Bill C-84 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to
(a) define “bestiality”;
(b) expand the scope of the offence of encouraging, aiding or assisting at the fighting or baiting of animals or birds so that the offence
(i) includes promoting, arranging, receiving money for or taking part in the fighting or baiting of animals or birds, and
(ii) also applies with respect to the training, transporting or breeding of animals or birds for fighting or baiting; and
(c) expand the scope of the offence of building, making, maintaining or keeping a cockpit so that the offence applies with respect to any arena for animal fighting.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Mr. Chair, I will be providing 10 minutes of remarks followed by some questions for the minister.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak today. I will focus my remarks on Bill C-84, which was passed by the House of Commons on May 8, 2019. It proposes a number of important reforms to address bestiality and animal fighting. These reforms would offer greater protections to children, other vulnerable persons and animals.

With respect to bestiality, the bill responds to the 2016 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. D.L.W. in which the court found that, absent a statutory definition of bestiality, the common law meaning of the term is limited to penetrative sex acts with animals. The consequence of this is that a gap has been identified in the law: bestiality offences do not apply to non-penetrative sexual acts with animals. This leaves children and other vulnerable persons without adequate protections from all acts of bestiality. Child protection and animal protection advocates, and members of the public, have called for legislative action to address this gap.

Bill C-84 proposes to remedy this by adding a definition to the bestiality offences that would include “any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.” As mentioned by other hon. members, this definition would not apply to legitimate animal husbandry activities, such as artificial insemination. In fact, agricultural stakeholders have expressed their views, both in writing to the former minister of justice and before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, that they have no concerns that the proposed definition would apply to current agricultural standards.

This proposed amendment received broad support from parliamentarians and witnesses who appeared before the justice committee. It pleases me to see members of all parties come together in support of a common desire to provide stronger protections for the most vulnerable members of society.

The committee also passed two motions related to enhancing Criminal Code protections for bestiality offences.

The first motion proposed to amend the Criminal Code to provide that a court may issue a prohibition or restitution order for a person convicted of a bestiality offence. In the case of a prohibition order, the court would have the authority to issue an order prohibiting the person from possessing, having control over or residing with an animal for any period, up to a lifetime ban. A restitution order would be available to order the person to repay the costs to an individual or organization of maintaining the abused animal. These types of orders are already available for the animal cruelty offences, and it makes sense that they should also be available for the bestiality offences.

The second motion passed by the committee would add the bestiality simpliciter offence to the list of offences for which a convicted person must adhere to the requirements of the National Sex Offender Registry. I believe that this is a meaningful amendment to the bill, as it would increase protections for public safety by recognizing that oftentimes, those who abuse animals will also commit violent acts against people, and as such, these individuals should be tracked.

Other hon. members supporting the bill mentioned that they thought the reforms did not go far enough to increase protections for animals. However, I believe the bill does offer important changes that target the most vicious forms of animal abuse, bestiality and animal fighting.

The amendments in the bill would address animal fighting in two ways. First, the amendments would increase the list of prohibited activities that support the animal fighting industry, including promoting, arranging or receiving money for animal fighting. This would make it easier to prosecute an animal fighting offence by clearly setting out the prohibited acts, thereby encouraging more prosecutions under the Criminal Code. The second amendment would expand the prohibition against keeping a cockpit to ensure that the provision applied to keeping an arena for the fighting of any animal. This amendment is particularly important considering that dogfighting is now the main form of animal fighting.

When the bill was being reviewed by the committee, it heard detailed evidence from the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association about the types of injuries that dogs suffered, including deep lacerations, broken bones and infections when forced to fight another dog. Law enforcement has reported that dog fighting, as with many illicit underground operations, is often connected to organized crime.

I am pleased that Bill C-84 will offer additional measures to combat animal fighting and make it easier for the criminal justice system to track these offenders.

The committee also passed a third motion, which the government supports, to delete the section in the offence of keeping a cockpit that required the destruction of birds found in a cockpit. This provision exists because such birds are often injured or trained to be aggressive and are unable to be held with other birds.

I agree with the position that the decision to destroy an animal should be made on a case-by-case basis after the animal has been examined rather than by operation of law. The destruction of animals that are seriously injured or aggressive, with no reasonable chance of recovery or rehabilitation, is already provided for under provincial animal protection legislation and does not need to be included in the Criminal Code. Moreover, it would be inconsistent with the objective of the amendment to the provision, which is to expand the prohibition on cockpits to apply to any animal and then to retain a provision that only applies to birds involved in cockfighting.

The measures proposed by Bill C-84 will strengthen public safety and protections for animals significantly. There has been much discussion about the correlation between violence against animals and violence against humans. In fact, in the United States the FBI has a national database that contains data on incidents of animal abuse in order to prevent violence against animals from escalating to violence against humans, including domestic abuse and serial murders. As well, many victims of domestic violence report that their abusers either abuse or threaten to harm pets in order to assert even more control over the victim. If a child witnesses animal abuse, that itself is a form of child abuse.

I would like to thank the members of the committee and the witnesses who appeared before us for their helpful testimony and important examination of the bill. As a result, three meaningful motions were passed by the committee and then supported in the House. The discussions that have taken place and the suggested amendments have produced a bill that has been strengthened through consensus and collaboration.

It is important that the bill be enacted as soon as possible, given the importance of these proposed amendments.

I have questions for the minister. I have heard from my constituents that they are pleased that our government is taking important steps with Bill C-84. Some even pointed out to me that these reforms did not go far enough. Has the minister encountered this sentiment from Canadians or stakeholders?

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Mr. Chair, I think it is important that several things were outlined in the minister's speech. I would like to start with the question of victims.

From the work I have been doing as parliamentary secretary and the work that the committee has been doing on bills such as Bill C-84, where there was an important amendment to implement an offender registry for bestiality crimes, and Bill C-75, in relation to victims of intimate partner violence, I know that addressing the needs of victims is at the core of what we are doing as a government.

The minister mentioned in his remarks that under budget 2019 there is funding for the Department of Justice's victims fund, which is targeted at giving victims and survivors of crime the respect and dignity they deserve.

I wonder if the minister could elaborate on the types of projects these funds will support in budget 2019 to help us achieve our commitments toward addressing victims.

Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to join this important debate on Bill S-203, an act to amend the Criminal Code and other acts with regard to ending the captivity of whales and dolphins.

Both I and my constituents in Parkdale—High Park have anticipated this piece of legislation for some time since it moved from the Senate to this House. Now that it has returned from the fisheries and oceans committee without amendment, I am pleased to stand and speak in favour of this bill. It is important to highlight the important work that was done by a unanimous fisheries and oceans committee to get it back before this House expeditiously.

Before I speak to the substantive elements of the bill, I want to add my voice to the voice of the leader of the Green Party and thank the Senate sponsors for this bill, the now retired Senator Wilfred Moore and Senator Murray Sinclair, who carried the bill forward after Senator Moore's retirement. I want to thank as well the House of Commons sponsor, the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, who commenced this debate today. All of these individuals have been tireless advocates for this legislation, and their activism and advocacy has helped carry Bill S-203 to this point we are at this afternoon.

The bill itself seeks to prohibit the taking of a cetacean into captivity and will amend the Criminal Code to create offences respecting cetaceans in captivity. It will also amend other acts to require a permit for the import of a cetacean into Canada and the export of one from Canada.

I want to begin by tracking our government's progress on the commitment to promote animal welfare rights in Canada and abroad. This is an important issue to me and the constituents of my riding of Parkdale—High Park, as I frequently hear from them about the work we must all do collectively to ensure the welfare of animals. Since 2015, we have made progress on this commitment.

In my role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, one of the pieces of legislation I have had the privilege of working on is Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code in relation to bestiality and animal fighting. That bill will make important amendments to our Criminal Code to change the definition of bestiality and expand the animal fighting provisions to capture more of this conduct and ensure offenders are brought to justice.

This week is indeed a momentous week in this chamber, because it was only this week that Bill C-84 received third reading and was then sent to the Senate. I, along with many others, look forward to its study and its eventual passage there. In the same week that we dealt with Bill C-84 in this chamber, we are dealing today with Bill S-203. It has been an important week for animal rights in this country.

With the help of stakeholders such as farmers, industry groups, provinces and territories, and veterinarians, our government has also been active on ensuring proper and humane animal transport. Federally, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the CFIA, administers the enforcement of regulations related to animal transport, and plans are under way to modernize the regulations and humane transport provisions of the health of animals regulations. These have not been updated since the 1970s. The need to reduce animal suffering during transportation is clear.

In 2017, we also announced an investment of $1.31 million to an entity known as the Canadian Animal Health Coalition, the CAHC, to help ensure the safe transportation of livestock, develop emergency management tools for the livestock industry and improve animal care assessments.

We have also been engaged with stakeholders on the topic of animal welfare during the slaughter process. The stakeholders in my riding of Parkdale—High Park have spoken to me repeatedly about the need to ensure that animals are handled humanely at all points of their lives and that the high standards we expect regarding animal treatment are upheld. I absolutely agree with their sentiment that this kind of protection must be a priority, which is why I currently serve as a member of the Liberal animal welfare caucus.

Let us get back to the bill before us, Bill S-203.

Scientists agree that whales, dolphins and other extraordinary marine mammals like them should not be kept in captivity or bred in captivity, and that doing so amounts to cruelty.

Additionally, it is well documented that the live capture of cetaceans and their transport to a foreign habitat harms the natural habitat where the cetaceans originate. At a time when oceans are under increased threat from a number sources, such as habitat destruction, coastal pollution, overfishing and global warming, which all harm these cetaceans, we can scarcely afford to be keeping them in captivity.

We must also think about the difficult living conditions for cetaceans that live in a confined space, such as an aquarium, without the social contact and normal activities most cetaceans in the wild would enjoy. Those that live in captivity suffer from a higher rate of physical health issues and a lower life expectancy.

As well, calves generally suffer from a much higher mortality rate and a lack of emotional connection to others of their species as a result of the limited space when they are in captivity.

Therefore, where we may have seen whales, dolphins and other cetaceans in an aquarium as a form of entertainment in bygone years, in many cases we now realize that it actually amounts to animal cruelty. Thus, our government firmly agrees that the capture of cetaceans for the sole purpose of being kept for public display should be ended.

Importantly, while the banning of whale captivity is not yet in law, the practice has been in place for some years now, which is a good sign. Bill C-68, which was mentioned earlier in today's debate in one of the questions by a member opposite, was introduced by our government. It is currently in the Senate and passed in the House in June of last year. It includes amendments to end the captivity of whales unless for rehabilitation. This legislation now before us is the next step, the next important step, in ensuring the safety and security of these intelligent and complex creatures.

Presently, as was mentioned by the Leader of the Green Party, there are two aquaria in Canada that are holding cetaceans: the Vancouver Aquarium, in British Columbia, and Marineland, in Ontario. The Vancouver Aquarium, which is a not-for-profit institution, currently has a Pacific white-sided dolphin, which was rescued from the wild and deemed not releasable, as well as five belugas on loan to aquaria in the United States. The Vancouver Park Board has not permitted the aquarium to hold cetaceans captured from the wild for display purposes since 1996, but it does work with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to respond to cetaceans in the wild requiring rescue and rehabilitation. Marineland holds the remaining balance of cetaceans, including one orca.

The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans retains the authority to issue a licence for the capture of live cetaceans. However, only one such licence has been issued over the past decade, and that was for the rescue and rehabilitation of a stranded Pseudorca calf. No licence has been issued for the purpose of displaying a cetacean publicly in over 20 years. As stated earlier, it has been the practice of successive Canadian governments that cetaceans not be captured or placed in captivity unless for rehabilitation.

It is also important to note the elements of Bill S-203 that relate to the protection of the rights of indigenous peoples, some of which feature whales and dolphins as a key component of their culture and traditions. These provisions were not initially part of the bill, but through the significant consultation process that took place while Bill S-203 was being studied in the Senate, the bill was sufficiently and appropriately altered.

It is essential to consider and address the needs of indigenous peoples. This is something I have heard frequently from the knowledgeable, engaged constituents of my riding of Parkdale—High Park and literally from people right around the country. They have always echoed to me that we in this place, as legislators, must apply an indigenous lens to all the legislation, government or otherwise, that comes before us. I am pleased to see that this is in fact exactly what was done in the Senate when it engaged in those consultations.

This legislation complements our government's work, which I have outlined. We are committed to the recovery and protection of marine mammals. This commitment is evident through another investment we have made, which is a $1.5-billion investment in what is an historic oceans protection plan that would help restore our marine ecosystems, in partnership with our indigenous partners.

As well, there has been a five-year $167-million investment in the whales initiative, which would take concrete steps to help endangered whales and reduce the impact of human-caused threats. Our latest announcement was $61 million for measures in support of the southern resident killer whale population off the coast of British Columbia.

Bill S-203 is one aspect of the support our government is giving to marine animals and their habitat. Bill S-203 is also supported by some significant leaders in the field of marine science and animal welfare, including Humane Canada and Animal Justice. Even the former head trainer at Marineland, Mr. Philip Demers, has expressed support for the measures in this bill.

What I think we are seeing here with Bill S-203 is the proper and necessary evolution of rights protections for animals in this country. It is a bill whose time has come. It is a bill I am very proud to support on behalf of my constituents and as a member of the government. I urge all members to do the same.

Criminal Code

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, right now, this is something to which we can all agree. Animal cruelty laws in Canada need to be vastly improved. We have laws that were adopted in the 1890s, slightly amended in the 1950s and they have unfortunately not been radically revamped in the world we live in today where most of us recognize that animals should not be treated as pure property. Animals are sentient beings. Animals can suffer. Most animals have the ability to know whether they are feeling pain. Today, our animal cruelty laws are, unfortunately, many years behind the times.

I want to salute the many groups that advocate for animal welfare, which helped in moving this legislation forward. I also want to congratulate those many other groups that work with animals, ranging from agriculture to people who deal with animals in other ways, including fishers and anglers. They have worked to ensure we have legislation that is satisfactory to virtually everyone. That is possible to do, with further animal cruelty legislation.

It is not true to believe that we can never find more compelling reasons to improve animal welfare because nobody will agree. People can agree, if we all come together. I strongly back the request of my colleague from Beaches—East York at our committee to look for an all-party parliamentary committee, probably not in this mandate but in a future mandate, to ensure we can all work with the many interest groups out there to advance animal cruelty legislation in Canada.

This is a specific bill that deals with several small issues. We made changes at the justice committee to broaden the scope of the bill slightly. As initially drafted, Bill C-84 defined bestiality. It is probably something that most of us never thought we would be talking about in this place, but I will do that.

A Supreme Court judgment in R. v. D.L.W. required legislative action. In R. v. D.L.W., the Supreme Court ruled that penetration was a necessary part of the definition of bestiality in the Criminal Code. It does not mean that there were not other offences in the Criminal Code that could deal with elements of bestiality short of penetration. However, the Court placed the onus on us in the House of Commons and on the people in the other place to revise the definition of bestiality in the Criminal Code, and we are proceeding to do that.

A number of people have said that the Supreme Court erred in its judgment. I do not agree that the Supreme Court erred. We disagree with the conclusions of the Supreme Court judgment, but that does not mean it erred in law. We take our law from the British system and in the British system and throughout the Commonwealth, there have been numerous cases where there were rulings that penetration was a necessary element of bestiality. That does not mean that now that the Court has clarified this, we in Parliament cannot change the definition to clarify that bestiality does not require penetration. We are doing that in Bill C-84. When the bill came before the committee, not only did each and every member of the committee agree with the proposed definition in the bill, but so did every group that came before the committee.

We also have expanded the scope of the offence of encouraging, aiding or assisting at the fighting or baiting of animals so that the offence:

(i) includes promoting, arranging, receiving money for or taking part in the fighting or baiting of animals or birds, and

(ii) ) also applies with respect to the training, transporting or breeding of animals or birds for fighting or baiting...

We are all aware that causing animals to fight for our own pleasure as human beings, the ability to push animals to hurt one another so some people can sit there and laugh or bet, is entirely cruel, inhumane and should not only abandoned, but people who violate that type of a provision should be punished, and punished severely. Therefore, I am pleased we are expanding the scope of that offence.

The bill would also expand the scope of the offence of “building, making, maintaining or keeping a cockpit so that the offence applies with respect to any arena for animal fighting.” We should be extending this not only to people who cause cocks to fight. Anyone who causes any type of animal to fight in an arena should be subject to the penalties of the Criminal Code. I am pleased that the bill would expand those provisions.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights also decided that certain provisions of the act should be amended.

With respect to section 160 of the Criminal Code, which prevents people from possessing or residing with an animal for a period of time, up to a lifetime ban, we wanted to ensure that people convicted under these new sections could be prohibited from owning an animal for up to the rest of their lifetime. Those who have been cruel to an animal once, particularly if they have been cruel in a very flagrant way or cruel a repeated number of times, should not be allowed to own animals.

The committee assigned in the bill the same prohibition and punishment of not being able to own an animal that the existing provisions on animal cruelty in the Criminal Code did. We also added a new subsection, which notes that people who have been convicted under these sections can also be required to pay the person or organization that has to take care of an animal to rehabilitate it. This would pay for the care and damage that they caused.

We also amended subsection 490.011(1) of the code, which defines the designated offences for which a convicted individual would be required to register in the sex offender registry, so that people who commit the offence of bestiality simpliciter will be required to register as a sex offender.

There was a significant amount of debate regarding this issue. Previously, individuals had commented that there was not enough proof linking the offence of bestiality simpliciter to other sex offences. However, our committee decided, based on the scientific evidence we had seen, there was sufficient evidence to require a person to register as a sex offender if he or she committed bestiality simpliciter and was convicted. I am very pleased my colleague's amendment on that score was accepted.

Finally, we repealed subsection 447(3) of the Criminal Code, which provided that “A peace officer who finds cocks in a cockpit or on premises where a cockpit is located shall seize them and take them before a justice who shall order them to be destroyed.” This required each and every cock that was seized to be destroyed no matter its health.

We determined that there was no reason to believe that each and every cock that was found in a fighting area necessarily needed to be destroyed. We were also convinced that provincial legislation on this matter was sufficient enough to deal with any orders that had to be made regarding the destruction of an animal that was so debilitated by fighting and needed to be destroyed.

To come back to my first point, the bill was indeed an example of our being able to find support from all sides. That should be congratulated. It means members were able to rise above partisanship to decide this was good for Canada, good for the animals in Canada, good for the children in Canada and good for all of us. At committee, we were able to work together with respect to unanimously approving amendments.

I am hoping that based on this agreement, we will be able to put partisanship aside and ensure the bill is adopted as swiftly as possible so it can move to the other place and become Canadian law prior to the next election.

A number of people in the House have advanced the cause of promoting the welfare of animals and they all deserve to be applauded, no matter from which side of the House they come. They are doing something truly noble in trying to help protect the very vulnerable animals, which really deserve much more protection than our criminal law and other laws afford them today.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke said is very important to remember. When the member for Vancouver East stood to move that motion, we put no speakers up. We were interested in going straight to a vote. I just want to put the facts straight before the House.

In my riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, we had a dreadful case of animal cruelty last year. I acknowledge that changing the law, by itself, would not solve animal cruelty. It would be one important tool, but we need a variety of measures.

Shortly after the government defeated its own Liberal member's bill, Bill C-246, the then justice minister made a promise before the media that her government would be looking at the whole range of tools in the tool kit to see if it could revisit this issue. It dragged on through 2016, 2017 and 2018, and here we are finally in 2019.

Can my colleague add some comments on how the government has moved at such a glacial pace on such low-hanging fruit as Bill C-84?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, in their questioning, the NDP and the Conservatives talked a lot about the time crunch. It is important to recognize that the government, like Canadians and like members opposite, supports the legislation. It seems that everyone supports the legislation. However, just because everyone supports it does not necessarily mean that there is not mischievous behaviour. For example, today the NDP tried to prevent the bill from being debated by moving a motion. Had that motion been debated, we would not be dealing with Bill C-84 today.

It is a bit disingenuous to say that it is the government that is trying to hold back the legislation. I believe that there is fairly solid support both inside the House and outside the House, and I too would like to applaud all those advocates over the years who have brought us to this point.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting), be read the third time and passed.

Third Reading

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, let me just pick up again on Bill C-246, the Liberal backbench bill that the government defeated. It would have also dealt with the things that are in this government bill. We could have done what is in this bill before us, and more, by passing that private member's bill.

Perhaps most importantly, Bill C-246 would have moved offences against animals out of the property section of the Criminal Code and into a new section dedicated to offences against animals. This would not only have been an important legal reform; I think it would also be a very important symbol of our need as humans to rethink our place in the natural universe and to see ourselves as part of the web of nature on which we depend for our very survival, rather than seeing the Earth and all of its beings as simply property for us to use and discard when we are done.

I have spent a lot of time on this private member's bill because it puts the much narrower government bill in front of us into a proper context. The fact that the government used its majority to defeat a more comprehensive reform of animal cruelty legislation tempers the credit the government should get for bringing forward this bill today.

At this point, I also want to give credit to the Conservative member for Calgary Nose Hill, who pushed the government to act on the very narrow definition that the Supreme Court found by introducing her own private member's bill, Bill C-388, in order to make sure that the government was forced to bring forward its own bill instead of having to deal with hers.

The member for Calgary Nose Hill did acknowledge some concerns in her caucus that attempting to modernize and strengthen animal cruelty provisions might affect farmers and hunters. I also want to acknowledge concerns in indigenous communities that reforms of animal cruelty legislation should not infringe on aboriginal rights and traditional hunting practices.

However, like the member for Calgary Nose Hill, I believe we can update animal cruelty legislation and at the same time avoid unintended impacts on farmers and hunters and unintended consequences with regard to aboriginal rights.

Perhaps I should mention that I am not a hunter, nor have I eaten meat for more than 35 years. I am a proud dog owner, although I resisted the temptation today to wear a t-shirt with a picture of my poodle on it under my jacket. I should also say that my support for this bill will keep peace at home, as my partner is a very passionate advocate for animal rights.

In fact, New Democrats in this House have consistently advocated reform of animal cruelty laws. The member for Port Moody—Coquitlam has proposed his private member's bill, Bill C-380, which would have banned the importation of shark fins. He has been working very hard on the Senate bill, Bill S-238, which is a parallel bill, to make sure that we pass that bill before the House rises to help end the cruel practice of shark finning.

Both the member for Vancouver East and the member for New Westminster—Burnaby have introduced motions to ban the import of products containing dog and cat fur. Former Toronto NDP MP Peggy Nash had a private member's bill, Bill C-232, to strengthen animal cruelty laws, as did former NDP Quebec MP Isabelle Morin, so this is not a new cause for us to take up. This is something we have been fighting for for many years in this House.

At the justice committee, the member for Beaches—East York moved an amendment to Bill C-84, which was adopted unanimously and which broadened the government's too-narrow bill, and three very important provisions were added to the bill in committee.

The first of those allows a prohibition order on animal ownership for a certain period, as determined by a judge. The second makes it an offence to violate an order prohibiting animal ownership, meaning that someone could actually be prosecuted for violating that order of prohibition. The third allows restitution orders to compel those convicted to pay for the care of animals injured. Those were quite important aspects from his own private member's bill on which the member got consensus to bring into the bill before us today.

A separate amendment was also adopted to add bestiality to the list of offences covered in the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. As the member for St. Albert—Edmonton very clearly pointed out, the reason for doing this is that abuse of animals is often an indicator of other forms of abuse, in particular of child abuse. This becomes information that is very useful to the police. I thank him for bringing forward that amendment to this bill.

Those two amendments, one with three provisions and one with one provision, added important aspects to Bill C-84, even though it remains, as I said before, less than the comprehensive reform of animal cruelty legislation that I would like to see before the House.

Still, Bill C-84 does redefine bestiality more broadly than the court decision and it does prohibit a broader range of activities associated with animal fighting, so I and my fellow New Democrats are supporting this bill.

I would have to say personally that even if it only contained the provisions banning activities associated with animal fighting, I would support this bill. It is important to ban promoting, arranging and profiting from animal fighting. It is important to ban breeding, training or transporting animals to fight and it is important to ban keeping any arena for the purpose of animal fighting. I think these are very important steps.

I am not going to go on for a long time, despite the accusations of the government that the reason that we wanted to speak was to delay the bill. I am not even going to use all my time today. I want to conclude by saying that the reason I wanted to speak is to bring our attention to the fact that there is still a lot of work to do on animal cruelty after we pass Bill C-84.

We are missing the opportunity for that comprehensive reform that I have been talking about. In particular, I believe this bill should have included basic standards of care and housing for animals. It could also have included restrictions on tethering animals, in particular dogs, a practice that, since it is unregulated, can be a severe threat to the health and safety of dogs. Of course, tethered dogs are much more likely to bite, and specifically to bite children. In fact, according to the Montreal SPCA, tethered dogs are three times more likely to bite and five times more likely to bite children.

Again, after Bill C-84 passes, there is much more work to do beyond fixing the additional provisions of the Criminal Code that I mentioned earlier. Most important, of course, is the work that needs to be done on protecting endangered species and the habitat that they depend on. This past week, we saw the release of an alarming report from the United Nations intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity. This report documents the unprecedented and accelerating rates of species' extinction at rates never before seen in human history. The report warns that more than one million animal and plant species are facing extinction within the next few decades as a result of human activity.

What we do need now, and I mean right now, are bold measures to protect and preserve the ecosystems that the endangered plants and animals depend on. Since I arrived in this House eight years ago, I have been an advocate for emergency action to protect the southern resident killer whales, as we are at the brink of losing a species, each of whose name is individually known. Instead of a bold and urgent recovery plan for the orcas that would mobilize large-scale habitat restoration where appropriate and put millions of hatchery chinook in the water, this work is being left to volunteers, and they have undertaken this work without any government support. Instead of support, we have a timid recovery plan that tries to manage declining stocks of chinook by relying on fishing restrictions when everybody knows that what we actually need—not just the whales, but all of us—is more fish in the water.

