Justice Committee on April 29th, 2015

[Diane Bergeron]

It's hard to say for sure because there are what I would call accredited facilities and non-accredited facilities. In Canada, to the best of my knowledge, we have: MIRA, in Quebec; in Manotick, right around the corner, Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind; the Lions Foundation canine vision program in Oakville, Ontario; Dogs with Wings, in Edmonton, Alberta; BC and Alberta Guide Dogs, which works out of Alberta and B.C. in domicile training and delivering dogs; and the Pacific Assistance Dogs Society. Then there are some fringe schools that do direct delivery service.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Kaye.

[Stephen Kaye]

The largest training facility would obviously be the RCMP police dog service training centre in Innisfail, Alberta. The next largest would likely be the OPP's training program here in Ontario. Outside of that you have roughly 500 service dogs engaged in various forms of law enforcement or peace officer activity across Canada. That's a ballpark figure. Much of that training occurs at local agencies. For instance, when I was in Saskatoon, I was the trainer for nine service dogs there. I accredited myself and affiliated myself nationally with the Canine Law Enforcement Accreditation Registry. That was a voluntary aspect of my development as a trainer and handler.

We don't have a centralized location where all these officers and all these dogs go to train. We do send officers on training. I have 16 officers here at my facility in Ottawa right now. They come from around the world. I have an individual from Madagascar here training with us. They come to us, and we try to have different training courses throughout the country that are accessible to our trainers and handlers. We don't have one centralized location. We have a number of small departments, agencies, etc., and we try to get trainers together to give them the knowledge to send them back with.

As far as costs for that go, to train a green dog and a new handler, the basic component of that course to be patrol dog team is roughly four months or 80 days. Then if you want that dog to become a specialty dog, a tactical dog, a detection dog, a cadaver dog, whatever the specialty is, those programs vary from an additional six weeks to perhaps three months.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

What would you say the average cost of training a law enforcement animal would be for the taxpayer?

[Stephen Kaye]

We have to keep in mind that these dogs train every single day that they work. To maintain the level of proficiency for a dog that will track someone for five miles half an hour after they've gone through an area takes a lot of work and it's ongoing. It cannot stop until the dog retires. The global figure used by the RCMP currently, given post 9/11 events and the massive increase in costs of these dogs, is projected to be between $70,000 and $75,000 for the four-month basic program

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Wow.

I have a short question for Ms. Cartwright of the humane societies.

I was struck by something you said in your opening comments about the fact that we often see people who kill and injure animals go on and escalate to being the kinds of people who will injure and perhaps murder humans. We all know of the terrible murder case of Mr. Jun Lin in Montreal by Luka Magnotta. I read that he had started with killing cats and posting that on the Internet. Can you expand on that a little and tell us how you think this legislation might help stop some of these people in the future?

[Barbara Cartwright]

Certainly the violence link, as it's commonly called, between people who commit acts of animal cruelty and people who commit acts of human cruelty is well established and has been well established in academic literature for quite some time. It is important to recognize that from a human perspective so that if someone does commit an act of animal cruelty, obviously against an animal, then getting them into the system and getting them on the radar screen is important to de-escalate them from committing an act against a human. We have some very popular cases right now that illustrate that point. Had Luka Magnotta been charged with animal cruelty for what he was doing to those kittens early on, perhaps he would not have had a chance to escalate to humans.

With regard to any animal cruelty, that is the case. I would argue that it's the same case for an enforcement animal. But it's possibly even more the case that if you're willing to attack a service animal, you may have a propensity to attack a human.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Our next questioner from the New Democratic Party is Madame Péclet.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for being here today and for your very touching testimony. It really brings home to us the practical nature of a bill and the results it can have in real life. Thank you very much.

My question goes to Mr. Carrière and Mr. Kaye. The third clause of the bill talks about intent. The word “wilfully” is used, but also the expression “without lawful excuse”. At the previous meeting of the committee, I asked the minister and the officials what kind of lawful excuse could be considered a defence.

You seem to be aware of it and you seem also to have witnessed actual cases of cruelty to animals. Could you explain to me a little about how this would be applied? What would a lawful excuse be in a case like the one we are studying today?

