Madam Speaker, as usual, my colleague from Elk Island has been very insightful and rather entertaining. I expected when he was telling us about coming down the road and seeing the mother duck that he could actually hear her say to her little ones “duck”, but I guess he left that part out.
The other day I was driving home in broad daylight on a country road that was not very wide. There was some extremely tall grass in the ditch. A deer jumped out of the ditch and I collided with it. It was totally an accident. I am sure I inflicted some pain and suffering on that deer. I am also convinced that the deer inflicted some pain and suffering on me, because I had to repair the automobile afterwards. I had to do it quickly before my wife inflicted pain and suffering on me, because it was her car.
I am looking at the bill and I am wondering if I might be guilty of inflicting pain. If someone had come along they would have seen me strike that deer. I frankly did not see the deer leave, because it rode up over the front end of my wife's car and landed behind the back door. By the time I got the vehicle stopped and got out of the car, the deer had vanished. Although I was not going very fast, it does take a few seconds to get the car stopped. I was not able to assess whether it limped away or whether it bounded off, but I am quite sure that at 60 kilometres an hour, which was about the speed I was travelling, striking a deer with a car that weighs 4,000 pounds would certainly inflict some harm on it and some pain, maybe even break some bones. I do not know.
Under the bill, would I be guilty of inflicting pain on that animal? That is one of the reasons it is so important that we keep the words wilful or wilfully in the bill.
There are many other aspects to the bill. It also deals with the disarming of a police officer and technical amendments to the Firearms Act. I frankly do not have any argument with that. I think that the disarming of a police officer, if it has not been in the code all these years as a specific crime, certainly should have been. We have to give our police officers the tools to do their job. We must respect our police officers for the job they do. Anyone who attacks a police officer should suffer the full wrath of the law. I am also talking about trying to disarm the police officer, take away his firearm.
I have no problem with the technical amendments to the Firearms Act. They seem fairly reasoned and commonsensical. On the other hand, other aspects of the bill lack that elusive quality of common sense.
Coming from a farming community, I see all sorts of things. Normally our livestock producers take the very best care of their livestock. It is in their best interest to do so because this is their livelihood. This is their living. Occasionally we hear reports on the radio or on the television stating that in such-and-such an area several head of cattle, hogs or whatever had to be humanely disposed of because they were in such a bad state of emaciation from lack of feed or they had been hauled in a truck that was so cold they had frozen spots on their carcasses. That is an offence that absolutely should be punished. There is no rationale whatsoever for causing undue suffering to defenceless animals.
Therefore I am making the case that wilful negligence should be taken into consideration, whether it is inflicting wilful suffering and pain or whether it is done through lack of knowledge or lack of attention. If someone knew or should have known those conditions would bring suffering and pain to an animal, livestock, pet, cat, dog or whatever, it would be very difficult for them to defend their position in a court of law. Those individuals should in all instances be found guilty of cruelty to animals.
I mentioned earlier agriculture and rodeos. I certainly do not support blood sports such as dog fighting, rooster fighting, or bear baiting, the old idea of putting a bear in the ring to kill dogs or turning dogs on the bear simply to entertain people who watch the fight. None of that makes any sense to me whatsoever.
We have to differentiate that from a common practice in the agricultural industry that is absolutely necessary. Farmers do not neuter their bull calves simply because they want to inflict pain and suffering on them. They do it for a very practical reason, which is that the animals fatten better and it makes them more docile. It also plays a large role in the genetics of the cattle herd. Farmers select the bulls they want to add to the gene pool of their livestock and simply neuter all the ones that do not measure up to a certain standard. That is a common practice, as is the practice of hot iron branding of cattle for identification purposes.
I know of one instance where a friend of mine who is a cattle buyer bought a load of cattle or two. He was marshalling them at a custom feedlot. He continued to buy cattle until he had a certain number and then find a buyer. He also put together orders for people who had asked him to pick out a certain amount of a certain type of cattle.
Unbeknownst to him, this feedlot was suffering from real economic stress. One day he went there and found the sheriff had actually seized the feedlot and all of the contents therein, including the cattle my friend had bought. I do not know whether my friend had a premonition or what, but he had undergone the old western practice of putting a brand on these cattle before he put them into the feedlot. When the sheriff asked, “How can you prove you actually have cattle in here that belong to you?” He said “They have my brand on them”. The sheriff released his cattle to him immediately. Cattle could be identified perhaps with a tattoo and it might stand up, but an ear tag would not.
While we are talking about tattoos and ear tags, do they inflict pain and suffering on the livestock? If they do, would putting an ear tag or a tattoo in the ear of an animal, which is a very common practice for purebred animals, inflict pain and suffering and make one guilty of a crime under this act? Those are all questions we have to ask.
I would like to see the bill go to committee. I would like to see it amended to reflect some of the common sense and some of the practices that are common and have been acceptable for hundreds of years.
