Madam Speaker, I want to take this chance to comment on this because in my riding the issue of cruelty to animals is the one which I have received the most mail on in my three and a half years as a member of parliament.
It is significant to mention that the letters are from trappers and hunters who support the legislation against cruelty to animals. These are people who have been targeted over the years and have been accused of cruelty and inhumanity. In fact, they are people who make their living in the most humane way that they know how and carry out their jobs in that manner. It is a very difficult living to make.
I also received letters of support for this legislation from other people. The thoughts that came through most clearly were people's true concerns that we use animals and take their lives so that we can live and eat, particularly in communities that live on a subsistence of hunting, fishing and trapping and when we do it that it be done with the regard for other lives in this world, not just our own and that people who live that way not do it cruelly and do it for reason. They also wanted people to know that they did not look at it as inhumane or cruel to animals.
I really wanted to bring it up because it is important to note that the support has come from young people, from old people, from first nations and from the conservation and humane societies in my riding.