Decision of BC Supreme Court Roslyn Cassells v. University of Victoria -

Injunction Against Killing and Trapping of Rabbits on UVic Property

The original petition gave both parties until Aug. 27, 2010 to bring the matter before the court again, but UVic on short order brought the matter back before the courts with an Notice of Hearing to have the injunction set aside.

UVic's teams of lawyers in Victoria and Vancouver produced reams of legal arguments, while the petitioner could not afford to hire even a single lawyer. 

 

All the rabbit groups' money had been invested in spay and neuter funds and sanctuary development during the mad dash to collect enough money to sterilize and house 2000 rabbits, develop the land donated for sanctuaries into rabbit havens, and acquire the requisite Ministry of Environment permits for the sanctuaries during the one month allotted them by the University of Victoria in July of 2010.

Although the temporary ex-parte injunction was overturned today, the time taken for legal proceedings has allowed enough time to get the Ministry of Environment permits issued.  

Despite having the required permits and funding in hand, rabbit groups had concerns, evidenced in letters to the court outlining unreasonable trapping rates demanded by UVic, that UVic would continue to kill rabbits even if the injunction against trapping was lifted.  For example, Tom Smith has been quoted in a number of letters and statements saying he wants to trap 400-500 rabbits in the first week of trapping alone. 

While the sanctuaries can ultimately take in all the rabbits from campus, they are restricted to holding a specific number of rabbits at any one time based on terms in their Ministry of Environment permits.  This "holding" period refers to the time between the rabbit being given to the sanctuary representative, transported to a veterinarian, sterilized and tattooed, recuperated from surgery, and transported to the home sanctuary.  While a sanctuary is "holding" this group, they cannot take more rabbits until they have been completely processed from UVic to sanctuary. 

Thus, if a sanctuary has a capacity of 400 rabbits, and a holding cap of 100, they can only do approximately 100 rabbits a week.  If all the sanctuaries took their maximum holding capacity in the first week, it would still not accommodate UVic's unreasonable trapping schedule.  If the sanctuaries were collectively able to take, (based on current information),
up to 226 rabbits, and UVic trapped 500 in the same period, UVic has said they will kill the "surplus" rabbits, the remaining 274 will die.

However, the lawyer acting for the University of Victoria, David Edinger, submitting the following in his letter to the court, which according to Roslyn Cassells' newly acquired legal counsel Robin Bajer of Vancouver, UVic can now be held to:

"UVic's first choice is to fill all the sanctuary places on a reasonable schedule, taking into account the speed with which rabbits may be processed by veterinarians and transported under applicable permits" (see p. 23, section (47) of the Reasons for Judgement in the Citation - Cassells v. University of Victoria 2010 BCSC 1213 Date 20100803)

So despite the injunction being overturned, thanks to the great public concern and media coverage of this important issue, and the granting of the initial injunction by Justice Kloegman, we now have a legal undertaking from UVic with regard to the trapping of the campus rabbits.  We will make every effort to hold them to this undertaking.