Thank you to the member from London North Centre. I thank you for your remarks. I know that we share the same kind of concern about the unethical puppy sales act. I want to learn a little bit more of your response, that we should ban breeding of female dogs at too young of an age.

My question is to the member from London North Centre. Thank you for your summary of the bill. Could you just summarize for us again what are the specific things you’d like to see improved in this bill?

Thank you to the member from Mississauga–Malton for the question. I’ve outlined in my presentation the things that this bill does well, but I think there are a great many things this bill is missing. There are so many opportunities within this bill to make improvements. I believe that there needs to be broader stakeholder engagement. I’ve mentioned a number of different voices which you need to be listening to, to make sure that you’re actually adequately standing up for animals, for their protection here in the province.

As well, I’m hoping that the government members will have listened to my appeal for funding for the Humane Society London and Middlesex and their new location at 1414 Dundas Street. It’s a brilliant plan. I’ve invited the minister there. I’ve spoken and sent letters to the finance minister as well. I hope that you will engage with them and make sure that they get the funding that they have requested, which was $1.5 million.

So the government should know that they have a problem, that there is not enough enforcement, that they’re not looking after animals in a really solid, thorough way. But part of this, I strongly believe, as well, is knowing where those puppy mills are and making sure that they are licensed, making sure that there are inspections, making sure that we’re going in proactively to make sure that bad things aren’t happening. Really, the government should have learned its lesson with long-term care, where they cancelled inspections and were only going in and doing spot inspections prior to the pandemic, and we see what happened to our treasured seniors.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Currently provincial animal welfare inspectors are badly understaffed. The member referenced this. A CBC investigation found that inspections were significantly down since the law was changed. Now, under the OSPCA, inspectors issued between 16,148 orders and laid 1,946 provincial criminal charges. That was between 2015 and 2018. However, since the PAWS law has been passed, PAWS inspectors only laid 6,970 orders and laid 667 provincial and criminal charges between 2020 and 2023. That’s a significant reduction in holding people and organizations to account for how they’re treating animals.

What does the member say, and how does this bill address this really serious issue around enforcement?

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.

Further questions?

I recognize the member from Waterloo.

I was listening to the member opposite, and I was thinking about what the president for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said, that the PUPS Act “is a welcome and important step towards protecting dogs from unethical breeders and addressing the issue of puppy mills throughout our province.”

So my question is very simple to the member opposite: Do you agree with the president of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—yes or no?

It’s now time for questions.

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.

Thank you to the member for Kitchener South–Hespeler for her remarks about this bill.

I actually want to echo something that was said earlier in this debate by my colleague the member for London North Centre. He and I are both big fans of the London humane society. We both got our cats from the London humane society and are very excited about the move of the new home of the humane society in London.

This is a big undertaking. It requires significant support from the public and from other levels of government. The municipal government has stepped up. The federal government has stepped up. Londoners have stepped up, but there has been no commitment from the province.

I’m hoping, in the context of the initiatives that have been brought forward by this government to support animal welfare, that this is something that would be considered. So I’m asking the member if that would be the case.

I want to thank my colleague for her comments. I appreciated her lived experience, both as a prosecutor and as a pet owner. Like the members of this House, dogs are mostly good listeners, but they have their own minds as well, so they often make their own decisions, despite what we say.

Interjection.

I also appreciate that it was a little like going back to law school, hearing about strict liability, absolute liability, obiter dicta—all terms that take me back to my law school days.

But my question to the member is the importance of the minimum sentences: In her experience as a crown prosecutor, how does she think that these minimum sentences or fines are going to make this bill more impactful?

I would like to thank the member for Kitchener South–Hespeler for bringing up the very real issue of the link between domestic violence and abuse of animals, and it was a relief to hear that Breezy was okay.

My question is about how this bill could be improved and strengthened. We have been approached by animal welfare and animal rights advocates who are very concerned about the care of wild animals in captivity. We’re talking the care of animals in roadside zoos, in very small—or the care of a wild animal that’s owned by a private individual. They’re very worried that these animals just don’t have the kind of protections that a cat or a dog would have.

