(Montreal) The City of Longueuil will not be able to proceed with the slaughter of deer in Michel-Chartrand Park before the Quebec Court of Appeal renders a decision on a Superior Court judgment in this case.
The Quebec Court of Appeal heard, Friday, in Montreal, a request for appeal from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the organization Sauvetage Animal Rescue. Pending the decision of the Court of Appeal, the city will not be able to proceed with the felling.
“We are awaiting the decision of the Court of Appeal which considered the stay, because we are asking to stay the decision to kill the deer while waiting for a hearing before the Superior Court”, summarizes lawyer Marie -Claude St-Amant, who represents the SPCA, during a press scrum after the hearings.
“We are still waiting to find out if the city will have the right to kill deer or not or if we will be able to do the trial on the merits to find out whether or not the decision to carry out a controlled crossbow hunt is a decision which is valid. »
The Superior Court had recently refused to order the suspension of the felling project that the City of Longueuil planned to undertake this fall. Judge Andres Garin had estimated that the inconveniences that Longueuil would suffer from a suspension of felling would be greater than those that the plaintiffs would suffer.
The Quebec Court of Appeal, however, granted the request of the SPCA and Sauvetage Animal Rescue to appeal the decision. She gave no indication of when she expects to make her decision.
Legal issue
During the hearing, which did not deal with the merits of the case, but with the decision to stay or not, Mme St-Amant argued that the Superior Court erred in taking into account the public interest in its decision. This notion should not be taken into account for an administrative decision of a municipality, according to her.
The decision of the Superior Court could have consequences for labor law, she gave as an example. “When a municipal official is fired, for example, we will have a resolution from the city, she specifies in a press scrum. If we apply the criterion of the Superior Court, it will be to say: “this dismissal was taken in the public interest” and we will have a very heavy burden to overcome to demonstrate that the dismissal was not taken in the public interest. »
“It’s the same with the deer decision. We made a decision at the City of Longueuil to kill the deer. Why this decision, which is only a decision and not a city by-law, [adoptée] without consultation, should be considered to be taken in the public interest? »
The lawyer for the city of Longueuil, Jean-Pierre Baldassare, however pleaded that the judge had not erred in his decision by taking into account the public interest. He declined to answer questions from the media after the hearing.
New evidence refused
For her part, lawyer Anne-France Goldwater, who represents Sauvetage Animal Rescue, tried to present new evidence.
She alleged that the data on the number of deer at Michel-Chartrand Park presented by the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks of Quebec and the city were erroneous.
Since 2017, the deer herd in Michel-Chartrand Park has tripled to reach some 108 heads, while the park’s capacity is only 10 to 15 of these deer. She claims there are “no more than” 60 deer.
However, the Court refused the request, judging that it was not essential to the cause presented and that it had not been presented within the time allowed.
In the deer debate, the Montreal SPCA argues that capturing and killing wild animals simply because they are believed to be harmful is no longer a socially acceptable method these days.
The City of Longueuil, which invokes the urgency of acting in the face of the explosion of the deer population in Michel-Chartrand Park, affirms that the current impasse poses serious damage to the balance of the park’s biodiversity and to the regeneration of vegetation. She also claims that there is a greater risk of car accidents and an increase in cases of Lyme disease, which deer carry.