Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to appear before you.
First of all, I would like to thank my MP, Jacques Gourde, for inviting me to appear before the committee today. We are very grateful for the opportunity to convey our concerns to the government about the current regime for the transportation of live animals.
We are here to talk about a real and glaring problem that is getting worse and worse. I am referring to the system of administrative monetary penalties or AMPs, specifically as regards the transportation of unfit animals.
Before delving into the issue, let there be no mistake that animal welfare is very important to our association and to our members. Moreover, we were the first to fight for compliance with the highest ethical standards relating to the transportation of animals.
Animals are our livelihood. This reality sometimes escapes the people with whom we discuss this. It is thanks to animals that we can put food on the table.
You must also understand that we have every monetary reason to protect animals. An animal who dies in transit is a straight loss for us. If too many animals die in transit, it becomes a problem for our clients.
In short, we have every reason to protect animals from ill treatment, and that is what we do. We do not need legislation to force us to protect animals. We scrupulously comply with the law .
What the current system provides, however, is something different. Allow me to read an excerpt from a unanimous Federal Court of Appeal decision from 2009, in the Doyon case:
In short, the Administrative Monetary Penalty System has imported the most punitive elements of penal law while taking care to exclude useful defences and reduce the prosecutor's burden of proof. Absolute liability, arising from an actus reus which the prosecutor does not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, leaves the person who commits a violation very few means of exculpating him- or herself.
That is strong language. These are the most punitive elements of criminal law, without the defences, but with a reduced burden of proof. The worst part of criminal law is kept, and the burden of proof on the prosecutor, the CFIA, is reduced to almost nothing, and all the elements of defence of the alleged offender are removed. How could our MPs have passed such a law? We have to wonder.
That said, we will not be calling for a criminal procedure today or for the usual burden of proof, or talk about a 50% discount, all points that could be problematic. We are willing to deal with all the imperfections of this law since Parliament enacted it. We do, however, demand the right to a defence.
We simply want to talk about the innocent party's right to plead their innocence, a right that is the foundation of our legal system.
Subsection 18(1) of the Health of Animals Act excludes due diligence. Yet this defence is present in nearly all Canadian legislation. It means pleading that every reasonable measure was taken to avoid the violation, or that one sincerely and reasonably believed something that was proven false.
To illustrate further, even if the transport company hired a veterinarian to examine the shipment, it could still receive a notice of violation. So if an animal had a completely undetectable condition, the transporter could still be fined.
In short, innocent parties are being found guilty. We want to stress this point. If the defence of due diligence is allowed, negligent transporters will still be found guilty. The only difference between allowing and not allowing the due diligence defence is finding people guilty who have done nothing wrong. Why should innocent parties be found guilty?
Let me give you an example of something that happens on a regular basis when animals are transported. When animals are being loaded, often there is not much time to examine them. They are loaded in all kinds of conditions. In the winter, for example, it is very cold. There are some animals that should not be loaded, but that are still in the shipment, either because certain producers did not understand the regulations correctly or because they decided to hide them in the group. When we get to the plant, the people there examine the animals and find that some should not have been transported.
In many cases, we transport swine or cattle. For swine, the transportation cost is $3 per head, while the animal could be worth $150 or $200. If an animal is hidden in a group without our knowing it and we have not noticed its condition, we are fined $7,000. We transport a lot of head of cattle every year. We are considered repeat offenders if there are too many such cases. The fine imposed on repeat offenders increases each time. It can rise to $12,000 and then $20,000. I don't know if you are aware, but that is how it works.
In closing, I would like to share a few statistics.
Of 10 countries with AMPs, including England, Spain, Germany, and Portugal, Canada is the only one that does not allow this defence. This defence is not allowed in just one third of the nine AMP systems in the country.
Let me quote another statistic. In criminal law, for the same charges, fewer than half result in payment; for AMPs, the rate is over 98%. Are there more offenders in criminal law? Certainly not. These are the same offences. The difference is that, in the case of AMPs, people are not given the opportunity to defend themselves. This huge difference means that innocent parties are often found guilty.