Animal welfare groups need to grow up

Jun 4/08, Harry Siemens ... The animal welfare lobby has mostly itself to blame for the watered down animal rights bill just passed by Parliament says veteran farm journalist Alex Binkley covering agriculture from the National Press Galley in Ottawa. Welfare groups were all over Parliament Hill in recent weeks and holding rallies in cities across the country objecting to the bill and calling for stronger laws.

“What they want is the kind of legislation proposed by the former Liberal government a decade ago,” said Binkley. “After some amendments, it got passed a couple of times by the Commons but never made it through the Senate.

He said the way they wrote the bill and launched it is the real reason it foundered. The Justice Department drafted it as a sort of animal welfare wish list without consulting organizations representing farmers, hunters, trappers, aboriginals, and others that deal with animals.

“When the legislation was made public, they mounted a strong lobby against some of its provisions which they rightly saw as opening up their activities to constant attack by the welfare groups,” said Binkley. “This clouded the bill in controversy even though it was sufficiently amended to make it through the Commons. The important point in all this was the farm organizations and the others made it clear they weren’t opposed to stronger penalties for animal abuse. They just didn’t want their own rights trampled in the process.”

If, at this point, the welfare groups had been more interested in improving the law instead of having their own way, they would have met the farm and other organizations to work out amendments they could all accept.

“That approach would have gotten everyone on side, and the resulting legislation would likely have been law for some years now and perpetrators of puppy mills and dragged cats would have all received the sentences they deserve,” he said. ” The animal welfare groups should have gotten together with the farm and other organizations as soon as Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in 2006 that his government was content to proceed with the bill introduced by Senator John Bryden. Given the time wasted on the previous legislation and the lack of agreement on what else needed doing, Harper’s decision was hardly surprising.”

However, had the animal welfare groups, the farm and other organizations come to Parliament with a joint proposal for improving Bryden’s bill, it most likely would have shot through Parliament.

Binkley said, in the end there was a bizarre spectacle of Liberal MP Charlie Hubbard shepherding the Bryden bill while another Liberal was pushing the animal welfare one. Parliament passed the Bryden bill by a convincing 189-71.

“The count should send a message to the animal welfare groups that they need to grow up,” he said.