Sauvetage Animal Rescue and citizen Florence Meney, represented by lawyer Anne-France Goldwater, have filed a petition in the Superior Court of Quebec seeking to stop the City of Longueuil from carrying out a plan to cull deer in the fall of 2022. The petition seeks judicial review of the City’s decision to cull white-tailed deer living in Michel Chartrand Park, as well as an order to suspend implementation of the deer cull until the legal challenge has been decided. The court petition follows statements made in November 2021 by Longueuil Mayor Catherine Fournier, who said the City would capture and kill all but ten to fifteen deer out of the population of seventy individuals. One week after the petition was filed, the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty (SPCA) filed for leave to intervene in the case. If intervention is granted, the Montreal SPCA will argue (i) that the City did not fulfill a legal obligation to consult an animal welfare organization prior to making the decision, (ii) the method chosen to kill the deer by using a captive bolt gun carried a high risk of suffering, and (iii) that sterilizing or castrating the deer should have been considered. Read the Montreal SPCA announcement here, and read more here.
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