For the fourth time, possibly a parliamentary record, a bill to update cruelty-to-animal rules has died in Parliament.
MPs and senators left Parliament Hill May 14 for what is supposed to be a one-week break but Parliament is expected to be dissolved no later than May 23 for a June 28 election. All legislation before Parliament that has not been approved will die.
Among the casualties will be Bill C-22, which would for the first time since 1892 strengthen criminal code rules against deliberate and unnecessary animal cruelty.
It has been passed twice by the House of Commons but is stalled in the Senate, where several northern Liberal senators argued the bill would restrict the ability of aboriginals and producers to conduct their normal farming, hunting or trapping activities.
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The government denies this and over years of debate, amendments have been made that turned most farm groups from suspicion to support.
“We support the legislation as it is and believe it should be approved,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture official Kieran Green said this spring when the bill was resurrected in the Senate.
Still, the Senate has not budged.
“This is a travesty,” Michael O’Sull-ivan, executive director of the Humane Society of Canada, said in a May 14 interview. “This really shows the need for reform that will produce an elected and accountable Senate. These people do not represent the vast majority of Canadians on this issue. We are a nation of people who believe animals should be treated well.”
He said humane societies and animal rights groups will pressure the government elected in June to bring the legislation back for a fifth time.
But he said an equally important job will be to educate the Canadian public about inadequacies of the existing legislation.
“There is strong evidence that people who abuse animals also are violent toward other people and by not taking this modest legislative step, they are condoning that violence toward animals,” O’Sullivan said.
