By Barbara Cartwright | CEO
On Monday June 17th Bill C-84, An Act to Amend the Criminal Code pertaining to Bestiality and Animal Fighting, passed through Parliament and into LAW!
This law does two things. It broadens the definition of bestiality in the Criminal Code making any sexual contact with an animal illegal. Bill C-84 signals Canada’s new priority on fighting animal crimes, which protects animals AND people too. What makes it ground-breaking is it that anyone convicted of animal sex abuse will now be required to register on Canada’s national Sex Offender Registry and to report annually to police.
This is a crucial improvement to our laws because sexual predators often use animals to groom or control the children and other vulnerable people they abuse. A recent report from the Center for Child Protection found that 87 per cent of the bestiality cases it studied also involved the sex abuse of children.
Tracking animal sex offenders protects children from their abusers by recognizing how violence against humans is linked to violence against animals. This is a Canadian first!
Secondly; encouraging, aiding or assisting in the fighting or baiting of animals is now an offence under the Criminal Code. Any person found breeding, training, keeping and transporting animals for fighting, as well as profiting from these fights will be subjected to criminal offence charges. This law protects communities, as animal fighting is often linked to organized crime. Bill C-84 also breaks new ground by extending animal fighting laws beyond cock fights to include all animals. It’s now a crime not only to attend an animal fight, but also to organize and host fights, train animals, broadcast fights or profit from the crime in any way.
Police know that dog fighting is usually associated with other criminal and gang activity. This is another way that Bill C-84 helps people while saving innocent animals from deadly cruelty.
Recently, animal welfare has not been a high priority for Canada’s law makers. Instead, it’s been a lighting rod issue that caused division and frustration. For 20 years now, we’ve struggled to update the simplest piece of legislation that protects animals – the animal cruelty section of the criminal code. It was originally enacted in the late 1800s. It’s sorely outdated and is out of step with modern Canadian life, animal welfare science and criminal law.
We look forward to a progressive future for the welfare of animals in Canada and we celebrate that thanks to your support of our work this critical piece of legislation was updated.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
