Mr. Speaker, I will try to bring the conversation back to the bill at hand.
At committee we heard from Barbara Cartwright of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies. She indicated that the existing animal cruelty laws were ineffective in part because of the words “wilful negligence” and the difficulty in proving wilful negligence as a barrier to effective prosecution in animal cruelty cases.
In spite of that evidence, in this bill the government has decided to include the world “wilful” in the key clause that deals with the killing of a service animal. Would the member agree with me that the government's insistence on including that word will make the legislation less effective and will result in it having the same problems as those in the present animal cruelty laws?