Mr. Speaker, in the last six minutes that I have to speak to this issue, I want to let members know that it is an issue that is extremely important to farmers, industry workers and people in the medical field. Some grave concerns have been expressed by these people about the bill and I will talk a bit about some of the specifics later. Right now I want to speak in general terms about their concerns.
I would suggest that many groups support the intent of the legislation. They agree with and support the objective which is an increase in penalties for offences relating to animal cruelty. Most groups support that objective. Even though there have been minor improvements made to the legislation, the bill requires significant amendments which have not been made to deal with some specific issues, a few of which I will mention.
If I could pick out one concern from this legislation in terms of the most important changes being proposed, that concern would be moving the animal cruelty provisions from those of a property offence, which is the case in the current legislation, to a new and separate section. By elevating the status of animals to a new and separate status above that of property, clearly substantial changes are being made to the way the law would treat animals and the way courts would treat animal cruelty.
I think most Canadians fully support protecting animals against cruelty. That really is not the issue here. Canadians widely support that concept. Members of my party strongly support that concept. However when animals are taken out of the part of the law dealing with property offences, then some very serious concerns come up. They have not been dealt with by the group of amendments we are debating today.
The new definition of animal is very broad. Not only does it elevate the status of animals, it also broadens the categories as well. It includes an extremely broad definition which says a vertebrate, other than a human being, or any other animal that has the capacity to feel pain. The category for these cruelty to animal offences has been broadened to any animal that can feel pain. I would defy the very government that has put this legislation in place to tell me to what animals that specifically applies.
The government is willing to put a law in place when it cannot possibly define to which animals the law applies, and there is grave danger in that. It does not make any sense to me. If the government cannot determine to which animals this law would apply, then how are people who deal with animals supposed to determine that? How broad could it go? How are people supposed to know to what this applies? The government should not put a law like this in place when it cannot define in a more specific way to what animals the law would apply. That is certainly one of the grave concerns that groups, including farmers, have with this legislation.
Just how bad this legislation is can be best demonstrated by looking at what the former justice minister said when she was talking about this piece of legislation. She said:
--what is lawful today in the courts of legitimate activities would be lawful when the bill receives royal assent.
She is saying that if it is lawful today to do these things, as a farmer for example, then when the bill passes it will still be lawful.
If that is the case and she wants to get tougher on cruelty to animal offences, then why on earth did she not just raise the penalty? She said it would not cover anything different. If she wanted to make it tougher, why did she not increase the penalties for the offences that are in place today? That would clearly do the job.
The former justice minister was being less than forthright in making a comment like that. It does not fit in. It does not compute. It does not make any sense. On the one hand the minister is saying that the new law will not apply to anything other than it applies today. The simplest and most obvious way to deal with that would be to increase the penalties. The government did not do that and I can only guess why. The government has not given a clear vision or view on that.
It would seem that the intent of this legislation goes well beyond the intent of the current legislation. Farmers and people who do medical research, which is so important to finding the cure for diseases such as cancer, have many good reasons to be concerned about the legislation and the changes that were made.
For eight years I have worked on having an effective form of gopher control returned to farmers. The Government of Alberta is finally providing this form of gopher control to farmers this spring, which is encouraging, under an emergency registration. If this law passes, farmers will have to worry about whether they can use that product to effectively control gophers without being found guilty under the law. I have concerns about that.
The amendments which should have been made have not been made. It is important that we support some of the amendments in this group.
