OTTAWA — Employing foreign sharpshooters in helicopters to cull deer inhabiting a small coastal B.C. island could cost taxpayers over $12 million, suggest newly released government documents. 

According to figures unearthed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation via an access-to-information act, Parks Canada has earmarked $12 million to fund a multi-phase “Fur to Forest” program, which employs non-Canadian helicopter-mounted sharpshooters to eradicate an invasive herd of European fallow deer from Sidney Island — a nine-square-kilometre tract of land off the coast of Vancouver Island.