Lac Simon Anishnabe Nation sues Ottawa over failure to protect Val-d'Or caribou

The Lac Simon Anishnabe Nation is suing the federal government, arguing it has failed to protect the threatened Val-d'Or caribou herd and, in doing so, violated the nation's constitutional right to hunt. The herd, which numbered about 40 in the 1990s, now consists of just seven animals living in a 14-hectare enclosure south of Abitibi-Témiscamingue in northwest Quebec. Two have died since the remaining nine were captured six years ago, and there were no new births this year. The nation filed its lawsuit in July.

"It's like a zoo, they are in a cage at this time. ... A caribou is always on the move. If they're not moving, there's something wrong," said Lucien Wabanonik, Chief of the Lac Simon Anishnabe Nation. He recalled seeing a herd of about 20 caribou cross the road in front of him in the 1980s, a sight that has since vanished as forestry and mining transformed the landscape. "There's nothing much left in our area of Abitibi-Témiscamingue in terms of mature areas where forest is untouched," Wabanonik said.

The boreal caribou were listed as threatened under the federal Species At Risk Act in 2003. In 2024, then-Minister of Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault recommended cabinet make an emergency order to save the boreal caribou in Quebec from imminent extinction. According to the nation's legal filings, the federal government has since conducted multiple rounds of consultation with Lac Simon, but no order has been issued and the herd continues to dwindle. Amir Attaran, lawyer for the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council, believes the consultations were a stalling tactic. "Anyone who works in Aboriginal law will have the experience of, when government wants to get something done, they don't consult, or they consult within a month. When government wants to delay, they'll consult for years," Attaran said. Environment and Climate Change Canada told The Narwhal in an email it cannot comment on a matter before the courts, but reaffirmed its commitment to working with and consulting Indigenous organizations in Quebec.

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Instead of issuing an emergency order to protect habitat in Val-d'Or and two other Quebec regions as Guilbeault recommended, the federal government announced a new funding agreement with Quebec on June 29, 2026. At a meeting with the Assembly of First Nations Quebec-Labrador, federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Julie Dabrusin announced the deal without prior consultation with the First Nations. Canada is set to pay up to $25 million over five years to the provincial government under an agreement that does not mention limits on forestry projects or construction of service roads. When asked about the agreement, the Quebec environment ministry said in a statement, "The financial agreement with the federal government will support the implementation of additional measures to conserve and restore the caribou's habitat. The Quebec environment ministry is currently assessing potential measures, and these could include measures devoted to the Val-d'Or woodland caribou population." Attaran noted the conditional "could" in the response, pointing out the agreement does not specify the money must be used for the caribou, only that it may be. "There's no assurance of it doing anything here," he said.

The ministry also stated that a proposed plan for the Val-d'Or caribou was not submitted on schedule, knowledge about the population has evolved, and the government is continuing its work to establish adapted measures. It said it has instated a moratorium on logging in the habitat, completed some restoration, and keeps the caribou in captivity as a precaution. In 2018, Quebec instituted a temporary logging moratorium covering 2,160 square kilometres of habitat. Lac Simon has called for an immediate moratorium on logging permits over a 5,000 square-kilometre area, which has not happened.

Lac Simon maintains the federal funding does not promote caribou conservation and is no substitute for an emergency order. The federal government has also committed $15 million for First Nations-led caribou conservation in Quebec, but Wabanonik said they are not interested. "If we do take those monies, it means accepting their ways of doing things. ... And we don't accept that," he said.

The nation's legal argument hinges on the Species At Risk Act and Section 35 of the Constitution. "What we're arguing is the act may be written as 'cabinet may,' but in reality it's 'must.' And the reason it's 'must' is very simple: you have here an Aboriginal right to hunt, constitutionally protected under Section 35," Attaran explained. He argues that allowing a culturally significant species to disappear is tantamount to extinguishing the right itself, and that without an emergency order, the caribou is at a very high risk of extinction, violating the First Nation's constitutional right. Attaran said this argument has never been tried in a Canadian court, and he is confident the nation will receive a declaration stating the constitutional right has been violated.

With files from The Narwhal