It is my pleasure to introduce to the House the Albanian community association from Waterloo region.

Lejdi Ago, Vlorat Vitia, Drita Berisha, Ariana Elezi, Halime Tropusha, Gjylzade Kelmendi, Bujar Kelmendi, Arber Morina, Shkelzen Islami, Sefedin Gashi, Muje Gashi, Adem Sulemani, Fitim Muharremi, Arben Sadiku, Ekrem Sadiku, Driton Qirici, Orges Zejna, Kevin Tervoli, Admir Sadiki, Dajtina Aliu, Antony Lena and Arben Faikovski, welcome to your House. Thank you so much for coming.

I’m very happy to stand up and have the opportunity to speak about this act, and seeing as I have the floor, I want to tell a story that’s unrelated but—well, somewhat related, but personal to me.

I articled in the Ottawa crown attorney’s office, and when I was an articling student there, there was an animal cruelty case in Ottawa that sort of took the media by storm. It’s interesting because in animal cruelty cases, they are unusual by being almost universally the only cases that are identified by the name of the victim as versus by the name of the accused. That doesn’t happen with person-on-person violence. So this was the Breezy case.

In this situation, a very violent and disturbed young man had a black Lab puppy. One of the things that’s sort of sadly interesting about animal cruelty is its connection to domestic and family violence, and animals being used as tools of intimidation. He had a habit of being quite abusive to his mother, and on this day, his mother wouldn’t let him in the house because she was scared of him.

The dog, Breezy, was in the backyard of their home, so he took the puppy and he went around the front of the house where there was a big picture window, and his mother was in the living room, and he proceeded to—the dog, Breezy, should have died. He beat her with a large construction shovel, raising the shovel over his head and bringing it down on her skull. He was wearing steel-toed boots and he kicked her multiple times with it. And finally, when she stopped trying to get up, he took her body and he threw it, up and over, into an empty renovation bin.

The first officer on scene had the presence of mind—she thought the dog, Breezy, was dead. She had the presence of mind to take a photo from the top of the garbage bin—like, one of those ones that’s about six feet down. It was empty at the time and you could just see this tiny, little black body in a pool of blood. Miraculously, she didn’t die. She should have died. I don’t know how she lived, but she lived.

Anyway, it attracted an enormous media storm and a large petition movement calling on the Ottawa crown’s office to treat this case appropriately. I had been agitating to be part of this case before the petition had even happened, after we first got the file, and I was one of the first people to see the file. I was an articling student at the time.

What was really interesting about this case was, less than a year before that, the federal government had brought in new Criminal Code legislation. So prior to this amendment, animal cruelty had been only what’s called a summary offence, which is the lowest grade of offence. So here, we have summary and indictable, similar to the States’ misdemeanour and felony. Very recently—I think it was only maybe six months, maybe a year before that—Parliament had voted to amend the animal cruelty provision in the Criminal Code to make it a hybrid offence, which means it is subject to election. So the crown, in assessing the case, can choose to proceed by indictment or by summary conviction.

Luckily, there’s a crown in Ottawa, who I actually have talked to about this bill—I’ve remained in contact with her; her name is Tara Dobec. She is, by far, one of the biggest champions for not just criminal prosecutions but also provincial prosecutions regarding animals. I went to her and basically said something along the lines of, “Tara, can you please assign yourself to this case and can I please be part of it?”

It became obvious that the accused was most likely going to plead guilty, but the issue is that we were going to be and became the—it was the first case in all of Canada where the crown proceeded by indictment, so we were in completely uncharted territory, legally.

When you’re preparing for sentence, usually speaking, you prepare your sentencing charts. You do your sentencing research to look at similar cases and see what consequences they have got. But hither to this point, sentences for animal cruelty in Canada were laughable—absolutely laughable, insulting. We knew that defence counsel was going to bring us cases that had a similarly laughable sentencing regime and we were going to argue that because that was the standard, we should apply the standard now.

Our issue became how to make an argument on sentencing that would encourage the judge to completely disregard all prior sentencing law in this brand new world that we were in. We also wanted—because when you’re looking at sentencing cases as part of research, you want the judge’s decision on sentence to include as much obiter comment and facts as possible, because then that case becomes a seminal case in prosecuting these offences elsewhere.

What I did at the time was I ended up—I went through, in painstaking detail, all of the Hansard debates about this change to the legislation in the federal Parliament, and it was fascinating because what they were talking about, their reason for doing it, was all to do with domestic and intimate partner violence and family violence. In some ways, they had overcome the opposition of some people who had that “it’s just an animal” attitude by saying, “Even if you think it’s just an animal, it’s also connected to this other extremely dangerous aspect in society.”

Then we went back, and we looked at the few other cases where Parliament had gone from summary to hybrid, and we prepared, I think, possibly the most comprehensive sentencing casebook that we’ve ever been part of, and almost 10 years ago now—it was June 2014—that individual was sentenced. Not only was it the first time in Canada where the crown proceeded by indictment, but it was also the first time in Canada for the accused to receive the maximum sentence. He received two years less a day on the animal cruelty alone, which was an unheard-of sentence at the time, and honestly remains, I think, probably one of the proudest moments in my legal career, and I was still articling at the time.

