Mr. Speaker, since I spoke earlier on a different section of the bill I have had a lot of entertainment come my way. It is not all sadness in here. I boarded the plane yesterday to fly back and I always get on at a small airport where everyone knows me. One of the security officers said, “Check that man for gophers”. Everybody knew that one.
There is a lot of humour coming from the phone calls and the letters that I have received. I want to share some of that with the House because it shows that people living between the Red River and the Rockies do not understand the problem. One kind lady phoned me and asked what those gophers eat. I told her they eat grass and they love crops. I said they really like chickpeas. She said that was the answer. All we had to do was sew chickpeas around each field and herd all of the gophers over there. I thought to herd gophers would be like trying to herd a bunch of cats. Herding gophers gives the House some idea as to what people know about the events that are taking place.
The most interesting comment came from an e-mail from a chap in Vancouver. He said those gophers do the people out there a lot of good as they loosen and aerate the soil. I said, “Are you kidding me?” He was dead serious about it.
When I was driving to the airport I heard that somebody at the University of Manitoba said that these pesky critters do a lot of good. Someone said that they eat mice. That may be true, I do not know. I will tell the House that I rode hundreds of miles on horseback with a horseback view of gophers and mice out in the grass and I have yet to see a gopher eat a mouse. I rode miles and miles around fields on a tractor. I have watched gulls and different things pick up mice but I have never seen a gopher eat a mouse. I have pulled those old wooden granaries with a tractor and underneath were mice and gophers living in good friendship with one another. After arriving this morning I decided to phone people who are older than I am and I could not find anyone who could ever remember seeing a gopher eating a mouse.
Everyone agrees that people who do things like my hon. colleague talked about, such as dropping a cat out of a window and so on, should be punished. The problem with the bill is who is it that would determine what is wilful and reckless. Who would determine that?
On the weekend we had a trade show. I had walked around for a while and a former student of mine related an incident. The raccoons have moved into our area. I guess I should have known but I was not aware that they could entice a dog down to a pond or a dugout and could drown the dog. They do that by attacking and turning the dog over so that it cannot swim. The raccoon is a beautiful swimmer. I asked what he did. He said that he was not too far for a shot and let one go. He got one raccoon and the dog freed himself and then he got the other one. Was that a wilful and reckless act? Someone will have to determine whether it was or not? Someone will have to determine if a man trying to save his dog should be charged with a wilful or reckless act. I am not stretching the point here. I am not taking something totally out of context.
We talk of any animal having the capacity to feel pain.
Alberta is the only province in Canada that brags that it is rat free. How does it keep itself rat free? It uses a poison. That poison causes the animal to literally bleed to death internally. Are we going to take away the most effective poison we have ever had? That is a good question.
A call came in from a lady who had a 4-H goat problem. She was at the 4-H day at the fair in Armstrong, B.C., where she was giving a demonstration of trimming the goats' hooves. When I was a boy I used to like to watch the farriers trimming the horses' hooves. Every once in a while they would get too close and they would draw blood. That is what happened this day. The lady was showing them how to trim the hooves. The goat moved a bit and she got a little into the meat and drew blood. She was just swarmed by people saying “Look at that. Trimming the hooves is cruelty to animals”.
This wide open bill has gone too far. I would like to quote what has been said in the House by members opposite:
--what is lawful today in the course of legitimate activities would be lawful when the bill receives royal assent.
I would like to believe that, I really would, but if that is the case let us not be saying “read my lips”. We must put those words into the bill. Every agricultural organization, from the Canadian Federation of Agriculture right down the line, would drop their defence. That is what they want to hear but it is not in the bill.
I ask this question: who decides what act constitutes cruelty? Many people have seen horse pulls. Some would say that is cruel. Some say that the rodeo activity of roping a calf is cruel. Some say bulldogging is cruel. Who will make those decisions? Is it going to be written in the bill or is a lobby group going to decide?
I want to close with these words that I hope will be forever ingrained in the members who vote for the bill. Criminal laws in the hands of special interest groups, to destroy legitimate farming and related food production, is the entire fear of the industry. Let me repeat that if members are going to allow the whims of the animal rights groups to decide the penalties and decide what is cruel, members are putting in jeopardy the entire industry, from ranching to furs and everything else.
It must be put in the bill. It must be put in the bill that those things which are legitimate and used in animal husbandry now will not be changed with the bill. If it is put it in the bill, the entire agricultural industry will support it.