In conclusion, while passing Bill C-84 is an important step forward in animal protection, it is only a first step in a process that will require us to re-examine our place in the natural world.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, given the debate we just had on time allocation, I want to assure the House that I am very pleased to get up today to speak to Bill C-84. However, I am disappointed not to be speaking to a broader bill that could have simply been called “an act to amend the Criminal Code, animal cruelty”, because what we really needed was a broad review of the animal cruelty legislation and not a bill just narrowly focused on bestiality and animal fighting. Instead of that broader review, the government introduced a narrow and weak bill, which, fortunately, the justice committee strengthened with amendments. I will return to those in a moment.

Even though the Liberal government has missed the larger opportunity to modify animal cruelty provisions in the Criminal Code as a whole, some legislation on animal cruelty is long overdue. By my count, since 1999, there have been 14 failed attempts to amend Canada's animal cruelty laws. Some would argue that we have seen no significant changes in animal cruelty laws since the 1950s. I have to say that I am not sure that we would have seen the government introduce any legislation on animal cruelty at all if it had not been for the Supreme Court decision in R. v. D.L.W., in 2016, which pointed out the problems with the narrow definition of bestiality in the existing Criminal Code provisions.

My skepticism of the will of the Liberals to act was fuelled when the Liberals used their majority to defeat their own backbencher's private member's bill, Bill C-246, from the member for Beaches—East York,, entitled the modernizing animal protections act. That was the kind of broad look at the changes we needed and that this government bill should have brought forward. Bill C-246 would have provided for much more comprehensive reform than we have in the bill before us today, and New Democrats supported that bill when it came before the House, in contrast to the Liberals.

Bill C-246 would have increased sentences for repeat animal abusers, including creating the ability to have a lifetime ban, after a second conviction, on any ownership of animals. However, that is not in the bill we are dealing with today, and I am disappointed that it is not there.

As well, Bill C-246 proposed to deal with a wide range of acts beyond the Criminal Code that actually deal with the way we treat animals, including the Fisheries Act, the Textile Labelling Act, the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act—

The House resumed from March 18 consideration of the motion that Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting), be read the third time and passed.

Bill C-84—Time Allocation Motion

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member has brought up Bill C-75. We feel it is an outstanding piece of legislation that goes a long way toward improving the efficiency, fairness and speed, frankly, of our criminal justice system.

The unifying theme of Bill C-75 is, in fact, to make the criminal justice system more fair, more efficient and better working, particularly in light of rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada, such as Jordan, which force us to take those matters seriously.

The elements brought up in Bill C-84 do not have that same goal in mind, if I may, and therefore it is appropriate that Bill C-84 be part of a separate piece of legislation. It just did not fit in Bill C-75.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, part of the minister's argument today has been that we need to get this legislation to the Senate to speed things up. I can understand that. We only have so much time.

That being said, by the same token, Bill C-75 has gone to the other place and it is a much larger bill. Would the member not agree that this particular bill, Bill C-84, should have been wrapped up in Bill C-75, gone to the justice committee and had full exposure to all of the different parts in that omnibus piece of legislation, so it could have maybe left a stand-alone bill for us to have a full discussion on the deferred prosecution agreements, an issue which was in Bill C-74, division 20?

That piece of legislation did not get a full hearing at finance committee. Only one witness from the justice department came to speak to it. I still get calls on a regular basis from people in both the academic and the legal communities who feel that the Liberal government's approach to that piece of omnibus legislation maligned Parliament and denied the proper hearing of major changes to the Criminal Code.

Would the member not agree that this place must be respected? Would he agree that that kind of sleight of hand by the government needs to change?

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, during the justice committee's study of Bill C-84, we heard evidence about a strong correlation between individuals who commit acts of bestiality and individuals who abuse women and children.

It was on that basis that I put forward an amendment at committee to amend section 160 to require that all individuals who commit acts of bestiality and are convicted under section 160 be required to register with the National Sex Offender Registry. I am very pleased all members of committee supported that amendment.

I was wondering if the minister could speak to that issue.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I have had the opportunity to be on both opposition and government benches. I have recognized on both sides that at times there is a need to use time allocation, because it is a tool that is there to ensure that priority bills can be passed. In fact, we have seen the New Democratic Party members here identify government bills they believe are a priority, and they supported time allocation.

It is interesting to listen to the questions that have been posed to the minister. When was that interest expressed to have an hour debate and then allow it to pass? The expression of interest to do so only came after time allocation was put into place.

For the minister, in recognizing the importance of Bill C-84, I suspect that if we did not bring in time allocation, there would be a very good chance we might not be passing the bill today, because we have seen oppositions in the past talk out a bill that everyone supports, ultimately forcing government to bring in time allocation.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I share the substantive concern that the hon. leader of the Green Party is raising. I can speak to the bills that I am, as minister, shepherding through the House. Certainly, on Bill C-84, the process has worked in the sense that a number of very good amendments were made at committee stage and there was robust debate.

Both Bill C-75 and Bill C-78 have had a number of interesting discussions in the House. They have gone to the other place. We are thinking about amendments on them based on our work in this House and on what the Senate is doing.

The process is working. I think we are approaching it in good faith. The fact of the matter is that sometimes we run out of time, and we feel we have done that in this particular case.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say for the hon. Minister of Justice that not all members in this place have had ample opportunity. Some of us have had no opportunity.

I would also like to say that, while the Green Party is in strong agreement with the bill, there is a difficulty with repeatedly using time allocation. This debate is about the question of time allocation. The overall message, which is most unfortunate, appears to be that allowing full debate on legislation, whether it is on an omnibus budget bill or a small bill that is relatively widely supported, such as Bill C-84, is basically a waste of time. The message is that it is up to the government to pass the bills, and when the opposition debates, it is basically a waste of time and gets in the government's way.

I do not think that is what the government wants to communicate to Canadians, but the number of times time allocation has been used in this place is not only deeply shocking to me, but it is horrific. It means that what Stephen Harper did in this place is now normalized by the very members who used to decry it.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

moved:

That, in relation to Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting), not more than one further sitting day shall be allotted to the consideration at third reading stage of the Bill; and

That, 15 minutes before the expiry of the time provided for Government Orders on the day allotted to the consideration at third reading stage of the said Bill, any proceedings before the House shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the said stage of the Bill shall be put forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment.

Bill C-84—Notice of time allocation motion

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise that agreement could not be reached under the provisions of Standing Orders 78(1) or 78(2) with respect to the third reading stage of Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code with regard to bestiality and animal fighting.

Under the provisions of Standing Order 78(3), I give notice that a minister of the Crown will propose at the next sitting a motion to allot a specific number of days or hours for the consideration and disposal of proceedings at the said stage.

Justice and Human Rights

[Arif Virani]

Madam Speaker, I am painfully aware of the fact that we are debating a subamendment, but I thank the member for Wellington—Halton Hills for his desire to clarify the record. If he needs to rise on another point of order, I am sure he will feel free to do so.

The point is that the member for Timmins—James Bay stood in the House just moments ago and asked a question of the member who just rose. That question was whether what he sought to do would jeopardize the independence of the director of public prosecutions. Therefore, let us unpack that.

The notion of the director of public prosecutions, if memory serves, was created around 2004 or 2006 specifically to address the need to ensure there was a depoliticization and an arm's-length nature of important matters and decisions that were taken with respect to prosecutions in the country. That is an important feature. It is hallmarked in the rule of law and the constitutional precepts that the member opposite has raised on numerous occasions in this very House.

By bringing that individual before the committee, the member for Timmins—James Bay raises an important point of whether that might be, unwittingly or de facto, politicizing the very exercise and decision-making power of that very individual. I put that to the House for the purposes of returning to this debate.

What is important to outline is that when we talk about the independence of the director of public prosecutions, a critically important role, it is a role that has been created for many reasons and a role that we need to jealously protect and safeguard.

I find it a bit ironic as well, as a prefatory comment to the comments I will be making, that the official opposition is seeking to direct the committees with respect to their work. We know from the record that when the official opposition was in power, which has been alluded to on numerous occasions by the government House leader, it reduced the resources provided to committees and took parliamentary secretaries like myself and inserted them completely within the committee structure and in so doing, ensured they served almost as de facto whips on committees.

What we did, conversely, was campaign on a different role for parliamentary secretaries and a different role for committees. We fulfilled that campaign commitment by providing better resources to committees and by ensuring that parliamentary secretaries like myself and 34 of my colleagues would not have a vote, for example, at committee. Those are important features that enhance the very committee process that the members opposite say we are somehow impugning.

Perhaps most egregious, and Canadians need to be reminded of this, is that on a day when the official opposition seeks to somehow take the side of the committee process, that is the same party that, when in power, circulated a memo to all committee chairs about how to deliberately obstruct committee processes to better manage the committees to do the Conservative Party's bidding. Those are facts and those facts are important so people understand how perhaps ironic and incredulous I find the position currently being taken by the members opposite.

Let us now look at the work the committees have been doing thus far. Official opposition members who sit on the justice committee, on pretty much every occasion I have seen when a justice bill is being debated in the House, have said it has worked in an amazingly harmonious and consensual manner. They have gone to great lengths to point out on many occasions the work of the member for Mount Royal, as chair, who has always sought to produce consensus-based, multi-party reports and have a consensus-based model and approach toward the committee deliberations, which is very important to note. It happened again earlier today, for Canadians watching or consulting Hansard.

Earlier today, we were debating Bill C-84 and the member for St. Albert—Edmonton talked about the member for Mount Royal, his studious chairmanship of that committee and his efforts to build consensus on numerous occasions. At the same time, the member for St. Albert—Edmonton reflected on the fact that he proposed an amendment to Bill C-84. What we did, like any logical government that is taking a non-partisan approach to committees should do and one that is empowering committees to do their work should do, we accepted that amendment, as we have done on other occasions on other bills, such as Bill C-75, the Criminal Code review amendment.

Again, those are prefatory comments about how committee structures operate and committees work. It is very important for people to understand that the justice committee stands out as an example of the great work committees can do on a multi-party basis. It stands out as an example where committees are fulfilling that kind of role.

In this context, what have we heard from the justice committee? We had people questioning their desire to engage in a discussion about the issues. We had people perhaps being surprised that the justice committee was very willing to hear from people.

The justice committee heard from the former attorney general, the current Attorney General of Canada and the deputy attorney general. It heard from the former principal secretary to the Prime Minister and the Clerk of the Privy Council. I will pause there to particularly acknowledge his 37 or 38 years of non-partisan service to the people of Canada and the Government of Canada and recognize that body of work.

It also heard from important experts and legal academics. That is something that I will confess tickles my fancy, as a lawyer who came here after 15 years of practice in human rights and constitutional law. It heard from people talking about the constitutional precepts that the member for Wellington—Halton Hills is regularly invoking here. The member for, I believe Victoria, from the New Democratic Party, who is the vice-chair of the justice committee, has also referred to it on numerous occasions. They have invoked concepts about what we call the Shawcross doctrine, which has been invoked so many times that people are starting to develop a familiarity about it. They have been talking about the importance of the role of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, and the fused notion that we have here in Canada, both federally and at every provincial level.

They have also talked, by comparison, about how things operate in Britain. For example, in Britain, there is a divorced role. Each entity is fulfilled by different individuals, which helps to address or alleviate some of the concerns that have been expressed here. That is an important issue. It came up today once again in question period.

These issues are being discussed and entered into the public debate, which is a very good thing. It is a hallmark of the committees and Parliament doing their work, which is an important precept. The Canadians who are watching right now should understand that these issues have all been advanced because the committee has been allowed to do its work.

What has the committee learned or what has come out of the committee process? Let us go there for a moment.

A motion was raised today by the member opposite, when we were meant to be debating Bill C-92, child welfare legislation, which would take indigenous kids out of the child welfare system and keep them in and among indigenous families and communities. Instead, they wanted to raise the issue of committee structure and to compel the reappearance of Ms. Roussel at the committee. However, in understanding our position on that, the members opposite need to understand what has already been heard at committee. What I am hearing and learning from reviewing the materials and watching the proceedings is this.

We heard testimony that the former attorney general stated that the Prime Minister told her this was her decision to take. We heard her state on the record that it is appropriate to discuss job impacts. We heard her say that nothing occurred that was unlawful. In response to a question by the leader of the Green Party, she said that nothing that occurred was criminal. We heard her say that she was never directed. We heard her state that the state of our institutions, the rule of law and the independence of the legal process, are intact.

I want to go to a couple of quotes that arose during the context of the proceedings to illustrate this point. The former attorney general herself stated this at the very committee that the members opposite are impugning. She said, “I do not want members of this committee or Canadians to think that the integrity of our institutions has somehow evaporated. The integrity of our justice system, the integrity of the director of public prosecutions and prosecutors, is intact.”

This position on this issue of the rule of law, which is an important point, has been raised by the member for Wellington—Halton Hills on numerous occasions in the context of this debate. It was also raised in the context of Mr. Wernick's testimony, when he said, “I think Canadians should feel assured that they work in a democracy under the rule of law.”

In the same exchange with the member for Willowdale, Mr. Wernick went on to state, “I think Canadians need to be assured that their police and investigators, with the powers of the state, operate independently, and that the prosecution service, the state charging people with offences, is completely independent. There is a legislative and statutory shield around that, which demonstrably is working...”

That echoes exactly what we heard from the member for Timmins—James Bay. It also echoes what we heard from communications that have been put out by the director of public prosecutions. That office has gone to pains and at length to reassure Canadians that it has not been influenced in this case, nor has it been influenced in any other case with respect to how it conducts prosecutions. That is a critically important point to raise in the context of contemplations by the members opposite about recalling Madame Roussel before the committee.

In the end, what we heard at that committee was that the former attorney general made the decision not to proceed. The law was followed every step of the way. What we have also heard, and what we know, is that the rule of law has remained intact. Those are critical points to be underscored at this juncture.

I want to return to what was raised by the member for St. Albert—Edmonton this afternoon when he first raised the motion about the issue of appropriate versus inappropriate discussion points with respect to the remediation agreement regime. I want to read this into the record so that it is crystal clear for Canadians. The remediation agreement regime exists in the Criminal Code. It is entrenched in the Criminal Code of Canada, based on amendments that were made last year.

The remediation agreement regime was studied at length in Canada-wide consultations. Following that study, it was proposed in legislation. That legislation was then studied by the finance committee and the justice committee of the House of Commons as well as a Senate committee. That remediation regime was then enacted into law and fully gazetted in an open and transparent manner to the public.

As has been stated on different occasions in the context of debates that we have been having over the past five or six weeks, the remediation agreement regime exists in five member countries of the G7. Those include the United States, Britain, France, Japan and now Canada. What we are doing by invoking a remediation agreement regime is harmonizing Canadian law with the laws of many other western democratic nations, particularly many other western democratic nations with whom we have trading relationships, which is an important point.

What is misunderstood here is this notion of what the remediation agreement concept invokes, or more specifically what it involves. There have been active discussions about whether the Prime Minister invoking the necessity and propriety of discussing jobs and job impacts was in fact appropriate. The position of Her Majesty's official opposition, articulated even earlier this afternoon, is that somehow that was inappropriate.

I want to read this into the record so that is is absolutely crystal clear. This is how one would conduct this matter if we were debating it in a much more rigorous way in a court of law. One would look to the statute for guidance.

Section 715.31 of the Criminal Code of Canada says:

The purpose of this Part is to establish a remediation agreement regime that is applicable to organizations alleged to have committed an offence and that has the following objectives:

It then lists six objectives:

(a) to denounce an organization’s wrongdoing and the harm that the wrongdoing has caused to victims or to the community;

(b) to hold the organization accountable for its wrongdoing through effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties;

That is an important point, because much has been made by members opposite about there being no accountability if a remediation agreement even enters the discussion points.

Paragraph 715.31(c) of the Criminal Code states:

to contribute to respect for the law by imposing an obligation on the organization to put in place corrective measures and promote a compliance culture;

That objective is clearly redressing the circumstances or the harm or the organizational capacity that allowed such a problem to occur. The fourth objective is as follows:

(d) to encourage voluntary disclosure of the wrongdoing;

That is to ensure that corporate actors or other actors come forward on a voluntary basis. The fifth point for the remediation agreement regime is this:

(e) to provide reparations for harm done to victims or to the community;

Again, that is addressing the victims. We have repeatedly heard invocations about the harms that has occurred in the context of SNC-Lavalin or other corporate actors in the context of remediation agreement regimes. What the statute itself talks about is ensuring that there are reparations for harm done to victims. That is important.

However, the last point is the most important point. It addresses precisely what has been raised by the member for St. Albert—Edmonton in his comments, which is why government members or the Prime Minister are even talking about jobs. Well, here is why, and, again, I am reading the Criminal Code of Canada, subsection 715.31(f), which says that the purpose of a remediation agreement regime is as follows:

to reduce the negative consequences of the wrongdoing for persons—employees, customers, pensioners and others—who did not engage in the wrongdoing, while holding responsible those individuals who did engage in that wrongdoing.

I will simplify that for the viewers. A remediation agreement is meant to ensure that the people who make decisions at a corporation are held accountable because they committed the wrongdoing, but those who are on the front lines, such as people who work on the assembly lines, answer the phone, stock the water cooler, are not held responsible, nor are people who no longer work at the company because they are pensioners. That is the point of a remediation agreement, which is why it has taken hold in now five member countries of the G7. It is why it has been adopted into law in Canada. It is important. The fundamental priority of any government is to keep its citizens safe and to promote their economic stability and security. That is a critical component.

These are important aspects, and I raise them today because it shows that concepts such as these need to be understood better. We can already understand them better by looking at the committee track record thus far. It has been a robust one. It has heard from a number of witnesses. That committee work is continuing as it should, in a manner that has been forthright and transparent.

Criminal Code

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code, as amended, with respect to bestiality and animal fighting. Let me say that I, along with all my colleagues on this side of the House, fully support this critical piece of legislation.

There are two main components to Bill C-84. The first is with respect to bestiality; more specifically, it is a direct response to the Supreme Court's D.L.W. decision. In D.L.W., the Supreme Court interpreted section 160 of the Criminal Code, which is the section that prohibits bestiality. In the decision written by Justice Cromwell, the court decided that in the absence of a statutory definition, bestiality should be interpreted only in those circumstances where the act involving the animal involved penetration. What this legislation does is clarify the law by providing for a statutory definition whereby any activity with an animal for a sexual purpose would be captured by section 160 of the Criminal Code, closing a very critical gap.

The second aspect of this legislation is to strengthen laws around animal fighting. I know the parliamentary secretary did discuss the amendments at committee in some detail, but I have in the last number of weeks been quite critical of my Liberal colleagues on the justice committee with respect to their handling of the SNC-Lavalin scandal and I stand by those criticisms. That said, in the normal course we are a committee that has often worked collaboratively. We have been able to put aside partisan differences to find common ground. That is precisely what happened.

We heard from witnesses who put forward ideas around how Bill C-84 could be strengthened, and three substantive amendments were passed at committee unanimously. I want to acknowledge the good work of our chair, the hon. member for Mount Royal, who from day one has set the tone that has enabled our committee to more often than not be one of the more productive parliamentary committees.

With respect to the first part of the bill, namely around section 160 and in terms of providing a statutory definition for bestiality, this is something that I fully support. I think there is widespread consensus to support this statutory amendment, but I will go back to the point that I raised when I asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice a question, namely that I cannot understand what took the government so long to act.

The D.L.W. decision was rendered in June 2016. It is now March 2019. What that means is that if this legislation moves forward as quickly as possible, it will be essentially three years in which this gap in the law existed. Why did it take three years? The fact is that the Supreme Court expressly invited Parliament to introduce legislation to provide for a statutory definition. There is as close to universal consensus as we are ever going to find around the need to provide for a statutory definition.

The type of amendment that would be required to incorporate a statutory definition into section 160 of the Criminal Code is, quite frankly, a relatively straightforward one. Because the government dragged its feet and dragged its feet some more, my colleague, the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill, saw fit to introduce a private member's bill to close the gap established from the D.L.W. decision, Bill C-388. That bill would provide for a statutory definition. The statutory definition provided in her bill states, “In this section, 'bestiality' means any contact by a person, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.”

That is pretty straightforward. We then turn to Bill C-84, which the government introduced one year after the member for Calgary Nose Hill introduced Bill C-388. The definition provided for in the government's bill states, “In this section, 'bestiality' means any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.”

There we have it. Word for word, it was copied and pasted from the private member's bill of the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill, except that the government waited one year to do it and almost three years after the D.L.W. decision was rendered.

When I asked the parliamentary secretary the reason for the delay, the parliamentary secretary noted that the government had undertaken various consultations with a wide range of stakeholder groups. That is true and that is right, but that was with respect to the animal fighting and animal cruelty provisions of Bill C-84.

It was important that those consultations took place. The aspects of Bill C-84 that deal with animal cruelty and animal fighting are sensible. They do not interfere with traditional hunting, angling or trapping, and there was widespread stakeholder support. However, those consultations had absolutely nothing to do with closing the gap in section 160 of the Criminal Code with respect to bestiality. The notion that somehow there was the need for consultation is simply not the case. It is simply not true in terms of closing this gap. Quite frankly, that argument does not hold water. The bottom line is there is simply no excuse for the delay.

I would speak to the seriousness of the delay from the standpoint of the evidence that came before our committee with respect to bestiality. In that regard, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection carried out a study of 192 cases over a five-year period from Cybertip, which the centre operates and which is the leading national tipline for online sexual activity in Canada. Of the 192 cases that the centre studied with respect to bestiality, a full 80% of those cases did not involve penetration.

That underscores the degree to which there is a gap in the legislation. As of today, since June of 2016, individuals who commit vile and despicable acts involving animals that fall short of penetration cannot be charged under section 160 of the Criminal Code. Again, when 80% of the cases, at least based on a review of 192 cases, did not involve penetration, I say that is a pretty serious issue that needs to be addressed and needs to be addressed as quickly as possible, which is something that the government has simply not done.

With respect to some of the amendments at committee, there were two that related to bestiality.

The first would provide a judge with the discretion to impose a prohibition order upon conviction that would prevent someone convicted of bestiality from being in the same premises or having access to an animal for a period of time that the judge deems appropriate, and with respect to repeat offenders, namely those who are convicted of a second or subsequent bestiality offence, for a minimum of five years.

The second amendment that was passed was an amendment that I brought forward. It would ensure that anyone convicted of a bestiality offence would be required to register with the national sex offender registry. Right now, anyone convicted of compelling the commission of bestiality under subsection 160(2), as well as anyone convicted under subsection 160(3), namely bestiality in the presence of a child, would be required to register with the national sex offender registry but all other offenders would not. As a result of my amendment, this legislation would close that gap.

It is an important step to keep children, women and animals safe because, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice laid out in some detail, there is a very clear connection between bestiality and violence against women and children. It is often part of a pattern involving some of the worst sexual crimes imaginable. Indeed, bestiality has been equated to sadism in terms of the impact that it can have on its victims.

In terms of looking at the severity of what we are talking about and how serious and how dangerous individuals who commit bestiality offences are, one need only look at D.L.W. himself. This is an individual who over a 10-year period sexually abused his two stepdaughters on a daily basis. The pattern of sexual abuse in that case escalated as time went on to the point that he committed bestiality against one of the stepdaughters involving the family dog. It is important to read into the record what the trial judge said of D.L.W. in terms of capturing the level of depravity that we are talking about here.

The trial judge in his reasons for sentence said:

I have been a judge for almost 40 years. This offender is one of the most evil men that I have encountered during my long tenure on the Bench. The man is evil incarnate. He is a monster. It is said that the devil can cite scripture for his own use. That is certainly the case here. With a warped vivid imagination and using passages from the Bible to justify his actions, D.L.W., in a most vile manner, sexually abused two of his stepchildren on a daily basis for over a decade.

Those are the types of offenders that we are talking about, and on that basis it is important that all individuals convicted of bestiality have to register with the national sex offender registry. I am glad that the government has lent its support in that regard.

Moving on to the second aspect of Bill C-84, there are important measures to strengthen laws around animal cruelty and animal fighting. We know that animal fighting is widespread and often under-reported. There are clear links between gangs and organized crime. There is an enormous amount of money that can be involved. We heard evidence before the justice committee that one dogfight can involve as much as $200,000. When there are four or five fights, a million dollars could change hands and get into the hands of organized crime groups.

The legislation would make some practical amendments to the Criminal Code to give law enforcement better tools to be able to crack down on animal fighting and eliminate an important funding source for organized criminal elements. In that regard, Bill C-84 would make a few amendments to the animal fighting sections of the Criminal Code. First, again in respect to subsection 445.1(1), at present that subsection prohibits anyone from encouraging, aiding or assisting in fighting or baiting animals. What that section does not capture at present is activities involved in training, transporting or breeding animals for animal fighting purposes.

I see my time is up, so I will just carry on after question period.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member has mentioned, I have some animal rights champions in my riding, such as Denise Paulin, Natalie Paulin, Emily Regier and Maureen Leblanc. Countless people are championing the issues here. They see the reality that Bill C-84 is actually a missed opportunity.

I would like to hear the member talk about some of the comprehensive things on which we could move forward but have not, such as addressing the issue of basic living standards for animals and tethering laws. We could have put those in Bill C-84, but we missed the mark.

We keep hearing that the bill is a first step, but we have had many first steps that the government has voted down in the past. We have momentum now. I would like to hear why we are addressing not only the issue of bestiality but also basic standards of care and housing and tethering.

[Arif Virani]

Mr. Speaker, I would point out to the member for Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke that the important aspect of the private member's bill initiated by the member for Beaches—East York is that it started an important debate that needed to take place in this chamber. I will readily admit, as I am sure most parliamentarians would, that we learned a lot, in the process of going from that bill to where we are with Bill C-84, about the need to update and improve our animal protection laws and to find consensus where consensus can be found.

The difference between the private member's bill and the bill we have before us is that no fewer than 10 different stakeholders support the current bill. They include the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, the Chicken Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Pork Council, the Egg Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Hatching Egg Producers, the Turkey Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Bison Association, the Canada Mink Breeders Association, the Canadian Sheep Federation and the Canadian Poultry and Egg Processors Council. It is an exhaustive list.

