Justice Committee on April 29th, 2015

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

I think that part of the test may be, once charges are actually laid, to see if that's going to....

Staff Sergeant Carriere, did you have anything to add to that?

[S/Sgt Troy Carriere]

I agree. It's going to be the interpretation by the courts. It's probably going to start to define what injured is, as we see in many cases as we get new legislation.

I agree with what Steve has mentioned, that we're dealing with two opposite ends of the spectrum when we're dealing with a service dog that works for the police. Part of the conditioning and testing is to make sure that it does protect itself as well as the handler. We look at the drive of that dog, the defence drive to protect itself if there's going to be a fight. I would venture a guess that it would be very difficult for somebody to try to attempt what may have happened to say, Lucy, if it was a situation with Diane's dog. It probably would not occur with a service animal in our line of work, and the results would be pretty quick.

Again, that comes back to training and conditioning from a very young age. They're conditioning their dogs to make sure that environmentally they're sound; they're very approachable. Again, the drive is there. She's extremely intelligent. Those are all components that we need in all of our dogs, but again, we're looking at different training methods and where we're trying to go with it. I think service animals, definitely, that's where it'll come into play a little bit more than ours.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you for those questions and those answers.

The final questioner on my list is Mr. Calkins from the Conservative party.

The floor is yours.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm very grateful for this piece of legislation. I'm grateful for your testimony here today.

As I'm reading through the legislation, I realize now that when I was a park warden in Parks Canada—I was a backcountry warden—my horses, Moberly, Yeager, Vim, and Cowboy, my service animals that helped me do my job as a mounted law enforcement officer, peace officer, which qualifies under this legislation, would have been afforded this protection had the need ever arisen.

I wish we had somebody here to talk a little bit more about the horse side of things, because I think a police horse is trained a little bit differently than a national park warden horse because it's used in a completely different environment.

I have some concerns about the test when it comes to training because I don't know if a park warden horse trained for backcountry operations, and so on, would meet the law enforcement test. A horse in downtown Toronto might be trained to do things like work in a crowd control situation and so on. I'd be curious to ask somebody about that. I don't know if you guys have any experience that can help me feel a little more assured that park warden horses would be protected under this legislation.

[Stephen Kaye]

Did you enjoy the peace officer status?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I did.

[Stephen Kaye]

Did that animal assist you as a peace officer in the performance of your duties?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

It helped me from an ambulatory point of view in terms of patrolling the vast portions of the northern boundary, so I would say, yes. I'm not worried about what I would say or what another park warden would say or what you would say. I'm worried about what a judge would say.

[Stephen Kaye]

Any piece of new legislation that's crafted is bombarded with challenges to see how solid and strong it is. A good prosecutor who's vigorous and aggressive and who does their homework may enjoy more success than one who doesn't do the homework for an identical case. Again I'm certainly no lawyer.

You were a peace officer charged with a duty, and this horse was the vehicle that allowed you to patrol and to respond to calls.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Absolutely.

[Stephen Kaye]

Did that horse have training to assist you in the performance of your duties?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I believe it did, and I think that's the case that needs to be made.

I just want to state that when I pass this bill at this committee, and I pass this bill as part of my duties as a member of Parliament, I want this testimony to be put on the record so that if this is ever put to a test, anybody who wants to reference the minutes of the debate or any judge who wants to reference the minutes of the debate will see that the purpose of my passing this bill includes that intention.

I also want to ask you a couple of questions, Troy and Stephen, because you've both been service animal or service dog handlers at some particular point in time. We've all enjoyed the demonstrations. You talked about the demonstrations. I was in Wetaskiwin and there was a service dog out there. I used to be the ranger in charge at Red Lodge Provincial Park, which is directly west of the canine facility. I don't know if you guys were ever out there practising, but they used to come and practise on me, which was always a lot of fun. It was a great facility for doing that. That probably explains some of the crazy things I say from time to time.

I know you talked about deploying the dog in a situation where you don't know what's going to happen, and we talked about these protections. It's an awkward question for me to ask, but I have to ask it. Will the passing of this legislation embolden a handler or give the handler more confidence in deploying a dog into a potentially dangerous situation?

[S/Sgt Troy Carriere]

I'll start. The officers that we select to be canine handlers certainly are a unique breed. They're dedicated beyond most. What I mean by that is it's a 24-7 job. When they go home, they're still looking after that dog. Will they deploy any differently? I don't think so. Will they take comfort in the fact that somebody is there to stand up for them if something unfortunate happens? Absolutely.

I'll talk from an Edmonton perspective. We've definitely seen an incline in crime, especially violent crime involving weapons. Is the likelihood greater now? I think it is absolutely. We don't know exactly what we're tracking usually. We may have an incident of a stolen vehicle crashing after a pursuit. The first members are there, and we're out tracking one or two subjects in the dark at two in the morning, jumping fences. Again, these are highly motivated individuals, but it's really tactically difficult for us because we don't know where they are, what their intent is, and what they were doing.

