The latest attempt by the federal government to update 111-year-old cruelty-to-animal legislation ended last week when the Senate refused to bring the legislation to a vote.
The bill is dead.
With strong support from dissident Liberal senators and against the wishes of the government leader in a Senate dominated by Liberals, the majority voted to send the bill for a third time to a Senate committee for study.
With a Liberal leadership change happening this week in Toronto and the parliamentary session expected to be ended next week to allow new Liberal leader Paul Martin to call a new session when it suits his political aims, all unapproved legislation will die.
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Included will be bill C10-B, the cruelty to animal legislation that has been approved three times by the House of Commons and rejected twice by the Senate over concerns that tougher anti-cruelty rules could jeopardize farming and trapping. The Senate now has killed it by delay, even though most farm groups have accepted it and most aboriginal trapping and hunting lobby groups have not objected.
“It is dead,” Saskatchewan Liberal senator Jack Wiebe said Nov. 7, a day after a majority in the Senate voted to send the bill to committee. “It is a shame because this bill was badly needed and widely supported. It would not have put farmers at risk nor, I believe, trappers.”
Northwest Territories Liberal senator Charlie Watt argued at length and lobbied hard to convince senators that the bill would undermine native trapping and hunting rights.
On Nov. 6, Senate government leader and Manitoba senator Sharon Carstairs pleaded with senators to let the bill pass as the House of Commons wanted.
She said farm concerns had been met and aboriginal concerns had been exaggerated.
“If we send this bill back to committee, there is every chance it will die.”
Yet with a two-to-one Liberal majority in the Senate, her position was defeated 40-23.
It was a bitter blow for the animal rights lobby that rallied on Parliament Hill Nov. 5 to demand Senate approval.
The bill to update 1892 criminal code rules on animal cruelty was first proposed in 1999 but died when the 2000 election was called.
In this Parliament, MPs passed it, had it rejected by the Senate, passed it with amendment, had it rejected by the Senate, passed it again and then saw it sink.
The bill became a political football in a power struggle between the Commons and the Senate.
At the Nov. 5 Parliament Hill rally organized by the International Fund for Animal Welfare and the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, it was noted that when the existing rules were first drafted, founding prime minister John Macdonald was in power.
Speakers said tougher rules against animal cruelty are needed because the current lax law allows animal abusers to avoid prosecution.
The farm and livestock lobbies initially opposed portions of the proposed legislation because they feared it would be used by animal rights extremists to harass farmers, but amendments prompted them to support it.