What is important is that it demonstrates what can be done to promote the same objective the member opposite and I share, which is promoting animal protection and ending animal cruelty when consensus can be found. We as parliamentarians have the responsibility to do that and to move forward on the best basis we can.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I find it curious that the parliamentary secretary mentioned the private member's bill brought forward by the member for Beaches—East York, Bill C-246. The government did not get behind that bill, which was a much more comprehensive review of animal cruelty laws. It would have provided us with all the things in Bill C-84, essentially, plus a lot more that we really need to address, including the change from considering animals under the property sections of the Criminal Code to establishing a separate section of the Criminal Code for offences against animals.

I am wondering why the government did not support that private member's bill.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice is right. Bill C-84 is a critical piece of legislation, and I am glad he focused on three substantive amendments that were passed in committee unanimously upon hearing from various witnesses. That is committee work as it should be. I am pleased that the government supported my amendment so that all individuals convicted of bestiality would be required to register with the national sex offender registry. That is going to keep children, women and animals safe.

The one criticism I have, however, is that it has taken the government almost three years since the D.L.W. decision to close the gap in terms of the narrow interpretation the court has taken in terms of the definition of “bestiality”. Why did the government wait so long to pass a relatively straightforward piece of legislation that is so critical?

[Arif Virani, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and to the Minister of Democratic Institutions, Lib.]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first time rising since the events on Friday. I want to state for the record my solidarity, and the solidarity of all parliamentarians, with the people of New Zealand and the Muslims who were killed and injured at the two mosques in Christchurch.

I rise today to speak to Bill C-84. The bill proposes to amend the Criminal Code to strengthen the laws around bestiality and animal fighting. As members will recall, proposed amendments to Bill C-84 will, among other things, address a gap in the law identified by the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of the Crown v. D.L.W. That decision and its interpretation of the bestiality provisions led to calls for law reform to address a gap identified by the court; that is the common law meaning of bestiality was limited previously to simply penetrative acts.

The bill's proposal to identify bestiality as “any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal” would address that very gap. Although some may view this provision as a modest step, it is an important one that needs to be taken, and our government is very appreciative of the non-partisan approach that members from all sides have taken to advancing this needed reform in an expeditious manner through Parliament. We would like to note, in particular, the unanimous support the bill received at second reading and in committee.

I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to the witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and to the members of that committee for their comprehensive review of this bill.

After listening to the testimony presented during the study of Bill C-84, the committee adopted three key amendments based on the expertise of witnesses who expressed their support for this bill. These amendments will provide for improved animal protections by authorizing the courts to issue a prohibition or restitution order when a person is found guilty of a bestiality offence. The amendments will also eliminate the requirement to destroy birds used in cockfighting.

Finally, these amendments will ensure that the names of those found guilty of engaging in a sexual act with an animal, or, in other words, those found guilty of the bestiality simpliciter offence, are added to the national sex offender registry. This amendment was proposed by the hon. member for St. Albert—Edmonton of the official opposition.

The issue of animal rights and welfare is an important one right around the country and in particular to the constituents in my riding of Parkdale—High Park. I have listened closely to the concerns of those residents. We are committed, as a government, to doing better on this issue by supporting this important bill.

I have heard in my riding, for example, from constituents such as Josie Candito, who has spoken to me repeatedly and testified while we studied the bill at committee, about the link between animal abuse and the abuse of children and women. What we know on that very point is that it is not clear that every animal abuser ends up abusing children and women. However, what is absolutely clear, and what the facts demonstrated at committee, is that people who abuse women and children have in their history an antecedence of having abused animals. This is a critical point because the bill targets that.

What we also heard from people like Anne Griffin and Tracey Capes, both of whom came before the federal/provincial animal welfare working group on Parliament Hill, are their thoughts regarding the bill and our government's continued efforts and progress to protect animals.

However, the one thing that my constituents have consistently reiterated is that there is still more work to be done to protect animals. They have told me that our next steps must be informed by a national consultation regarding the most important issues to Canadians or a high-level analysis by the federal government, taking into account the broad perspectives on an issue as vast as animal welfare. I have told them, the current Minister of Justice has told them and the former minister of justice has told them that Bill C-84 is an important first step toward our government's goal of more comprehensive protection for animals, and we indeed intend to continue this important work.

In my time today, I will review some of this important testimony and discuss how these amendments bolster the objectives sought by this crucial legislation.

As mentioned, the first amendment adopted by the committee would authorize a court to issue an animal prohibition or restitution order for each of the three bestiality offences found in section 160 of the code.

The object of this prohibition order is to prohibit offenders convicted of bestiality from possessing, having the care of or control over, or residing with an animal for any period that the court deems appropriate up to a lifetime prohibition. A lifetime ban may indeed be necessary in certain circumstances, having regard to the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of certain offenders. This was a helpful suggestion originally made by one of the important stakeholders who testified before the justice committee, Ms. Camille Labchuk of Animal Justice.

The restitution order specifically would require the offender to repay an individual or an organization the costs of caring for the injured animal as a result of a criminal offence. This would also make the offender more accountable for the consequences of his or her actions.

The proposed amendment builds on section 447.1 of the Criminal Code, which authorizes the court to issue such orders for persons convicted of animal cruelty offences. Right now, when someone is charged with a bestiality offence under section 160 of the Criminal Code, such orders can be issued only at the time of sentencing as a condition of a probation order or conditional sentence. These orders are limited in duration to the term of the imposed conditions and expire after that.

This was pointed out by Sergeant Teena Stoddart, from the Ottawa Police Service, when she testified before the committee. That means there is a gap in animal welfare measures, since the courts can issue such orders for animal cruelty offences but not for bestiality offences.

The committee also heard from several other witnesses on this issue, including, as I mentioned, Ms. Labchuk, executive director for Animal Justice; Ms. Barbara Cartwright, CEO of Humane Canada; Dr. Alice Crook from the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association; and Professor Peter Sankoff from the University of Alberta, Faculty of Law. They all agreed on the need for this amendment to this important bill. Indeed, this amendment is entirely consistent with the objectives in the bill, and we on this side of the House are pleased to support it.

I would now like to turn my attention to the second amendment adopted by the committee, which provides for the repeal of subsection 447(3) of the Criminal Code.

The current subsection requires a peace officer who finds birds at cockfighting premises to bring the birds to a justice of the peace so the JP can order they be destroyed. That provision requires the automatic destruction of birds, but does not apply to other animals, such as dogs. It is very much a vestige of the distant past when animal fighting primarily involved only cockfighting and resulted in the roosters being so severely injured that they needed to be destroyed.

Nowadays, however, there are better ways to solve this problem in order to eliminate any legal loopholes in animal protection. Ensuring the welfare of these animals is a key objective for the provincial and territorial legislation and for the general powers set out in the Criminal Code.

First, the provinces and territories have jurisdiction over matters concerning animal welfare. That includes passing legislation dealing specifically with the seizure of animals in distress and the care they must receive, where possible, as well as the administration of humane euthanasia if necessary.

Second, some witnesses and parliamentarians believe that the criminal law does not address the seizure and automatic destruction of mistreated animals in an appropriate manner.

In fact, Madam Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, testified before the committee that the automatic destruction of birds found in a cockfighting ring in the previous version of the section was “completely needless, and it ties the hands of authorities when there may be a better option for the birds.”

Ms. Labchuk further testified before the committee. She said:

We think the fate of any bird seized should be decided on a case-by-case basis. This is already done for dogs and other animals rescued from fighting rings. There is no principled reason that roosters or birds forced to fight should be automatically killed. It may be appropriate to rehabilitate them. It may be appropriate to send them to a sanctuary, where they can receive lifelong care and still enjoy a high quality of life.

It should be noted that Ms. Labchuk's position was broadly supported by other witnesses, including Ms. Cartwright, the CEO of Humane Canada.

All 10 provinces and the Yukon Territory empower peace officers and animal welfare inspectors to seize animals in distress. Furthermore, where appropriate, the legislation provides for the animals to be humanely destroyed.

Nunavut and the Northwest Territories allow peace officers and animal protection officers to seize dogs, and these territories have legislation requiring general rehabilitation for the dogs, as well as humane euthanasia where appropriate.

In addition to these protection measures, the Criminal Code also confers general powers on peace officers and public officers to seize offence-related property while executing a search warrant. Section 487 of the Criminal Code therefore authorizes peace officers to seize an animal, where circumstances warrant.

Once more, pursuant to section 489 of the Criminal Code, things not specified in a warrant can also be seized where a thing has been obtained by the commission of an offence, used in the commission of an offence or something that will afford evidence in respect of an offence under any act of Parliament. Accordingly, repealing subsection 447(3) would leave no gap in the law, which is an important point. Instead, repealing it would leave the matter of seizure and the question of whether care or euthanasia would be appropriate to be dealt with under applicable provincial laws and by persons trained specifically in such matters.

I would now like to draw the attention of the House to the third amendment adopted by the committee. This amendment would add the bestiality simpliciter offence, in subsection 160(1), to the list of designated offences for which an offender must be automatically ordered to register and comply with the requirements of the National Sex Offender Registry, pursuant to the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, or SOIRA, as it is commonly called.

This legislation, enacted in 2004, created the National Sex Offender Registry to help Canadian law enforcement agencies investigate sex crimes by registering specific information on sex offenders. When an offender is found guilty of a designated sexual offence, the court must order the offender to register with the National Sex Offender Registry and comply with the SOIRA for a period of 10 years, 20 years, or even indefinitely. Offenders found guilty of other designated infractions may be ordered to register with the registry and to comply with the SOIRA if prosecutors established the intent to commit a sexual offence during the commission of an offence like breaking and entering in relation to a dwelling-house, in paragraph 348(1)(d).

Currently, the designated sexual offences include subsection 160(2), compelling the commission of bestiality, which was added in 2011, and subsection 160(3), bestiality in the presence of or by a child, which was included in 2004 in an enactment of the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, known in English as SOIRA.

The justice committee received testimony and studies on the link between animal abuse and bestiality and acts of violence against persons, particularly women and children. I alluded to this at the outset, and it bears repeating. We do not know definitively that all animal abusers end up abusing women and children, but we know that for people who abuse women and children, their antecedents include abuse of animals in all instances. That was the evidence before the committee.

For example, the justice committee heard about the innovative work conducted by the Canadian Violence Link Coalition. It was launched to “study and bring forward all of the different academic research that's going on and that supports the links between animal violence and human violence.” The work of the Canadian Violence Link Coalition follows a multidisciplinary, multi-sector and collaborative information-sharing approach in strengthening the response to animal abuse and neglect and establishing its link to the abuse of humans.

During her testimony, Ms. Cartwright commented, “While not all abusers are serial killers, all serial killers are animal abusers.” The evidence I have been referencing is that of Ms. Cartwright, before the committee. The evidence demonstrates that abuse of humans is a common step up from animal abuse for individuals who have a propensity for serial violence.

Ms. Cartwright's remarks were reiterated by other experts, including Sergeant Teena Stoddart, who spoke about research reported in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry showing that, out of a group of 943 inmates selected at random, half of sex offenders and one third of child molesters had abused animals as adolescents. The same study also confirmed that child molesters use animals to attract and win over their victims. By making inappropriate sexual contact with the animals, the molesters desensitize the children and normalize sexual contacts between adults and children.

There is growing international research in this area, but we were pleased to learn of new Canadian data collected by Amy Fitzgerald of the University of Windsor, primarily on the link between animal abuse and interpersonal and spousal abuse. I have to admit I was surprised to hear that Canadian research shows that these violence links are worse in Canada than abroad, according to similar international studies.

More specifically, women who are victims of violence also report that their animal is in the same situation.

This violence link is further supported by the testimony of Ms. Lianna McDonald, executive director, and Ms. Monique St. Germain, general counsel, of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. They spoke about the growing online proliferation of child sexual abuse images, of which the most explicit and extreme images depicting sexual assault against children involve bestiality.

Having regard for the evidence demonstrating the very strong relationship between violence toward animals and violence towards humans, we believe that adding a bestiality simpliciter as a designated offence is consistent with the underlying objective of the SOIRA and with the existing designation of the two other bestiality offences.

I would like to close by addressing one last point, which was raised during the study of Bill C-84. Some committee members and witnesses feel that this bill does not go far enough and that a comprehensive reform of the animal cruelty regime is overdue in Canada.

As the minister mentioned in his testimony before the committee, our government remains open to dialogue and discussion as to the best way to address these vast and complex issues.

That said, we are equally mindful of testimony received at the committee on the importance of moving these reforms forward as soon as possible, particularly because they are designed to close a gap in the law and enhance protections for the most vulnerable members of society. Moreover, it is very important to keep in mind that Bill C-84 is a targeted response to two specific issues that enjoy widespread support from all the key stakeholders in this area of the law. Those stakeholders submitted a letter to the Minister of Justice. Ten of the most important stakeholders, from agriculture to hunting to veterinary care, all support the aspects of this bill.

Bill C-84 is a meaningful and much-needed step forward. We are confident that we can move this critical piece of legislation ahead today and in so doing come one step closer to enhancing protections for the most vulnerable members in our society. On that basis, I would urge all members to support the swift passage of this important piece of legislation, Bill C-84.

[Diane Lebouthillier, Liberal, Gaspésie—Les-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

moved that Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting), be concurred in.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting), as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon we will continue with debate at third reading of Bill C-77, the victims bill of rights.

Tomorrow we will debate Bill C-83, the administrative segregation legislation, at third reading.

For the next two weeks, we will be working with our constituents in our ridings. Upon our return, Monday shall be an allotted day. Tuesday we will start report stage and third reading of Bill C-84, on animal cruelty. At 4 p.m. on Tuesday, the Minister of Finance will present budget 2019. Wednesday will be dedicated to the budget debate.

Justice and Human Rights

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the 25th report of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights concerning Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code in regard to bestiality and animal fighting.

The committee has studied the bill and has decided to report the bill back to the House with amendments.

[Carole Morency]

The way Bill C-84 reads now, as introduced, the definition of bestiality was added as proposed subsection 160(4), after the offence provisions. If they are following the usual order, the Criminal Code would say, “This is an offence, and here's the penalty. In addition to that penalty, here would be the prohibition order or restitution.” The definition would normally come at the end of the sequencing of the subsections.

[Carole Morency]

It would end with.... It would be, “in addition to any other sentence that it may impose”, then comma, and then you have (a) and (b), with the changes that have been noted about the deletion of “or a bird”.

One of the other distinctions would be.... Perhaps the legislative drafters would comment that normally you would put sentencing provisions together in a provision. Here, you have the definition that Bill C-84 is proposing as subsection 160(4), and LIB-1 would propose to put the additional penalty provision after the definition. In the end, I guess it's all there, but it's probably a drafting thing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the meeting of the justice committee that everybody is waiting for today. Our discussion is on Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code with regard to bestiality and animal fighting.

I'd like to welcome the student group here today—it's great to have you. I think all the committee members are excited to have so many people in the room on our clause-by-clause on the bill. Clause-by-clause means that we're going through amendments to a bill. This is a bill that was proposed by the government, and different committee members have heard from witnesses and will now be proposing amendments.

It's a pleasure to have Mr. Davies and Mr. Erskine-Smith join the members of the committee this morning.

It's also a pleasure to be joined by witnesses from the Department of Justice: Madame Carole Morency, director general and senior general counsel; and Ms. Paula Clarke, counsel, criminal law policy section. Welcome, both. You will be helping us if we have questions on any of the amendments.

We'll now get to the list of amendments.

(On clause 1)

The amendment we have to clause 1, LIB-1, is essentially the identical point as PV-2, NDP-2 and CPC-1, just put in a different part of the code. It has exactly the same effect, to apply rules to a conviction in the bestiality section that people can't own animals.... Those rules were in different sections and didn't apply to this offence. Each of these amendments—PV-2, NDP-2 and CPC-1—would become moot if LIB-1 was adopted, because it achieves the same thing.

Mr. Erskine-Smith, this is your amendment. You have the floor.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Are there any forms of animal cruelty that are of concern to you or to your organization that aren't adequately covered by existing offences in the Criminal Code or by amendments in Bill C-84?

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Is there anything with regard to Bill C-84 that you'd like to see? This is an opportunity, when the government is looking at making these changes, to do something.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

However, making it easier to actually get convictions, which Bill C-84 does, will hopefully have an impact on the number of incidents that actually occur.

[Jordan Reichert]

I would say yes, I'm supportive of Bill C-84. I believe the animal fighting aspect really rounds out the legislation and, I think, fulfills its goal and its interest in serving to protect animals.

However, I believe the bestiality aspect fails to address the more systematic issues surrounding bestiality and to bring it into more contemporary times in terms of how these things are taking place and how they're being organized. I was reading about a forum called Beast Forum, or something like that. It has 1.2 million registered users. When you think about the number of people who could be trading and organizing through these kinds of channels and the rings that may be established, it's not sufficient to simply be focusing only on the act of bestiality. It's not just between that animal and that person. It has a much larger social aspect to it as well, which needs to be addressed.

That's why the Washington state law is one of the most progressive in terms of addressing this more well-rounded approach.

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Reichert, I appreciate your presentation and the brief that you've submitted to the committee.

From what I gather, you're supportive of Bill C-84 but you don't think it goes far enough. Is that fair to say?

[Jordan Reichert]

Thank you so much.

First of all, I want to thank the committee for this whole process.

In particular, I want to thank Mr. Rankin, the member for Victoria and my MP—he is absent today but he has been here—for all his good work in the community and his support for various issues I've brought forward related to animals. He's been very helpful with that.

I also want to thank Mr. Erskine-Smith, the member for Beaches—East York—he's not here now either—for his work on bringing animal issues forward into government. I think he's made a tremendous impact here.

My name is Jordan Reichert. I'm the West Coast Campaign Officer for the Animal Protection Party of Canada. The Animal Protection Party of Canada is North America's first political party for animals to represent their interests and those of the environment. It was established in 2005—before, one could say, bringing animals into politics was cool, perhaps. We hold all political parties accountable for their policy in regard to protecting animals and the impact of their policy on the environment and society as well.

To start, I want to address the question of animal sentience, which underlies the purpose of why we are gathered here to consider the treatment of animals under the law. While animals may still be defined as property under the 1892 statute in the Criminal Code, they are without question sentient. According to the declaration on consciousness that was made in July 2012, scientists, in the presence of the late Stephen Hawking, wrote the following:

Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors.

In recognition of the above, it is necessary to approach Bill C-84 from the perspective that we are enhancing protections for vulnerable individuals who may not be treated as equals under the law but are nonetheless affected equally by its inadequacies to protect their safety. Bill C-84 addresses specific instances of cruel acts against animals—namely, bestiality and animal fighting—without addressing the broader implications of animals' continued definition as property. I want to acknowledge this shortcoming while not dwelling on it, and move on to the specific acts addressed in the bill.

The amendments to the Criminal Code proposed in Bill C-84 address long-standing holes in the law that have allowed for the sexual abuse, exploitation and suffering of animals across Canada. While these issues in particular may not be as prolific or garner as much attention as other animal cruelty issues, they are no less important to the animals who suffer them.

As is often referenced as the catalyst for Bill C-84 in regard to bestiality, the Supreme Court case of the Queen v. D.L.W. narrowly defined bestiality as “penetration between a human and an animal”, drawn from the original term “buggery”. This allowed an act of unquestionable sexual harm to an animal and a young person to be excused. In the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision, this has had further chilling effects on prosecutors' already limited abilities to address animal cruelty cases. With there being a strong correlation between the abuse of animals and the abuse of vulnerable people when they are present, this amendment will benefit individuals, animal and human alike.

My concern about the wording of Bill C-84 is that it does not go far enough to address the contemporary systematic aspects of bestiality rings. Bestiality is not only a private act but also a social one, with online forums and an existing trade in images, video and the arranging of meetings to sexually abuse animals. For example, unlike child pornography, no provisions are made in the wording of the law against bestiality, old or amended, that address the creation of materials and the promotion or dissemination of sexualized content of animals.

In Washington state, laws around bestiality acknowledge this broader narrative behind the act. There, causing or aiding another person to engage in sexual activity is also prohibited, as is permitting it in your premises, observing it, promoting it and advertising it. In Canada, under the current law and proposed amendments, the proliferation of bestiality would still have avenues to spread unaddressed, online and otherwise.

Animal fighting is another illegal activity that does not get significant media attention due to its underground nature and ties to organized crime. The act of breeding, training and fighting animals causes considerable psychological and physiological damage to animals, or may lead to violent premature death.

There is also the theft and deaths of the animals associated with the training of dogs who fight in the arena, including dogs and cats who are used as bait during the training process.

Current wording in the Criminal Code fails to address substantial motivations and processes involved for people engaged in animal fighting. Animal fighting often involves financial investment in the animals being fought and profited off of, and that investment must be recognized as a key motivator for the people behind this brutal blood sport. Operations that breed and abuse animals for fighting may be run in an organized and semi-professional manner, and this needs to be addressed in the law. Furthermore, the current wording only addresses cockfighting pits, and not the more common contemporary design of “arenas” used for dogs. You've heard much about this.

Changes proposed in Bill C-84 will substantially address many of the shortcomings of the current reading of the law. Adding the wording “promotes, arranges” and “receives money for or takes part in” increases acknowledgement of the breadth of processes behind the organizing of animal fighting rings. Including “the training, transporting or breeding of animals or birds” is also an important acknowledgement that the arena is the end game and not the sum of animal fighting. While cockfighting still exists, the new wording that describes the less specific “arena” is essential to bring the law into the contemporary context of animal fighting.

However, Bill C-84's current amendments neglect to include the theft of animals for the purpose of training or fighting other animals. This would be an important inclusion, considering the prevalence of this activity related to animal fighting.

The Animal Protection Party of Canada is unequivocally opposed to the use of animals for sexual gratification and fighting. Animals have been recognized by the scientific community as sentient beings who are feeling and intelligent, who have their own interests and who are expressive of their needs and desires.

The act of bestiality is exploitative of the position of power a human has over a vulnerable animal and is not something the animal can be understood to consent to freely. Animal fighting may be more brutal, merciless and violent, but again it stems from the same power imbalance that places a vulnerable animal at the mercy of someone who has admonished themselves of their duty to provide safety and security for the welfare of animals.

Due to the clandestine nature of bestiality and animal fighting, it is unclear how prolific each may be in Canada. However, there is evidence that such acts are not completely uncommon.

What I regret to tell you is that the case law does not reflect even a faction of the number of cases that are submitted to animal welfare agencies by the public who witness them, let alone the number that are never reported. Amendments to Bill C-84 will hopefully help to prosecute these crimes and empower the public to report them but also help improve the status of animals within the law.

With over 50% of Canadian households having pets as our friends and family, animals deserve better than to be relegated to the property section of the Criminal Code. Bill C-84 will not address this broader issue of animals as property, but it will address some of the most egregious abuses of our relationships with them.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

We will now reconvene our session of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights as we study Bill C-84.

We are delighted to be joined today on our next panel by Mr. Jordan Reichert from the Animal Protection Party of Canada, who is the West Coast Campaign Officer.

Welcome, Mr. Reichert.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Great. Thank you.

Mr. Annau, we've heard from other witnesses and department officials that amendments to Bill C-84 should not impact any legitimate hunting or fishing practices. Is there any wording that you have a particular concern about in Bill C-84?

[Frank Annau, Environment and Science Policy Advisor, Canadian Federation of Agriculture]

Thanks, everyone.

My name is Frank Annau. I'm speaking on behalf of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, or CFA, as this organization's environment and science policy adviser.

CFA was formed in 1935 to give a united voice to Canadian farmers. It has since grown to be Canada's largest general farm organization, representing approximately 200,000 farmers and farm families nationwide.

Our president Ron Bonnett sends his regrets for not being able to attend this morning, but we both extend our thanks for this opportunity to participate in providing comments on Bill C-84.

Canadian agriculture has a long history of responsible stewardship and devotion to improving animal care standards and performance. Producers care deeply about their farm animals and wish to ensure respectful and equitable treatment for all animals.

This conviction is strongly shared by those of us working within Canada's agriculture community, so much so that in 2016, CFA participated in a working group with the National Farm Animal Care Council, or NFACC, to identify areas within the Criminal Code where greater protection for animals was needed. The research of the working group was thorough and examined distinctions between federal and provincial laws to help inform avenues for updating the code. These proposed updates were addressed in a joint letter to former Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould in December 2017. It was signed by a wide array of stakeholders including the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, Chicken Farmers of Canada and the Canadian Pork Council, just to name a few.

The letter formed a united opinion on changes needed to help protect the safety of Canadians and improve the welfare of all animal species. Recommendations included that bestiality mean any contact for a sexual purpose between a person and animal, that provisions dealing with animal fighting explicitly include all species of animals, and that profiting from animal fighting be included under the Criminal Code as an additional offence.

As such, we are pleased to see these recommendations addressed in clauses 1, 2 and 3 of Bill C-84. The extended definition of “bestiality” and provisions related to animal fighting, training, promotion and arena hosting greatly strengthen the security of animal welfare here in Canada. Most importantly, these amendments address the loopholes in the Criminal Code by adding further legal protection for children and vulnerable members of society against sexually exploitation.

As such, the CFA extends its support for the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code under Bill C-84. The inclusion of all animals under provisions specific to bestiality and animal fighting instills the values of agricultural producers by helping to ensure the respectful treatment of all animals.

Thank you for this opportunity to participate.

[Sgt Teena Stoddart]

Good morning.

My name is Teena Stoddart. I have been a police officer for 28 years. I was a paralegal before that. Currently I'm a sergeant with the Ottawa Police Service and a member of the Canadian Violence Link Coalition. In 2010 I was seconded to the OPP behavioural science section, where I received specialized training in serial predator crime. I received training from the RCMP and the FBI. I have been volunteering with Humane Canada since 2009 and the Ottawa Humane Society for over 15 years.

I will start by advising the committee that police officers get no training on investigations involving animals unless they are or have been attached to a behavioural science section. In some cases, a sexual assault investigator will attend a conference or training, but it is not required or the norm. In Ontario in 2017, there were 25,981 police officers. OPP behavioural science has approximately 25 specialized police officers. The RCMP would have approximately 10. In my estimate, then, less than 1% of police officers in Ontario would have any type of specialized training in animal abuse or the violence link, yet animal abuse is one of the top signs of a serial sexual predator. In November 2018 I facilitated the first violence link training to police officers. It's a start, but we need resources to see this endeavour come to fruition. We need governments to mandate violence link training.