It’s fascinating; as somebody who has prosecuted, formerly, SPCA offences myself on many occasions, the fact that I’m standing in the Ontario Parliament now, becoming part of the Hansard debate on a law that is concerned with animal welfare, feels like a very full-circle moment to me. I will be very excited to see the first successful prosecution under this new legislation.

To talk again briefly about the legislation, I know I have spoken to some people who are not as big of a dog lover as I am that may question why we are doing this, and—frankly, I think it’s a misattributed quote, so I don’t really want to attribute in to Gandhi because I don’t think it’s actually accurate, but there’s that statement that we judge a society’s humanity on the basis of how it treats its most vulnerable. I will not say that we are close to any measure of perfection or even adequacy as far as that measurement goes, but every step forward is in itself a positive impact.

When we talk about puppy mills, particularly, they are an endeavour that is motivated by greed. It gives an opportunity for people who are lacking in ethics, lacking in kindness, compassion, morality, to keep dogs, a very loving and gentle animal, in often appalling circumstances in order to operate with very low overhead and generate puppies that can be sold for the profit of the operator.

When we look at how you prosecute this and why there needs to be a specific offence—because there are arguments that, “Okay, we already have a distress provision, so why not proceed under a distress provision?” The issue here is—it’s not akin to what happened federally, but one of the arguments that I literally made in convincing that judge to give that sentence, two years less a day, was I said, “The very fact that Parliament voted on this, that Parliament voted to make this a hybrid offence and give the crown the opportunity to proceed by indictment, is sending a clear measure that the people of Canada, as meted out by the representative democracy, are saying that this particular offence”—in that case, animal cruelty; in this case, the operation of puppy mills—“is a particularly negative, pernicious behaviour that the government wishes to call out, name, shame in a very specific fashion.” That is part of the reason why this is so important: It is a clear message from this government to say that this is conduct that is not acceptable in Ontario society.

There’s also a significant amount of, what I would say is almost a consumer protection aspect to this. Now, I will be honest: I do not come from the supportive side of the “Adopt, don’t shop” logo. I own a purebred dog that I paid for, and I am far more likely to support the idea of, “Buy, own, possess your dog in a responsible and ethical manner.” Supporting ethical breeders is something that I’m happy to endorse versus the idea of just continually trying to deal with the overflow of unwanted animals that we’re seeing right now. Frankly, that overflow of unwanted dogs is in large part coming from puppy mills because they can simply churn out any number of litters and tack a multi-thousand-dollar price tag onto them and rake in the money. They rarely pay taxes or anything like that.

A lot of these dogs—never mind the parents of these dogs—are coming inbred, poorly socialized, riddled with disease, riddled with parasites. There is a statistical correlation between mill dogs and bite incidents, lack of socialization. So you have people who have failed to do their research properly to find the flags of a puppy mill and have bought these animals, brought them to their home—often at a fairly significant personal expense and emotional investment—only to find out that they have bought a dog that is ill, that in many cases they may now be just as in love with as any member of their family, but facing thousands of dollars in veterinary costs and a great deal of emotional distress. So by punishing these types of bad actors, we’re also protecting the Ontarians that wish to welcome a dog into their life, but want to do so responsibly.

I also want to briefly address the member from Kiiwetinoong’s concerns. I agree with some of what he said about the state of dogs up in the north; it’s considerably different than it is in the rest of southern Ontario, and a lot of that is to do with the lack of access to veterinarians. I’m pleased that our government has been providing more supports to OVC to open up more opportunities for veterinarians to train, but in a lot of these fly-in communities that wouldn’t be able to support a veterinarian themselves, he’s right: There is very little access to basic veterinary care or surgical services.

However—and I’ll pull out a little bit of the lawyer stuff—as I said, I prosecuted these types of offences. Although it changed from SPCA to PAWS, the framework remains the exact same, and what is key to understand with PAWS offences, as well as with offences under Bill 159, is that these are what are called strict-liability offences.

I’ll do a little mini-class on that. Strict liability implies that when you are dealing with this offence, there’s no mens rea to it—so there doesn’t need to be any intention to commit the act. The crown, the prosecutor, merely has to prove that the act itself was committed, and that is on the highest standard of proof, which is beyond a reasonable doubt. Unlike an absolute-liability offence, in a strict-liability offence, the accused person has the opportunity to raise one of two defences, even though there is no mens rea component, and those two defences are mistake of fact and due diligence.

I think that is what would, frankly, operate to mitigate that member’s concerns about animals on northern reserves, because while we get to the point that the crown has, for example, proven that you have violated a section of the new Bill 159—we’ve made it past the actus reus; we’ve made it past the burden of proof of beyond a reasonable doubt—however, the accused then has the opportunity to raise their defence. I think that in the case of a lot of northern dogs—and I don’t want to be seen to be making a sweeping legal statement here; this is just an interpretation of one person, in no way binding. What I anticipate would happen is—the assessment of due diligence is essentially whether or not a reasonable person in the same situation would have taken all possible steps to prevent the event from happening.

