Written by: Heather Clemenceau
Finally, someone is proposing to fix the loophole in the Canadian criminal code that allows bestiality.
After Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s private member’s Bill C-246 — the Modernizing Animal Protections Act — was defeated in second reading by a vote of 198 to 84, it was left to Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to do something to improve animal protection laws. Despite it being a Liberal bill that would have seen the first substantive change to Canada’s animal protection laws in over 100 years, a total of 177 Liberal MPs voted against it. Only two Conservative MP’s voted in favour of it, and one of them was the MP for Calgary Nose Hill, Michelle Rempel.
Rempel has now introduced her own private members Bill C-388 – An Act to Amend the Criminal Code (bestiality). While it’s not as comprehensive as Erskine-Smith’s bill, it is intended to respond to the 2016 R. v. D.L.W. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the acquittal of a British Columbia man who was charged with bestiality after compelling the family dog to sexually abuse his 16-year-old stepdaughter.
MP Rempel issued the following statement after presenting her private members bill (full text available here):
“The Supreme Court has clearly indicated that this is a legal grey area that can only be corrected by legislation. I am disturbed that the government has not yet corrected this glaring void in our criminal code.
This is a non-partisan issue that is clearly needed to keep both humans and animals safe. The current law is reflective of an archaic understanding of sex, and the change that I am seeking to make with my bill both reflects the language of the Supreme Court ruling, and frankly is a no-brainer. The Liberals should have introduced legislation to correct this issue immediately after the ruling. Nearly a year and a half later, I hope that tabling this bill will encourage the Prime Minister to stop dragging his feet and take action to make this common sense change.”
Animal welfare and rights have long been considered a fairly liberal and left-wing issue. The current Liberal government has not, however, supported its party’s own bill; the ramifications of this disappointing result were felt by animal rights/welfare advocates across Canada. It left little doubt that we have our work cut out for us.
Call To Action!
Please ask your MP to support this bill – Find your Member of Parliament here. You can also offer support to Rempel’s Facebook thread on the bill here.
Once again Canadian politicians don’t miss a chance to show the world the regressive backwater they are when it comes to issues of animal cruelty and legislating on behalf of our animals; regardless of party affiliation the majority of spineless politicians remain more interested in appeasing special interest groups and voting blocs than doing what is right for the animals; and again it’s all about political correctness or , in the case of our Supreme Court, hiding behind the pathetic “legalisms” which allowed for their cowardly and unethical ruling on the bestiality case; meanwhile back in Ontario, and yes it is directly related, we have the same shameful “political mentality” that has produced and supported one of the most dysfunctional and incompetent animal “welfare” organizations one can imagine in the form of the OSPCA ; and make no mistake, it is the very same mentality rooted in anthropocentrism which leads to such cowardly decisions ending in the slaughter and sacrifice of innocent animals such as has been allowed at Shorthills; philosopher Jacques Derrida(1930-2004) has pointed out that we live in an epoch that is unprecedented in human history for the myriad ways in which animals are mistreated, in fact calling it “genocidal torture”; he maintained that ” this violence inflicted on animals will not fail to have profound reverberations(conscious and unconscious) on the image humans have of themselves.Much of Derrida’s work was devoted to revealing how animals have been misunderstood and maligned with typical human prejudice throughout much of the history of western thought; while we may find hope in some of today’s more enlightened attitudes and positive changes, in general, our thinking about animals continues to be dominated by the Cartesian view of hundreds of years ago..especially in our own country!
Reblogged this on catsaremine3.