Speaking to the bestiality section of Bill C-84, this legislation needs to include touching an animal for any sexual purpose in order to make our communities safer for all living beings. The International Journal of Law and Psychiatry conducted a research study. They took a random sampling of over 943 incarcerated men. Half of sexual offenders and a third of child molesters committed animal abuse during adolescence. This same study confirmed that childhood sexual assault abusers use animals to lure and/or groom their victims. An example of grooming would be, “I touched the doggy there, so it's okay for you too.” Then they progress to, “You can touch me where you touched the doggy.” It's a desensitizing process used to normalize sexual touch to children.

Sexual predators educate themselves on grooming methods. That's how they get away with the crimes. They have chat groups and do research just like everyone else. Grooming is a means to get the child normalized to the inappropriate feeling of touch on their private parts. That way, when the predator tries to touch the child, it's not foreign for the child to have their private part touched for reasons other than medical or cleaning. The use of peanut butter took place after an attempt to have a dog penetrate failed. The offender searched online for other ways to involve the dog. This was from a Supreme Court of Canada case.

Predators know that in a lot of these cases, there is little law enforcement can do. I'll give you the example of being called to a residence and the mother saying, about her eight-year-old, for instance, “My child tells me that for the last three years Uncle Johnny has tried to get her to fondle the dog.” All we can do at that point is say, “You'd better not have Uncle Johnny come over anymore.” We have no legal recourse. I have consulted Crowns and various people on this issue. It's the same thing if we get called to a park and a mother says an offender was using a dog to lure or groom a child. There's nothing we can do.

Bestiality is not only found in relation to children. Police services also investigate when one partner forces another into posing or committing sexual acts with an animal and takes pictures or videos it. The abusive partner then blackmails the other into staying with them and putting up with the abuse. The vulnerable spouse will not report to police for fear of retaliation. Many research studies have identified that animals are used to control their victims. We just heard Monique St. Germain and Lianna McDonald state that in their research.

Now I'll talk about the animal abuse side of this. Dr. Rebecca Ledger is Canada's leading expert and court-approved expert on animal behaviour. I have worked with her to deliver police training. She's conducted decades of scientific studies of all kinds of animals. I have an email from her stating that “penetration does not need to occur in order for the dog to suffer”. We had an Ottawa case recently where this came up and she gave expert testimony.

Having the Criminal Code bestiality crime as being committed only if there is penetration puts vulnerable citizens at risk from predators. Broadening the bestiality law strengthens community safety for all living beings. I would submit that it have the same sentencing provisions as section 447.1 of the Criminal Code of Canada does for the lifetime prohibition of animals and restitution. Also, it needs to include their being put on a sex offender registry. Right now bestiality does not fall under that provision.

I'll move to the animal fighting part of Bill C-84. Once again, putting in place proper legislation aimed at stopping the heinous crime of dogfighting will give law enforcement a tool to increase community safety by taking away a funding source for gangs and shutting down their venues to move their guns and drugs. It also removes the means for gangs to recruit young people.

Decades of evidence-based research produce findings such as the fact that illegal gambling gains from dogfighting are substantial. One purse can go for more than $200,000. One dogfighting event can host several animal fights. If you have five animal fights in an event, you're looking at $1 million. This study was produced by Michigan State University.

Gangs also use animal fighting events like we use conventions: for networking, recruiting, and to sell and trade guns and drugs. This is also in the Michigan State University study.

The early introduction to animal cruelty through exposure to dogfighting, especially repeated acts, impacts development and has strong links to later interpersonal violence. This was reported in a 2011 study.

To desensitize young people to gang violence, they invite them to dogfights to acclimatize them to violence. Animal fighting is bloody. Because animal cries and pain are recognized as similar to humans, the thick skin starts to materialize so that violence on a human is not so far-fetched. Many of the youth interviewed in the Maher and Pierpoint 2011 study spoke about using the dogs as weapons against both humans and other dogs for rival gangs.

The Chicago Crime Commission conducted a study and found that 82% of those arrested for animal abuse had prior convictions for assault, weapons or drugs, again demonstrating the violence link. In Chicago, 35% of search warrants executed for animal abuse or dogfighting investigations resulted in seizures of illegal drugs and/or weapons. The commission produced an action alert in August 2004 entitled “Reduce animal violence, reduce all violence: A program to amplify human and animal violence prevention and reduction by targeting dogfighting and animal cruelty”.

Last but not least is the irreparable damage done to bait dogs and the animals that are used for fight dogs. Training techniques are used such as electrocution, kicking, punching, stabbing and beating dogs, in addition to withholding vet treatment for injured dogs and forced fighting. Even if these animals are saved, they often have to be euthanized due to aggressive behaviours or medical issues.

The violence link is extremely prevalent in both bestiality and animal fighting. The research is clear. Where you see evidence of animal abuse there's a great probability that humans are or have been abused by the same predator. We strengthen community safety for all living beings by giving law enforcement the tools to deal with these crimes.

All living beings deserve to be free of violence, and if that violence happens to them, they deserve to be protected by laws, police and the judicial system.

Thank you.

[Lianna McDonald]

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone.

Mr. Chairperson and distinguished members of the committee, we thank you for giving us this opportunity to provide a presentation on Bill C-84.

My name is Lianna McDonald. I am the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. Again, joining me is Monique St. Germain. She's our General Counsel.

We are here this morning to express our agency's strong support for the bill and to speak specifically about the offence of bestiality.

We have had the opportunity to listen to many of the proceedings so far. We will provide some different information for the committee to consider, coming from the unique lens that our organization has, tied to crimes against children. We will provide examples of what we have seen in real images and in case law.

Our organization is a national charitable organization dedicated to the personal safety of all children. We have been doing this important work for over 30 years.

Our agency operates cybertip.ca, which is Canada's national tip line to report the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children. The tip line is a central part of the Government of Canada's national strategy for the protection of children from sexual abuse and exploitation.

Cybertip launched 16 years ago. Its primary role is to receive and analyze reports on potentially illegal material or activities regarding online crimes against children. It is through this work that our agency witnesses first-hand the ways in which children are being sexually victimized. Since its inception, the tip line has processed over 400,000 reports, and the number of reports has increased steadily over the years. The tip line is now processing, on average, 10,000 reports a month.

To combat the growing online proliferation of child sexual abuse material, our organization developed a new tool called Project Arachnid. This automated crawler and platform helps reduce the online availability of child sexual abuse material, breaking the cycle of abuse. Through Project Arachnid, over 1.6 million notices have been sent to social media and content providers hosting this egregious material around the world.

The vast majority of the images seen through the tip line depict very young prepubescent children, many of whom are preverbal and cannot tell anyone about the abuse. We also know that most children who appear in the sexual abuse material have never been identified by law enforcement.

In 2016, we conducted an analysis of over 40,000 unique images and videos classified by the tip line as child pornography, and 50% of the images involved explicit sexual activity and extreme sexual assaults against children. Among the extreme acts were those involving bestiality. Over a five-year period, Cybertip assessed 192 different sex acts involving an animal and a child, and 80% of those acts did not involve penetration. Oral sex acts were the most commonly seen, in 55% of the bestiality images.

You have already heard from a prior witness that bestiality content along with sadistic material is considered the most harmful form of child sexual abuse material. The following two examples provide a lens into the stark reality of what bestiality looks like when children are involved. While these examples may be difficult to hear, they are harder to see and worse to endure.

In the first example a young girl around eight years old is sitting on a blanket beneath an animal. The image is focused on her and she's completely naked. The girl has one hand around the animal's penis and her mouth around the other end of the penis. In the second example yet another young girl is laying on a bed with her arms behind her head, her legs are spread open and a dog is appearing to lick her genital area.

To better understand the unique challenges faced by survivors of child sexual abuse material, our agency conducted an international online survey. The results were released in 2017 and were based on responses from 150 survivors from around the world. While we did not ask specifically about bestiality, a number of survivors told us their abuser threatened to harm pets or other animals in their life as part of the abuse. To quote from one survivor, “They killed my pets, which they gave to me as a present beforehand in order to make me compliant.” Another survivor said, “I was deeply ashamed. And I had also abused other children/animals myself and was afraid I'd go to prison if it were discovered.”

What was clear from the survey was that all survivors of child sexual abuse imagery face lifelong impacts from having their abuse recorded.

The sexual abuse is horrible in and of itself, but when the abuse includes forcing a child to participate in a sexual act with an animal, the trauma to the child is compounded.

Cybertip also receives reports on online luring. For example, last year the tip line received a report about a young teenager who had been communicating online with an individual. This individual not only asked the child for nude images but also directed the child to engage in digital penetration of the family pet. This is just one of the many examples of the ways in which technology is being used and misused to manipulate and coerce children.

People who seek to victimize children and animals do not limit themselves to acts of penetration, as defined in R. v. D.L.W. With the rate at which we are finding new child sexual abuse material, we know that this is a problem, one that is likely growing. Until the law is changed, children and animals are vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation.

Thank you.

My colleague Monique has a few comments to make.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights as we continue our study on Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code regarding bestiality and animal fighting.

It is a pleasure to be joined today by an illustrious group of witnesses.

By video conference from Winnipeg, we have Ms. Lianna McDonald, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

Welcome, Ms. McDonald.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

Professor Sankoff, first of all, thank you for your leadership in this area and thank you for intervening in the R. v. D.L.W. case. I think it's great.

You started by saying that we have in Canada, sadly, among the worst laws on animal cruelty in the western world. Thanks to the leadership of Mr. Erskine-Smith, we tried to make a dent in that in Bill C-246, but the Liberal majority voted it down. Maybe after the election we can get back to the basics on that.

Your analogy to polygamy was intriguing. You talked about how there's a possibility in an individual instance of no harm to the individuals involved, but society says the risks are high enough and the vulnerability of the children are great enough that really we should proceed notwithstanding the lack of any particular harm in a given case. You use that as an analogy to bestiality, which I thought was a very apt one.

I'd like you to talk a bit more about that from the perspective of harm to the animals, which you focused on, almost like animal rights, Professor Singer's work and all of that. It's as distinct from the difficulty, as you pointed out, of proving psychological harm and all the other things.

Talk a little bit about that and see if that vision can be implanted in the current law as proposed in the narrow compass of Bill C-84.

[Prof. Peter Sankoff]

There is a very strong principle at common law which suggests that Parliament is assumed to have knowledge of the common law when it's enacting particular language.

First of all, my view is that re-enacting these particular words would not send a signal that you were doing anything different to the established meaning of those words because, first of all, there is no amendment to those particular words in what you are proposing in Bill C-84. Obviously it is impossible to ever predict with 100% certainty what any court will do, but I would be very comfortable in saying that the term “baiting” was enacted under the understanding that it was designed to deal with bear-baiting and bull-baiting, and I would be very surprised to see the court take a more expansive view of that wording given its historical placement.

[Josie Candito, Animal Rights Activist, As an Individual]

First, I want to thank our dedicated MP for Parkdale—High Park, Arif Virani, for allowing me this opportunity to speak to all of you today.

Presently, many animal rights laws fall under individual provinces. Unfortunately, this often leaves animals unprotected or protected more in one province than another. In some cases, the animals may be transported between provinces, falling under different legislation in each province. Animal cruelty is wrong, no matter which province it occurs in, and standards for animal rights and protections should be universal across our country. I have some proposals for policy changes on the federal level.

First, animals must be recognized as beings that can feel pain, and animal cruelty crimes should be moved from the property section of the Criminal Code. It is important to note that recognizing animals as sentient beings is not reinventing the wheel. Quebec already recognizes animals in this fashion, and the U.K. has a plan to enact this type of legislation.

To include this language in federal animal rights protection legislation, to me, would be reasonable. Animal cruelty laws currently fall under the property section of the Criminal Code. As animals are sentient beings, this offence should be moved to a new section titled “Offences against animals” in the Criminal Code. Animals are not inanimate property like a car or a watch. The change would recognize animals as thinking, feeling beings and would recognize that it would be wrong to harm them, as opposed to recognizing that it is wrong to damage someone's property. These animals are our families, our fur children, our best friends. They have emotions, feelings and unique personalities. We have the bare minimum guidelines for food, water and shelter. A dog tied down outside on a piece of plywood is acceptable by law at this time.

Second, the language of animal cruelty law must be strengthened to close loopholes that allow abusers to escape penalties. In the current Criminal Code, there are loopholes that allow certain kinds of animal abusers to escape punishment. Many of these loopholes could be closed with amendments to the legislation, as we are doing with this bill by closing loopholes against animal fighting and by providing a definition of bestiality and brutal and vicious killing. We could change the language in current legislation from “wilful neglect” to “gross negligence”, therefore making the act of neglect punishable regardless of whether it was premeditated.

Bill C-84 has been tabled and, hopefully, the bill will pass soon.

It is important to add a clause to ban animal ownership if one is convicted of animal cruelty more than once. Any person who has harmed an animal more than once has done so through gross negligence or wilful malice and should never be allowed to own an animal again. Imagine if your dog were stolen, stabbed with a screwdriver and dragged by a tow-chain, and the accused got probation. At the moment, statistics show that jail time is rarely served. Most of the time, the accused just gets probation.

Third, federal animal transportation regulations should be amended. Stiffer laws are required to ensure the safe transportation of animals, free from dehydration due to heat stress and from overcrowding and/or burdening animals in undersized transport trailers.

Fourth, there should be a ban on the sale of puppies by pet shops and third party commercial dealers. Puppies must be available only from rescue centres or reputable dealers where the puppies are always seen with their real mothers. Reputable breeders should be held to high breeding standards and should be licensed, monitored and registered. Restricting the sale of puppies encourages more people to rescue older dogs.

Last August, the U.K. passed Lucy's law. I believe such a law is attainable here. The U.K. has set an example and hopefully Canada will follow.

Fifth, a registered animal offenders list should be created. This list would not need to be publicly searchable. It has been proven that people who commit animal abuse often go on to commit domestic violence and other violent assaults. There is a link between animal, domestic and child abuse. Creating a registry of animal abusers ensures that law enforcement can identify a pattern of abuse earlier. Many states in the U.S. have already enacted such a list, which lessens the burden in Canada to reinvent the wheel. A registry can act as a deterrent. If potential animal abusers know that there may be a permanent searchable record, that may deter them from this abuse.

A registry of animal offenders would also ensure greater protection of animals. Those adopting an animal, those providing care to animals and those providing animal services would be asked to sign affidavits to swear they are not on the list. False statements could be punishable by law.

We know that the Liberal government stands against animal abuse and against abuse of women. I hope that it will be the party of history, with everybody working together in a non-partisan way to continue to make these changes in our law.

Tail docking, ear cropping, declawing of animals and mutilations that are not medically beneficial should be illegal and punishable under the federal law. Obviously, spaying and neutering would be beneficial.

The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association has long opposed these procedures as they are unnecessary and put animals at increased risk of damage, infection, pain and distress. There is no reason why any of these cosmetic procedures should be allowed anywhere in Canada. Some provinces have already enacted bans on these sorts of procedures, in particular, B.C. and Quebec. A ban on unethical and unnecessary mutilation should be country-wide.

Our animal anti-cruelty l laws are outdated. It has been 127 years since these laws have been properly updated. Obviously, views were different then from what they are right now. “To date, politicians have utterly failed to update our laws”. That's a quote from the February 15, 2018 edition of The Globe and Mail.

I personally rescued a dog named Charlie, but that day, he rescued me, and I vowed then to keep going and advocate for updated laws to protect our animals. It is a very personal and passionate thing that I believe. We need to be the animals' voices.

I hope that all the parties can come together, and that some changes can be made. This new law, I believe, will take baby steps towards where we need to go. We still have a lot of work to do.

I'll just leave you with a quote that I love, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

Thank you all for listening.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

We will now resume our meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and our study of Bill C-84.

We have a little bit of an unusual situation where both members of our panel are here by video conference today.

We are joined by Ms. Josie Candito, as an individual, from Toronto, Ontario, and by Professor Peter Sankoff, a professor of law and associate dean at the University of Alberta, from Edmonton.

Welcome to both of you. You both have 10 minutes for your opening statements, and then we'll go to questions from the panel.

We will start with Ms. Candito.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here.

I'd like to start with you, Ms. Cartwright and Humane Canada, and acknowledge with thanks your organization's 40 years of advocacy and all of your member humane societies. You do amazing work for which we all should be grateful.

For Canadians watching at home and others, you correctly said that Bill C-84 is a modest bill. Dr. Crook has talked about it being a first step and Ms. Labchuk has called for a complete overhaul. Canadians might ask why we are here with these two clauses, essentially. The answer, of course, is that the Liberal majority chose to defeat Mr. Erskine-Smith's Bill C-246, which would have been more comprehensive, which would have done the comprehensive reform that the minister has once again committed to, but we are two years later and no closer to that review. I really appreciate and support Mr. Erskine-Smith's suggestion that there be an all-party, non-partisan commitment to this, some kind of committee, and I would be pleased to be a part of it.

The first question relates to what Ms. Cartwright said about the prevalence, the connection between sadism and bestiality being most impactful upon children. Professor Crook, you also, in a letter supporting Bill C-246, wrote as follows for veterinarians: “There is overwhelming evidence of a direct link between abuse of animals and violence towards people, especially other members of the family—children, spouse, elders.” What is that evidence? Both of you have referred to it. I'd like you to speak a little more, each of you, about where that comes from, perhaps starting with you, Ms. Cartwright.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

My last question picks up on this idea of a bigger conversation and Bill C-84 as a first step. I want to actually note that this is a non-partisan issue, because I've had conversations with Michelle Rempel, with Len Webber, with Murray Rankin, members of all parties who care about ending animal cruelty. They want to have conversations around a table to say, “Let's make this a non-partisan issue. Let's bring stakeholders from all sides in and let's hammer out some consensus to move forward in a more significant way.”

You can maybe get a glimpse of what that could look like around this table, where we're focused on these two specific concrete provisions. But we're not able to talk about how we can better protect animals beyond the confines of these two specific provisions, as far as it goes, and so we get a piecemeal approach. We get Bill S-214 on cosmetic testing. We get Bill S-238 on shark finning. We get Bill S-203 on cetaceans in captivity. We get Bill C-84, which focuses on two specific provisions in the Criminal Code.

I guess the fundamental question I have is in terms of thinking of a way forward. Do you think it would be useful to strike a special all-party parliamentary committee to look at animal protections more broadly, to make recommendations to the government so we can see a piece of government legislation that implements much broader reform, where consensus has been forged across party lines and across a broader set of stakeholders?

I'll go around the table as well. Ms. Labchuk.

[Dr. Alice Crook]

CVMA has long supported changes to the Criminal Code regarding the abuse and neglect of animals. We also see this bill as a good start, addressing two particularly egregious sections. We most recently supported Bill C-246 and the provisions there. We see that as a longer-term goal and it's really important to get the provisions in Bill C-84 passed.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

I note there is obviously strong support around this table for Bill C-84, and at different times it's been called very important and at different times modest. In keeping with Ms. Crook's very appropriate commitment to build a more humane and compassionate Canada, if you were to put yourself in the shoes of Justice MinisterDavid Lametti, is there something missing in this piece of legislation that you would want to see, apart from the tweaks you've proposed, Ms. Labchuk?

[Barbara Cartwright]

Good morning, everyone. I am appearing before you today to express support for Bill C-84 on behalf of humane societies and SPCAs across the country and their millions of public supporters.

Although our name is now Humane Canada, you may know us better as the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies. We were founded in 1957, in part, out of this very institution. One of our three founders was a senator, Senator Frederic A. McGrand from New Brunswick. He was a visionary whose keen interest in animal protection and child protection led him to identify early on the direct links between animal violence and human violence and to take action to protect animals and to create a safer society.

In April 2018, we changed our name to Humane Canada. We are the only national organization that represents humane societies and SPCAs, the very humane societies and SPCAs in all of your ridings, upon which Canadians depend not only to care for the abused and abandoned animals in our communities but also to enforce the law, to advocate for greater care and protection of animals, and to provide resources, research and humane education. These local and provincial organizations have served the Canadian public for 150 years, making them one of the oldest and most trusted social institutions in our country today.

We represent 56 diverse members from all 10 provinces and two of the territories, from the largest urban centres to the smallest coastal communities. We are proud to represent the largest SPCA on the continent, which is BC SPCA, who you will hear from on Thursday, and some of the smallest, like Happy Valley-Goose Bay SPCA and the NWT SPCA.

More than 40% of humane societies have a role in the enforcement of our law, so they are community safety officers. They investigate more than 100,000 complaints a year, so Humane Canada has worked for many years to update the Criminal Code of Canada.

As well, it is often your local humane society or SPCA that takes in the victims of these crimes, the animals, to rehabilitate them and find them new homes where they can rest assured of not being victimized any further. Enacting Bill C-84 is a key step in reducing the victimization of animals and vulnerable people in Canada. Strengthening bestiality and animal fighting sections of the Criminal Code deals with two egregious crimes that are also closely linked to human violence and that compromise our community safety.

That said, Bill C-84 is also modest in that it is only addressing issues in the existing offences that have fallen out of step with current society. I will not focus on the suffering that occurs in violent crimes against animals, because it is already well recognized in Parliament that these two offences are crimes and have been part of the Criminal Code for more than 100 years. Rather, I will focus on how these offences have fallen out of step with society's current understanding of the scope of the crime.

I will start with the crime of bestiality. As you have already heard, due to the recent Supreme Court decision in R. v. D.L.W., a legislative gap has opened up, effectively legalizing sexual abuse of animals that falls short of penetration.

Historically, sexual acts with animals was referred to in the Criminal Code as buggery with an animal. In 1955, Canada's criminal laws were amended to introduce the word "bestiality" into the English version of the code, specifying that sex with animals was a vice that was to be criminally sanctioned. The term, though, was not explicitly defined anywhere in the text.

Further revisions were made to the Criminal Code in 1988, outlawing the forcing of children to commit or watch bestiality, as measures of child protection. What did not change, though, with those amendments was the continuing absence of an explicit definition of bestiality in the Criminal Code.

Meanwhile, our social norms as to the acceptance and morality of animal abuse and sexual exploitation have changed over time, to the point where any touching of an animal for a sexual purpose is clearly recognized as deviant behaviour.

I don't know if you've talked to any of your constituents, but no one wants to even talk about this issue at all. It's that much of a taboo in our society. For example, the Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe project, also known as COPINE, has a tool that they use to identify the severity of child pornography on the child. It categorizes bestiality along with sadism as the most severe offence in the rating system of the severity of images of child abuse and the impact on the victim.

Bestiality on this scale is defined as “pictures where an animal is involved in some form of sexual behaviour with a child”. It does not limit the act to penetration nor does it limit the impact of the act based on a lack of penetration. Sexual acts with animals shares this highest category of severity with sadism, which in this system is defined as “pictures showing a child being tied, bound, beaten, whipped or otherwise subject to something that implies pain”.

It is also clear now that animals are victims of domestic and interpersonal violence, often used as tools to coerce and control children and intimate partners in abusive relationships.

In December 2018, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection released a report on the direct links between animal sexual assault and child sexual assault. In the 38 cases with reported decisions involving animal sexual assault and child sexual assault, the courts did not adhere to the strict legal definition of bestiality as the term was sometimes applied both to penetrative and non-penetrative sexual acts. In fact, oral sexual acts and manual stimulation of the animal were more common forms of abuse than penetrative acts.

At the same time, society's understanding of animal behaviour, emotion and psychology have evolved. We now know there are physical and psychological aspects of neglect and abuse, particularly sexual abuse. We understand the scope and implications of consent with regard to sexual acts more today than ever before. Simply put, there can be no consent given on behalf of the animal, and the victim cannot report the crime or testify on its behalf.

With these developments, Canadian society is no longer served by using the historic common-law definition of bestiality as buggery with an animal. The definition of bestiality must be broadened to include any act for a sexual purpose.

Sadly, while it may not be evident to everyone, cases of sexual assault of animals are far too frequent, and humane societies and SPCAs struggle with the limited scope of the current definition. Fixing this loophole has been delayed for too long. As Justice R. Abella observed in her dissent in R. v. D.L.W., “since penetration is physically impossible with most animals and for half the population, requiring it as an element of the offence eliminates from censure most sexually exploitative conduct with animals.” However, since the majority of the court found that this was Parliament's historic intent, an act of Parliament moving beyond the common-law definition of bestiality to include all sexually exploitive conduct with an animal is required to fix this gap. We support the simple amendment before you to fix this egregious problem.

The status quo risks normalizing deviant sexual behaviour, decreasing animal welfare in Canada and ultimately increasing the sexual exploitation of vulnerable members of our society, not only animals, but children as well.

Bill C-84 also addresses the historic flaws in the Criminal Code's animal-fighting provisions, which are woefully out of step with current society and inconsistent with the crime of animal fighting as it happens today. Historically, bear-baiting and bull-baiting were both popular blood sports in Canada that were made illegal through the Criminal Code. As these fell out of favour, we saw the rise of cockfighting and dogfighting. Dogfighting is now the predominant form of animal fighting in Canada. However, our laws have not been updated to reflect the evolution of this crime. The limitations and inconsistencies in the current animal fighting provisions are as follows:

First, encouraging, aiding and assisting at the fighting or baiting of animals is already an offence under the Criminal Code. However, the use of the term “at the fighting or baiting of animals” risks our only being able to prosecute those actually caught in the act or at an animal fight. It narrows the offence to just one brief moment in the whole crime. It neglects the training, transporting and breeding of animals, which often are even more cruel than the actual fight itself.

Second, as with other crimes, animal fighting is moving online, and our current laws are not equipped to deal with it. For example, it is no longer necessary to be at an animal fight to be part of the wagering that happens around it. The entire fight may be broadcast online. Worse still is a new form of fighting called trunking. Animals are placed in the trunk of a car to fight to the death while somebody drives them around the streets and stops every once in a while to check in on the animals and report out to all the people betting on the fight. Bill C-84 expands the scope by stating “(b) in any manner encourages, aids...arranges, assists at, receives money for or takes part in” an animal fight.

