Advocates of tougher cruelty-to-animals laws are preparing to mount an intense Parliament Hill lobby during the winter to persuade MPs to kill the latest version of the legislation for being too weak.
A bill approved by the Senate Dec. 7 and sent to the House of Commons increases the penalties for animal cruelty convictions but does nothing to update rules and definitions that are largely unchanged since they were written into the Criminal Code in 1892.
“It is inconceivable in 2006 that we still have animal cruelty rules and definitions that were written when Queen Victoria was on the throne,” said Shelagh MacDonald, program director for the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies. “This bill still considers animals property. This bill still does not capture the vast majority of crimes that are committed against animals.”
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Recently, the federation and the International Fund for Animal Welfare released the results of a national public opinion survey that reported 85 percent of Canadians want tougher laws and three-quarters support removing animal cruelty from the property sections of the Criminal Code.
“The interesting thing is that support for tougher laws was as strong or stronger in rural areas, among farmers, among people who identify themselves as people who hunt or fish, among people who say they vote Conservative,” said MacDonald.
“If this government does not act on this, it will not be following the wishes of people who are its constituency.”
The Senate bill sponsored by New Brunswick Liberal John Bryden accepts the existing language of the law but increases the penalties for convictions.
It is the ninth version of a cruelty-to-animals bill to come before Parliament in the past decade. All the others have died when elections were called or were killed in the face of opposition from senators who said tougher laws could be used by animal rights activists to harass farmers, hunters and researchers who use animals in their businesses.
The last version that died when the 2004 election was called had received the support of most agricultural groups including the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
No agricultural groups appeared before the Senate as it studied Bryden’s bill.
MacDonald said the House of Commons would be wise to support a private member’s bill presented by Toronto-area Liberal MP Mark Holland that reflects the more comprehensive bill that was before the Commons in 2003.
“There was absolutely nothing in that bill that is a threat to farmers or their operations and that is what should be supported,” she said.
However, with a minority government and an election expected next year, this latest version of the bill also is expected to die.
The Senate vote to send the bill to the Commons was not unanimous. Manitoba Liberal Sharon Carstairs opposed the bill and called it “woefully inadequate” for the modern world.
“We need to move into the 21st century,” she said Dec. 7.
“The fact is that this bill has not been changed substantively since 1892. It is not good enough that the only change in this bill is to increase penalties. I cannot support the bill, and I will not.”
