McKenna facing Caribou lawsuit

OTTAWA — A wildlife advocacy group is taking Environment Minister Catherine McKenna to court for allegedly failing to tell Canadians how the country’s woodland caribou are being protected.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society said Thursday it had filed an application for judicial review in Federal Court in Montreal.

The Species at Risk Act requires the environment minister to “form an opinion about whether or not the critical habitat of the woodland caribou is protected,” lawyer Frederic Paquin told a news conference.

“She was supposed to form that opinion more than four and a half years ago and she failed to do so,” said Paquin. “She is quite late.”

The original failure to report occurred under the previous government, but there have also been no reports since the Liberals and McKenna took office in 2015.

The woodland caribou habitat was publicly identified by Environment Canada in 2012. The Species at Risk Act says once the habitat of a species at risk is identified, the minister of environment has six months to determine if any part of that habitat is unprotected. Every six months after that, the minister is to produce a report on the progress towards protecting it until full protection is achieved.

The society says there have been no reports at all since 2012.

The species was designated in 2002 as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. In 2011 Environment Canada estimated there were about 34,000 woodland caribou in 51 ranges in nine provinces and territories.