Written for Daily Hive by Bryce J. Casavant, a former BC Conservation Officer and current lecturer in legal disciplines at Royal Roads University.
A motion in the Legislature to amend BC’s police law focuses on municipal police agencies but skips over historic calls to reform the BC Conservation Officer Service and protect bears.
The majority of reported bear kills are from police services like the BC Conservation Officer Service (BCCOS). Calls for change have been long-standing.
Approximately 25% of environmental police responses result in a bear death. Roughly 75% do not. However, annual BCCOS kill numbers for bears regularly spark public outrage and concern. This includes the 603 bears killed during 2023.
The public has recently re-ignited environmental police oversight concerns, especially in relation to the issuance of assault-style weapons.
The BCCOS is not a wildlife management agency. It is a police service that was never properly designated in recent law but possesses advanced police weaponry like assault-style rifles (which are used to kill bears and pose a public safety risk if not controlled).
A new BC police reform law (Bill 17) does not address the issues of bear deaths or the paramilitarization of the BCCOS, but it should if the minister cares about wildlife and citizens. Bill 17 must protect wildlife and the environment and ensure the BCCOS is properly designated in newly proposed police reform legislation.
Bill 17 focuses mainly on municipal policing issues, jail guards, and civilian oversight board modernization. It ignores the long-standing hue and cry for refinements in BC’s environmental policing services and the BCCOS.
If the BCCOS is not a police agency, it should not have police equipment like assault-style rifles. If the minister truly wants an environmental policing agency (which has been the situation since 1871), he must properly designate the BCCOS as a provincial police agency in Bill 17 — or give the assault rifles back.
It is not correct or right to gloss over the concerns of wildlife and public safety, which have been on the record for years.