Yes, it’s legal now. I can use it now. News flash: This is the first time I’ve ever done this.

This is a news article: “Tribunal judgement saves farmer from almost $400,000 bill after beef animals removed for no reason.

“The 77-year-old” farmer “must pay only $14,276 of the $391,196 sought by Provincial Animal Welfare Services ... when its officers seized his healthy beef herd before Christmas and held them at expensive foster farms for months.” Again, this is a news article. I wasn’t there; I’m just going by the news.

“PAWS rounded up and removed 101 ... Angus-cross beef cattle December 16, after he failed to comply with orders to clean up ‘hazardous debris’ on parts of the 200-acre property where the animals roamed. Two animals were injured badly enough to be put down during the chaotic roundup involving the use of ATVs, and a contractor ended up in a Toronto hospital with serious injuries.”

That wasn’t the farmer who did that; that was PAWS. I think, now that we’re looking at PAWS, we need to look at how PAWS actually interacts. I take the parliamentary assistant at her word. When you create something, nothing is perfect. You need to look at how to make it better.

We all want to protect. We all have our favourite animals. The Solicitor General has got a rabbit; I have a dog.

Interjection.

But the difference is how to deal with an individual animal or how to deal with a herd. The animals were healthy. They weren’t healthy after the roundup, and neither were some of the people involved in the roundup. Again, the government, from what I understand, is appealing that. In the PAWS Act, perhaps that’s one of the amendments. But we always need to look at the cause.

I don’t want to leave the impression—and I’ve repeated it several times—that anyone in the official opposition or anyone in the agricultural community is okay with the abuse of animals—at no time. We have no problem with, if it’s identified that you have to act and you have to act quickly.

Speaking of quickly—and better minds than mine might know this better—if you are charged under the PAWS Act, you have five days to appeal. For a farmer, who could be very good at his job—it’s an allegation—five days in May is different than five days in November, because agriculture is very seasonal.

I’m not trying to disparage anyone. I don’t know any PAWS inspectors. I’m sure that they’re good at their job. But it’s so varied.

When it used to be under the SPCA—I don’t know if I’ve told this story before in the Legislature, but I’m going to tell it.

We had a dairy farm, and my wife had a little store across the road. We had a horse across from the store. It looked kind of cute. When people came to the store, they looked at it. The SPCA inspector at the time came to my wife’s store one day. She was a regular customer, a very nice person. And I’ll make this really clear: It’s the wife’s horse. I don’t like horses, and they don’t like me. Horses are pretty good judges of character.

The horse was lying sprawled out in the field. That’s how horses sleep sometimes. The inspector looked at my wife and said, “Oh, my God, that horse is dead.” She got really upset. And then Ria went, “Velvet,” and she went like this, and the horse got up and came to her.

Interjection.

I shouldn’t say this, but honestly, it wouldn’t have bothered me. I didn’t love the horse. I love my wife. I didn’t love my wife’s horse. I have no affinity for horses.

Interjections.

That inspector was probably very well trained at many things, but she didn’t recognize that. And I often think about that, because a PAWS inspector has a lot of power. If a PAWS inspector doesn’t know something, then that five days might not be enough.

There are very few other appeal processes where you only have five days. Now, I understand—I’m guessing why that five days is there is that if the animal is in crisis or near-crisis, you don’t want to give a 30-day period. I understand that. But there are all kinds of issues. Another one, anecdotally: The inspector didn’t know how to work the water bowl, so the animal didn’t have access to water. That’s not as silly as it sounds, because some of that stuff is very complicated. Like, I can’t use a cash machine. But when a person of power and who needs to have that power—we’re not disputing that that person needs to have that ability. But there needs to be some kind of appeal process, and it needs to be reasonable.

I think that’s something that has to be looked at if the government is now opening up the PAWS Act. Every piece of legislation, you should be able to open it up, and make it better. So if we’re going to open up the PAWS Act, let’s make it better. Let’s protect animals, but let’s make sure it actually works on the farm.

The livestock organizations all signed on. Many of them have their own internal processes, their own inspection systems, because they want to make sure that when they sell a product—I know a lot about dairy. When they ensure that the milk that you buy is produced by healthy animals that are housed in well-maintained facilities and that they have access to everything they need, Dairy Farmers of Ontario ensures that, but Dairy Farmers of Ontario also signed on to PAWS, to make sure that if there is any question that a third party can go in and say, “No, no. Okay,” that third party has to be reasonably appealable.

Now we’re going to go back—