At every auction market in the country and at every rodeo there are representatives from the humane society who are there to supervise. Those people would be great witnesses before the committee because they have seen what is acceptable and what is not. They have a very good idea of an acceptable practice and a practice that would constitute cruelty.
I would like to see all the amendments we have put forward adopted by the committee. They would answer some of the concerns of farmers, hunters, agricultural groups, those in the fur trade, people in the rodeo and the circus business, and others.
Every year the Calgary Stampede takes place. There is usually a protest following or during the stampede that says the roping of cattle is unnecessary cruelty and all the rest of it. There is a long way between the catching of a calf at the end of a lariat rope and cock fighting. Cock fighting is a brutal sport in which two roosters fight until one of them is dead. To me that is a senseless and cruel sport that has no place in modern society. I agree with those people who oppose it.
Wilful neglect is certainly deserving of harsh punishment. It is absolutely unacceptable. From an agricultural point of view it just does not make any economic sense not to take care of livestock. Neglect of farm animals, where they are not properly fed or not properly bedded, is not only against the law and should be against the law but is also a very stupid economic move. If one is with the condition that one does not have the feed or the bedding to properly look after livestock, then they should be sold. There is a ready market for any livestock and they should be sold to someone who will take care of them.
Still in the livestock and farming vein, there is one clause of the bill I would like to quote from. It says anyone who “kills an animal or, being the owner, permits an animal to be killed, brutally or viciously”. I wonder what brutally or viciously killing means. Does it mean if one shoots them it is brutal and vicious and if one tickles them to death it is okay? I do not understand that at all.
If one kills a human being, is it brutal and vicious? I think so. Gophers, which are properly known as the Richardson's ground squirrel, dig up meadows and generally cause havoc with the turf. One could shoot them with a .22 or, worse yet, use a leghold trap. As we kids used to do in school days at recess, one could go out and drown them by pouring water down their holes. Perhaps we were guilty of cruel and unusual punishment with those poor little ground squirrels, but are those things all considered to be “brutally or viciously” killing the animals?
The bill goes on to say that anyone who “kills an animal, or being the owner, permits the animal to be killed, brutally or viciously, regardless of whether the animal dies immediately”, is guilty of a criminal offence. My concern is that I own livestock. The whole purpose of the livestock is to create protein, meat, for customers. To do that, since we have yet to discover a way to eat animals alive, animals have to be killed in some way.
Even if the animal dies immediately, we are guilty of a criminal offence, and even though we did not do it. I guess we hire professional hit men to kill our steers so we are still guilty of consulting with and getting somebody else to carry out our foul deeds. Even though the animal dies immediately, we are guilty of a criminal offence.
I shudder to think of how many times I have been guilty of that, because we have sent literally thousands of animals to the slaughterhouse. The animals die immediately, I think. I am not sure, but I am pretty sure that they do. They are immobilized, the butcher opens the carotid veins in the neck, the animal is bled and dies almost immediately. As soon as the carotid arteries are opened the blood pressure goes to zero and the animal is for all intents and purposes dead immediately.
However, that does not matter. I am still guilty under this legislation. That is a terrible deficiency in the bill. I hope that the committee will move to amend this or to remove any ambiguity in this area so that the person who raises chickens for a living will be able to have the chickens killed and processed. We had chicken for lunch today. I wonder how that got here. It got here because somebody killed the chicken, I hope not brutally or viciously, and I hope immediately. I hope somebody did not have to go to jail because we had chicken for lunch.
That is the kind of common sense I am talking about, which is absent in the bill and which is absolutely vital to the bill. We cannot stand to have this kind of ambiguity. We must have more clarity. The bill as it is now will cause a tremendous amount of anxiety in the agricultural community. It has already, in my opinion.
While the bill is not in the form that I would like to see, I want it to be on the record that I am a pet owner and a livestock producer and I pride myself on taking good care of my livestock. My animals are well fed, with good access to a good water supply. In cold weather I keep them bedded. We give them the very best obstetrics we can if they have difficulty calving; we do everything we can to assist them, including giving them Caesarean operations if need be, to save the life of one or the other and sometimes both.
As far as our pets are concerned, we have a little white Maltese dog that we keep in the house. She is our pride and joy. Our children grew up and left and we needed something to mother, so we got a puppy. I would not do anything whatsoever to make life uncomfortable for that little dog. Frankly, anyone who would is an abuser and should be dealt with as an abuser, whether he does it through neglect or wilful harm. I want to be extremely clear about that.
I support the idea that animals have a purpose in our lives. Pets have a different purpose than farm animals, obviously, but a lot of pets on the farm are also working pets, like stock dogs. We have had stock dogs on our farm that were an absolutely essential part of our operation and saved us many steps.
While I am not pleased with the bill in its present form, I am prepared to give it tentative support to get it into committee in the hope that it will be amended to reflect the common sense suggestions I have put forward today.