Finally, maintaining a facility for cockfighting is an offence, but maintaining a facility for all other animals is not an offence. It is an inconsistent approach to an activity that has more than one target species.

Dogfighting is also linked to a range of other crimes. The links to gangs and illegal gambling stand out in this regard. According to a report by the ASPCA in the United States, virtually all dogfight raids involve the seizure of illegal drugs and about two-thirds result in the seizure of illegal weapons. Such raids often result in the arrest of offenders who already have outstanding warrants. The same associations with gangs and criminal organizations exist in Canada, but are often underestimated and under-reported.

The Ontario Veterinary Medical Association recently reported that after the 2014 creation of a major case unit, the Ontario SPCA reported three investigations in less than a year which resulted in 11 search warrants executed in different regions of the province and the seizure of 64 fighting dogs, documents, photos, veterinary supplies, electronic equipment and hundreds of items related to training animals to fight.

Since these activities are linked to criminal undertakings and often linked to organized crime as well, it would be logical public policy to eliminate all animal fighting, and the breeding and the training that support it.

In conclusion, we appreciate the minister's commitment before this committee to ensure all protections are extended to the most vulnerable in Canada. Bill C-84 is an important step forward in the pursuit of this commitment. It provides greater protection to the most vulnerable in our society: animals and children.

On behalf of the community organizations, the humane societies and SPCAs that enforce these laws in many of your ridings, I urge you to support the swift passage of Bill C-84.

Thank you.

[Camille Labchuk]

Good morning. Thank you.

I am an animal protection lawyer and the executive director of Animal Justice. We work to ensure that animals have a voice in Canada's legal and political systems. We work with legislators and citizens to improve laws protecting animals and we push for the vigorous enforcement of laws that are already on the books.

We also go to court to fight for animals when necessary and it was in this context that we first started working on the issue of bestiality. Animal Justice intervened in the Supreme Court case of D.L.W., which has brought us all here today. We were the only intervenor. We tried to convince the court to interpret the bestiality offence to include all sexual contact with animals. Unfortunately, we weren't successful.

After the D.L.W. decision came out, we heard from countless Canadians, as I'm sure this committee has as well. Most were shocked and had a really difficult time understanding how it could be that something so appalling as the sexual abuse of animals could be considered legal in Canada.

My own response was that, unfortunately, it was no surprise at all, because federal animal cruelty laws in this country haven't been updated since the 1950s. The D.L.W. case was perhaps the most headline-grabbing manifestation of how problematic our cruelty laws are, but there are countless other ways and other examples I could point to that show how our outdated and poorly crafted laws let down animals.

We've fallen very far behind other western nations and very far behind our own values as Canadians as well. People in this country do care deeply about animal protection, and I think that sentiment only grows as we learn more and more about the cognitive and social capacities of animals and more and more about how they suffer at human hands.

I was pleased to hear the Minister of Justice say at the last committee meeting that Bill C-84 is only a first step towards overhauling our cruelty laws, because clearly, more must be done. When Mr. Erskine-Smith's Bill C-246 was defeated, the government committed to a comprehensive review of the animal cruelty provisions in the Criminal Code. That was more than two years ago, and we're still waiting for news on that review. The public, and I believe most importantly the animals that are victims of cruelty, are deserving of a timeline and clarity on next steps.

To move on to the bill, Animal Justice supports what Bill C-84 does. I won't spend too much time explaining why we do, but I will propose two very straightforward amendments to make Bill C-84 even more effective at protecting individual animals. Rather than just penalizing offenders, we want to ensure that this bill provides tools for law enforcement and judges to protect animals from further harm.

To start with the bestiality provisions, there's no disagreement in this room that bestiality is abhorrent and heartbreaking. We've advocated against it since the D.L.W. case. We assisted Mr. Erskine-Smith with his Bill C-246, which would have closed the bestiality loophole, and with Ms. Rempel in her Bill C-388, which would have done the same thing.

Bill C-84 does close the loophole by ensuring that the term “bestiality” encompasses all sexual contact with animals. That's a very good thing, but it misses one other glaring loophole. That's the fact that right now there's no sentencing tool for judges to ban a person convicted of bestiality from owning, having custody of, or residing in the same location as animals in the future. Judges can already impose this type of ban, which is known as a prohibition order, in the case of somebody who's been convicted of an animal cruelty offence. We think it's very important that judges have this option as a sentencing tool for bestiality offenders as well.

I assume that the reason it wasn't already proposed by the government is simply due to the historical location of the bestiality offence in the Criminal Code. The general animal cruelty offences, apart from bestiality, are in sections 445 through 447, but bestiality is in section 160 of the code, housed with other sexual offences. This is because bestiality historically has been more about punishing deviant sexual behaviour than about punishing or enjoining conduct that's harmful to animals. Prohibition orders—bans on keeping animals—just were never contemplated for sexual offences, so it makes sense that the bestiality offence hasn't had an accompanying tool such as this.

Clearly, however, we're here today because the bestiality offence has evolved and is evolving. Today our rationale for criminalizing it is not just to protect humans but also to ensure the protection of vulnerable animals who cannot consent to sexual conduct. This vulnerability justifies protecting animals from those convicted of bestiality offences as well.

I'm proposing that this can be done by adding the bestiality offence to the sentencing provisions in subsection 447.1(1) of the existing Criminal Code. This would let a judge impose a prohibition order for all of the animal cruelty offences and also the bestiality offence. I will provide the committee with my proposed amendments after this meeting so you can take a look at them.

Many prosecutors will tell you that one of their top priorities in sentencing is not just how much jail time they get for an offender or how much of a fine they can get, but actually getting that prohibition order, so they can keep animals away from individuals convicted of abusing them. I don't think I need to elaborate on why it's a monumentally bad idea to give people convicted of bestiality free and legal access to more animals.

Many other jurisdictions have already empowered judges to use prohibition orders this way in cases of bestiality. This includes our neighbours south of the border: the states of Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.

I will now move to the animal-fighting provisions. Forcing animals to fight, injure and kill one another for the trifling sake of human entertainment also, obviously, deserves our consideration. I was pleased to review the government's charter statement on this piece of legislation. It recognizes that in the proposed animal-fighting section, section 2(b) of the charter, freedom of expression, may be implicated, to the extent that the bill restrains communication between individuals about issues. The government points out that violent expression, such as promoting animal fighting, does not promote the values underlying section 2(b) of the charter, and so wouldn't be implicated here. We see this as a very important recognition that our laws do value animals and preventing violence against them.

I take no issue with the provisions in the bill, but I do propose considering a further amendment to repeal subsection 447(3) of the Criminal Code. That's the mandatory provision that imposes an automatic death sentence on any birds seized from cockfighting rings. This issue was raised at the committee's last meeting.

There is a clear intent in the Criminal Code to outlaw all types of animal fighting. Paragraph 445.1(1)(b) is the main existing animal-fighting offence, and it prohibits all fighting of animals or birds. The code doesn't distinguish between different types. It doesn't matter what species of animal is used.

The amendment in this bill to subsection 447(1) transforms the offence of keeping a cockpit to one of keeping an arena used for any type of animal fighting, so there is a clear intention to bring all animals in equally. Yet subsection 447(3) requires only the killing of birds seized from animal-fighting rings, not for dogs or other species. In our view, this is completely needless, and it ties the hands of authorities when there may be a better option for the birds.

We think the fate of any bird seized should be decided on a case-by-case basis. This is already done for dogs and other animals rescued from fighting rings. There is no principled reason that roosters or birds forced to fight should be automatically killed. It may be appropriate to rehabilitate them. It may be appropriate to send them to a sanctuary, where they can receive lifelong care and still enjoy a high quality of life.

Repealing the provision wouldn't interfere with the ability of authorities to humanely euthanize birds when that situation is deemed to be appropriate. This is already done with dogs, if the need should arise. Provincial legislation generally empowers enforcement agents to do this, with the assistance of a veterinarian who can make the assessment about the bird's well-being.

I'm concerned that there's a real danger the public might lose confidence in the administration of justice, should they see a situation where an automatic death sentence is imposed on the animals for a seemingly senseless reason.

One recent high-profile dogfighting case in Ontario proves this point. I know Mr. MacKenzie will be familiar with it, as it occurred close to his riding.

There was a bust of a dogfighting ring in Chatham, Ontario, in 2015. I will skip through some of the details, but the Crown and the OSPCA sought an automatic death sentence for most of the dogs implicated in the case. The public was outraged by this. I attended those court proceedings. We had some involvement in the case. There were protests outside the courtroom every time there was an appearance. People were shocked that the dogs could be automatically killed without an individualized and appropriate assessment.

In the end, there was a reasonable solution reached. There were new assessments done on these dogs and most of them were sent to a rehabilitation facility in Florida, where most of them are doing pretty well.

The laws in this case are different, but I use this to illustrate the point that there's no public appetite for the mandatory killing of animals, without considering that they are each individuals and that they have individual circumstances and individual needs.

We already treat offenders as individuals in sentencing. That's a well-established principle in criminal law, so I would say it's only fair to treat animals who are victims as individuals too and treat them with compassion, because their lives do matter.

Here's a quick note on how many birds may have been killed under subsection 447(3). There are no national statistics on animal cruelty prosecutions, so it's difficult to know for sure, but here are a few numbers. A 2008 bust in Surrey, B.C., resulted in 1,270 birds being seized and killed, a 2009 bust in York Region resulted in 74 birds being seized and killed, and a 2016 bust near Cornwall resulted in 38 roosters being seized and killed. We're talking about a significant number of lives.

That's it for my submission. I'll be happy to respond in the question period.

[Dr. Alice Crook]

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and committee members. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to address the committee.

I'm a member of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, which I will call the CVMA, and I'm currently adjunct professor in the department of health management at the Atlantic Veterinary College, where I teach about animal welfare. I'm a past chair of the CVMA Animal Welfare Committee. I was honoured last year to receive an international animal welfare award from the World Veterinary Association in recognition of my work toward the humane treatment of animals.

Besides animal welfare in general, my particular areas of interest are animal abuse and effective veterinary response, pain management, welfare-friendly veterinary practice and enactment of effective animal welfare legislation. Besides teaching, I've given numerous presentations and written articles on these topics. I was one of two lead authors during the creation of the CVMA website on addressing animal abuse.

The CVMA provides a national and international forum for over 7,200 veterinarians working in all of Canada's provinces and territories as private practitioners, researchers, educators and public servants. In addition, the association counts 7,300 veterinary technicians and technologists as affiliate members. Veterinary practitioners provide services to owners of pets, livestock and other animals. Animal welfare is a priority for the CVMA and its members.

Veterinarians provide unique expertise on the health and welfare of all types of animals, in addition to specific expertise in animal health and disease, and knowledge and understanding of the biology of domesticated and wild animals. Veterinary practitioners provide services and understand the care and management of animals and have practical experience in recognizing signs of suffering in animals.

With respect to animal cruelty and neglect, veterinary practitioners are commonly the first professionals to examine a vulnerable and abused animal, including in cases of sexual abuse and animal fighting. An affected animal may be brought into the veterinary practice by the owner or a family member, or a veterinarian may be asked to assist animal protection officers with an inspection, or a veterinarian may work directly with animal welfare organizations to provide medical care and document evidence after animals have been seized.

The CVMA is a participant in the Violence Link Coalition, which the minister referred to in the committee hearing last week, and is keenly aware of the very well-documented link between abuse of animals and other family members, including child, spousal and elder abuse. To protect the animal victim, and because violence may be a sentinel for other violence that is occurring, it's crucial that veterinarians deal effectively with instances of suspected animal maltreatment.

Through the website that I referred to, the CVMA provides numerous resources to veterinarians on the subject of animal abuse, including sexual abuse and animal fighting. We also have presentations at our annual conference and lots of resources like that. If you wanted to look at that website, it's easy to find: It's just CVMA animal abuse, and it will take you to that.

The CVMA has actively lobbied for a number of years for amendments to the Criminal Code aimed at strengthening the law with respect to animal cruelty. In this regard, CVMA is very pleased to support Bill C-84, which provides an unambiguous definition for bestiality and a much more comprehensive treatment of animal fighting.

The CVMA, along with other interested stakeholders from the agricultural and animal welfare communities, noted in a letter to the Minister of Justice in late 2017 that gaps currently exist in the law with respect to bestiality and animal fighting. I know you have seen that letter.

With respect to bestiality, the CVMA believes that Bill C-84 will close a gap that currently exists that effectively legalizes sexual abuse of animals that falls short of penetration. As proposed in Bill C-84, bestiality means any contact for a sexual purpose with an animal. Bestiality, also called animal sexual abuse, can involve a distressingly wide range of animals and result in a wide range of suffering and injury, including death.

It may or may not include other physical violence, and there may or may not be visible injuries. Signs that may be seen in animals that have been sexually assaulted include traumatic injury to the anus, rectum, vulva or vaginal area; recurring vaginal or urinary tract infections; foreign objects within the genital/urinary tract; and internal injuries. It's certainly worth knowing that these are the very same types of injuries that are seen in children who are subject to sexual abuse.

Bill C-84recognizes that harmful sexual behaviour is an affront to animal welfare in Canada. In CVMA's view, the bill will help support what is referred to as one welfare, that is, benefiting animals as well as addressing the sexual exploitation of other vulnerable members of society, including children.

With regard to animal fighting, CVMA recognizes that the current legislation does not include as an offence maintaining a facility for animals other than cocks, nor does it recognize as an offence the training of animals to fight. The CVMA is pleased that Bill C-84 updates the Criminal Code provisions to deal with these gaps, so as to include all species of animals, and to add the offences of training animals for fighting and profiting from such activities.

For the purpose of this presentation, I will focus on the realities of cockfighting and dogfighting, as these are the species most commonly affected in Canada.

I'm going to talk about sentience for a minute. Animal welfare science has contributed greatly to our understanding of the pain and suffering, both emotional and physical, that animals experience during acts of cruelty. There's abundant scientific support for the existence of emotions in animals, also called sentience, accompanied by the identification and understanding of the brain processes that underlie such emotional experiences. This evidence-based understanding is now being applied in cases of animal cruelty. I'd be more than happy to provide references on this or to answer questions about this.

I'm going to focus now on the suffering involved in dogfighting and cockfighting, where aggressive animals are pitted against each other or against bait animals in a confined space. The fight ends when one animal dies or is cowed or is seriously injured. In dogs, the behaviour of the aggressor includes chasing, biting, wrestling and lunging until one dog is incapable of continuing or is withdrawn. Behaviours of the animal victim, which might be the losing dog or a bait animal, include distress calls, attempts to retreat or escape, defensive behaviour, appeasement gestures, cowering and trembling.

Typical injuries in dog fighting include multiple bites on the face and legs, bite injuries to the belly and groin, or so-called ringing or degloving injuries on the leg when a dog firmly seizes the leg of an opponent who is trying to pull away.

Also typical in fighting dogs are multiple injuries in different stages of healing. These types of injuries are not typical of fighting that may occur between normal dogs. I'd be glad to elaborate on that, if the committee wishes.

I want to speak about the emotional experience of the animals involved, both the aggressor and the victim. They will likely experience anger, fear, panic, helplessness, extreme pain from serious bite and ripping injuries, and lasting pain and discomfort from disabilities, such as nerve, muscle, tendon or bone damage.

You may wonder what a bait dog is, as I've referred to. These are smaller dogs that are used in training dogs for fighting. Cats, rabbits and kittens are also used as bait animals. Clearly, such bait animals suffer extreme injury and fear and panic from which they are unable to escape. Survivors may experience anxiety and fear in circumstances similar to those in which the cruel act took place, such as in the presence of other dogs.

In conclusion, the CVMA is pleased to see notable progress in improving the welfare of animals in the form of amendments to the Criminal Code through Bill C-84. CVMA is actively involved in organizations such as the National Farm Animal Care Council and the National Companion Animal Coalition, as well as with partners such as Humane Canada, allowing us to collaborate with other stakeholders, including industry, to work to ensure that Canada has high standards with respect to the humane treatment of animals.

We are ready to assist the Government of Canada in any way to further enhance legislation to protect animals from cruelty and abuse, and in this way help to build a more humane and compassionate Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights as we resume our study on Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting).

It is a great pleasure to be joined by three very distinguished witnesses today.

First I would like to check. Professor Crook, can you hear me?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

I have less of a question than a point on “baiting”, just so that the committee is clear. From some of the questions, I got the sense that people thought the word “baiting” was being added by the bill, but the word “baiting” has been in the Criminal Code for decades, so to the extent that you had concerns previously or today, Mr. Barrett, your concerns would have been there 10 years ago. The amendments today in Bill C-84 add words around “fighting and baiting”, but they are not adding the word “baiting”.

[David Lametti]

I think it was made clear by my predecessor and I think it was made clear in my opening remarks, that in Bill C-84 we have picked two areas on which there is widespread agreement, and which we could get done now. We are filling a gap in one case, and we are addressing a practice in another case—animal fighting—that we don't want to see.

I agree that there are larger, deeper ethical questions and legal questions that really do go to the heart of the way in which we envisage society and our relationship to ourselves, amongst ourselves, and to animals. Those are larger questions that need to be addressed.

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith]

I think it gets to the bottom of what we want the Criminal Code to look like in terms of protecting animals, and that will depend upon the first principles of what we want to protect in the first place. I think it's important, when we know and the evidence is that animals can think, feel, love and suffer, that our laws should reflect that reality.

Attempts by previous Liberal justice ministers have been made to introduce significant reform to the Criminal Code with respect to the animal cruelty provisions, including by Justice Minister Anne McLellan, Justice Minister Martin Cauchon, and Justice Minister Irwin Cotler. These three previous attempts were more substantive than Bill C-84. Do you think Bill C-84 is sufficient?

[Michael Cooper]

Thank you, Minister.

Not to belabour the point, but I do think it needs to be put on the record that in Bill C-84 the definition provided is the following:

In this section, bestiality means any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.

In 2017, my colleague, the honourable member for Calgary Nose Hill, introduced a private member's bill, Bill C-388. The wording in Bill C-388 is as follows:

In this section, bestiality means any contact by a person, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.

Again, it's identical language. Why didn't the government get behind Bill C-388 more than a year ago?

[Michael Cooper]

With respect to the bestiality loophole following the D.L.W. decision of the Supreme Court, my issue is not with Bill C-84. I fully support closing the loophole. I think all Canadians—the majority of reasonable Canadians—would support closing the loophole. My issue is with the time that it has taken to introduce legislation to do so.

The decision of the Supreme Court was rendered in June of 2016. It is now January 2019. I know, Minister, that you've just been appointed, so I'm not faulting you personally for it, but we're now two and a half years in. By the time this legislation goes through the Senate, this loophole will probably have existed for three more years.

As you pointed out, we're talking about bestiality. We're talking about what is often a pattern of behaviour that involves the most vicious of behaviour towards animals and children. That's a common theme that we find: children are more often than not the victims. Indeed, according to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and their December 2018 report, of the 21 cases they reviewed, more of the cases did not involve penetrative acts. Of the cases that didn't involve penetrative acts, all of them involved sexual abuse of a child.

Minister, I guess my question is simply, what has taken so long?

[David Lametti]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, I'm very pleased to be here today, appearing for the first time as the Minister of Justice, to discuss Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting).

The amendments in the bill reflect our government's ongoing commitment to examine our criminal justice system to ensure the laws protect our most vulnerable and reflect our shared values.

This in-depth review of our criminal justice system has resulted in vital bills studied and thoughtfully amended by the committee. I want to thank you for the important work you do and the work you will be doing on Bill C-84.

This bill before is a result of significant consultation and collaboration with key stakeholders. We have received broad support on these amendments from child protection groups and organizations like the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.

I would like to thank them for their advocacy and support in this endeavour, which truly reflects a common-ground approach to addressing a critical gap in the Criminal Code's bestiality offences. I would also like to recognize the advocacy of many of our colleagues, including, in particular, Mr. Erskine-Smith.

Bill C-84, is a direct response to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the R. v. D.L.W., where the court found that in the absence of a statutory definition in the Criminal Code, the common law meaning of bestiality is limited only to penetrative sexual acts.

That is why Bill C-84 seeks to add a definition of the term “bestiality” to section 160 of the Criminal Code, in order to make clear Parliament's intent of ensuring that bestiality offences apply to all acts, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.

As a side note, I would add that the expression “for a sexual purpose”, which appears in a number of other Criminal Code provisions—namely, in reference to child pornography in section 163.1, luring a child in section 172.1 and making sexually explicit material available to a child in section 171.1—is well understood by the courts and does not apply to legitimate animal breeding practices such as artificial insemination or veterinary practices.

In its 2001 decision in R. v. Sharpe, the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted the expression in the context of child pornography to mean an act that, viewed objectively, was committed for the sexual gratification of the accused. The expression is therefore used in Bill C-84 to interpret the offence of bestiality.

This is a crucial amendment to ensure the protection of children from sexual abuse, an objective that has always been a priority for our government and indeed all parliamentarians.

Thanks to the important work by the Canadian Violence Link Coalition, including the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, we know more about the link between animal sexual abuse and the sexual abuse of children, as well as other forms of violence. Research shows that bestiality offences are not isolated events, but rather are usually part of a pattern of vicious treatment of both children and animals. Bill C-84, therefore, sends a strong message that bestiality is one of the most severe and violent acts against children, vulnerable persons, as well as animals and that it has no place in Canadian society.

In addition to closing that gap in the Criminal Code, the bill seeks to strengthen animal protection measures by broadening the scope of legislative provisions that prohibit animal fighting.

Currently, paragraph 445.1(1)(b) of the Criminal Code makes it an offence for anyone to encourage, aid or assist the fighting or baiting of animals. Furthermore, under section 447 of the Criminal Code, it is an offence for someone to build, make, maintain or keep a cockpit on premises that they own or occupy, or to allow a cockpit to be built, made, maintained or kept on such premises.

An individual who commits any of these offences is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term of up to five years or, on summary conviction, to a fine of up to $10,000 or to imprisonment for a term of up to 18 months or both.

For many Canadians, animals are a meaningful extension of the family, and we have an obligation to protect them. Bill C-84 proposes two important amendments to strengthen the criminal sanctions against animal fighting in the Criminal Code.

First, it amends the animal fighting offence in paragraph 445.1(1)(b) in order to address a gap. Currently, the offence prohibits anyone from encouraging, aiding or assisting the fighting or baiting of animals, but the bill seeks to broaden the offence to specifically prohibit profiting from animal fighting and training, transporting or breeding animals for the purposes of baiting or fighting.

By clearly outlining the prohibited offences proposed, the bill will make it easier for law enforcement to lay charges and for the Crown to prosecute those offences.

Second, the bill amends section 447 to expand the offence related to the keeping of a cockpit to include any arena for animal fighting. Currently, under the Criminal Code, the offence applies only to a cockpit, excluding arenas for the purpose of dogfighting and other types of animal fighting.

These are important changes because they clearly prohibit a wider range of activities often associated with this terrible crime.

Due to its underground nature, it is not known how often animal fighting, especially dogfighting, takes place in Canada. However, we do know that it is a significant problem linked to organized crime, including illegal gambling and the illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons. Moreover, the dogs that are used in fights are often seriously wounded or killed. The proposed reforms would make clear that animal fighting is a cruel and abhorrent activity that simply has no place in Canadian society.

1 would also like to take this opportunity to clarify that these reforms to the animal fighting provisions do not apply to any legitimate activities, such as hunting, training, or using a dog for protection. This is important and I know that many Canadians will wish to be assured of this fact.

Before concluding, I'd like to acknowledge that some stakeholders and parliamentarians feel that Bill C-84 does not go far enough to strengthen animal protection measures.

Bill C-84 is a targeted response, based on extensive consultation, in order to protect the most vulnerable members of society through a common approach. The bill addresses two specific issues with widespread support from the public, the provinces and territories, child protection stakeholders, as well as animal welfare advocates and members of sectors that make use of animals. The Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and 10 agricultural stakeholder groups have all called for amended animal fighting and bestiality provisions.

In closing, I'd like to remind the committee that the impact of these reforms will be to provide significantly greater protection for children and vulnerable persons, as well as for animals. While the proposed reforms in this bill are targeted at two of the most serious issues, our government is committed to ensuring that all appropriate protections are extended to the most vulnerable and accordingly will continue our comprehensive review of the criminal justice system for further amendments.

I'm looking forward to hearing from Canadians on this, and I'm sure I will hear from the committee on this.

Thank you for your time today. I'd be happy to take any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

The reason the minister and the department are here this morning is that the committee is commencing its study of Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting). For that reason, I'm also very pleased that Mr. Erskine-Smith is joining us today, and will be joining us for our hearings on C-84, as he was instrumental in helping to develop this bill.

Welcome, Mr. Erskine-Smith.

Bill C-84—Criminal Code

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 32(2), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, a charter statement for Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting).

[Colin Fraser, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

With regard to this motion, I will not be supporting it. There are problems with it for a few reasons.

First of all, basically, it's asking the committee to invite the minister to seek what amounts to a legal opinion on the procedures, practices and precedents dealing with cabinet confidences. I don't think it would be appropriate for us to have the minister come here and give us her opinion on this. If the members want to get a legal opinion on such things, of course, they're entitled to do so, but it wouldn't be appropriate for our committee to undertake that type of work, in my view.

With regard to the Norman matter, it's obviously the subtext here for the rationale of this motion. I appreciate what my friend has said, that this would be in general terms and wouldn't be specific. It could easily stray into that type of discussion. The sub judice principle applies, that if there is a matter currently before the courts, it would be inappropriate for any member of cabinet to discuss this matter, or to make any types of submissions on that basis outside of the court process.

In addition to both of those excellent reasons, I would submit, we also have a lot of important work that this committee is doing. We started Bill C-78 today. We have Bill C-84 coming to this committee, an animal cruelty bill. It will be important for Canadians to see justice done to that bill. We have a human trafficking report that we're currently putting together to send back to the House. We have, in our agenda, a new study on the criminalization of HIV. We have lots of other important work to do.

For all of those reasons, it would be best to not support this motion. That's why I will be voting against it.

Elections Modernization Act

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my great friend and colleague, the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith.

