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Three individuals approached him after they were stymied in their attempts to find out how many conservation officers were hunters, he said, adding they received letters saying no records could be located.

Casavant filed his own FOI request, and he, too, was initially rejected, but pursued the issue until he got the results based on his inside knowledge of government databases and the department.

“It really ticks me off when bureaucrats just block the public from exercising their information rights,” he said.

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The response of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. to FOI requests is only as good as the information provided by the ministry, Casavant said.

“They don’t know what records the government has. It’s all based on the honour system,” he said.

Casavant also said he believes the Conservation Officer Service is too closely tied to pro-hunting organizations such as the Guide Outfitters Association of B.C. and B.C. Wildlife Federation, all of which sit on a wildlife regulation advisory committee that helps to establish hunting regulations.

In July 2015 an adult female bear was shot after breaking into a freezer and grabbing garbage from inside a home near Port Hardy. Casavant was ordered to shoot the female’s two, eight-week-old cubs on the assumption they were conditioned to human garbage and not candidates for rehabilitation.

Casavant refused, believing there was no evidence to support their death sentence, and took them to the non-profit North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre for rehab. He was suspended from his job and, following a public outcry, transferred from the Ministry of Environment to the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations to serve as a natural resource officer.

The cubs — Athena and Jordan — were released into the wild in June 2016, and were thought to have successfully hibernated on their own.

Currently, there are 148 conservation officers employed in 45 offices in eight regions spread across the province.

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