Canada's current animal cruelty law is simply criminal

The reason heinous acts like this are taking place in this country is because Canada's animal cruelty law is hopelessly outdated and ineffective. It's basically a 115 year old law that still considers animals as 'property', does not consider it an offence for someone to train animals to fight other animals and still places the onus on the prosecution to prove wilful neglect for a conviction to even take place. In fact, only 1% of culprits of animal cruelty are ever convicted at all!

While we Canadians like to see ourselves as the world's consciousness and moral compass, often looking down on our neighbours to the south for their atrocious human rights record, the sad reality is that someone like Michael Vick would walk here at home. We have nothing to be proud of when it comes to our animal laws.

For those of you not familiar with the latest developments, here's the 411 on Bill S-213 and Bill C-373. The first bill is a private Senator's bill, which has already passed a second reading and was supposed to have been voted on this past Friday. The vote has been deferred to Wednesday, April 9.

Not one single animal protection agency in the country supports this bill, because it's viewed as lazy legislation aimed at pacifying a few without actually making any serious changes to the legislation.

S-203 would maintain the exact same wording as the original law, would continue to allow the training of animals for dog fights, would still consider animal cruelty a property offence and would continue to make it difficult to prosecute cases of neglect.

"This bill takes 1892 legislation and simply adjusts it for inflation by increasing the penalties," said Steve Carroll, CEO of the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies. Most importantly, if the wording of the legislation remains the same and there's no increase in the current 1% of successful convictions of animal cruelty, of what use is a new law that increases the penalties for that measly few?

Bill C-373 on the other hand, aside from increasing penalties, would also close some of the loopholes and make it an offence to kill an animal without a lawful excuse or train an animal to fight. It would be a law with much more of a bite.

So where's the problem? The problem is our MPs are failing animal lovers across the country miserably. The Liberals, the Conservatives and the Bloc are all supporting inadequate Bill S-203 (although some Liberals, like NDG MP Marlene Jennings, are not), while the only party opposing it is the NDP.

It's not too late to make a difference. Voice your disgust with current animal legislation, write or call your MP and register your dissent with S-203. Force them to listen to the people who voted them into office in the first place.

Abused animals have no voice, but you do. But if you don't use it, you might as well be looking the other way the next time some sadistic animal takes a bat to a helpless pup.