[Stephen Kaye]

That's an interesting question and as you raise it, I struggle to think when that would ever occur. I think there would be extremely limited occasions. However, I think it's important to include it and that might surprise you.

If for instance and I saw an instance once.... Here's a short story. A service dog, who had been in service for a considerable period of time, was outside in his run during a lightning storm and panicked. We're talking about being inside a well-made, chain-link, very well-reinforced kennel. He broke out of that kennel in a panic, injuring himself to escape this massive storm, and the handler was away. The handler had no idea this was occurring.

If you had an instance when a trained patrol dog engaged me and I had done nothing wrong and the handler wasn't present and I was not able to get that animal to stop hurting me without causing it harm or causing it injury.... I would pray it would never occur, but a dog in panic.... They're still animals. Yes, service dogs are unbelievably well trained. If a hunter shoots a deer it can run for a mile after it's been shot through the heart. How can it do that? A human would never do that, but these are animals and truly they're domesticated dogs but they are descendants of wild animals. In panic, in flight, in fear, if the only way I could protect myself from...and there's no malice because the dog is just terrified. The only reason I could imagine that clause being used is if this animal were attacking me and the only possible way I could survive that attack was by taking that animal's life to protect myself, that would be about the only occasion I could imagine where that defence would exist.

This was a well-balanced, solid dog that had been in our program for a long time. We had worked around gunfire. We had worked around tactical teams. It was some trigger with that storm and all the circumstances; the dog panicked. To see the kennel—and I saw the kennel—to see that a dog could modify chain-link the way that dog did to escape from the kennel, I was blown away.

So that's a short story. I think it's important to have it. I think the chances of there being a lawful excuse for harming a service animal.... If I have to pinch you to let go of me, technically am I harming the dog? I guess I probably am. But if you're biting me, there's reasonableness in my doing something to get you to stop. But outside of that we try to be very careful, very diligent; we work very hard and train very hard to do our jobs as best we can. But again you have humans interacting with animals trying to perform a service.

Could something happen, some untoward, unfortunate event? I suppose it could. It would be terrible, but I think not to give someone the ability to protect themselves from unjustified circumstance is wrong. So I think to have this.... If we never use it, that's fine. We may never use it, but I don't think there's any harm in having it either.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Do you want to add something?

[S/Sgt Troy Carriere]

I think it was well said. I agree.

The chances of it happening are very rare. But again when you're dealing with an animal, they are unpredictable. At times you don't know what that one thing is. When I look back at that situation, there are times when you're training your dog and you don't know until it happens. Sometimes there's that one thing. It's very much like a human. You don't realize sometimes that there's that one thing that you're really fearful of until it happens, so I agree.

Is it necessary? For sure. It's a good clause to have in there. Do I see it being used very often? That's unlikely, but I think it's appropriate.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you for those questions and answers.

Mr. Wilks, if you'd like to be next you can be.

So from the Conservative Party, we now have Mr. Wilks.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks to all the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Kaye and Mr. Carriere, I'm retired from the RCMP and I had the great honour of knowing Mike Buday, who was killed March 19, 1985. What happens to a service dog in that particular instance where its handler is killed in the line of duty, but the dog is left without a handler? I wonder if you could explain how that happens and what happens to the dog.

[S/Sgt Troy Carriere]

I'll give you an example. I think, obviously as a retired RCMP officer, you'd be very familiar with an incident that we had in and around Edmonton where that case did happen. That's with Corporal Jim Galloway who lost his life. We, as a service, went out and collected his service dog and brought him to our kennels at that time. In that instance, because he was a little older service dog, the decision was made by the Innisfail kennels to retire that dog.

If the dog was younger in age, two or three years of age, and still had a lot of years left in it, I would probably guess, as a section commander, I would reassign that dog to another handler if it was appropriate. The same things may happen that we see in other service animals. If there was something that was significant that affected that dog's ability to do the job from thereon in, after we tested him or her, then we may have to retire it because of the incident that had taken place. It's really dependent on the situation, the dog itself, and where you are as a service. Do you have the flexibility to retire this dog?

