The sorry state of animal protection in Canada
Imagine a country without national legislation dedicated to animals’ welfare.
A nation with no federal cabinet member or politician assigned responsibility and resources for promoting animals’ well-being.
A country that has no national hotline for reporting suspected animal cruelty, or targeted public investment for investigations into crimes against animals.
Actually, there’s no need to imagine this scenario — you’re living in that country.
Two-thirds of Canadian households now include animals, and every community on these lands includes other species. Polling regularly shows that a fierce opposition to animal cruelty is one of the few values that unites Canadians from all backgrounds, provinces and political persuasions. Yet our federal government is not doing enough for animals. In fact, it doesn’t do much to protect animals at all.
Canada has long fared poorly in global rankings, earning a D on the World Animal Protection Index, well behind countries like Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland, India and Mexico. And the federal government has shown little interest in changing the status quo.
Meanwhile, in early August, the New Zealand government announced its intentions to strengthen its animal welfare act — for the second time in the past three years. Earlier this year, the British government announced ambitious new legislation to combat many kinds of animal harm. The last major reform of Canada’s wholly inadequate cruelty laws took place in the 1950s.
National governments around the world are responding to increased public concern about the severe damage we do to animals’ bodies and minds through live export, factory farming, cosmetics testing, fur farming, exotic animal ownership and interpersonal abuse. This makes the silence from the Canadian government on these urgent issues all the more conspicuous and alarming.
It’s also dangerous. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the interconnectedness of human, animal and environmental health. The very real risk of zoonotic (animal to human) pathogen transmission is heightened when exotic animals are moved across borders, and when millions of slaughter-bound animals are kept in grossly overcrowded cauldrons for disease and microbial resistance.
Plus, animal abuse regularly occurs before or alongside violence against women, children and seniors. Protecting animals is not a distraction from today’s most pressing social and environmental issues — animal protection is inextricably connected to the health, safety and well-being of everyone in Canada.
Most (but not all) provinces and territories have laws protecting some animals from certain kinds of illegal cruelty, although the strength and utility of these laws varies widely. Additionally, this uneven legal terrain is enforced by a patchwork of police agencies, specialized animal protection officers, municipal agents and investigators working for charities — local or provincial SPCAs and humane societies.
There are some glimmers of hope at the federal level. Recent changes to the Criminal Code have restricted the breeding of captive whales and dolphins, and modernized provisions on bestiality and animal fighting. Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith oversees an all-party animal welfare caucus.
But the lack of serious discussion or substantive action by the federal government to address even common-sense policy issues — such as banning the live export of horses for slaughter — is embarrassing for a nation that purports to care about animals and their treatment. Erosion moves faster than the federal government, when it comes to animal protection.
Despite the scale of suffering and our linked vulnerabilities, animal welfare is likely to be low on the agenda this election — if it’s on the agenda at all. This ongoing neglect must change.
If New Zealand and Great Britain — both agricultural powerhouses — can summon the political will to protect the most vulnerable beings among us, why can’t Canada?