There have been consultations and reports and draft legislation tabled and introduced and debated, including before this committee and in the Senate, repeatedly over the last 20 years. If you look at the history of those various pieces of animal cruelty legislation, what you see are provisions addressing neglect loopholes in the Criminal Code right now. The mental standard for neglecting an animal that the prosecutor has to prove to get a conviction is that an animal must be willfully neglected, so two terms that are the essential polar opposites of each other: willful and neglect.
The neglect problems with the Criminal Code have resulted in many situations where individuals should have been prosecuted criminally, but were prosecuted under weaker provincial animal protection legislation to avoid concerns over judges acquitting people inappropriately.
Overall, there is a lot more that the Criminal Code should offer to animals, and a lot more that the public should expect from the Criminal Code. It is important, and I agree with you, Mr. Erskine-Smith, that we address animal fighting and bestiality, but completely overhauling this section and taking it out of the, frankly, 1950s, when it was last amended, is appropriate to do in 2019.