Good morning. Thank you.
I am an animal protection lawyer and the executive director of Animal Justice. We work to ensure that animals have a voice in Canada's legal and political systems. We work with legislators and citizens to improve laws protecting animals and we push for the vigorous enforcement of laws that are already on the books.
We also go to court to fight for animals when necessary and it was in this context that we first started working on the issue of bestiality. Animal Justice intervened in the Supreme Court case of D.L.W., which has brought us all here today. We were the only intervenor. We tried to convince the court to interpret the bestiality offence to include all sexual contact with animals. Unfortunately, we weren't successful.
After the D.L.W. decision came out, we heard from countless Canadians, as I'm sure this committee has as well. Most were shocked and had a really difficult time understanding how it could be that something so appalling as the sexual abuse of animals could be considered legal in Canada.
My own response was that, unfortunately, it was no surprise at all, because federal animal cruelty laws in this country haven't been updated since the 1950s. The D.L.W. case was perhaps the most headline-grabbing manifestation of how problematic our cruelty laws are, but there are countless other ways and other examples I could point to that show how our outdated and poorly crafted laws let down animals.
We've fallen very far behind other western nations and very far behind our own values as Canadians as well. People in this country do care deeply about animal protection, and I think that sentiment only grows as we learn more and more about the cognitive and social capacities of animals and more and more about how they suffer at human hands.
I was pleased to hear the Minister of Justice say at the last committee meeting that Bill C-84 is only a first step towards overhauling our cruelty laws, because clearly, more must be done. When Mr. Erskine-Smith's Bill C-246 was defeated, the government committed to a comprehensive review of the animal cruelty provisions in the Criminal Code. That was more than two years ago, and we're still waiting for news on that review. The public, and I believe most importantly the animals that are victims of cruelty, are deserving of a timeline and clarity on next steps.
To move on to the bill, Animal Justice supports what Bill C-84 does. I won't spend too much time explaining why we do, but I will propose two very straightforward amendments to make Bill C-84 even more effective at protecting individual animals. Rather than just penalizing offenders, we want to ensure that this bill provides tools for law enforcement and judges to protect animals from further harm.
To start with the bestiality provisions, there's no disagreement in this room that bestiality is abhorrent and heartbreaking. We've advocated against it since the D.L.W. case. We assisted Mr. Erskine-Smith with his Bill C-246, which would have closed the bestiality loophole, and with Ms. Rempel in her Bill C-388, which would have done the same thing.
Bill C-84 does close the loophole by ensuring that the term “bestiality” encompasses all sexual contact with animals. That's a very good thing, but it misses one other glaring loophole. That's the fact that right now there's no sentencing tool for judges to ban a person convicted of bestiality from owning, having custody of, or residing in the same location as animals in the future. Judges can already impose this type of ban, which is known as a prohibition order, in the case of somebody who's been convicted of an animal cruelty offence. We think it's very important that judges have this option as a sentencing tool for bestiality offenders as well.
I assume that the reason it wasn't already proposed by the government is simply due to the historical location of the bestiality offence in the Criminal Code. The general animal cruelty offences, apart from bestiality, are in sections 445 through 447, but bestiality is in section 160 of the code, housed with other sexual offences. This is because bestiality historically has been more about punishing deviant sexual behaviour than about punishing or enjoining conduct that's harmful to animals. Prohibition orders—bans on keeping animals—just were never contemplated for sexual offences, so it makes sense that the bestiality offence hasn't had an accompanying tool such as this.
Clearly, however, we're here today because the bestiality offence has evolved and is evolving. Today our rationale for criminalizing it is not just to protect humans but also to ensure the protection of vulnerable animals who cannot consent to sexual conduct. This vulnerability justifies protecting animals from those convicted of bestiality offences as well.
I'm proposing that this can be done by adding the bestiality offence to the sentencing provisions in subsection 447.1(1) of the existing Criminal Code. This would let a judge impose a prohibition order for all of the animal cruelty offences and also the bestiality offence. I will provide the committee with my proposed amendments after this meeting so you can take a look at them.