I am looking at the clock right now and I see that we have little more than half an hour left in this debate. It is a sad state of affairs for a bill that really covers such an important law in which every Canadian has so much vested, not the least of whom are members of the House, that we have to debate it under the yoke of time allocation.

The rush is all the making of the Liberals. We have heard repeatedly about Bill C-33, the first attempt by the Liberals at amending our election laws. That bill was introduced on November 24, 2016, and it is about as far as it got. It stayed at first reading. The member for Perth—Wellington called it a very unloved bill because it seemed to have been forgotten by the Liberal government.

Bill C-33 languished for many months and then finally on April 30 of this year, Bill C-76 was brought in, which swallowed up Bill C-33 but added a whole bunch more.

Then the sense of urgency came. The Liberals suddenly became aware of the timelines they had to deal with this. The Liberal government has a clear majority. It has commanding control over the agenda of the House. The Liberals came to power with an ambitious election agenda, and they are making us pay for their laggardness.

The bill came back to the House for report stage last week. On Thursday, October 25, the government moved time allocation. We really only had a few days to debate the bill, which started on Wednesday afternoon. On Thursday, the Dutch prime minister was here, so it was not a full day. We debated the bill on Friday afternoon. On Monday, the government decided to debate Bill C-84 and Bill C-85. We had the votes at report stage last night, Here we are on Tuesday, the final day to debate the bill at third reading.

It makes a mockery out of the Prime Minister's promise to treat this institution with respect when he rams the bill through, especially when the amendments that were looked at in committee and at report stage were backed up by such solid evidence. The Liberals have demonstrated time and again that it is their way or the highway.

We have to place all of this within the context of the biggest promise the Liberals made with respect to electoral reform, and that was that 2015 would be the last election held under first past the post. Why does this matter? When the hon. clerks at the table read out the tally of the votes, we do not approve a motion with 39% support, yet that is precisely what happens in this place. The Liberals do have a majority government, but it was elected by 39% of the people.

If we truly believe that every vote should count equally, then the House of Commons should reflect how people voted. I certainly wish the Liberals had followed through on their promise, that they had listened to the evidence that was gathered by the special committee on electoral reform and at least had progressed.

If the Liberals want to see how it is really done, they need to look no further than the province of British Columbia, where a B.C. NDP government, led by my friend Premier John Horgan, who is also a constituent, is following through with a promise.

Right now B.C. is having a referendum on electoral reform. I was happy to cast my ballot last weekend in support of proportional representation. This is a great opportunity for the province of B.C. to lead the way on electoral reform. It is a great way to show Canadians that on this issue, if they want progress, if they want a government that keeps its promise, they will vote NDP. John Horgan and the NDP are showing that.

I want to move on because I do not want to be entirely negative. There are some important things in the bill that we support. Many of the changes in Bill C-76 are just simple reversals of the Conservative bill from 2014.

For example, Bill C-76 would reinstate vouching for identity. It would restore the voter ID card. It would remove restrictions on how the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada could communicate with voters. These are all good things and we support them.

On a personal note, the government has incorporated the idea behind my private member's bill, Bill C-279, which I introduced in 2016. That bill sought to limit the length of elections. I think all members, and indeed Canadians, would be very happy if we did not have to go through a 78-day marathon campaign anymore. Seriously, there needs to be a limit on the length of elections, especially with the changes the Conservatives brought in under its government. It greatly expanded how much political parties could spend every day we went past 36 days. I do not think anyone could argue in favour of Canadians needing 78 days to make their decision. Therefore, I am glad to see there is a hard limit of 50 days on the length of elections.

I am also happy to see that Elections Canada would now be able to access information from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. One of the great things I do as a member of Parliament, pretty much every month, is I get a list of new citizens who recently acquired their citizenship. I get to write certificates, congratulating them on acquiring their citizenship and welcoming them as future electors of Canada. If Elections Canada is able to update its registry in co-operation with another government department, all the better. I think every party in this place wants to see more people participate.

The early registration of teenagers, age 14 to 17, is a great step forward. One of the other things I really enjoy doing as a member of Parliament is visiting all the high schools in my riding. When we make efforts to speak to students, especially grade 11 and 12 students, they are actually a very thoughtful and engaged group. They care very much about their future. They care about climate change, about very progressive ideals. I have really valued my exchanges with them. With early registration as voters, it gives them another impetus to get the buy-in to the system so when they turn 18, they can actually go and cast their ballot.

I was fortunate enough to turn 18 in 1997, an election year, and I got to cast my ballot. I can remember doing that with a lot of pride.

Removing the ban on public education by the Chief Electoral Officer is also a great thing, as well as extending the hours of advanced polls. These are all positive measures in my view.

That is not to say that there are not problems. One of the biggest gaps, and it has been clearly identified by the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, who has been doing yeoman's work on this bill on behalf of the NDP, is the privacy rules covering political parties. Every political party in this place gathers a lot of information on Canadians. We know generally how many people live in a household, what their ages are, their genders and, in some cases, what their professions are.

We live in a time now where information warfare is a fact. Hacking is a fact. We need look no further than the examples of the Brexit vote and the recent election in the United States. It would be absolutely foolish of us to pretend it will not to affect Canada. Unfortunately, despite all the evidence that was heard at the procedure and House affairs committee, not only from the Privacy Commissioner but a whole host of experts, the Liberals cynically ignored this important provision. They decided not to strengthen privacy laws covering political parties. Also, nothing was really done with respect to election ads on social media and the Internet.

One of the big things is this. I remember the Liberals amended their own bill at committee to remove the requirement of political parties to keep receipts for their spending. This is the Liberals at committee amending their own bill to take that out. Last night, through report stage amendments, we tried to insert that back in, through vote no. 12. It was voted against. The Chief Electoral Officer has been calling for this since the 38th Parliament. For a party that likes to sing praises of the Chief Electoral Officer, to repeatedly ignore his recommendations and his calls to action on so many occasions makes a mockery of the Liberal statements in this place.

We also tried to move the voting day to Sunday, which I think would have encouraged more participation. On a Monday, I know everyone is entitled to get those hours off, but it sometimes does not always work out.

We tried to be constructive with the bill. Despite the many flaws that exist, we will vote to send it to the other place. However, I will be reminding Canadians of the opportunities that were lost, the opportunities that we attempted to address and the Liberals' flagrant attempts to ignore all of those constructive proposals.

Criminal Code

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate what I asked the previous speaker. This bill is based on a private member's bill, kind of an omnibus bill, about animal welfare and cruelty to animals that perhaps tried to do too many things at once. The government has taken two very simple parts of that bill and put them into Bill C-84. As my colleague from Longueuil said, it is sort of like motherhood and apple pie and, of course, everybody here is going to agree with that.

However, why did the government not do the perhaps more difficult work of broadening the scope to other real animal cruelty issues around the care of animals without getting into the problems of fishers, hunters, trappers and farmers doing their business in proper ways? We could easily have language in the bill that would protect those activities while getting at true animal cruelty, which this bill does not cover at all, even though in her speech, the member seemed to suggest that it does. It is only about bestiality and animal fighting, two things we can all agree are not proper things for Canadians to do. We should have tackled the broader subject.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code, bestiality and animal fighting.

Animal rights, updated animal cruelty laws and anything to do with taking care of our animals are very important to Davenport residents, so I felt it was important for me to speak to the bill.

I have received hundreds of letters over the years since I have been elected and a number of calls to action around improving our animal cruelty laws and many of the issues that have been talked about in the House in our discussion on Bill C-84.

Before I begin my formal remarks, I want to acknowledge the work of my colleague from Beaches—East York who introduced Bill C-246 two years ago. This proposed legislation was intended to modernize many aspects of Canada's animal cruelty laws. While the bill was ultimately defeated, I did vote in favour of it, not only because of the overwhelming support of it by Davenport residents but because I personally felt the time had come for us, on a fairly big scale, to update the legislation in a number of ways.

However, it was partly due to the member's efforts that the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada committed to review the animal cruelty offences. She engaged in a broad public consultation that led to proposing Bill C-84, which is what I will speak on today. I will focus on a couple of areas.

I think we can agree that bestiality, its links to child sexual abuse, cruelty to animals and the issue of animal fighting are major concerns in Canada. Therefore, Bill C-84 proposes to do a few things, including providing a clear definition for bestiality as well as strengthen and modernize Canada's animal fighting laws. I will focus on these two issues in the bill, which have broad support.

First, Bill C-84 would fill a gap identified as a result of the 2016 Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the case of R v. D.L.W. in relation to the prohibition of acts of bestiality. In the D.L.W. decision, the Supreme Court was asked to interpret the scope of the bestiality offence under the Criminal Code. Surprisingly, it was found that the Criminal Code did not contain a definition of bestiality.

In considering the origins and historical evolution of the common law bestiality provision, the court stated that penetration had always been one of the central elements of the offence. The court refused to interpret bestiality in such a way as to broaden its scope, saying that the decision to broaden the definition fell squarely within the responsibility of Parliament. The Supreme Court decision in the D.L.W. case allowed us to identify a gap in the law that the bestiality offences in force did not apply to persons who committed sexual acts with non-penetrating animals, even in the presence of children or with children.

Many stakeholders, including child and animal advocates and even some provincial governments, urged the federal government to act on the D.L.W. decision and to fill deficiencies identified by the Supreme Court. The first amendment proposed in the bill therefore is to define the term “bestiality” in the Criminal Code to prohibit “any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal”. This proposed legislative amendment will serve several important purposes, such as the protection of children and other vulnerable persons who may witness or be forced to witness an act of bestiality.

The proposed legislative amendment contains a strong public safety component. Research shows that violence, including sexual violence against women and children and violence against animals, are not separate and distinct issues. Rather, they are part of a broader context of violence that is inextricably linked.

In fact, research conducted by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection on images of child sexual exploitation on websites reported that between 2002 and 2009, 35% of all images analyzed involved serious sexual assault, including bondage or sexual servitude, torture and bestiality. This data demonstrated that there was a clear link between bestiality, child sexual abuse and other forms of violence.

In addition, since the D.L.W. decision, the case law analysis on this issue also revealed numerous cases where offenders convicted of possession of child pornography were sadly viewing images of children aged one to 16 engaging in bestiality acts.

Case law further demonstrates that when sexual violence against a child involves an animal, the level of criminal behaviour may be particularly serious, and acts of sexual violence committed do not always involve penetration.

Since the D.L.W. decision, bestiality offences under the Criminal Code do not apply in cases where the offender commits sexual acts with non-penetrating animals. The impact is that animals are only protected from non-penetrative sexual acts by persons when the sexual act causes physical injury to the animal and is therefore an offence for cruelty to animals. Likewise, children are only protected from being compelled to commit or witness acts of bestiality without penetration when other sexual offences against the child apply.

Bill C-84's proposal to define bestiality fills this gap by making it clear that all acts of sex with animals are prohibited under the bestiality provisions of Canada regardless of the circumstances. In other words, society has no legitimate interest in allowing people to commit sexual acts with animals, especially in the presence of children or with their participation. The bill proposes to define bestiality as “any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal”.

The meaning of this sentence is well understood and established in law. This expression is found in several other provisions of the Criminal Code, such as child pornography, luring on the Internet and making sexually explicit material available to a child.

In the 2001 Sharpe decision, the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted the sentence in the context of the child pornography offence to mean that the act, viewed objectively, was committed for the sexual gratification of the involved child. It would be noted that the proposed definition clearly would not intended for animal breeding activities such as artificial insemination.

I would now like to highlight the provisions in the bill to strengthen Canada's animal fighting laws.

At the moment, the Criminal Code prohibits anyone from encouraging or assisting in the fighting or harassment of animals and anyone who constructs and maintains an arena for cock fighting on the premises that the person owns or occupies or to permit such an arena to be constructed, maintained or guarded on those premises. The bill would ensure that all activities contributing to animal fighting would be prohibited and that all animals would be entitled to the same protection. This would be achieved by amending section 445.1 of the Criminal Code to prohibit a wider range of activities, such as promoting, organizing and participating in animal fights.

In addition, Bill C-84 would ensure that section 447 would prohibit all arenas of animal fighting, not only those that would be committed to cock fighting. While there are no reliable statistics on the extent of animal fighting in Canada, given the clandestine nature, we know that animal fighting activities are often related to organized crime, including illegal gambling, trafficking, illicit drugs and weapons. Although cock fighting has become a thing of the past in Canada, the incidence of other forms of animal fighting, particularly those including dogs, has increased.

The animal fighting offence reforms proposed in the bill will achieve a number of important goals, including the following two. They will make it clear that all forms of animal fighting are prohibited. They will strengthen our ability to bring to justice those who commit these heinous crimes and to track the number of cases.

I would like to point out that the broadening of the scope of animal welfare offences does not involve legitimate activities such as hunting, training or the use of dogs for protection purposes. Rather, it targets acts of gratuitous violence that have no place and no legitimate purpose in our country.

Although this is a relatively short bill, the proposed amendments are necessary to fill real gaps in the criminal law.

In short, the bill is part of the firm commitment of the Minister of Justice to examine and strengthen the animal cruelty laws. I hope all members of Parliament will join me in supporting the proposed reforms. I encourage all members of the House to unanimously support the speedy passage of Bill C-84.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Davenport.

What this bill brings forward is a balance: more protections for animals against animal cruelty, and also an understanding of the important work that farmers need to do.

We are going to talk a lot about the legislation, but nothing brings it more to life than a story. I was listening to the member for Cowichan—Malahat—Langford talking about Teddy the dog and the abuse it suffered and how the community has rallied. We have heard from citizens from coast to coast to coast how important this is. That is significant. We know these stories have happened in all of our ridings and it is important for us to protect those who do not have a voice, our animals. That is why it brings me great pleasure to be able to speak to Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting). This bill proposes several amendments to the Criminal Code to improve and expand the law in respect of these two issues.

Historically, discussions surrounding the criminalization of certain types of behaviours toward animals have tended to generate significant controversy and strong passion on various sides. As we experienced during the second reading debate on Bill C-246, the modernizing animal protections act, it is not always easy to reconcile competing interests in this area of the law. Despite the challenges we see time and again on these broader questions, I believe it is important, as a starting point, to recognize that the measures proposed in this bill focus on two issues that enjoy broad support. In fact, I understand that a wide variety of stakeholder groups have written to the Minister of Justice in support of these specific proposals. In addition to the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies and the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, and a diverse range of stakeholders from the agriculture sector have equally expressed their support, again striking the right balance.

It is clear that there is more we can do as parliamentarians to protect animals and to condemn those who intentionally subject them to harm. When we can all come together, we can get important things done. That is precisely what this bill seeks to do. Bill C-84 seeks to better protect children and other vulnerable persons and animals in a couple of different ways.

First, there are amendments to existing offences in relation to animal fighting. Causing animals to fight each other is generally done for the economic gain of some people and the entertainment of others. In all of its manifestations, it is an abhorrent behaviour that has no place in Canadian society. It has long been prohibited under criminal law. Animal fighting can be a complex enterprise involving many people at different stages of the operation. Because there are a variety of activities carried out by numerous different people, possibly in different places, it can make it challenging to define the scope of the offence and to prosecute those offenders. In fact, animal fighting has been shown to be linked to organized crime. We might suspect the reason for this is that it is a profit-generating activity, which is what criminal organizations are only interested in. This potential link with organized crime is yet another reason to take seriously the measures proposed in this bill.

Criminal law seeks to define offences by identifying specific actions that are prohibited. The time has come to update the existing prohibitions to ensure that all of the various activities done in support of animal fighting are clearly prohibited. That is precisely what this bill does. The existing offence in paragraph 445.1(1)(b) of the Criminal Code prohibits encouraging, aiding or assisting the fighting of animals. The problem with this is that it is not entirely clear what conduct is or is not prohibited. Therefore, the bill would expand this offence so that it would expressly prohibit a range of additional activities that are done in support of animal fighting. It would add the following to the list of prohibited activities: promoting, arranging, receiving money and taking part in animal fighting, as well as training, transporting or breeding an animal for the purpose of fighting.

The objective of such reforms is to more clearly define what conduct is prohibited in order to facilitate the investigation and prosecution of these offences. Related enforcement actions would be facilitated, because it will be very clear when behaviour is criminal and when it is not. Enforcement bodies will not have to ask themselves whether breeding animals for the purpose of fighting or receiving money from animal fighting are prohibited since the various links on the chain of an animal fighting operation will now all be set out very clearly.

This change would greatly benefit the animals that are deliberately subjected to harm in the most brutal of ways for human entertainment and profit. There is no social value to these activities, only cruelty for its own sake.

It is vital that the law be clear, that animals be protected from the full range of activities that are done in support of animal fighting, and that law enforcement be equipped to detect and stop this crime at whatever stage they find it.

A related amendment is a proposed change to the offence of keeping a cockpit, dealt with in section 447 of the Criminal Code. The narrow scope of this offence is likely a result of the historical era in which it was enacted, a time when animal fighting would have primarily involved cockfighting.

Today we know that animal fighting can take other forms, most notably dog fighting. Bill C-84 would therefore broaden the current offence so that individuals who make or maintain arenas that are intended to be used in fighting by any type of animal are subject to criminal law.

I would also note that research continues to show a correlation between animal cruelty and other forms of criminality and violence. While these proposed reforms target one form of animal cruelty, the broader context remains relevant. Where individuals participate in the senseless brutalization of animals, this kind of behaviour represents a threat to public safety that we must all be concerned about.

The other major component of this legislation addresses bestiality. There have always been offences prohibiting bestiality in the Criminal Code, including prohibiting the compelling of a person to engage in bestiality and inciting a person under 16 years of age to engage in bestiality or engaging in it in the presence of an individual, as dealt with in section 160 of the Criminal Code.

However, there is currently no definition of bestiality in the Criminal Code. In the 2016 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. D.L.W., the court held that the common law definition of bestiality is limited to sex acts with animals that involve penetration. This ruling generated a lot of commentary, with many Canadians feeling that it left out many of the offences and forms of behaviour that are harmful and equally deserving of prohibition.

While interpreting these offences is in the domain of the courts, creating new offences or expanding the scope of the existing ones is something that only Parliament can do, and this is precisely what Bill C-84 proposes to do. The bill proposes to amend the relevant section, section 160, to define bestiality for the first time in the Criminal Code.

It is entirely appropriate for Parliament to define the scope of key terms in criminal offences, as this is in fact what defines the scope of criminal conduct. It is our responsibility not just to ensure clarity in the scope of criminal offences, but also to ensure that the scope of criminal offences keeps up with modern times and adequately protects the public from offensive behaviour in a way that is consistent with our collective values.

I am confident that Canadians will support these proposed measures, which aim to clearly identify as unacceptable certain forms of conduct that are harmful to animals, to children and to the whole of society.

I urge all members to support this legislation to ensure its swift passage. This is the right piece of legislation that will bring that balance by protecting animals from cruelty and also ensuring that farmers will be able to do their jobs. Stakeholders are onside. It is time to move forward.

[Bob Saroya, Conservative, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code, bestiality and animal fighting. While I am glad the issue is being addressed and I support this legislation. I am disappointed that it took so long for the Liberal government to act on these very simple, straightforward changes. On this side of the House, we have been asking for these changes for two years. We have been asking for the Liberal government to ensure that there is justice for these very disgusting crimes, and we are not alone. Thousands of Canadians have the same concerns and have been demanding that the government work to protect animals and victims of crime.

I am glad the government finally took these thousands of Canadians seriously. Bill C-84 aims to protect children and animals from cruelty and abuse. We can all agree that protecting children should be one of our top priorities. I am glad that we are able to provide protection for children and animals while still making sure that we are not causing undue hardship on legitimate and traditional farming, hunting and trapping practices, including indigenous harvesting rights. We do not want to fix one problem while creating another and I am glad this bill would avoid that.

Bill C-84 sets out to broaden the definition of bestiality in order to prohibit any contact for a sexual purpose between a person and an animal. The current definition of bestiality is very restrictive and has resulted in at least one charge being thrown out because the definition was too limited. We cannot allow any other cases to be thrown out simply because we have a definition that is so limited that criminals who prey on children and animals are not able to be convicted and sentenced.

On this side of the House, we stand with and support victims rights. We have been demanding that the government take action on this issue. In fact, almost a year ago, in December of 2017, my colleague, the member for Calgary Nose Hill introduced a piece of legislation that was exactly the same as the current piece of legislation. We knew that changes needed to be made a long time ago and we tried to address them. I am glad that we are addressing them now, but we could have avoided criminals slipping through the loophole that exists for sexual abusers over the past year if this important issue had been addressed much sooner.

The bill would also prohibit the ability to profit from or keep any facility for the purpose of animal fighting. Right now, the Criminal Code does address animal cruelty and specifically animal fighting, but this bill would help to expand the protection of animals and capture all activities related to animal fighting. That means that anyone who promotes, arranges or takes part in animal fighting or the baiting of animals would be committing a crime. Also, anyone who profits from animal fighting would be committing a crime.

It would also be against the law under this new piece of legislation to breed, train or transport animals for the purpose of animal fighting and anyone who is found to be building or maintaining any arena for animal fighting would be committing a crime. Right now, the current definition only references a cockpit, which is a place used for cockfighting, but it does not address the fighting of other animals. Under this bill, all arenas for all types of animal fighting would be captured.

One thing that does worry me about this legislation, though, is whether it will be passed by the time the House of Commons rises in June of next year. I am concerned that the government will not prioritize this legislation and ensure that it passes quickly. If this does not pass before June, it will have to be reintroduced, leaving an opportunity for further cases and criminals to slip through the loopholes of the existing legislation and definitions. That will mean that dangerous criminals who prey on children and animals may not be punished for their crimes simply because the bill did not become law quickly enough. I do not want to see that happen.

Again, it is so very important for this Parliament and the government to increase the protection for children and vulnerable individuals who may be compelled by another person to commit or witness sexual acts with animals.

Protecting children should always be a top priority, so I am glad to see this bill addressing the shortfalls that currently exist in that area. It is aIso important that we ensure that animals are protected from violence and cruelty, which the bill does set out to do. I am supportive of that as well.

I hope that the government can provide assurances to the House that the bill will be a priority and that these changes will be made as quickly as possible.

In conclusion, I will again state that I support the bill and I am glad that we are addressing these important changes. However, I am concerned about the timing and the lack of urgency that we have seen from the government on this issue.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-84. I would first like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the member for Markham—Unionville.

Bill C-84 seems to be another example of the government striking a valiant attempt to make a change, yet it is an incomplete attempt, much like most of the legislation we have seen coming forward from the government. Some of these previous shortcomings include Bill C-45, the cannabis bill, which just came into effect a few days ago. Even though that legislation was debated in the House and passed roughly a year ago, there still remain multiple enforcement agencies, municipalities, regional districts and first nations that agree it simply was not complete or ready. It did not give the provinces or municipalities time to prepare.

After that was Bill C-46, the bill that dealt with impaired driving, which was tied to Bill C-45. We have now heard that because of the way Bill C-46 was drafted, there is no proof that the systems in place and the science and technology around identifying impairment, which was fairly standardized when it came to alcohol, are going to be effective when it comes to drugs. Not only do we have another piece of flawed legislation out there, but we have communities and enforcement agencies trying to scramble to figure out how to deal with that.

The next piece of legislation I am familiar with is Bill C-71, the government's firearms legislation, which, in listening to its rhetoric, is aimed at reducing gun violence, gangs and so on. However, the bill does not mention gangs or gun violence at any point in time. All it talks about is registering firearms and making things worse for law-abiding firearms owners.

The most current is probably Bill C-75, an act to amend the Criminal Code. That is a bill the government introduced to bring modernization to the Criminal Code. That bill has been bantered back and forth many times, but it is now at committee stage. My colleague from St. Albert—Edmonton is currently on the committee studying that bill, and members are looking at stacks and stacks of amendments to another government bill. I experienced the same thing when I sat in on the discussion on Bill C-69, when I happened to be substituting on that committee. I believe there were 600 amendments to that government bill. The bill was 300 pages long, and I believe 300 or 350 of those amendments came from the government side.

I continuously see the government putting forward draft legislation for debate in this House that it has not thought through or consulted on properly, and it just ends up being hashed about at committee. We have seen the Senate return a number of bills to this House with amendments. Worst of all, we see communities, enforcement agencies and the public trying to figure out how they are going to manage or work around this poorly drafted legislation from the government.

Turning back to Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to bestiality and animal fighting, I praise the government for bringing forward legislation to deal with this. I agree we need to do what we can, as legislators, to bring in legislation to protect people, protect the innocent and protect animals from the abuses we have seen. Also, to protect them from the ways criminals have been able to skirt the laws through definitions, different interpretations in the courts and so on. On that point, I will give the government credit for at least attempting to do something right.

When I look at this bill, I also see where it comes up short in some cases. I compare it to an insurance policy. I think everyone here has had an insurance policy and has taken a close look at it. Some have possibly made a claim through that insurance policy only to find out that the claim is denied because in the fine print something was excluded.

We may get a chance to amend this bill in committee. Even though it is a short bill and one would not think it needs much amendment, I do not believe it is perfect and I will be talking to committee members about possible amendments going forward.

When I see that the bill includes a phrase that basically bans the fighting or baiting of animals or birds, I question whether that is going to impact our provincial hunting regulations. I have not yet been able to have full discussion with anyone to determine this. In some provinces, it is completely legal and within ethical standards to plant crops to attract wildlife, such as deer and elk, to certain areas for hunting purposes. Those are perfectly accepted standards that continue to this day. In fact, many of those standards actually improve the chances of correct and humane harvest of those animals because they are at a baiting station.

That is why I question the wording in this bill. I will be following through further on this to make sure that this bill, like many other bills the government has put forward, is not flawed after it gets through committee. I want to make sure we are protected in those ways.

Another thing that troubles me with this bill is why it took the government almost a year to introduce its own bill that is identical in most ways to a bill introduced by a member from our side of the House, the member for Calgary Nose Hill. Her bill was introduced in December 2017, and yet the government sat on it and did not move it forward for debate. The government could have had this process done by now and given credit where credit was due, to the person who brought the issue forward.

