By Kerri Thomson | Manager, Justice and Legislative Affairs
Hello,
Thank you for your continued support of Humane Canada. We’re pleased to share an update on the latest developments in animal cruelty legislation. Please note that this report contains some mildly graphic content that some readers may find difficult.
On February 11, a Winnipeg couple responsible for the torture and deaths of more than 90 animals were sentenced to 12 years imprisonment on animal cruelty charges, with a lifetime prohibition order against being around animals. It is the highest sentence in Canadian court history for an animal cruelty offence.
In delivering his decision, the judge read from Winnipeg Humane Society's Community Impact Statement. Humane Canada was proud to support this member organization in crafting this statement, which included important context on the trauma and emotional damage that their staff underwent in fielding calls from the community about the horrific details that emerged during and after the investigation in the media.
Please note there is some mildly graphic content to follow:
The couple created a business selling videos of animals being crushed to death on the dark web that they marketed to a Telegram group with more than 100 members.
While animal cruelty is an offence under the Criminal Code, there are currently no sufficient charges that address this issue of possessing and sharing animal torture content which is becoming an increasingly urgent issue. This content has links to violent online extremism that targets children and vulnerable youth to desensitize them to violence.
The United States adopted federal legislation specific to the act of animal crushing and related videos in 2010. Humane Canada will be asking the government to adopt similar measures in Bill C-16 that would include appropriate provisions and penalties for this violence to better protect potential animal victims.
In other news, on December 9, the federal government introduced Bill C16, the Protecting Victims Act—a major step toward recognizing the Violence Link. The bill would criminalize animal sexual abuse images and modernize definitions of illicit material in the Criminal Code.
A new offence targets the publication or distribution of bestiality representations, with penalties of up to five years. Updates would group these materials with other forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Bill C16 also creates a new coercive control offence that explicitly includes harming, threatening, or controlling the care of an intimate partner’s animals, using language similar to the previous government private member’s bill C-332, which received unanimous support in the House of Commons. Criminal harassment provisions would also be amended to cover threats directed at a person’s animals.
The Criminal Code update on the criminalization of animal sexual abuse images is something that Humane Canada has been fighting for since before Bill C-84, which updated the definition of bestiality to include any contact for a sexual purpose with an animal in 2019. Closing that loophole will better protect not only animal victims, but also children who are subjected to these images which are too often used as a grooming tool by perpetrators of sexual abuse.
Perpetrators of abuse often use animal abuse, and threats of it, to coerce, control, and intimidate partners, children, and elders into staying silent about their abuse. They use the same approach to prevent people from leaving or to force them to return. Animals are often overlooked in cases involving broader human harm unless explicitly included in legislation.
Bill C16 was deemed read a second time on February 2 and sent to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights for further study. You can track the bill’s progress here.
We thank you fo your continued kindness for animals and support of animal cruelty legislation in Canada. We look forward to keeping you updated on progress made.
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By Melissa Devlin | Manager, Annual Donor Relations & Engagement
By Melissa Devlin | Manager, Annual Donor Relations and Engagement
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