Sure, and I'll speak a little, in particular, to what we saw dealing with Quanto and working with the crown prosecutor. Unfortunately, we have to have a special crown prosecutor assigned because of the cases that we see in Edmonton to deal with animal cruelty charges. He was an exceptional individual who helped us work through this. We were fortunate, I think, in the sense that this was a guilty plea overall, which makes it easier than going to trial. I don't know if we would have seen the same sentencing if it hadn't been an agreed statement of facts. I know 18 months for some may seem significant enough. I disagree. This is where I see the new bill being appropriate.
Again, we have to look at a couple of important points.
In this case, with the new bill it's consecutive, whereas in a lot of cases it's concurrent when we go to court with other charges.
We have a five-year maximum with the indictable component of this new bill if there's a service animal killed in the line of duty, such as Quanto, which I think is also appropriate. There has to be a strong deterrent. This is partly a bit of my opinion of what I saw with the public. As a police officer, do we have our own biases? Absolutely. Unfortunately, we see the crimes too often, and of course, you may get a little jaded. But what I saw and heard clearly from the public was that they wanted a bill to deal with this specifically. They wanted a bill to make sure there was a deterrent, and if somebody did hurt a service animal, that there was some punishment that fit the crime.
I'll give you an example of how far some comments that came to me went. I had an email from an individual who is in his late fifties now, from Calgary. I can't remember all the details, but it stuck in my mind because he himself as a young man in the seventies had been involved in an incident with the Calgary Police Service. One of their dogs was injured severely and he was the accused in this instance. He was charged with some weapons offences and did his time. It was two years or less, for sure. But now that he reflects back on his time, he feels there needs to be a bill to protect these service animals. I guess that one touched me a little, because here was an offender realizing that there wasn't a significant section to deal with this.
Speaking of the crown on this case, it's such a wide scope with an animal cruelty charge that it would have been very difficult, if we'd gone into a trial situation, to debate the fine parts of it. Then I think we heard that an animal cruelty charge was never put in place to deal with situations that law enforcement has seen, again, unfortunately, on an all too common basis. I think somebody talked about the fact that we're here talking about a service animal that was killed, but on a very regular basis I see my service animals being hurt. There has to be something done, because again, I think we all agree that we have to speak for them. If we don't, then who does?
I have dealt with people trying to submerge my dog underwater. I have seen him when he's been kicked in the face and having to get several sutures, and again, they do this without question. I think any handler who's done any time on the street will say with 100% certainty that their dog has probably saved their life.
I can think of a specific incident where an individual I was tracking in downtown Edmonton was waiting to ambush me with a pool ball in a sock. I had no idea he was there, and I can thank my service dog for finding him and dealing with him, because I would probably have been the subject of a massive injury had he not been there.
So do I think this is appropriate? Absolutely. I think it is necessary and it's time. I think it's been all too long. I thank the government and each of you for supporting this bill, because that's what I'm hearing from many people.