It seems to be a continuous mantra of the government to not do anything until it is caught not doing anything. We see it when we have witnesses appear at committee to give testimony. We see it in the Auditor General reports. It just seems to be a continuing theme.

In fact, I had the same experience myself. I introduced a private member's bill a couple of years ago to recognize volunteers in search and rescue situations. Just a few weeks later the government announced that it was going to create service medals for search and rescue volunteers. Again, it was not doing anything until it got caught not doing anything.

That is the case here. It is disappointing that the government has to be shown the way forward by members on our side. We see this quite often with the opposition day motions we bring forward. In fact, we had another one just last week. We put forward an opposition day motion that the Liberals could have easily acted on much sooner, but we had to force their hand by forcing the argument and putting it to them to make them step up to the plate. It is just another case of, as I said, not doing anything until they are caught not doing anything. Then they get caught in a bind and have to put out something that is not complete, not well-thought-out and not well-processed.

With that, I am finished my comments. I know I will be receiving questions on this.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as it is my first opportunity to rise today in the debate on Bill C-84, I want to thank my hon. colleague for Toronto—Danforth for her speech.

I did attempt to ask question earlier today of the Minister of Justice, because the bill is certainly good, but it leaves a lot of holes. We still need to move forward to eliminate elements of animal cruelty, and we need to do more around these particular issues.

I hope that we can get the bill to committee and that the government would be open to substantive amendments so that we can make more progress than Bill C-84 would make. I would be interested in my colleague's thoughts on what might be possible at committee.

[Julie Dabrusin, Liberal, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak in support of Bill C-84. It is a step forward on animal welfare issues. We have so much more to do, but I am happy to mark the start of the move toward better and stronger animal welfare legislation.

There are other related bills I expect to see shortly in this place coming from the other place on the captivity of whales and dolphins, on shark finning and on the testing of cosmetics on animals. Those are all important steps forward on animal welfare issues. I am really looking forward to participating in those debates and voting in support of those efforts.

Animal welfare issues are very important to me. I am a member of the Liberal animal welfare caucus. I would really like to thank the members for Brossard—Saint-Lambert and Steveston—Richmond East for their leadership role on that caucus. It is an important way for us to get more information and to learn more about what we can do to move things forward. It has definitely been a source of learning and advocacy for us.

As I said, this bill is a step forward. It ends the sexual abuse of animals and also gets rid of the cruel practice of animal fighting. Those are important first steps forward for us. It is hard for me to believe that we even need this legislation, and yet we do.

I was reading a little bit more about animal fighting. Once one reads about it and sees pictures, it is really hard to get images out of one's mind. It really centres us on why we need to take action.

I was looking at the Ontario SPCA web page about dog fighting. It described it this way: “Dog fighting is a sadistic ‘contest’ in which two dogs—specifically bred, conditioned, and trained to fight—are placed in a pit (generally a small arena enclosed by plywood walls) to fight each other for the spectators' entertainment and gambling.”

This bill goes beyond dog fighting, but let us focus on dogs for a moment and what I was reading about. Dogs die as part of this fighting, and this is not just about the dogs in the fights themselves. In the training process, there are also what are called “bait dogs”.

U.S. awareness about bait dogs, which are part of the training process, really came to the fore when a female pit bull named Turtle was found on the side of the road with many scars and wounds. The reason she had all those scars and wounds is that she had actually been used, attacked over and over again by dogs training for these fights as part of this cruel contest.

This dog, Turtle, was rescued, which makes her a lucky one despite the tremendous pain she went through. However, other animals are not able to be rescued. That is why we need this type of legislation and why I can speak so strongly in support of that need. We should never see that happen to animals at all.

I was also taken by another article I read in The Globe and Mail, which mentioned that U.S. dog owners come to Canada for dog fighting because we are seen as having lax legislation. I cannot even imagine that Canada would be seen as a place where someone would come because of lax legislation on animal cruelty. That is something we cannot let happen, and this bill takes a step forward in preventing it.

Canadians care, and that is also why this is so important. Two weeks ago, I went to one of my local churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, and it had a blessing of the animals service. People brought their animal friends to church for a blessing, and they got to talk about the important roles that our animal friends have in our lives. It was also a time to talk about the kind of advocacy we can do in support of animals in our community. I would really like to thank Kimberly Carroll of Animal Justice because she made a call to action that day and talked to us about the need to give a voice to animals, as they cannot speak for themselves.

That is what we are doing today in the process of this debate. Today is one more step in trying to give a voice to animals. I know this is important to people who live in Toronto—Danforth, and it is certainly important for me. It is important to how we want to see our community and country.

I want to cite the words of Albert Einstein. He said that “Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” That touches me in terms of how I want to see an expanding circle of compassion, which I believe this legislation and the other bills we will be seeing coming from the other place move us closer to doing.

Gandhi said that “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Those are good points of balancing out. How do we want to see ourselves as a community?

Another aspect of the bill, aside from the animal fighting part, is about bestiality. It is another important part of what the bill covers. In 2016, there was a Supreme Court of Canada decision, and in it bestiality, as it is currently defined in our Criminal Code, was said not to include non-penetrative acts. There was an important dissent that was written by Supreme Court of Canada Justice Rosalie Abella, but the majority did not agree with that, and I would like to quote the decision because it is important. This legislation directly responds to it. The court decision stated:

Penetration has always been understood to be an essential element of bestiality. Parliament adopted that term without adding a definition of it and the legislative history and evolution of the relevant provisions show no intent to depart from the well-understood legal meaning of the term. Moreover, the courts should not, by development of the common law, broaden the scope of liability for the offence of bestiality. Any expansion of criminal liability for this offence is within Parliament’s exclusive domain.

The decision also said:

Courts will only conclude that a new crime has been created if the words used to do so are certain and definitive.

I would submit that that is what this decision does. It provides clear, certain, definitive wording. It is quite simple in fact. Our government response to that decision is that we amend section 160 of the Criminal Code by adding a subsection 4, which states, “In this section, bestiality means any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.” It is simple, certain and definitive. That is why it responds quite well to the concerns that have been raised in that case.

By dealing with this, we are increasing our circle of compassion. I say that because I also want to talk about, and I know we heard this earlier today, that a link has been seen between animal cruelty and violence toward people. The Humane Canada conference in 2017 brought together experts to talk about these links and how they would be better addressed. In fact, similar conferences have been held in the United States. There will be a conference by Humane Canada on this issue in November this year in Toronto, discussing the link between violence against animals and violence against people. When the purpose of the conference was set out, it stated:

Violence against animals and violence against people are not distinct and separate problems. Rather, they are part of a larger pattern of violent crimes that often co-exist. Research shows a significant correlation between animal cruelty and crimes of domestic violence, the physical and sexual abuse of children, sexual assault and other violent crimes.

When I was reading and learning more about this, in domestic assault situations and domestic violence, sometimes the threat of violence to an animal friend in that household is one of the ways that control is exerted over the domestic partner as part of the violence. It is a more complex issue and the circle of compassion encapsulates our entire community. We need to end animal cruelty. It is as simple as that.

It is something that I personally feel passionately about. I am happy to see that we are here to debate and discuss it. I look forward to seeing the bill move forward. I want to thank the member for Beaches—East York who raised many of these issues in his bill earlier in the discussion. I am seeing this as one more step. We need to move it forward. Let us do it. Let us take the steps that we need to move forward on animal cruelty.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Toronto—Danforth.

I am very pleased to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-84, a bill that proposes several amendments that would strengthen the Criminal Code's response to bestiality and animal fighting.

I have been passionate about animal protection all my life. During my five years on Oakville's town council I had the opportunity and privilege to work with the Oakville & Milton Humane Society and its former executive director, Kim Millan. I have spoken at length with Kim, as well as former OSPCA officer, Laura Mackasey , and current OSPCA officer, Caitlin Jones who are the front line when dealing with animal cruelty cases. I can remember so clearly Laura and Kim saying to me, “We want to do more, but our hands are tied by legislation.” I was actually shocked at how our laws had failed to keep up with the realties of our world.

I was an early and vocal supporter of the member for Beaches—East York's private member's Bill C-246, and met with my local humane society about the proposed legislation. It also publicly supported the bill because it deals with animal cruelty on a daily basis and knows how critical it is to update our laws. Quite frankly, those on the front line of animal cruelty need governments to step up and give them the tools they need to protect animals.

The bill before us today reflects the Minister of Justice's commitment to review animal welfare laws in the wake of the defeat of Bill C-246. She held extensive consultations all across Canada. Bill C-84 is an excellent first step, but quite frankly, there is more to be done by all levels of government to end animal cruelty.

I will highlight one issue which was brought to my attention by someone who has worked in the field for many years. We need to ensure that any person convicted of an offence of animal cruelty should be prohibited from ever owning an animal again, and if the person is prohibited from owning an animal in one province, that restriction should apply in all provinces. It is my hope that this is something that could be considered at committee.

We know there is a direct link between animal cruelty and child abuse and also between animal cruelty and domestic violence. That is why we must take the abuse of animals seriously. Research from the University of Windsor found a strong correlation between the abuse of human family members and the treatment of companion animals. Childhood sexual assault is also linked with animal sexual assault. Barbara Cartwright, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies has stated that not all people who commit animal cruelty are serial predators, but as far as we know, all serial predators have committed acts of animal cruelty. We also know there is a correlation between animal fighting and guns and gangs. Bill C-84 also tightens the law around animal fighting.

I am sure most Canadians are shaking their heads asking why these changes have not been made sooner. I agree, but I applaud the government for bringing Bill C-84 forward.

On the specifics of Bill C-84, I will now focus my comments on the bill's amendment, which arises in the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in 2016 in the case of D.L.W. In this recent decision, the court limited the meaning of the term “bestiality”. I cannot stress enough how important Bill C-84's bestiality amendment is. Specifically, it would serve to protect vulnerable people, especially children, as well as animals. To be clear from the outset, criminal liability must result whenever any kind of sexual act with animals occur. While difficult to talk about, it is a subject that we must address because of the very real consequences of a lack of legislation on this issue.

The term “bestiality” has never been defined in statute in Canada, but it forms the basis for criminal liability in three distinct Criminal Code offences. Canada's bestiality provisions find their origin in ancient British law, and the offence was included in Canada's first Criminal Code in 1892. The recent Supreme Court case was the first time the Supreme Court of Canada had the occasion to consider the meaning of the term “bestiality”. Because there was no statutory definition of the term, the court examined its history and its interpretation at common law to determine its meaning.

The court found that sexual penetration has always been one of its essential elements. Nothing in the legislative history of Canada's bestiality provisions was found to have changed its original meaning at common law. Importantly, the court also noted that any changes to the scope of existing criminal offences must be made by Parliament.

The circumstances of the D.L.W. case are disturbing, to say the very least. Without elaborating on the extensive and sustained sexual abuse that the accused perpetrated against the victims over a period of approximately 10 years, the court was asked to consider whether the activity constituted a form of bestiality. The majority of the court answered the question in the negative because of the historical interpretation given to the offence.

The decision stated that the courts must not create new crimes that Parliament never explicitly intended and expanding the scope of bestiality to include all sexual acts between humans and animals would do just that, largely because, in the words of the Supreme Court, “there is not, and has never been in Canada, any statutory definition, exhaustive or otherwise, of the elements of bestiality.” The court also pointed to the ongoing significant policy debates about what the focus of this sort of offence ought to be and once again clarified that it is for Parliament, not the courts, to expand the scope of criminal liability for this ancient offence.

Bill C-84 proposes an amendment that would achieve exactly what the courts have suggested. Specifically, it would define “bestiality” as “any contact for a sexual purpose with an animal”. It would mean that accused persons, like the one in the D.L.W. case, would no longer be acquitted simply because the sexual abuse in question did not involve penetration. This is an appropriate and necessary response to the Supreme Court's decision. As parliamentarians, it is our duty to ensure the criminal law protects the most vulnerable, especially children. Involving animals in harmful contact is often indicative of a propensity for even more serious offending.

As I stated earlier, there is an established link between animal cruelty and child abuse. The D.L.W. case is a case in point. We must extend the criminal law's protections in this regard. Undoubtedly, the Criminal Code contains other offences that could apply to the conduct at issue in the D.L.W. case. At the same time, the proposed changes would send a clear message that forcing others to engage in sexual acts with animals and involving children or animals in this kind of activity is harmful and will not be tolerated.

The bill's second focus on animal fighting is also an overdue change to our legislative framework in Canada. Our society does not tolerate these abuses of animals and I am pleased the government has introduced Bill C-84 to protect the vulnerable, animals and Canadian society in general. It is my hope that this legislation will go a long way in also helping people like those who work with the Oakville & Milton Humane Society, as well as the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to do their jobs more easily and give them the legislative framework they have been calling for.

I call on all members of this House to support this bill.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I agree. This problem is a complex one. Many cases are very different from each other both in the crime that was perpetrated and also in the background of the people and animal involved. It always will require people working together at various levels. That being said, there are significant gaps that exist in the criminal law. I believe that in order for us to be effective, those are one of the key spokes in the wheel of this issue that we need to absolutely fix.

I welcome Bill C-84. As the member said, it is moving the ball forward. However, I will not withhold my criticism for his government and say that it has been moving at a pretty glacial pace on judicial reform both in appointing judges and in amending the Criminal Code, especially for a government that came to power with such bold promises of action.

Bill C-84 is welcomed, but I look at it as yet another missed opportunity where the justice minister, who is supposedly committed to this issue and has even made many statements in the media committing to it, lost the opportunity to put in provisions that not only New Democrats support but many Liberal members, including former justice minister Irwin Cotler have supported in the past.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be partaking in today's debate on Bill C-84. It touches some subject matter which is difficult to talk about, but that is often the case with the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code is a gigantic statute that has to cover everything that could possibly go wrong in society and figure out how we amend and correct that behaviour, but also how we dole out punishment.

Bill C-84 is specifically aimed at addressing gaps in the Criminal Code that exist with respect to animal bestiality and animal fighting. Supreme Court decision R. v. D.L.W., from 2016, was referenced by both the Minister of Justice and the hon. member for Calgary Nose Hill.

Specifically, Bill C-84 would update section 160 of the Criminal Code to include a broader and more comprehensive definition of “bestiality” and would amend paragraph 445.(1)(b) and subsection 447(1) to address animal fighting, specifically building facilities to harbour animal fighting and also promoting or making money from the event.

Canada's animal welfare laws have not been substantively changed since the 1890s, which has to say something to anyone listening to this debate.

I want to acknowledge the member for Calgary Nose Hill, who brought forward a private member's bill on this issue, Bill C-388. In her drafting of Bill C-84, the Minister of Justice lifted Bill C-388 and included it. Therefore, that is an acknowledgement of the work the member for Calgary Nose Hill has done.

I know the member for Calgary Nose Hill was recently in a bit of a tussle with an iPolitics columnist on an article he recently wrote. He was looking at some of the statistics that existed with this crime. There is the Supreme Court of Canada case I mentioned and there has been one case in federal court. Even in the province of Alberta, which is home to 4.3 million people, six people were charged with that offence between 2013 and 2017. Therefore, it is not a very wide ranging crime. It is certainly an abhorrent one and one we should we should rightfully close in the Criminal Code.

What I am concerned about is not really what is in Bill C-84, which I hope will receive unanimous consent in the House to have it sent to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I am mostly concerned about what is not in it. I also agree with the member for Calgary Nose Hill's assessment of the glacial pace of justice reform by the Liberal government.

The minister came to power with a mandate letter from the Prime Minister, signalling bold criminal justice reform. We had a series of four government bills, which I will not number. Every time a new justice bill was added, like an amoeba, it would swallow the components of the first one and progressively get bigger and bigger. However, they were all languishing at first reading. Finally, we arrived at Bill C-75 and there was action on that bill, which I believe is currently at the justice committee. However, it has been a pretty glacial pace.

I like and respect the Minister of Justice. I was our party's justice critic for the entire 2017 year. It is a complex subject matter and requires a lot of responsibility and maturity to approach it. However, I have to judge the minister on her performance and I would not really give her a passing mark on the legislative front with respect to the promises made within her mandate letter.

I want to now move to a story from my riding, a story of Teddy the dog. This really goes to the heart of what is not included in Bill C-84. I will give my support to the bill, but I know constituents in my riding will be sorely disappointed. Teddy the dog was one of the most brutal cases of animal abuse the BC SPCA has ever witnessed.

In February of this year, officers came onto a property and found an adult dog tethered by a few inches. It was standing out in the wet and the cold in a pile of its own feces. The officers found a collar imbedded in that dog's neck that had caused the dog's head to swell to three times its original size, because it had been left on the dog from the time it was a puppy. The collar had never been loosened. When the officers removed the poor animal named Teddy and brought it to the veterinarian, the vet had to surgically remove that collar, which exposed the dog's trachea and a mound of infected flesh. Unfortunately, that dog passed away from its injuries.

It is far too often in this country that we hear of cases like that. Changing our laws would not be the magic bullet to solve this problem, but it would be one key, critical component, especially when we have such obvious gaps in our system.

There was a rally in my riding in March, where, as I said earlier, we had people from across the political spectrum. We had supporters of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, my party and the Green Party. They were all united, because they cared about animal welfare, and they cared that the state of our animal cruelty laws is not up to what it should be right now.

During that rally, I made a commitment that despite the defeat of Bill C-246, put forward by the member for Beaches—East York, I would continue pressuring the Minister of Justice to close these gaps and address the shortcomings of our current criminal law.

The unfortunate fallout from the case of Teddy the dog was that some people in the community felt that they could take the law into their own hands. A great deal of racism came out of it, because it involved a property on a first nation reserve. Therefore, I want to take this opportunity to remind constituents in my riding that racism and vigilantism have no place in our community. While we must always stand on guard for animal welfare, and certainly prosecute to the fullest extent of the law those who are found guilty, we have to let the law do its job. We have to believe in the rule of law. We cannot support or condone in any way people taking up a case for themselves. I want to make that very clear.

As I mentioned in my question to the Minister of Justice, not only this Parliament but previous Parliaments have wrestled with the idea of the inadequacy of the Criminal Code provisions with respect to animal cruelty. There have been a number of Liberal bills and New Democrat bills over previous Parliaments that have dealt with this issue.

I will get to the bill put forward by the member for Beaches—East York, but first I want to mention the bill put forward in a previous Parliament by the great Irwin Cotler, probably one of the most revered Liberals ever and a former minister of justice himself. He introduced Bill C-610. It only made it to first reading, but that particular bill tried to make some important updates, specifically with respect to failing to provide adequate care. Bill C-610 was introduced on June 6, 2014. I want to read into the record the speech Mr. Cotler gave at that time:

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and introduce this legislation, which amends the Criminal Code's provisions on animal cruelty. In particular, it creates a new offence of inadequate and negligent care of animals. The bill establishes an offence for anyone who negligently causes unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal or a bird, or, being the owner, wilfully or recklessly abandons it or fails to provide suitable and adequate food, water, air, shelter and care for it. It also punishes those who negligently injure an animal or bird while it is being conveyed.

He went on to say that “Canada's animal cruelty laws are woefully out of date.” He left it at that.

The former member for Parkdale—High Park, Peggy Nash, introduced Bill C-232 in the last Parliament. The hon. member for Vancouver Centre, in the previous Parliament, introduced Bill C-277. There has been multi-party support for these initiatives, but every time, they seem to have run into roadblocks.

Coming up to the most recent attempt in this Parliament, Bill C-246, which was introduced by the member for Beaches—East York, unfortunately I was not present for that second reading vote. I was travelling with the Special Committee on Electoral Reform at that time. I was substituting on it. We were hearing from the great people of Atlantic Canada about how great it would be to have some electoral reform. Unfortunately, the Liberals did not see it the same way. We will see how that conversation goes on in the future.

In any case, I think the member for Beaches—East York acknowledged that his particular private member's bill probably bit off more than it could chew, as it was trying to cover so many different angles. The more a private member's bill covers, the more areas people can find problems with and reasons to shut the whole thing down. I know that there were concerns raised by my Conservative colleagues, especially with respect to legal activities such as ranching, hunting, fishing, trapping, medical research and so on. I think there are ways to proceed with legislation that would address those concerns.

My wife and I have a small farming property. I come from a rural area of Vancouver Island. My constituents like to hunt and fish, and many of them are farmers. I would not support a piece of legislation unless there were specific provisions to protect those activities. I have some of the best salmon fishing in the world right off the west coast of Vancouver Island, which I enjoy. That is something that is a part of our heritage.

I raise animals. Most farmers will say that looking after the welfare of their animals is good for business. We do not want to have animals that are sickly or in poor health. I can attest to that. I have chickens, turkeys and lambs. When they are happy and well looked after, they do very well. It is in my interest not only from a moral point of view but from a commercial standpoint. There are always going to be those few bad apples who give everyone a bad name. However, that is specifically what this law has to be designed for, to weed out the bad apples and go after those who are the poor farmers who give everyone a bad name, and so on.

In 2016, when the member for Victoria, who was our party's justice critic and is now back to being the justice critic, rose to give our party's response to Bill C-246, he addressed those concerns. He said that we can insert clauses into the Criminal Code that start off with the phrase “For greater certainty” to make the necessary changes.

I heard concerns during that debate from Conservatives who wondered about jurisdictional and constitutional issues, because we know that the provinces have their own animal cruelty laws, as does the federal government. However, the supremacy of the criminal law power could easily override provincial legislation to ensure that we were not ending up with a patchwork quilt and that the law applied equally in each province, no matter where one lived. The Supreme Court of Canada has held that valid criminal law requires a prohibition, a penalty and a criminal law purpose, such as peace, order, security, morality and health. A change with respect to animal cruelty could easily satisfy all of those.

Here we are three years into the government's mandate, which I alluded to in my opening remarks. With respect to Bill C-84, there is so much more that could have been included in this bill. I said to the Minister of Justice during questions and comments that, with respect, the provisions in Bill C-84, which is not a very big bill, are very much the low-hanging fruit. I do not see how anyone in this place could raise any legitimate concerns about the bill, except for tinkering around the edges, such as whether some words could be modified. The general purpose of the bill is to broaden the definition of “bestiality” and to make sure that we have an all-encompassing law that goes against animal fighting. We are not going to find any significant objection to that.

However, the minister saying, after the defeat of Bill C-246, that the conversation would continue, that the Department of Justice would be having ongoing consultations with stakeholders, I think led many Canadians to believe that reform was actually coming. Therefore, when I announced to my constituents that we had Bill C-84 and what was missing, I had to convey a sense of disappointment.

Honestly, I think I and many constituents and many Canadians across this country were expecting a lot more, not only because it is three years into the government's mandate but because it is also two years after the defeat of Bill C-246. I know that the member for Beaches—East York has conveyed publicly that Bill C-84 is an obvious choice and is the low-hanging fruit. However, there is a sense of wondering what else is coming.

The Liberals are masters of the long promise. They say that they are continuing to engage with people, but I would not be surprised if we have to wait until the 43rd Parliament before we get some action. Who knows who will be in power at that point to deliver it?

My party has long supported animal cruelty measures. I have mentioned all the private members' bills. We could have included in this legislation, and I hope this is something the committee on justice and human rights will look at, some provisions for basic standards of care.

If I look at the case of Teddy the dog, in my riding, he was tethered with a chain just a few inches long and was having to stand in his own pile of feces. The B.C. SPCA has some specific recommendations the government could take note of. Basically, they want to see, for any dogs or animals that are tethered, five freedoms respected: freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from pain, injury and disease; freedom from distress; freedom from discomfort and freedom to express behaviours that promote well-being. That is a starting point. There are lots of suggestions out there. There are many different stakeholders involved in this issue, and this is something the government could have taken note of.

As I referenced in my earlier questions and comments, I have written to the minister on this issue on behalf of constituents. Prior to Bill C-84 being introduced, I conveyed in my correspondence to the justice minister the concerns of my community about how many cases of animal cruelty exist across this country and that this particular case acted as a catalyst. People are demanding more action.

The minister did respond in June of this year. Again, it was not really anything concrete. She assured me that the government was intending to review all the options to improve any gaps in protection resulting from the existing Criminal Code provision, which is something that has not been done yet. The minister agreed publicly that animal cruelty is a significant social issue that needs to be addressed, and so on. There are many public comments that come from the government that signal an intent to do something, but when we actually get something concrete, like Bill C-84, we see that it has not amounted to much.

Just to highlight how important this particular issue is and why these gaps are so important, I want to speak about some of the statistics. It was reported, I think a couple of years ago, that there are approximately 45,000 animal cruelty complaints in Canada every year, but only one in 1,000 result in charges and far fewer in convictions. That is a significant difference between complaints and actual action in the court system. It says to me that there is definitely a need for this legislation.

I will conclude by saying that we support these gaps being addressed in the Criminal Code. Bill C-84 is an important first step. The Minister of Justice can be assured that we, as a caucus, will be supporting this bill going forward to committee, but we will remind Canadians that there was so much more that could have been done. It is a sad day that, after three years, we are still going to have to wait for those meaningful parts to be addressed.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, what the member for Calgary Nose Hill has said in her remarks is very true. One thing I found out last year, as my party's justice critic and sitting on the justice committee, is this. When we look at bills amending the Criminal Code, we have to be so very careful even with the individual words used. While we are responsible in this place for writing the law, it is up to the court system to interpret it. Therefore, we always have to look at the ways it might be interpreted.

That being said, when I look at Bill C-84, a lot of my constituents, and these are constituents across the political spectrum, Conservatives, Liberals, New Democrats and Green Party members, are going to be disappointed with what is missing because of the very brutal case of animal cruelty in my riding. I acknowledge that changing the law alone will not solve this problem, but the fact remains there are thousands of animal cruelty complaints every year in the country and very few of them make it to an actual charge, let alone a conviction. There is room for specific language in the Criminal Code that would exempt the legitimate activities of animal husbandry, hunting and fishing.

Does my colleague have any thoughts about how to move forward? The justice minister is committed to having this conversation, but in my colleague's view, is there a way to amend the Criminal Code that would take action on these specific areas of neglect? We still have gaping holes in our criminal justice system aside from Bill C-84, and I know members of her caucus have raised these concerns. However, in her view, what is the way forward to tackle what the member for Beaches—East York is raising, what my constituents are raising and what Canadians across the country, from all political stripes, are taking about? Parliament has tried many times and failed every time. How do we go forward from here?

