Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's frankness on his position on this bill. I think members in the House would agree there is no appetite and no tolerance whatsoever for what we all understand generically as cruelty to animals. An animal is defined as a vertebrate except a human being for the purposes of the bill.
The member raised an interesting question about the definitions of “vicious” and “brutal”. Could the member contemplate a scenario where a hunter who has hunted for many years and has a licence could possibly hunt an animal in a way which he would consider to be brutal or vicious? Sometimes if people are drinking or angry or whatever, they might just happen to do something that might be brutal or vicious. It would be difficult to define it, but the facts of each case would have to be on their own merit. I could imagine there could be a case where maybe the animal was wounded or otherwise mutilated, but it was not killed. It could happen.
Is there a way in which we could deal with his concern about viciousness and brutality in a way that he would still want to protect animals?