By Tina Depko
Bill C-15B increases animal protection but leaves industries alone, writes Tina Depko.
A cat screeches pitifully as its skin is peeled back with a knife. Its muffled pleas go unanswered as the executioners continue their morbid mission. When they are done, they decapitate the suffering animal and throw its body in their fridge. The stop button on his camcorder is pressed and he ejects the videotape adding it to his growing collection.
If this sounds like some sick, twisted excerpt from a work of fiction, it isn’t. This happened in Toronto in January and is enough to make anyone’s stomach turn.
Under the current cruelty to animal sections in the Canadian Criminal Code the “executioners” could be sentenced up to six months in jail, fined $2,000 and forbidden to own an animal for up to two years.
That’s a slap on the wrist. The fact that they could get off scot-free due to the cryptic wording of the Code is unacceptable. The animal cruelty section was written in 1892 when animals were considered property.
The Federal Department of Justice got its act together and proposed changes to animal cruelty laws in 1999. The mission failed when Bill C-17 died in the October 2000 federal election.
The latest attempt, Bill C-15B, shows greater promise of being passed. If it becomes law it will revolutionize the way animal abusers are punished.
The most impressive part of this bill is that it increases penalties for people who willfully abuse animals. If passed, Bill C-15B will allow judges to imprison these criminals for up to five years, make them pay up to $10,000 in fines and prohibit them from ever owning an animal again. Someone who skins a cat alive should never be allowed to have another animal under their care.
Another area where this provision will be effective is in the battle against the rising number of puppy mills.
“There are puppy mill owners that have been charged several times with operating a puppy mill, but because the law has been very lenient and because they have been dealing with their own property they have never been prevented from owning animals,” says David Loan, campaign manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “So as fast as they are convicted and fined, they have their puppy mills running again. This bill could change that.”
Bill C-15B also places the animal cruelty laws in the section dealing with sex offences, morals and disorderly conduct rather than under the property section of the Criminal Code. A Winnipeg man was let off after he crushed the skull of a stray cat with his boot because the animal was not anyone’s property. Stray animals and wildlife have just as much right to be protected as animals who have owners.
“With the animal crimes section under the property crimes section of the Criminal Code, it makes it very hard to prosecute,” says Shelagh MacDonald, program director for the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies.
“Some of the wording in the current Code is very outdated and it lets animals that are not owned, either stray or wild, to fall through the cracks.”
Some have applauded the strengthened laws, but they are met with suspicion by animal industries.
“We feel that the bill threatens agriculture, rural Canada, and all animal based industries,” argues Peggy Strankman, manager of environmental affairs at the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association. “The cattle industry supports tougher penalties for animal abuse, but the changes
that they are making set the stage to open up our industries to lawsuits that would challenge our basic accepted animal husbandry practices.”
Removing animals from the property section indicates how serious the justice department is about strengthening animal cruelty laws. This should not negatively impact animal industries.
Recent Prairie droughts have left many ranchers in tough financial situations, and the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association fears that removing animal cruelty laws from the property section will open the door for unfair, individual lawsuits that will prove costly to farmers.
It is easy to get lost in the bill’s wording, but it does not appear that animal industries will be at any more risk than they have been the last 110 years. The Crown still has to approve charges and it must be in the public interest to prosecute.
Karen Markham, a lawyer at the federal department of justice, says the Criminal Code sets minimal standards of behaviour towards animals and that these standards were never intended to regulate the industry. She adds the changes proposed in the bill will not affect animal industries any more than in the past.
“The test for liability has not changed, so it is not as if industry is suddenly at risk in a way that they weren’t before,” Markham argues. “There’s always controversy created when there is change. People just don’t know what is in store for them.”
Animal rights advocates have been fighting for two decades to modernize animal cruelty laws. The fears of the animal industry aside, passing the bill would at long last give a voice in the courtroom for those who cannot speak for themselves.