I personally believe that, in the event of northern dogs being born in the conditions in which they are being born, it would be fairly easy for a person, if it had moved to charges, which I don’t think it would, but if it had moved to charges for the person to be able to show a due-diligence defence, because the court would be obligated to take into consideration the fact that that person had no realistic access to veterinary services, no realistic access to spay and neuter services, that we have a massive overpopulation in those areas.

So I understand the member’s concerns. In fact, that was something that initially occurred to me when I was looking at this legislation in the context of a PMB, but as somebody who has prosecuted this, I believe that were it to ever get to the point of charges, which I would find incredibly unlikely, that due diligence defence, essentially, would operate to prevent the type of people in his community or the Matawan community from actually bearing any responsibility legally for this.

I don’t know if that put his mind to rest at all, but I certainly understand his concerns. I raised them myself, and that is my own answer to my own concerns.

Ultimately, I am very, very pleased to be seeing this today. It’s a very small step, but right before I started my election campaign, I lost my dog. He was only three, and I lost him after a 10-month battle with terminal illness. I won’t say how much I spent on him because it appalls many people, but if time or money or tears or trips to the vet would have saved him, he would still be here; ultimately I lost. But it offends me on a deep moral level to see other people treating dogs like throwaway items that can be used and abused and profited from in any way.

I realize that we have a lot of distance to travel when it comes to animal welfare, but I am still in a position where I will celebrate the taking of this particular step and I am really looking forward to seeing, from the sidelines now, the first time that charges are laid under this new provision. I will be following with great excitement whatever provincial prosecutor first takes the reins on this and follows a prosecution to its conclusion. I think it will be a landmark day, and while specific deterrence and general deterrence are not always the strongest of sentencing principles, when you have offences that are motivated by greed, as a puppy mill operation is, the knowledge that conviction can happen and that the financial consequences of such can be swift and drastic I do think will have a significant impact on the perpetrators of this type of offence.

I also hope that it will give some support or some relief to our animal welfare inspectors as well, because part of what this does is it gives them a much clearer framework under which to actually lay charges rather than the more sort of amorphous area that is general distress provisions. So I am hoping that they will find it easier to investigate and lay charges against perpetrators, and I am hoping that—as I said, I’m looking forward to hearing the stories of the first provincial prosecutors who pursue prosecution under this offence.

Ultimately, I’ll be voting for it, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

I appreciate the member’s comments about domestic violence. I will be very enthusiastically looking forward to hearing some of the experts that testify before our upcoming IPV committee. But one of the reasons that I think this does something is that when you look at the framework of how these prosecutions work, the crown doesn’t, in fact, prosecute these; municipal prosecutors do, who are funded by municipalities, not by the province.

Animal investigations and prosecutions are extremely time-consuming and difficult. They attract media attention. They drag on for days and days and days. When you are a busy provincial prosecutor just trying to get through your HTA cases, frankly, these can fall behind. That further discourages our hard-working animal welfare inspectors.

By tacking on a very, very high fine, it significantly focuses and increases, I think, the desire and motivation for provincial prosecutors to prioritize these types of offences. So that is how I think this will have a significant impact.

I did a lot of, at the time, SPCA prosecutions. The very last one I did before leaving the crown was a cat-hoarding case. That was six days of trial on cat hoarding alone with a single, self-represented defendant. I ended up getting a three-year prohibition. I don’t even know if I got a fine. So that was six days of trial that I didn’t end up being able to spend on the HTA offences that, frankly, fill up the municipality’s coffers.

By having these very high fines, as somebody that operated as a provincial prosecutor, I would feel much more comfortable taking six days of provincial court trial time knowing that I would be getting a very significant fine as a result. So I think it has a huge impact.

If I could snap my fingers and dispense money to all these institutions, I would. However, I must say that, with all due respect to London, I would be advocating for the Humane Society of Kitchener Waterloo and Stratford Perth first, which is also planning on doing a similar expansion. I’ve done what I can. I think the issue with these types of projects is they tend to sort of fall between ministries.

But I really appreciate the work that these organizations do, both London and the Kitchener-Waterloo and Stratford-Perth humane societies. We would be quite lost without them.

I think the first part is the fact that this bill is drawing the issue of puppy mills out into the daylight. These are things that operate on private property; in dark and locked-up barns; in cramped circumstances; in fetid, unbelievable conditions. And unfortunately, a lot of people really have no idea what a puppy mill even is. So the fact that the government is actually choosing to spend time and debate time on this issue, I think, forces people to even type into Google “What is a puppy mill,” which would get a lot farther as far as even not supporting them.

But the other part that I touched on briefly is that even for those who may not feel a particular affiliation with animals or with dogs, there is a very significant consumer protection angle here, as well, which is the fact that people spend thousands and thousands of dollars on mill dogs that they bring home that are disease-ridden, full of parasites, inbred, unsocialized, prone to bites, and then often dropped off at our humane societies that are absolutely crippled under the load of pandemic dogs. So that’s why I think this is important.

However, I can say to the member that I meet and hear from the same people, and the government, I know—as I look over at a member in particular—has a number of extremely active supporters of increasing those types of standards. So that issue is far from lacking in champions on both sides of this House.