Evidence of meeting #128 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fighting.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Thanks very much.
First, to all of you, thank you. We've obviously heard very horrifying stories this morning.
Ms. Stoddart, I understood that your response to some questions from Mr. Cooper about amendments was that you don't want to slow the bill down, but presumably with respect to those two narrow amendments that have been proposed, if they didn't slow the bill down, you would support those amendments. Is that fair to say?
9:25 a.m.
Sgt Teena Stoddart
Absolutely.
9:25 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Remind me, Ms. Stoddart. How long have you been involved on the animal cruelty beat and working with Humane Canada?
9:30 a.m.
Sgt Teena Stoddart
I've been with Humane Canada since 2009. My first meetings were with an MP at the time.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Okay.
My next question is for the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
Are you familiar with previous attempts at reforming the Criminal Code with respect to the animal cruelty sections?
9:30 a.m.
Environment and Science Policy Advisor, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
I believe so. I believe there was Bill C-22, I think it was, in 2004.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
You'll remember, then, that the Canadian Federation of Agriculture expressed their disappointment that the bill did not pass.
9:30 a.m.
Environment and Science Policy Advisor, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
Unfortunately, I can't recall. I was not with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture at the time. I began in June of this past year.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
You're not aware, then, of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture's position in relation to the previous iterations of the Criminal Code provisions.
February 7th, 2019 / 9:30 a.m.
Environment and Science Policy Advisor, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
I'm aware of their position with respect to Bill C-22, which was supportive.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
It was supportive. Okay. How do we get back to there?
I'm appreciative of the work of Humane Canada in conjunction with the CFA and other organizations to get this bill before Parliament. I think it's really important that you guys worked together and forged a consensus, but it's also disappointing, in a way, when you see previous attempts that were much more substantive, where there had been consensus at the time, and that we're not where we were in 2004.
When it comes to building that consensus for more action, are you committed to working with parliamentarians, Humane Canada and other organizations to see more action done to protect animals?
9:30 a.m.
Environment and Science Policy Advisor, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
Absolutely.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
Okay. In terms of one way to do that, I think this is a pretty useful forum, actually, for hearing from different stakeholders about their concerns and how we can improve and update the law. Obviously we've already heard two amendments to a bill put forward by the government, which I think are good amendments in regard to how we can improve the law even more so than what the government is proposing.
Do you think this forum is useful one? If we had a parliamentary committee dedicated to studying how we can improve animal protections, with members of all parties and with stakeholders such as the CFA, police forces and Humane Canada coming before us and providing recommendations, do you think that would be a useful way to forge additional consensus?
9:30 a.m.
Environment and Science Policy Advisor, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
I do believe that, yes.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Liberal Beaches—East York, ON
That's great. I appreciate that.
Those are my questions.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
Does anyone else from that side have any questions? We have three minutes left.
Ms. Khalid.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you, Chair.
To our witnesses, I really do want to thank you for your very compelling testimony today.
To the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, you spoke very descriptively about some of the situations you deal with, especially when it comes to pornography. My question—I think I would like everybody to comment on this—is, what is the role of reporting on this?
I remember sitting in Montreal while we were doing a study on human trafficking, where we had the opportunity to speak to Montreal law enforcement. They had just done a sting operation where they had posted a picture of a minor. I think it was a 12-year-old. Over 900 people viewed that posting, but nobody bothered to report it to the police.
In terms of animal protection and that violence link between animals and children, how important is reporting?
We'll start with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, please.
9:30 a.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
It's very important.
Essentially, the types of reports we would see would involve not only animals but also the abuse of children. We very much rely on the public to come forward. Through the tip line, we do receive those.
The second very important thing, though, is that we see a whole bunch of very egregious material tied to sexual assaults and involving animals, and we don't have those victims identified. We have a very significant problem—an epidemic, essentially—when we look at the number of unidentified victims and children that we see day in and day out within the imagery.
We have public education that's absolutely key to our colleagues in the room, who spoke about investigations and enhancing police training. I think that's absolutely imperative as well. Then, I think, we really have to mobilize the public to do more: to come forward when they start to see these types of activities and report them.
9:30 a.m.
Sgt Teena Stoddart
I absolutely agree. Police services need training. We've been working in the Canadian Violation Link Coalition. The coalition has been working very hard to bring that to fruition. I gave a presentation to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in November and they are primarily on board with the training. We would like them to come on board with all eight of our objectives that we're working on right now.
To give you an example of how we are not trained, my superintendent attended the 2017 Canadian Violence Link Conference and afterwards he came up to me and he said, “I did not know this stuff”. We have a superintendent of a police service that doesn't know it. His wife works in our sexual assault section and she didn't know it. There's an absolute need. When a victim comes forward, whether it's a child's guardian or a partner assault, they will charge all the human offences but they forget and leave off that.
One of the things that we're doing is that Crown attorney Dallas Mack, who was a longtime dangerous offender application Crown attorney in Ottawa.... We need all these offences, even calls for service, documented properly now because, particularly with gangs and people like that, these offences take place from ages 15 to say 25. The dangerous offender applications don't happen until 10 to 15 years of criminal activity. There's a lot that goes into a dangerous offender application, but if you don't have all those offences and all those calls for service documented properly and the patrol officer is recognizing them when they go to them on the road, which they don't now, then that compromises the dangerous offender applications 10 years down the line. There is an absolute need for training.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
It's no problem if you have something to say on this, Mr. Annau, but just quickly, please.
9:35 a.m.
Environment and Science Policy Advisor, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
I was going to agree that's very important and the list of reasons as well, but if we're running out of time.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you so much. Does anybody have any really quick short questions that they want to ask? Otherwise, we'll move to the next panel.
I want to thank all three groups of witnesses. You were really helpful in our study of the bill and it's really appreciated that you came. I would ask Mr. Reichert from the next panel to come forward and the other people are on video conference, so we'll just briefly suspend until the next panel.