Many prosecutors will tell you that one of their top priorities in sentencing is not just how much jail time they get for an offender or how much of a fine they can get, but actually getting that prohibition order, so they can keep animals away from individuals convicted of abusing them. I don't think I need to elaborate on why it's a monumentally bad idea to give people convicted of bestiality free and legal access to more animals.
Many other jurisdictions have already empowered judges to use prohibition orders this way in cases of bestiality. This includes our neighbours south of the border: the states of Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, Tennessee, Texas and Washington.
I will now move to the animal-fighting provisions. Forcing animals to fight, injure and kill one another for the trifling sake of human entertainment also, obviously, deserves our consideration. I was pleased to review the government's charter statement on this piece of legislation. It recognizes that in the proposed animal-fighting section, section 2(b) of the charter, freedom of expression, may be implicated, to the extent that the bill restrains communication between individuals about issues. The government points out that violent expression, such as promoting animal fighting, does not promote the values underlying section 2(b) of the charter, and so wouldn't be implicated here. We see this as a very important recognition that our laws do value animals and preventing violence against them.
I take no issue with the provisions in the bill, but I do propose considering a further amendment to repeal subsection 447(3) of the Criminal Code. That's the mandatory provision that imposes an automatic death sentence on any birds seized from cockfighting rings. This issue was raised at the committee's last meeting.
There is a clear intent in the Criminal Code to outlaw all types of animal fighting. Paragraph 445.1(1)(b) is the main existing animal-fighting offence, and it prohibits all fighting of animals or birds. The code doesn't distinguish between different types. It doesn't matter what species of animal is used.
The amendment in this bill to subsection 447(1) transforms the offence of keeping a cockpit to one of keeping an arena used for any type of animal fighting, so there is a clear intention to bring all animals in equally. Yet subsection 447(3) requires only the killing of birds seized from animal-fighting rings, not for dogs or other species. In our view, this is completely needless, and it ties the hands of authorities when there may be a better option for the birds.
We think the fate of any bird seized should be decided on a case-by-case basis. This is already done for dogs and other animals rescued from fighting rings. There is no principled reason that roosters or birds forced to fight should be automatically killed. It may be appropriate to rehabilitate them. It may be appropriate to send them to a sanctuary, where they can receive lifelong care and still enjoy a high quality of life.
Repealing the provision wouldn't interfere with the ability of authorities to humanely euthanize birds when that situation is deemed to be appropriate. This is already done with dogs, if the need should arise. Provincial legislation generally empowers enforcement agents to do this, with the assistance of a veterinarian who can make the assessment about the bird's well-being.
I'm concerned that there's a real danger the public might lose confidence in the administration of justice, should they see a situation where an automatic death sentence is imposed on the animals for a seemingly senseless reason.
One recent high-profile dogfighting case in Ontario proves this point. I know Mr. MacKenzie will be familiar with it, as it occurred close to his riding.
There was a bust of a dogfighting ring in Chatham, Ontario, in 2015. I will skip through some of the details, but the Crown and the OSPCA sought an automatic death sentence for most of the dogs implicated in the case. The public was outraged by this. I attended those court proceedings. We had some involvement in the case. There were protests outside the courtroom every time there was an appearance. People were shocked that the dogs could be automatically killed without an individualized and appropriate assessment.
In the end, there was a reasonable solution reached. There were new assessments done on these dogs and most of them were sent to a rehabilitation facility in Florida, where most of them are doing pretty well.
The laws in this case are different, but I use this to illustrate the point that there's no public appetite for the mandatory killing of animals, without considering that they are each individuals and that they have individual circumstances and individual needs.
We already treat offenders as individuals in sentencing. That's a well-established principle in criminal law, so I would say it's only fair to treat animals who are victims as individuals too and treat them with compassion, because their lives do matter.
Here's a quick note on how many birds may have been killed under subsection 447(3). There are no national statistics on animal cruelty prosecutions, so it's difficult to know for sure, but here are a few numbers. A 2008 bust in Surrey, B.C., resulted in 1,270 birds being seized and killed, a 2009 bust in York Region resulted in 74 birds being seized and killed, and a 2016 bust near Cornwall resulted in 38 roosters being seized and killed. We're talking about a significant number of lives.
That's it for my submission. I'll be happy to respond in the question period.