Thank you, Mr. St. Amand.
It's a fair question, and the answer to the question would be no. It would be not only of no comfort, but for somebody who has worked on this, worked very closely with Mr. Cotler, who was the justice minister in the last Parliament, I would see it as being a very sad day if we were to pass it, for the following reasons.
The point was just made that this does nothing to address the fact that we can't get convictions, that every day people know they can get away with animal abuse because they have legislation that allows them to do it. Making the sentences stronger when they know they can never get convicted isn't going to do anything.
Worse than that, it sends the wrong message. It sends two messages that are wrong. The first one it sends is that we're doing something about animal cruelty when we're not. We're saying to people that we're increasing sentences and we're getting tough on animal cruelty. When you've had people who are on the front lines, people like the SPCA officer who is the chief for Ontario and responsible for Ontario, say to you that they can't get convictions today and that they're deeply frustrated every day, and when we have veterinarians who see case after case that can't be prosecuted.... Being behind the Philippines with third world legislation just isn't good enough, and if we pass that, we simply entrench it.
The worst part of it is that we send a message to the Senate when we had already said...we wouldn't do this on any other issue. Can you imagine any other issue where the House of Commons sent essentially the same bill twice to the Senate, and then the Senate sends something back that's infinitely weaker, and we accept the argument from the Senate as well that it's the best you can get? Are we going to allow the Senate to dictate to us, an elected House, that the best we can get is something so watered down that every animal welfare group in the country opposes it?