Union fights ruling in bear cub killing case

The conservation officer who captured international headlines in 2015 for refusing to kill two bear cubs and won his court case arguing that he was later terminated improperly faces a new legal challenge by his own union.

Bryce Casavant won his case at the B.C. Court of Appeal June 4 in a unanimous decision that ruled the B.C. Labour Relations Board didn't have the authority to rule on a matter that should have been dealt with under the B.C. Police Act.

“It's being thrust back into the unknown,” Casavant said Sunday. “I was pretty confident before the Court of Appeal that the concepts of constabulary discipline that I was advancing were well-established.”

The B.C. Government Service and Employees Union, however, has filed a request for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada challenging that ruling upends “years of labour relations between the employer (the province) and union.”

Casavant made the news as a conservation officer in 2015 for refusing the order of a superior to euthanize two bear cubs whose mother he had to kill after she had entered a home near Port Hardy.

Arguing he had discretion over what to do with them, he took the cubs to a veterinarian, who assessed and transferred them to an animal rescue organization that later released them into the wild.

He was deemed “unsuitable for the job of conservation officer,” and moved to a job in the Ministry of Forests without the status of special constable.

Said Casavant: “(My) own union has turned on me” by appealing the decision of B.C.'s highest court. “It is gut wrenching.”