Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
Humane Canada is the federation of humane societies and SPCAs across 10 provinces and two territories. Our members are the organizations that Canadians rely on most to care for abused and abandoned animals, advocate stronger protections and support communities with resources and education.
We are also the founders of the Canadian Violence Link Coalition, a partnership of multisector stakeholders examining the well-established connection between animal abuse and human violence, known as the violence link, which is often present in coercive control, intimate partner violence and child sexual abuse.
I'm here today to support Bill C-16 and its measures addressing animal sexual abuse images. These images are frequently used by predators to groom children and normalize sexual abuse. Animals are also used directly as tools of coercive control by abusers, and their abuse can signal escalation toward more severe forms of intimate partner violence. We are grateful to Minister Fraser for including these often-forgotten victims in this bill.
However, we must draw your attention to another emerging threat: animal cruelty and torture imagery. This content is being used by violent online networks to target and recruit vulnerable children and youth by desensitizing them toward extreme violence.
Evidence from the RCMP and our own research indicates that nihilistic online groups like The Com and 764 groom young people to build trust, and then coerce them into creating and sharing increasingly severe content, such as animal torture, bestiality, child sexual exploitation and self-harm. These networks operate in plain sight on platforms such as Telegram, Roblox, Discord, Minecraft and Twitch, often luring targets to other platforms to continue grooming away from moderator oversight.
There are also organized groups producing cruelty content, such as “crush videos”, for profit. The recent Winnipeg case of a couple who created and sold animal crush videos to a Telegram group of over 100 members, which required applicants to provide videos of themselves torturing an animal to gain membership, demonstrates that this violence is happening right here at home.
While the Criminal Code addresses some forms of animal cruelty and sexual abuse, and Bill C-16 would criminalize the creation and distribution of bestiality representations, there is no meaningful mechanism to address non-sexual animal torture and cruelty content being created and circulated online. This material harms the animals involved and causes serious trauma to children, youth and adults who may encounter it, whether intentionally or not. Worse, it can normalize violence and inspire viewers to act.
In the brief we submitted, we recommend strengthening Bill C-16 by criminalizing the creation, distribution and possession of all animal cruelty and torture content and by adding the creation and possession of animal sexual abuse imagery to the offence proposed under proposed subsection 160(3.1). These additions would help close existing loopholes and better reflect modern criminal harms.
Recent media articles and recent research underscore the urgency of this issue. Just this past December, our government declared online nihilistic groups such as 764, Maniac Murder Cult, and Terrorgram Collective as terrorist entities under the Criminal Code. These are the largest groups using child sexual abuse materials, or CSAM, and animal torture imagery for maximum shock value and their ability to desensitize potential victims.
The United States' 2019 Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act allows for prosecution of these offences both within and outside U.S. borders, something that Canada's current laws do not easily permit.
A new report by Finland's Protect Children, sponsored by the U.K. online safety regulator Ofcom, involved over 20,000 adults who had viewed CSAM. Nearly half of those respondents had also sought out or encountered other illegal content, most commonly animal cruelty, self-harm and extreme violence. This intersection of violence is clear.
Finally, laws are only as effective as their enforcement, so we urge that any amendments involving animal victims include mandated training for justice stakeholders on the nuances of animal abuse in relationship violence. Humane Canada would be happy to support the government with research, training and outreach to ensure that these measures are implemented effectively.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
