Justice committee  Good afternoon. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon. My name is indeed Stephen Kaye, and I am the president of the Canadian Police Canine Association. I represent hundreds of law enforcement canine handlers from across Canada. I'm here

Justice committee  Again, having been in service for many years, as Troy alluded to, we have an understanding of how the courts work and what 18 months actually equates to. If you've spent some time on remand, etc., these numbers become alarmingly small, alarmingly quickly. A saying I've heard a

Justice committee  It's the certainty that there will be a consequence. I'll expand on what Troy said, in the other sense that I deal with people across this country who are dog-passionate people. They come out to public demonstrations, presentations, and the competitions that we do. We did one la

Justice committee  I appreciate that, sir.

Justice committee  We don't have them all on there. The Edmonton Police Service has lost a number that haven't been added to the list. I think that sometimes it's the nature of events. A dog that is shot and killed is going to be on the website. If a dog died in a car collision while a member was

Justice committee  I get asked reasonably frequently how often a service dog is hurt or killed. The fact of the matter is that a lot of police officers don't lay the cruelty to animal charge, because it's ridiculous. There are a lot of other charges that are laid. There's a belief that not very muc

Justice committee  That is posted on our website. That's correct.

Justice committee  Is that figure accurate? No, it's not.

Justice committee  The largest training facility would obviously be the RCMP police dog service training centre in Innisfail, Alberta. The next largest would likely be the OPP's training program here in Ontario. Outside of that you have roughly 500 service dogs engaged in various forms of law enfor

Justice committee  We have to keep in mind that these dogs train every single day that they work. To maintain the level of proficiency for a dog that will track someone for five miles half an hour after they've gone through an area takes a lot of work and it's ongoing. It cannot stop until the dog

Justice committee  That's an interesting question and as you raise it, I struggle to think when that would ever occur. I think there would be extremely limited occasions. However, I think it's important to include it and that might surprise you. If for instance and I saw an instance once.... Here'

Justice committee  It's so situational. There are dogs out there, and we had a belief for many years.... I've been in the dog game for a long time. We had a belief years ago that we couldn't reteam dogs, we couldn't recreate that initial bond, and we couldn't count on the dog when the chips were re

Justice committee  I'll speak quickly to that as well. I've seen legislation that also includes the word “interfere”, and interference is a very broad brush. What defines interference? I don't know if there should be some discussion about including that or not. It would boil down to interpretation

Justice committee  Correct. The clause, and it came up, says “wilfully”. You're the owner and it doesn't stipulate how you cause harm, but that you “wilfully” did something to cause that to occur. You initiated a process.

Justice committee  I believe so.