[Nathaniel Erskine-Smith, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, having sat through a few speeches by the member for Calgary Nose Hill, I can attest to the fact that she does not say complimentary things about many Liberals, so I appreciate her comments today.

I am thankful that Bill C-84 has been introduced and that the justice minister has said that this is a first step. It is important that this is part of an ongoing move to improve, update and strengthen the animal cruelty provisions in the Criminal Code. However, what holds us back from that is this notion of unintended consequences, sometimes a scare tactic about a slippery slope.

We have a letter from animal sector groups, alongside the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, saying that we should pass Bill C-84 to tackle animal fighting and bestiality. That is what the justice minister has done.

In 2004, there was a letter from a long list of animal sector groups, asking then justice minister Irwin Cotler to pass Bill C-22. That was the long list of Criminal Code amendments in my private member's bill. My frustration is hearing some Conservatives say that they are worried about how it will affect animal husbandry. If those asking that question had read the case law and looked at the letter of support from the animal sector groups or even turned to common sense, what is lacking in this place sometimes, they would know this has nothing to do with animal husbandry and everything to do with the sexual abuse of animals.

If we want to continue to tackle animal cruelty, how do we get beyond the specious arguments about unintended consequences?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for answering some of those questions, and my colleagues who asked them. It feels like legitimate, real debate has broken out in this place this morning. It is a rare day. It is wonderful.

Before I start speaking in favour of Bill C-84, there are some people I would to thank. These people have worked very hard on this bill, which, to me, is the minimum this place could do in terms of updating Canada's very outdated and archaic animal cruelty laws. First is Pierre Sadik, Canadian Federation of Humane Societies; Camille Labchuk, Animal Justice; the member for Beaches—East York, who tabled a private member's bill earlier in this Parliament; and my legislative manager, Bari Miller.

These people have all helped me over the last year and a half in putting together a non-partisan consensus that we need to see some advancement in terms of the legal framework that Canada uses to protect the rights of hunters, anglers and farmers but also to acknowledge that animal cruelty has indicators and broader societal implications than on just animal welfare itself.

Today, we are speaking specifically to the provisions in Bill C-84. It has been nearly a year since I tabled Bill C-388, my private member's bill, which does include provisions that are in this bill, which responds to the 2016 Supreme Court decision, R. v. D.L.W., which the minister spoke to at length this morning.

For those who are listening this morning, who might not be familiar with the content of that particular decision, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld an acquittal of a British Columbia man who was charged with bestiality after compelling their family dog to sexually abuse their 16-year-old stepdaughter. In the decision, the Supreme Court found that existing provisions around bestiality do not adequately define what sexual acts with animals are prohibited under Canadian law.

The Supreme Court applied a very narrow understanding of sexual abuse that requires a penetrative act. This narrow definition created a loophole that allowed sexual abusers to avoid conviction and highlights how the definition of bestiality in the Criminal Code is severely outdated. The bill before us today responds to this situation by tightening up that definition of bestiality to prohibit sexual abuse of animals, including that beyond a non-penetrative act.

I have been disheartened, because there have been some discussions, both within the Canadian media and people abroad, saying that this is not a problem, it is a manufactured problem, and asking why we are even talking about this. First of all, I would argue that the definition needs to be tightened up, including taking into consideration some of the questions that my colleagues have asked about ensuring that animal husbandry activities are allowed.

This is important because, first of all, in the situation of the Supreme Court ruling, we have a 16-year-old woman, a girl who did not have justice dealt to her because the Supreme Court charged us as legislators with ensuring that this definition was closed. It has been over two years since this happened.

To me, this is justice in one case, and that is enough. However, broader than that, we also have to understand that since the Supreme Court ruling, there have been other cases that have had a similar lens applied to them and then had unfortunate consequences.

I will read from a story in the Winnipeg Free Press, published in April 2017. The title of the article is “Child-porn collector pursued 'dark fantasies', court told”. This man, Andrew Harrison pleaded guilty last week and was given a one-year jail sentence and three years of supervised probation as part of a joint recommendation from the Crown and defence lawyers. Investigators eventually tracked the IP address. He was convicted of child pornography, I believe.

However, the interesting part that is relevant to the bill is the following. Members of the Internet child exploitation unit also charged Harrison with bestiality after finding two videos of him involved in a sexual act with his dog, the court was told. However, that charge was stayed last week because it did not meet the new definition of bestiality, requiring penetration, as set out by a recent Supreme Court decision, according to the Crown.

This is one other case, but I do know anecdotally, from talking to stakeholders in the animal welfare community as well as others across the country, that there has been speculation that law enforcement officials have not been laying or attempting to lay charges related to bestiality that do not involve penetrative acts since the Supreme Court ruling, because they knew these charges would not pass the test set by the Supreme Court. This is why it is so important for us to pass this legislation. I frankly wish it had been done sooner, or in the context of some of the government's other justice legislation, but here we are today.

The other thing I want to lay out here is that the government had the opportunity to put this legislation in its previous bill and, therefore, to also study the terms laid out in this bill. What I do not want to see happen is the government not responding to legitimate questions from colleagues in this place around the definition and how it might apply to activities like animal husbandry or whatnot, because it failed to put this legislation forward earlier in this Parliament.

Again, I point to my Liberal colleague, the member for Beaches—East York. It is a rare day I can be found complimenting a Liberal in this place, but my colleague had a large piece of comprehensive legislation on a bunch of different animal welfare issues. He reduced that bill significantly through amendments to a few very tight issues. One of them is the bestiality provision, which we have in my private member's bill. Now the government, late in this Parliament, is trying to rush this through. It is therefore incumbent upon the government and the minister to answer these questions to ensure that the intent of the legislation, as she has described it is, is applied in fact.

Going back to why this is important and not an issue that should be ignored, there is a strong connection between abuse of animals and abuse of people. A provincial government of Australia website says:

Research has established a strong connection between abuse towards animals, and abuse towards people. When a person abuses an animal there is a risk that they may also be abusive towards other people in their lives. Children who experience abuse towards animals, or abuse within the home, are also more likely to abuse animals or perform acts of violence towards people later in life. They repeat lessons learnt in the home: to react to anger with violence, and to perform this violence on more vulnerable individuals. Animal abuse can take the form of physical violence, torment, neglect, or threats to safety – be it to household pets, wildlife, or farm animals. It is often used by the abuser to demonstrate power over other family members, and promote an environment of fear, vulnerability, and isolation. It commonly occurs alongside other types of abuse within the home.

There are other bodies of research that clearly show the link between the abuse of animals and abuse of people. Through the debate here today, in both aspects of the bill, the bestiality change, as well as the change to animal fighting, which I fully support, we have to acknowledge that we cannot turn a blind eye to the severity of this problem, because it escalates.

I personally think we have a responsibility to ensure that the rights and welfare of animals are protected, but we also have to understand that case law shows that it is a problem, despite the fact I have seen some articles recently saying that it is not. Moreover, research shows that by we in Parliament, by not taking action on this, might precipitate broader abuses leaning toward violence against people in our country, which is why it should not have taken two years for us to get to this point. However, here we are.

I want to thank people in the stakeholder community for their efforts on this because that community has been asking for this change for a long time. I also want to thank the over 8,000 Canadians who signed the petition seeking legislative change in this regard. There has been considerable pressure on the government from a variety of organizations across the stakeholder gamut. The Canadian Federation for Agriculture has spoken in favour of the bestiality change. The Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and the Canadian Cattlemen's Association also issued a letter to the Minister of Justice to implore her to remedy this legislative gap.

To my colleagues who have raised concern about the animal husbandry component, I have been assured by officials as well as members of these communities that they do not see any potential implications given the definition in case law. However, to the stakeholders who have written in support of it, we need to be very clear about the intent of this debate to say that this legislation was not put forward, and certainly not in my private member's bill, to prevent legitimate animal husbandry activities. Instead, it is designed to prevent the abuse of animals by humans undertaking sexual acts for their gratification by abusing animals.

As the Supreme Court case of R. v. D.L.W. demonstrated, violence against animals and violence against people are not distinct and separate problems. Violence against animals can be a strong predicator of violence against humans and the relationship between these acts of violence is known as the violence link. Very simply put, if a person wants to hurt animals, they are also more likely to hurt another person as well. I have gone into that in some detail today. I just want to reiterate this.

While the bill addresses the definition of bestiality, I have concerns that there are elements missing in Bill C-84, as it does not currently give judges the ability to ban bestiality offenders from owning animals in the future, something that is a standard for other animal cruelty offences under the Criminal Code. That means that someone who is convicted of committing a bestiality offence is legally allowed to own animals. However, someone who is convicted of animal cruelty is not allowed to own animals. A reasonable person can see why this is a problem endangering animals as well as humans, and I would like to see an amendment to the bill, possibly at third reading that could make this small change.

I also want to address critics of the bill who view it as a slippery slope. Again, some of my colleagues have raised the issue of animal husbandry. The concern is that perhaps farmers and other husbandry workers could somehow be criminally implicated by this small change in law. This law as well as my private member's bill ensures that contact with animals for sexual purposes is prohibited, and the key word here is “sexual”. Sexual offences appear in the Criminal Code in a number of different places, including the context of sexual interference, section 151; invitation to sexual touching, section 152; sexual exploitation, section 153; and most importantly, the section 271 offence of sexual assault.

To my colleague who was asking questions of the minister, this is my analysis. The word “sexual” has been clearly defined in case law. The leading Supreme Court case is R. v. Chase, 1987, 2 S.C.R. 293. Chase it makes it clear that contact will only be sexual in nature if it is objectively clear to a reasonable observer that there is a carnal or sexual context to it. To my colleague who raised this question earlier and asked the minister for evidence from case law, I would direct him to this case. The person's motive is also relevant and if they are motivated by sexual gratification, that would be considered in determining whether or not the contact is sexual. In other words, the key question that would be grappled with is whether or not the sexual nature of the activity were apparent to a reasonable observer.

To apply this to the issue at hand, it is abundantly clear that artificial insemination of cows or other animals in farming or science would in no universe be interpreted by the courts to be done for sexual reasons, one would assume anyway. Rather it is done for animal husbandry reasons or scientific reasons. There is no element of sexual gratification in either situation. Artificial insemination of animals is an accepted activity that occurs across a variety of sectors, and no reasonable person would view it as anything other than economically or scientifically motivated. I would also point out that the current law that requires penetration would apply to practices like artificial insemination already if we are interpreting it without the case law looking at intent.

Again, to my colleague's question of the justice minister, she could have expanded on that. I would expect her, if she is going to appear at our committee, to look at that particular definition and perhaps get more information to colleagues who might have concerns about that. In fact, there has never been a case that has used the existing law in this matter, using the current bestiality provisions to prosecute a farmer for the artificial insemination of an animal, given that the current definition deals with penetration.

It might also be helpful to make an analogy to the care given by a doctor or even a veterinarian. Doctors frequently have contact with a patient's sexual organs, and touching is not done for sexual purposes but for medicinal purposes. Similarly, a veterinarian who examines an animal's sexual organs would never be deemed to be engaged in sexual contact with the animal but contact for the purpose of veterinary medicine.

This is a very uncomfortable discussion to have, but sometimes hard discussions are needed, and we cannot shy away from having them. However, I am glad to see the bill finally in front of Parliament so that we can give police more tools to deal with dangerous sexual criminals.

The other component of the bill that I support is the ban on animal fighting. Some of my colleagues have had questions about the definition of animal fighting and the situations it would pertain to. At first glance, the proposed legislation is pretty clear in its intent to prevent animal fighting in a very specific context, and not with a broader set of non-specific definitions.

The reason this is also important to my NDP colleague's comment of a bare minimum in updating animal cruelty and animal welfare legislation in Canada is that this is another instance where animal abuse or cruelty can have broader societal implications for humans. For example, we know that dog fighting, in fact, most animal fighting, has been linked to gang activity or organized crime and illegal gambling. Therefore, if somebody does not want to look at the animal cruelty components of the proposed legislation, they should at least, at a bare minimum, look at the fact that this particular activity is known to have broader implications for crime in Canadian society. It is one of these rare situations where we have consensus among a broad variety of stakeholders that this is something Parliament should be passing and undertaking.

Some colleagues raised concerns with me that it might affect rodeos in Canada. I do not take it to read that way, but perhaps the Minister of Justice, the parliamentary secretary or officials could speak to the intent of it as well, which might get rid of some of the concerns that my colleagues have in that regard. As a member of Parliament from Calgary, I do not see rodeos as places where animals are fighting each other, or fighting to the death. That is not the case, and so I would not see that as the intent of this proposed legislation. However, perhaps the minister could clarify that to ensure that there are no unintended consequences from the bill.

Also, because I believe this may have come up, perhaps my colleague from Beaches—East York might want to speak to the fact that some of those concerns were raised during the committee study of his bill. Even though his bill was defeated in this place, the intent of that proposed legislation was to be specific and to deal with a specific problem. However, one of the approaches my colleague from Beaches—East York took in that somewhat frustrating journey with his private member's bill was, to my understanding, to try to update the animal welfare legislation by drilling down towards specific problems and then come up with specific legislation so there would be no broader impact on Canadian agriculture.

The feedback I often get from colleagues or stakeholder communities is whether this would affect medical research or someone's ability to run a ranch. I certainly do not think that is the case.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question about the necessity to expand the reach of animal fighting to include dogs. As I mentioned in my speech, there has been significant study around dog fighting, which does exist in Ontario, by the Ontario SPCA major case management team, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Chatham-Kent Police Service. As I said, they have partnered to identify the reality that dog fighting does exist in Ontario.

I recognize the member's comments about individuals in his constituency raising this issue. In my own constituency, many constituents have come to me to ask the government to address it. There is probably not one member of the House who has not received letters from constituents about this.

The government's commitment in putting forward Bill C-84 is to ensure that we do everything we can to protect animals and protect vulnerable people, including children. The commitment I made here on the floor today is to continue this conversation as we proceed and to look toward modernizing the Criminal Code provisions.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his recognition that there may not be many members of the House who would oppose the specific pieces of Bill C-84.

I have had the opportunity to talk with the hon. member about the horrific example of abuse that happened in his riding with respect to Teddy the dog. Bill C-84 reflects a consensus among individuals who want to make every effort to protect animals and protect vulnerable people, including children. In my office, I have received letters from many stakeholders across the country who support the quick movement of Bill C-84.

Does it go to the extent the member is talking about? This is a first step. We continue to have discussions with stakeholders who want this legislation, and the government, to go further. I am committed to continuing to have those conversations.

There is more we can do. Certainly there is a diversity of opinion around amendments and changes that can be made to the Criminal Code to modernize it. As the member said, there are many provisions that have been in place since 1892.

We continue to have these discussions to modernize the Criminal Code. Our government is committed to ensuring that animals are protected from cruelty and that we do everything we can to ensure that children are protected as well. Those discussions are ongoing.

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

moved that Bill C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure I speak to Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code, bestiality and animal fighting, which brings forward important updates to the Criminal Code. Our government remains steadfast in our commitment to ensure our laws protect our most vulnerable and reflect our commonly held values. The bill is exactly about that.

As a government, we have brought forward important amendments to the Criminal Code, including by increasing efficiencies in the criminal justice system, cleaning up outdated and unconstitutional provisions, clarifying sexual assault laws and strengthening the impaired driving regime. These changes, along with those proposed in Bill C-84, reflect my ongoing commitment to ensuring our criminal laws remain clear, comprehensible and contemporary.

I am proud of our efforts in this regard and will continue to pursue law reform that is evidence-based and ensures our criminal justice system extends the strongest protections to Canadians, especially the most vulnerable.

Before I begin to outline the details of the bill, I would like to acknowledge the advocacy of many honourable members in the House, including in particular the member for Beaches—East York for his leadership and for initiating a very important discussion on this issue in his private member's bill. I would also like to thank the several organizations and numerous Canadians who have written in and advocated for many years. The bill is a result of their hard work.

Bill C-84 focuses on filling gaps in the Criminal Code and preventing violence and cruelty toward animals. It reflects significant consultation with child and animal protection groups, as well as agricultural and animal use stakeholders, and brings forward changes that reflect a common ground approach to addressing these important issues.

Clause 1 would add a definition of “bestiality” in section 160 of the Criminal Code to include “any contact, for a sexual purpose, between a person and an animal.” This responds to the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. D.L.W. in 2016, where the court held that the bestiality offences in section 160 of the Criminal Code were limited to sexual acts with animals that involved penetration. In arriving at that determination, the court examined the common law definition of bestiality, which originated in British law and was subsequently incorporated into our Criminal Code.

The broadened definition would increase protections for children, as well as other vulnerable individuals who may be compelled to engage in or witness bestiality, and animals, by ensuring the criminal law captures all sexual acts with animals, not just those involving penetration. By virtue of the definition's “sexual purpose” focus, legitimate animal husbandry and veterinary practices would continue to be excluded from the scope of the offence.

In its decision, the Supreme Court noted that courts must interpret the law, not change the elements of crimes in ways that seemed to them to better suit the circumstances of a particular case. Rather, it is Parliament's responsibility to expand the scope of criminal liability, should it elect to do so.

In the wake of this decision, child protection advocates as well as animal welfare groups expressed serious concern with the effect of the decision and called for law reform. I agree the gap identified by the Supreme Court requires a parliamentary response, and we are doing just that.

As mentioned, this bill responds to the Supreme Court's decision in D.L.W., by defining bestiality as “any contact, for a sexual purpose, with an animal.” This would ensure all contact between a human and an animal for sexual purpose would be prohibited. This would send a clear and unequivocal message to those who would wish to harm animals. This amendment would also provide increased protection to children who would be exposed to or coerced to participate in abusive conduct, as well as other vulnerable persons who may be compelled to engage in such conduct.

The proposed definition focuses on the broad term of contact for sexual purpose. The phrase “for a sexual purpose” has a well-established meaning in Canadian criminal law. It is used in a number of different instances in the Criminal Code, and I am confident the use of this consistent terminology will cover the offences in question.

In its entirety, the proposed definition is clearer and reflects Canadians' understanding of what this offence entails. It is also consistent with calls from animal welfare groups and agricultural stakeholders, including the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.

At the same time, this definition will ensure that those involved in legitimate animal husbandry activities, including breeding livestock and veterinary medicine, will not be captured by these offences.

Currently, the Criminal Code has three main offences related to bestiality. Bill C-84 does not change the nature of the penalties related to these offences which, on indictment, carry maximum sentences ranging from 10 to 14 years in jail.

I would also like to note that the changes proposed in my criminal justice reform legislation, Bill C-75, will increase the maximum penalty on summary conviction for both offences to two years less a day. Such changes will contribute to a more efficient criminal justice system by encouraging proceeding by way of summary conviction where it is appropriate to do so.

There is a strong public safety rationale for Parliament to expand the scope of these offences, particularly as it relates to enhancing protections for children and other vulnerable persons. Research continues to demonstrate a well-established link between animal sexual abuse and sexual abuse of children, as well as other forms of violence.

I would note that the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies organized a conference in 2017, the purpose of which was to look more closely at these issues. The final report provides an overview of these issues. I commend the federation for its important work to promote a greater understanding of the severity of these issues.

We also see these links in criminal cases. Canadian criminal law shows that when sexual abuse of a child involves an animal, the extent of this horrible behaviour is most often severe and frequently includes a pattern of vicious treatment of both the child and the animal. With this bill we are ensuring that those in law enforcement, including prosecutors, have the tools they need to achieve justice for the victims of these despicable acts.

I would also like to discuss a second set of reforms contained in Bill C-84, which marks an important step in providing comprehensive protections for all animals. These additional measures will strengthen protections for animals by broadening the scope of the animal fighting offences in the Criminal Code.

There are currently two offences in the Criminal Code that specifically address animal fighting. The first is paragraph 445.1(1)(b), which prohibits encouraging, aiding or assisting at the fighting or baiting of animals. This is a hybrid offence with a maximum penalty of five years on indictment or a maximum of 18 months' imprisonment and/or a fine, not exceeding $10,000. Bill C-75 will also increase the maximum penalty on summary conviction to two years less a day.

Presently, this offence fails to capture a number of other associated activities with participating in the deplorable activity of animal fighting. Accordingly, Bill C-84 proposes to broaden the scope of this offence to include a wider range of activities, including encouraging, promoting, arranging and assisting at, receiving money for, or taking part in the fighting or baiting of animals, including prohibiting any of these activities with respect to the training, transporting or breeding of animals for fighting or baiting.

These are important changes and will ensure that all aspects of animal fighting are prohibited, ensuring that all persons in the chain of this criminal behaviour can be held accountable. I note, in particular, that the proposed changes also target the financial incentives associated with this crime and, in so doing, will act to discourage those involved with this unacceptable behaviour.

The second existing offence prohibits keeping a cockpit, which is section 447, and carries the same penalties as animal fighting. It too will see its maximum penalty on summary conviction increase through Bill C-75. This offence, as it exists in the Criminal Code, is extremely narrow in scope, a reflection of its historical origins when cockfighting was the primary form of animal fighting.

However, we know that, unfortunately, dog fighting has grown in prominence today. Bill C-84 amends this offence to ensure it extends to building, keeping or maintaining any arena for the purposes of fighting any animal. The fact of the matter is that all forms of animal fighting are cruel and abhorrent, and so our laws should appropriately extend to all animals. Simply stated, there is no legitimate or reasonable societal purpose to engage in animal fighting. This behaviour is cruel and must be stopped.

This is another important step our government is taking to ensure our criminal laws are contemporary and address conduct that is deserving of criminal sanction. It is important to note that animal fighting has often been linked to organized crime, including illegal gambling and the illicit trafficking of drugs and weapons. The changes we are bringing forward in Bill C-84 will improve the ability of law enforcement to prosecute criminals, track cases of animal fighting and protect public safety. By broadening the offence to include additional activities, we are ensuring that law enforcement is equipped to detect and intercept the crime at whatever stage it is discovered.

I would like to take a few minutes to speak specifically about dog fighting. Given its clandestine nature, it is difficult to collect statistics on the prevalence of dog fighting in Canada. In fact, dog-fighting operations often go undetected until law enforcement officers discover them while investigating other crimes. That said, we know that in May and October 2015 and in March 2016, the Ontario SPCA major case management team, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Chatham-Kent Police Service partnered together to end suspected dog-fighting operations. These three joint investigations led to the execution of 11 search warrants on three properties in Lanark County, Tilbury and Kent Bridge, Ontario. This resulted in the seizure of 64 pit bull dogs, documents, pictures, veterinary supplies, electronic equipment and hundreds of items related to the training and fighting of dogs.

The Ontario SPCA reports that dog fighting is undeniably taking place in Ontario. The Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals reports that dog fights can last one to two hours and end only when one of the dogs is too injured to continue or has died. The dogs involved often suffer from deep puncture wounds, broken bones, and in many cases die from blood loss or infection.

As I mentioned, dog fighting, a terrible form of animal cruelty, is also linked to a wide range of other crimes, including illegal gambling and drugs and weapons offences. The primary motivation for dog fighting is gambling and participants often wager thousands of dollars, showing how lucrative it is for those involved.

I would also note that, according to the Ontario SPCA, when police raid dog-fighting events, they often find children present. Exposure to this type of abuse desensitizes children to violence and may itself be a form of child abuse. I am proud that we are taking important steps to limit and prevent this horrible abuse to animals and children. The proposed reforms to the offence, targeting arenas coupled with the changes to the animal-fighting offence, will target those who take part in training or receive money to train dogs to fight and who employ terrible techniques to increase the viciousness and ferocity of these animals. This so-called training can include abusively suspending a dog from a tree or a pole by its jaw and encouraging the dog to grab bait and hold on as long as possible in order to increase the lethality of its bite.

No animal should have to die as a form of human entertainment. It is unspeakably cruel and offends Canadians' values at the deepest level.

I am proud of these necessary changes we are bringing forward to protect animals from horrible situations of abuse. It is important for me to reiterate that this bill in no way interferes with any legitimate animal use. This bill seeks to protect public safety and ensures that we are doing more to prevent violence and cruelty toward animals.

We are focusing on aspects of protection that enjoy broad support and reflect our shared values. Again, the broadening of these offences will not interfere with legitimate animal uses, such as the training and work of service dogs, medical research, hunting, fishing or indigenous animal harvesting rights. Animal fighting and bestiality are in no way legitimate activities.

Before I conclude, I would like to reiterate that this bill is the result of significant consultation and there has been broad support expressed for these reforms. As mentioned earlier, the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture have called for these changes. The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and many agricultural stakeholder groups have also advocated for these amendments to address animal fighting and bestiality.

As parliamentarians, many of us hear from concerned citizens who are urging action to modernize our animal cruelty offences. Similarly, in our consultations, a number of provinces have called upon Parliament to take action to address the gap identified by the Supreme Court in D.L.W. I am confident that this bill addresses these concerns.

I recognize that some would want the bill to go further by proposing additional reforms to animal cruelty laws. I believe it is critically important that we take steps now to address these particular issues, for which I believe there is broad support. Our government is committed to all of the appropriate protections that are extended to the most vulnerable, and we will continue to review this as part of our broad review of the criminal justice system.

There have already been some suggestions made, including by animal rights organizations, on the ways that we can strengthen this bill. As I have said with respect to other legislation, I welcome constructive suggestions that reflect the objectives of our proposed reforms and look forward to a fulsome and productive debate. I therefore urge all members to support this bill and help ensure its swift passage.

Business of the House

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, for the remainder of the week and next week, our focus will be on report stage and third reading stage of Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act.

On Monday of next week, we will commence second reading debate of Bill C-84, concerning animal cruelty, and Bill C-85, concerning the Canada-Israel free trade agreement.

Animal Welfare

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis for his advocacy, in fact all parliamentarians' advocacy, on this important issue.

Yesterday I was proud to introduce Bill C-84, which delivers on our government's commitment to protect children and animals from abuse. We are toughening the laws against bestiality and animal fighting, conduct that is completely unacceptable. I look forward to the support of all members in this House.

Criminal Code

[Jody Wilson-Raybould, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-84, an act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting).

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)