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The deer debate must become public
Perceptions by Gerry Warner
Please consider this column an open letter to the citizens of Cranbrook and my fellow councilors on Cranbrook City Council. Regardless of where you stand on the deer issue we all share responsibility for the problem and I don’t think any of us has been living up to our responsibility including Cranbrook City Council, which has failed in one key respect.
WE HAVE NOT BEEN TRANSPARENT!
And because of that we have lost most of our credibility on this issue with our own citizens, regardless of where they stand on the cull. And once again, we’ve raised our city’s profile outside of Cranbrook in a most negative way. This has got to stop because nobody wins on an issue as deeply divisive as this and it will only get worse.
As a result, I’ve drafted a notice of motion demanding that all future council discussion of the deer cull issue take place in the public part of council meetings until we develop and approve a deer cull policy. At this point, I have no idea what the policy will be. It could be to continue the cull or to try something entirely different or to have no policy at all and let the chips fall where they may. But that’s not the point.
The point is that whatever we decide, IT MUST BE DECIDED IN PUBLIC!
So far we have hidden from the public eye and like shadowy apparatchiks of some Third World regime, we’ve cowered behind closed doors and taken a bad situation and torqued it up into something infinitely worse. I have been partly responsible for this and for that I here and now unequivocally apologize to each and every citizen of Cranbrook for my role in this toxic mess. As a retired journalist with more than 30 years of experience, I should have known better. But I have now realized the error of my ways and I’m determined to do better.
In this regard, I’d like to make a critical point. The argument that swayed us to retreat in-camera was because of alleged vandalism and public safety incidents during the Invermere deer cull and the possibility of similar incidents occurring here. There is some merit in this argument, but I have since come to the conclusion that whether the argument is meritorious or not, vandalism and public safety is an RCMP issue, not a council issue, and it shouldn’t have swayed our judgment in taking the public’s business behind closed doors. Once we retreated into our locked chamber, we lost control of the issue and the rest is history.
I’d also like to be upfront about where I’m coming from. I support a cull, but not in the incompetent way we’ve gone about it. Firstly, as everyone knows, a civil court case has been filed arising from the Invermere cull and I think it would have been prudent and respectful for Cranbrook City Council to wait until this case was heard. Instead, we foolishly rushed in and stirred up the proverbial hornets’ nest and made ourselves – and our city – the target of anti-cull rage from coast to coast. Talk about dumb politics. That’s about as dumb as it gets.
And what really burns me in this entire asinine fiasco is that we had the perfect solution in our hands and we let it slip through our fingers. And what is that, you rightfully ask? Let the Conservation Officers do it! They’re doing it already. Every year in Cranbrook and the rest of the province, COs cull hundreds, if not thousands, of injured deer. It’s their job and they have the expertise to do it. And legally, deer are “owned” by the Fish and Wildlife Branch and culling them is their responsibility. Passing this responsibility down to municipalities is just another provincial government download.
What more can I say? I respect the feelings of people on both sides of this tortuous debate including the suggestion to be “creative” and find ways to avoid culling while at the same time stopping urban deer from wreaking havoc on our hitherto peaceful communities. And to just show my own concern about the issue, I’ve sent emails to every council member and the mayor that I will no longer take part in any in-camera discussion about the deer issue.
This is a public issue and it should be discussed publicly.
Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and Cranbrook City Councillor. His opinions are his own.
