Help pass stronger anti-cruelty laws in Canada!

[Tigerlily]

I received this in another vegan community. I decided to copy and paste and let people here know.

IFAW Action Alert:

After a Yukon man was told that 15 of his neglected dogs would be confiscated, he shot all 56 of his dogs, threw them into a pile on his front lawn, and sat on top of the dead animals waiting for the police to return.

And there was nothing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) could do about it.

That’s because Canada’s national animal cruelty legislation hasn’t been significantly updated since 1892 and is extremely difficult to enforce. Currently, less than ¼ of 1% of animal abuse complaints lead to successful convictions.

Help pass stronger anti-cruelty laws in Canada!

IFAW has been working for seven years to pass modern legislation in Canada that will protect animals from horrific acts of cruelty, including amendments that:

- Update the language so that it is easier to prosecute individuals who neglect their animals.
- Remove animals from the property section of the Criminal Code of Canada. Currently wild and stray animals are virtually unprotected from shocking acts of cruelty because they are not considered property.
- Make it illegal to breed animals for fighting.

But now all of this work is being threatened. Senate Bill S-213 is making its way through Parliament and may derail all of our efforts to protect animals from cruelty.

Bill S-213 is an ineffective bill that does not contain any of the amendments that IFAW has been fighting for. The bill contains the same loopholes and outdated language of the Criminal Code and only provides a few increased penalties which will remain nearly impossible to enforce.

Animal abusers who slip through the cracks unpunished today will continue to do so under S-213. Law enforcement officers would still be helpless to protect the 56 dogs that were neglected and systematically shot by the man they were dependent on for care.

S-213 ignores the core issues that need to be addressed to effectively protect animals from cruelty and prosecute offenders. Please write to your MP today and ask them to oppose Bill S-213.

P.S. Under this ineffective legislation, abusers of animals such as “Buddy Bear”, the young bear cub stolen from his mother and beaten repeatedly by a Wakefield, QC area man, would still be charged with nothing more than owning an animal without a license. Please say no to Bill S-213 now!

Please forward this message!!

(Check out this link for a comparison of Bill S-213 and current legislation!)

Thank you!

[Alvin Carrier]

Can one of the many Brits on here confirm or refute what I've heard about animal welfare laws there:
-that England has at least tens of thousands of seals (can anyone give a more specific figure?) but no sealhunt. I understand a seal can be killed if it interferes with a fishing net. What exactly does the seal have to do to be killed (what is interfering?) and does anyone have a statistic on how many such seals are killed? Canada hunts about 335,000 in one year officially, and I hear some such slaughters go uncounted.
-I hear it's been illegal in England since 2001 to kill an animal primarily for its fur. I hear an animal can be killed there if it qualifies as a pest (eg., rats, mice and rabbits) and then its fur can be used to advantage. Here in Canada, any thoughts of imposing the same limits on fur trapping would be met with cries that Canada would soon be infested with disease and that Canada would soon be overrun with animals. But England is a much smaller country--I would think England would would then be intested and overrun much more quickly, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
-I hear there has NEVER been a rodeo in England.
-while I'm at it, I hear the UK has 65 million people and about 700 murders per year. Canada has half that population and about 500-600 murders per year.
Each of these comparisons so far favours the UK. I've written letters to newspapers here to say the English are simply more civilized than Canadians (or Americans). If this post draws some interest, I might post some addresses of newspapers here so that you English animal lovers can tell Canadians how backward the latter are. I don't mind. If it's true, it's true.

[LuC]

I think it is sad that Canada is archaic in it’s animal protection and abuse legislation. We can be so socially forward and backward all at the same time. I hope to see a change in the near future.