Sometimes it's a compassionate thing because all these dogs do go home to their families. Yes, they are service dogs and they are a tool, but they go home to families. When they go home to families they're just another dog. They're just another pet, and they're part of that family. That's what we saw with Constable Matt Williamson and his young family in Edmonton. We can't lose sight of the fact that they're still an animal. These dogs are loved, not only by the community but by the families that look after them. In a lot of instances I'd be hard pressed not to retire that dog and allow the family to have that memory of that dog.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Anything further, Mr. Kaye?

[Stephen Kaye]

It's so situational. There are dogs out there, and we had a belief for many years.... I've been in the dog game for a long time. We had a belief years ago that we couldn't reteam dogs, we couldn't recreate that initial bond, and we couldn't count on the dog when the chips were really down on a reteam to defend the handler. We've grown, we've learned, and we do things so much differently than we used to. We're seeing and enjoying a lot more success with reteaming events when they do occur. It's so dependent on the dog. They're as individual as humans and they have personality quirks and traits.

Some dogs will never work the same for another officer. You just cannot duplicate it. Whereas other dogs, very driven dogs.... I use an analogy that I worked one tracking dog at one point in my career that I truly believe I could have tied a cinder block to my leash, given him the tracking command, and watched him head off over the horizon. He didn't care who was behind him. He was so driven to work. That was all he knew. Truly, anybody could have tracked with that dog. It's very situationally dependent.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

My second question revolves around another instance that I was involved with in 1991, when I was in the drug section and we utilized two service dogs quite often. I don't know if it's captured in the bill or not, so I'm looking for your expertise here. Kick open a door, the dog goes in, and the dog is attacked by another dog released by the owner, in fact a bull mastiff. As you know with bull mastiffs, once they grab on they just keep working their way up. We ended up shooting the dog. The police service dog sustained severe injury. It did survive, but it was severe. I don't know if that's captured in this bill. Is it something else that we need to move toward because the dog itself can't be charged?

[Stephen Kaye]

Correct. The clause, and it came up, says “wilfully”. You're the owner and it doesn't stipulate how you cause harm, but that you “wilfully” did something to cause that to occur. You initiated a process.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

You're comfortable that it captures it in the bill?

[Stephen Kaye]

I believe so.

[David Wilks, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Okay, thank you very much.

I have nothing further to ask.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

That's good, thank you very much.

Our next questioner from the New Democratic Party is Ms. Crowder.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a brief question, and you may have covered it with “wilfully”. When Ms. Bergeron was talking she was explaining about a case in the United States where it sounds like the dog was intimidated until it was no longer able to be a service animal. I wonder, with this legislation—it says, “without lawful excuse, kills, maims, wounds, poisons or injures”—if in your view the word “injure” would include where the animal was not physically injured, but terrified into no longer being able to perform its duties?

Mr. Kaye or Staff Sergeant Carriere.

[Stephen Kaye]

I'll speak quickly to that as well.

I've seen legislation that also includes the word “interfere”, and interference is a very broad brush. What defines interference? I don't know if there should be some discussion about including that or not. It would boil down to interpretation.

If I'm doing my job correctly, and I'm preparing a dog for the work that we're going to do, you'd be very hard pressed to intimidate my dog. Arguably, the more you do that, the more you'll elicit drive and behaviour out of my dog. You'll solicit a response out of my dog. I think that's where the bill is very good, that it covers things like service dogs.

I think, when you look at Diane's dog, and I'm going to use those dreaded words: she's a beautiful dog. That said, she's a passive dog, not that a service dog doesn't have a big heart, but a service dog's drive for work, I would argue, is equally as large as its heart. I look at Diane's dog and I think that she's the most beautiful, gentle creature I can imagine. Could I easily intimidate that dog versus a dog who we have trained with intimidation techniques and tactics to be somewhat inert to that or to respond to it directly?

I think it's going to impact our nature of service dog less, but may impact Diane's nature of service dog considerably more, as a much more passive, gentle, open, and receptive animal. Let's face it; a service dog trusts his handler, trusts the family of the handler, and outside of that pack—because that's truly how dogs operate, it's pack hierarchy—you're not really welcome. You're not really accepted. I think Diane's Lucy here has a much bigger pack and is much more receptive to other creatures entering that pack.

I think it's great legislation because it will encompass things like that. This is where you could have, in your definitions, perhaps specific to this particular section of the code, what “injure” specifically defines because I don't know if that would be included or not.