apprehension cases, most notably that of Paul and Zabeth Bayne, a Hope, BC couple whose children were seized by the Ministry of Children and Family Development for four years, then eventually returned. From 2007 to 2010, Christie represented Bruce and Donna Montague in a constitutional challenge of Canada's gun registry and other firearms laws. The constitutional challenge was ultimately dismissed by the Ontario Court of Appeal, but Christie continued to represent the Montagues in their efforts to resist civil and criminal forfeiture applications by the Crown. In January 2012, Christie became the first lawyer to successfully challenge an application under British Columbia's Civil Forfeiture Act, when the BC Supreme Court found that the retroactive forfeiture of a truck subsequent to a criminal prosecution was "clearly not in the interests of justice". This decision was upheld on appeal. In September, 2012, Christie successfully defended Terry Tremaine, a Regina math instructor charged under Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code, by establishing that there had been unreasonable delay in bringing the case against him to trial. Politics Christie became leader of British Columbia's provincial WCC, and led it through provincial elections in that province through the 1980s and 1990s. Christie never won a seat at the provincial or federal level, nor did the BC WCC ever win any seats in the provincial elections it contested. Christie continued to run an organization with the "Western Canada Concept" name up to the time of his death, but it is no longer a registered political party except at the provincial level in British Columbia, which has relatively lax party registration laws. In 2005,