Madam Speaker, in the introduction to my speech, I would like to read the title of this bill so that everybody who is listening recognizes exactly what we are up to here. Second, I will look at exactly what the implications are.
The act is entitled “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals, disarming a peace officer and other amendments) and the Firearms Act (technical amendments)”. Here we have a bill with very far-reaching implications.
If we look at the summary of the bill, we will recognize that the bill has indeed moved into areas that are very far-reaching and have implications not only for the present generation but also for generations to come. For instance, it amends the criminal code by:
(a) consolidating animal cruelty offences into one section and introducing new offences for brutally or viciously killing an animal or abandoning one;
(b) creating an offence of disarming, or attempting to disarm, a peace officer; and
(c) making a number of technical amendments.
The intent being envisioned by the summary and also by the title of the bill clearly invokes and evokes a certain empathy. There is not one of us in the House who would not find ourselves very much in sympathy with and in support of what the bill is purporting to do.
In the introduction, I would suggest that the bill is rather far-reaching. In fact, many people would label a bill of this type an omnibus bill. An omnibus bill suffers from two kinds of characteristics. First, there is too much in it for people to really understand it all. Second, it is too general in some of its indications, so not enough attention has been given to clearly define or to give clear direction to what is intended. My hon. colleague talked about a preamble; in a bill like this one, a preamble is doubly important. Third, in certain other areas the bill is a little too specific in that it does not allow flexibility, which might otherwise be the case.
In principle, the bill is sound. Who in his right mind would not want to live in a society that is peaceful and orderly? Who in his right mind would not take offence that anybody should even dare to disarm a peace officer? Clearly we would not want that to take place. This bill brings that particular thing into focus by saying that it is a criminal offence and should not be tolerated in society. I think we would all agree with that. I certainly do. That principle is sound.
The other part of this legislation goes to the punishment of those who would cruelly use or abuse animals, both pets and other animals. I do not think any one of us would say that we are for being cruel to animals. Of course we are not. We do not want to be. It is ridiculous to even suggest that there are other creatures on the face of the earth and one of our purposes is to be cruel to them. We do not want to do that. This bill makes that a criminal offence. That is good. We can support those kinds of things.
Then we come to the business of saying that disarming a peace officer becomes an indictable offence and if that is the case then under certain conditions there will be an imprisonment of up to five years. When it is a summary conviction, which in technical jargon is slightly different, the maximum punishment is 18 months.
The big issue here is that it is a punishable offence and people who do these kinds of things ought to be treated with that kind of awareness.
There is another principle involved here. If we as a society want to live a peaceful, ordered life we must have people who from time to time protect us against those who want to disturb the peace, who do not want to have a decent lifestyle and want to interfere with ours. We need to equip these people. We need to protect these people. We need to give them the background and the information so that they can indeed provide for the peace, order and good government that we all want so much. I think we would all support this provision in the bill.
When it comes to the other part, the amendments to the firearms legislation, we ask ourselves, what is all this? When we analyze what the amendments are we discover that they are all very technical and could almost be interpreted as being cosmetic in nature. There is not much to offend there. However, the question then becomes, how will that actually change anything?
I guess it is necessary in certain cases because there is a grandfathering of certain things here. There is the training of employees who sell handguns. I think that is all very good. One could argue that it is just plain common sense. I guess the Liberal government thinks that common sense is so rare that it has to write it into legislation. If that is the case, then it is a good thing it is in here.
The other part of this, though, leads to something that I cannot resist. I must refer to the Liberals' Firearms Act, which they introduced here some time ago. It came in the form of Bill C-68. That particular piece of legislation is so badly flawed that if they really want to make a difference what they should do, at the minimum, is to take our 200 amendments that we proposed at report stage and implement them. That would help make the legislation a little more meaningful.
Mr. Speaker, you know, the Minister of Justice knows, the Prime Minister knows, the RCMP knows and all the police officers know that particular piece of legislation is not working. It has not reduced violent crime. It has not come even close to being a reasonable implementation scheme. Already $328 million has been spent. We were told it was going to cost less than $100 million. It is well over three times that number now. We have to take a very caustic look at that particular piece of legislation.
I would suggest that we really have not given the firearms legislation appropriate attention in the provisions of this bill. In fact, we could go even one step further. Police associations in Canada are considering withdrawing their support for the legislation. So with regard to this piece of legislation and putting this little cosmetic change in there, while it does not cause us any problem, it does not deal with the more serious case of the firearms legislation.
I want to turn my attention to the provisions in the bill with respect to cruelty to animals. I want to focus on two particular aspects of this part of the legislation.
First I want it clearly understood by all persons in the House listening to me now that we really want to support the idea that people who are wilfully cruel to animals should be punished severely.
However, what the bill proposes is that it should delete from existing legislation the words “wilful neglect” and “marked departure from the exercise of reasonable care”. When a person wilfully neglects an animal, that is being cruel to that animal. If that individual does not take reasonable care of an animal and departs from reasonable care, and does so in a very marked and obvious way, such a person should, in my opinion, be very severely chastised. No, they should be punished. This bill does that, but by removing words like “wilful” and “marked departure” it creates ambiguity and lack of clarity and allows for interpretations that really give inadequate direction to the people.
The other one has to do with “wilful” and wilfully being cruel to animals, directly. I know some young people who do terribly cruel things. I once saw this happen and it was awful. They wanted to kill this kitten. They put a string around its neck and threw it from the top of a barn and let it hang there. That is wilful cruelty and that should be punished.
There are penalties in this act, and I think the penalties show the severity with which we will consider these particular acts.
If we are really going to get serious about this, we have to recognize that certain amendments are necessary. As this bill now goes to committee, there are certain amendments that I would certainly encourage the Liberals to consider at that time. We will be moving an amendment, for example, to have animal cruelty provisions maintained in sections 444 to 446 or to make the necessary changes to proposed section 182.1 to comply with the concerns of farmers, hunters, agriculture groups, the fur trade and others who harvest animals. This falls outside the things that we talked about just now. We need to bring those things in so that it is clear and specific and all people understand.
Second, in another example of an amendment, we will be moving an amendment at committee stage to ensure legitimate individuals involved in animal operations are not unduly subject to criminal intent.
These amendments, and there will be others, quite a few of them, are necessary to make this bill do what it is intended to do.
I commend the Liberal government for the intention of its bill, but I would also remind it that we all agree on what should be happening here, and with the best of intentions, even a good bill can be improved by bringing certain amendments to it, which the official opposition will present. I would encourage the Liberals to please consider those amendments so that we can all live together in greater peace and harmony and have legislation that is even better than that which they have presented to the House.