Thank you for your question.
Quanto's case is not unique. Other similar cases have come before the criminal court.
Obviously, in the case of Quanto, there was a conviction obtained by the crown under a different section of the Criminal Code. What the sentencing judge did there, I suspect, is look at the fact that this was a police animal, as an aggravating circumstance as opposed to a specific offence, which is what we're talking about here.
While there isn't a great deal of accumulated case law on this particular subject matter, there is some. Mr. Casey said that it's somewhere in the range of 10 cases. I think we looked at 12 to 15. There were a few others, perhaps, that didn't show up because they were provincial court cases and perhaps not as prominent.
Again, the Quanto's case and the resulting Bill C-35 is an attempt to encapsulate the specific role and the specific purpose these animals play, above and beyond an animal that is a pet or an animal that is kept for domestic purposes. Again, one of the more horrific examples of animal abuse is these puppy mills, where they raise animals for the sole purpose of mass-producing them, and they're abused. Dogfighting is another specific example in the Criminal Code.
In answer to your question, we didn't have a great deal of case law to depend on. We looked at Quanto's and the circumstances there. We consulted with police and those officials who work directly with animals and determined that this was a value proposition to put a specific law in place to protect those animals.