Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-205 because I come from a riding where agriculture is so important and agri-tourism makes such an enormous contribution to the vitality of Shefford.
The Bloc Québécois supports the principle of this bill because we have always stood with farmers, who would not be able to survive if they did not treat their animals properly. I grew up with horses. My father even raised a mistreated horse and practically brought it back to life. I accompanied my aunts and uncles when they went to care for their animals. That contact with the land and the agricultural community on a smaller scale was a privilege for me, and it did a lot to open my eyes to the importance of this sector in the food chain.
I want to begin my speech today by stating the main points of the bill. I will then give a real-life example from my region, and I will close by reminding members of some of the arguments for and against the bill. To start, I want to dispel the myth that Bill C-205 challenges vegan values. The bill is about respect for animals, laws and private property.
First, let me summarize the bill, which is actually very simple. It makes it an offence to enter, without lawful authority or excuse, a place in which animals are kept if doing so could result in the exposure of the animals to a disease or toxic substance that is capable of affecting or contaminating them. It also amends the Health of Animals Act, under which the penalties would be applied.
However, shared jurisdiction limits its effects. Certain difficulties may also complicate the application of this bill, including the fact that the purpose of the Health of Animals Act is really to protect animals in order to protect the humans who consume them and to prevent epidemics of zoonotic disease, or animal-to-human disease transmission. It was not created to define animal welfare. Agriculture and animal protection are shared jurisdictions, so the federal government's power to implement this kind of bill broadly is limited. That is why it would be good to have more information about how the bill would actually work.
To better understand the issue, here is a brief description posted on the website of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or CFIA:
Canadian provinces have the primary responsibility for protecting the welfare of animals, including farm animals and pets. All provinces and territories have laws in respect to animal welfare. Provincial and territorial legislation tend to be general in scope, covering a wide range of animal welfare interests. Some provinces and territories have regulations that govern specific aspects of animal welfare, or are related to certain species.
The CFIA's animal welfare mandate is limited to regulating humane transportation of animals and the humane treatment of food animals in federal abattoirs.
The Criminal Code of Canada prohibits anyone from willfully causing animals to suffer from neglect, pain or injury. The Criminal Code is enforced by police services, provincial and territorial Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and/or provincial and territorial ministries of agriculture.
We must therefore be careful, because all provinces have animal welfare laws but not all of them have passed legislation to address this particular issue. In recent years, several provinces, including Ontario and Alberta, have created or strengthened laws to punish people who break into a slaughterhouse or farm.
Quebec does not yet have a law such as this, but it does have the Animal Welfare and Safety Act. This law is very much in line with the type of agriculture we have in Quebec, which is much more oriented towards family operations. We must avoid getting involved in a situation where it could be construed that we are telling it what to do or giving lectures. If the question is asked, the reply is simple: Quebec is considering the issue and it is not up to the federal government to impose its laws on the provinces.
I will now talk about a case that farmers and food processors in Shefford have raised with me several times, especially since I live in the region that is known as Quebec's pantry. It is a region that I share with the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot who also spoke of the highly publicized case of Porgreg in Saint-Hyacinthe. We are neighbours, so of course, people have talked to us about this a lot. Again, on December 7, 2019, 13 vegan activists and antispeciesists broke into a pig farm in Saint-Hyacinthe to protest against raising animals for human consumption. They entered a pig barn where they filmed and protested for nearly seven hours, sitting on the floor in front of the pig enclosures to try to expose their quality of life.
Sûreté du Québec officers had to enter the building to remove them. These 30 people, who were not supposed to be there, then contaminated the premises, which put the health and safety of the herd at risk.
During a press conference in January 2020, the co-owners of the farm in question said that after the incident they had noticed some clinical signs of a disease. After testing was done, they found out they were dealing with the rotavirus, which they had not seen in nearly 40 years.
That is what Ms. Grégoire explained when she testified alongside the president of the UPA, Marcel Groleau, and the president of the Éleveurs de porcs du Québec, David Duval. It should be noted that pigs are very sensitive to stress and when they are in captivity their environment needs to be controlled both in terms of temperature and noise.
This type of break-in obviously has potentially disastrous biosecurity consequences for pig farms and puts the animals' health, safety and well-being at risk. Access to the pig barns is limited and controlled, to prevent the potential introduction of external diseases, viruses or bacteria, such as the swine respiratory disease, or SRD, porcine epidemic diarrhea, or PED, the rotavirus, which is a viral disease of a pig's small intestine, or African swine fever, which has ravaged pig populations in Asia.
Farmers whose herds are infected as a result of a break-in end up having to spend a significant amount of money. This event was quite unsettling for the animals. One of the owners, Ms. Grégoire, reported that the activists had put water in their generator's diesel tank, tampered with the building's thermostats and left the barn doors open. The temperature in the barn dropped to -12°C. The noise and stress even caused the sows to get up abruptly and then kill the piglets when they lay back down. Anyone who has spent any amount of time on a pig farm could have foreseen this outcome. secur
The UPA had to seek an injunction against the activist group to prohibit it from coming within 500 metres of a farm without the owner's consent. That injunction was urgently granted because the group was planning other stunts.
When I read the request for injunction, it was worrisome to see that the risk of criminal conviction clearly did nothing to curb the behaviour of the individuals in that group and did not have the desired deterrent effect. Farmers in my region are therefore extremely concerned, because the activists do not seem to regret their actions. The fear that it will happen again is legitimate.
One month after the incidents in Saint-Hyacinthe, UPA representatives made a public announcement with the owners of the farm to show their support and denounce this type of practice, which is clearly becoming more and more common. Marcel Groleau even said that “the acts committed seek to impose an ideology through defamation, propaganda, threats and fear. Society strongly condemns this type of abuse, for which there must be serious consequences”.
The Bloc Québécois values freedom of expression highly, as we recently demonstrated. People absolutely have the right to protest and make themselves heard and share their vision of how things should be. However, we cannot allow that to take the form of illegal activities that can harm both farmers and animals.
I mentioned the Porgreg farm earlier, which raises pigs, obviously, and, without downplaying the consequences for other animal species, pigs in particular are genetically very similar to humans. Their sensitivity to stress is very high. The incident stressed the animals. In addition to exposure to contaminants and changes in temperature, light and noise, as well as the commotion of the tussle with police, the pigs are in danger of getting sick.
That is unfortunately what happened at the Porgreg farm. The owners hold the activists responsible for the fact that the farm has been dealing with a rotavirus outbreak since late December 2019. They told the media that none of their pigs had had that disease for nearly 40 years. They also said, and I quote, “Our sows are feverish and sick. Since they entered our hog barn, our maternal mortality rate has increased considerably.” They also pointed out that several visits from veterinarians have been required, and that also means additional costs. According to one of the owners, the stress of seeing activists breaking into farms will cause a lot of anxiety for many Quebec livestock producers.
Let us now look at the views of both supporters and opponents. Obviously, most producer federations are in favour of this measure. These include the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, the Canadian Pork Council, the Chicken Farmers of Canada, the Egg Farmers of Canada, the Turkey Farmers of Canada, the Canadian Meat Council and, of course, the Union des producteurs agricoles.
From the animal rights activists' perspective, the legislation does not go far enough and should punish offending producers and processors when the living conditions of animals are deemed to be poor.
Many people go as far as to discount the biosecurity argument, believing that the meat industry hides behind all kinds of bogus arguments to the effect that surprise visits from activists to slaughterhouses can create contamination problems or endanger the lives of animals.
In closing—