No bite left in animal welfare bill
Back in February, a rookie Toronto MP brought forward a private member’s bill that was about as close to endorsing motherhood as a politician could get. Or, at least, that’s how it seemed. On the face of it, Bill C-246, Liberal Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s proposal to modernize animal protection, appeared resolutely uncontroversial.
It called for a ban on shark-fin imports, tougher rules against animal fighting and abusive puppy mills and a prohibition against the sale of dog and cat fur.
It sought to close loopholes in existing law by specifying that it would be illegal to kill any animal “brutally or viciously.”
It also sought to close another loophole by widening the definition of bestiality to include any kind of sexual activity between humans and animals.
And it formally recognized something already implicit in Canadian law — that while animals may belong to humans, they are not just property in the sense that, say, tables and chairs are.
In a more logical world, the bill would have been adopted in a heartbeat.
But animal cruelty laws are a touchy subject in Canada. Representatives of the so-called animal use industry, including the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, railed against the bill, warning that it represented the thin edge of a gigantic animal-rights wedge.
Rural MPs, including Liberals, said the bill was anti-farmer. Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government refused to support it.
In the end, Erskine-Smith got the message. This week, in an attempt to salvage something from his efforts, he backed down.
On Wednesday, he told his fellow MPs that if they allowed the bill to go forward to its next stage, study by a Commons committee, he would personally guarantee that it was gutted there.
Under the headline, “Stopping animal cruelty, keeping hamburgers,” he circulated a revised version that deleted almost five pages of the seven-page bill.
Gone was any attempt to move animal cruelty laws out of the property section of the criminal code. Gone, too, was the proposed ban against killing animals “brutally or viciously.”
The proposed ban against shark-fin imports remained. But Erskine-Smith told the Commons that if the wording caused anyone problems, he’d be willing to amend that, too.
Also remaining in the revised version were tougher rules against animal fighting, the ban on the sale of dog and cat fur and a toughening of language around negligent behaviour and bestiality.
But politically, it was a rout. Even with Erskine-Smith’s promise of amendments, Bill C-246 is unlikely to pass when it comes up for a second-reading vote Oct. 6.
The animal use industry is still opposed. So, it seems, are plenty of rural MPs, both Conservative and Liberal.
“The effect of the bill is to risk criminalizing currently legal activity,” Quebec Liberal MP David de Burgh Graham told the Commons on Wednesday.
“I do not believe my family belongs in prison for sustainably feeding ourselves,” he added in a burst of hyperbole.
Greg Farrant, who is government affairs manager for the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, said his organization is still urging all MPs to scrap the bill.
Farrant said the hunting and angling group would support some of Erskine Smith’s aims, such as cracking down on animal-fighting activities, such as bearbaiting (although even here, OFAH would like language that ensured hunters could continue a different kind of bear baiting — the practice of leaving out buckets of rotting meat in order to attract the big animals into kill zones).
But, Farrant said, Bill C-246 is fatally flawed. To make it palatable to hunters would require simply too many amendments. The Ontario Federation of Agricultural, in a note posted on its website this week, takes a similar position.
Erskine-Smith sounds understandably frustrated. On Wednesday he noted that his bill was nearly identical to other versions that passed the Commons but, for various reasons, never made it into law.
Still, he appears sanguine about his decision to eviscerate the bill.
“Something is better than nothing,” he told disappointed animal welfare supporters in a YouTube video.
And perhaps it is. But my guess is that, in spite of his climbdown, nothing is what Erskine-Smith — and the animals he champions — will get from this exercise.