On many occasions as the investigators are on scene, they're finding handguns in the vehicle. They may find balaclavas in the vehicle. Now you start putting it together. Now it's more of a high-risk situation. Our officers are trained to always think tactically, but they just don't know because they and their team and their dog are in the dark tracking into areas that are unknown to them. I gave an example of one occasion, on which somebody was waiting for me, and I think every handler who has ever deployed will give you numerous examples of that. These are generally the 2% of people who do the crime. They're involved in violent incidents and have been involved in things probably since they were a kid. A lot of them are habitual offenders.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

I have one last quick question if I may.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Be very quick.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Ms. Bergeron brought up the case of a friend of hers in the United States whose dog was being abused and all the things that situation caused. Will the legislation, as it's presented before the committee today and presented before the House, capture a situation like the one Diane talked about for the purposes of prosecuting somebody?

[Stephen Kaye]

I think the issue there was that the dog wasn't harmed. Was the dog interfered with? Could you articulate that the dog is now ruined based on that person's activity? So if you tip the dog over, or even if you come up and you flick it in the ear, you do something to negatively impact the performance of that animal to serve Diane's friend. Is that acceptable and would the law capture it?

I would argue that it would. Just because the dog isn't hurt, have you done something to terminate its career? Is it serviceable anymore? No, and this is where the interference clause might come into play. You didn't specifically injure the dog, but did you harm it? The dog can't work anymore because of what you did. I would argue that had to cause some kind of harm, or why isn't it working anymore?

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you for those questions.

We have a few more questioners now.

Madam Péclet from the NDP, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you very much.

Ms. Cartwright, I would like to ask you some questions. We have a little time so we are going to take advantage of that as long as you are here.

Could you tell us some more about the measures? I understand that Bill C-35 is one bill among many that we need to prevent cruelty to animals. Bill C-35 certainly will allow charges to be brought against those who act cruelly to animals.

What measures would you like to see the government put forward to prevent cruelty to animals? What kinds of problems are your organizations dealing with? What kinds of measures could we put in place to help you?

[Barbara Cartwright]

Thank you very much for your question.

There are, as I mentioned at the outset in my comments, definitely other weaknesses within the Criminal Code with regard to animal cruelty. Mr. Kaye mentioned having worked on trying to improve protection for police animals for a decade, and certainly many of us have been working for a significant amount of time to update the Criminal Code with regard to animals.

Specific for us, areas that we were working on hopefully are going to be dealt with in Bill C-35, which is the aggravating offence of maiming, injuring, killing or wounding a service animal. So it's good to see that's moving forward.

We also see a very large hole in the Criminal Code dealing with animal fighting. Right now there is on the books that it's illegal to be at a cockfight, for example, but it doesn't recognize the other types of fighting that have evolved over the last hundred years. It also doesn't recognize that you could be training an animal to fight and be committing acts of animal cruelty, and that it should be illegal to actually profit from animal fighting. The way the current Criminal Code is written is that you must be caught in the act of being at the fight.

As we will have seen in the past with say, as some of you may know, the very high-profile case of Michael Vick, he wasn't at the actual fight. He was charged with a felony, because he was the one who owned the training facility, and to train an animal to fight is an extraordinarily cruel process. That's one area that we see should be very easy for everyone to get behind, that animal fighting and animal cruelty that happens in animal fighting should be addressed in the Criminal Code more appropriately.

We would also like to see the term of “willful” be removed from “neglect.” I don't necessarily think it's the same case here the way willful is used, but “willful neglect”, to prove that someone intentionally did something and what was going on in their mind at the moment that they were neglecting an animal, has made it very difficult to move forward with the Criminal Code, so we see prosecutors across the country actually turning to provincial legislation in order to address this issue.

Why that's important, of course, as you will all appreciate, is that we need it to be charged under the federal law so that your criminal record follows you. As you might have recently noticed in the case with the Milk River dogs, a woman who was habitually neglecting animals to near death and moving from province to province was only being charged provincially, because of the concern that the federal law, the Criminal Code, would not be able to address the issue adequately.

We would also like to see that all animals are protected. Right now, as you probably know, cattle enjoy their own section of the Criminal Code, because when it was written a hundred years ago, cattle were the main animals that were of critical importance. We would like to see all animals have the protection of the Criminal Code in wording.

Finally, there's no specific offence for particularly brutal, violent, or vicious crimes against animals, and to our earlier conversation about the violence link, we think it's very important that we have an offence that addresses this issue that whether or not the animal dies immediately, if you kill an animal brutally or viciously, the chances are you will escalate to humans as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Is that good?

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

Yes.

Thank you very much for those answers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Our final questioner is Mr. Menegakis, from the Conservative Party.

Questions or comments, Mr. Menegakis...? We'll let you comment if you wish.