Is there interest from this government to strengthen this bill in committee to ensure that wild animals in captivity have basic standards, welfare standards, as well?

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.

I rise to talk about Bill 159, preventing unethical puppy sales. We know this is a serious problem and that, in these cases, the dogs are treated simply as commodities, and it’s all about profit. We do see this happening also with seniors, I have to say, with housing and long-term care, that there’s a lot of that mixed in there as well—profit taking. According to advocates, the key piece to any statute or regulations will be on the enforcement and inspection end. I will come to talk about how that’s happening on the ground right now a little bit later.

We do know that provincial animal welfare inspectors are badly understaffed right now. We also know that the abuse of animals doesn’t begin and end with puppy mills but also with other animals that are bred illegally and sold and not kept well.

One of the things that really struck me right away with this bill—and I think there are ways to improve the bill and I think that requiring licensing is one of those ways. But I’m struck by the contradiction with the section of Bill 91 that slipped in this thing about train and trial areas, which had been actually outlawed in 1997. There were only 24 of these areas left in the province, and then all of a sudden, in a bill that was about something completely different, we have a section that allows that business to expand again. It’s a very cruel business that traps coyotes, foxes, rabbits and uses them as bait and trains the dogs to rip them to shreds. It does seem like a contradiction that some animals we care about and other animals we’re prepared to let them be ripped to shreds. It struck me as a favour to somebody, because it had nothing to do with anything else in the bill at the time.

I’d like to look a little bit at what’s going on in Thunder Bay. Robin Ratz, founder and board chair of Murillo Mutts—Murillo is a small community in Thunder Bay–Atikokan, and it’s a specialized rescue facility. She says:

“‘Unfortunately, I guess my question would be is “What are the consequences, or how are they going to find out about these puppy mills?”‘”

And: “She said there are multiple puppy mills in the Thunder Bay area, including one that Murillo Mutts had a ‘really bad experience’ with last Christmas.

“A local resident had obtained a dog from a breeder, only to find out that the pup was extremely ill.

“‘In order for us to assist people like that, we have to have them surrender their animal to get care without our vet. Unfortunately, the puppy was too sick, and died. The breeder ended up contacting our rescue, and she had a second sick puppy and promised she would get it to the vet. The next day, she called and acknowledged she had no money to pay for vetting, so we brought that puppy into care as well. Between the first dog and the second dog, fees, stuff we had to throw out because it was parvo [virus], we lost about $7,000 worth of stuff.’”

This is a volunteer rescue organization.

“She questions whether the government’s proposed crackdown goes far enough, pointing to a clause in the new legislation that would prohibit breeding a female dog excessively.”

The question is: “‘How are you gonna tell that a dog’s been bred more than three times in two years?’ she asked. ‘I don’t really think it’s going to stop. It’s going to take a lot of people getting those $25,000 fines.... It usually takes an outcry before anything happens, and by then how many animals have already suffered, and how many people, like I said, at the hands of an unethical breeder?’”

So there are definitely people in the Thunder Bay area making a living off of puppy mills.

“‘It’s just wrong to do that to an animal. Some of them just over-breed them, and they live in horrible conditions ... the laws don’t protect the dogs, so they just keep going on.’”

Further: “She recalled a local situation where provincial animal welfare services was informed about pups in distress, and visited the breeder to give advice but left all the dogs behind.”

I’m going to get into a case where there was an attempt to bring in supports to deal with the abuse of animals. This is what the ministry says: “Generally speaking, the most urgent calls are responded to on the same day, where possible, but there may be times when it takes longer to respond due to when the call may have been received or because an inspector is already responding to other urgent matters.”

This is a story that took place in Rossport, Ontario. It was a case where there were seven dogs in a house. Some of them had escaped, and there was constant barking, and so many, many people tried to reach the provincial animal welfare officers.

On September 2, OPP officers came and tried to help with the dogs. There was a “public safety issue of unattended aggressive dogs running at large and attacking each other.

“The Ontario Animal Protection Call Centre was called by numerous residents” the next day, September 3, “as the dogs in question had been left unattended in high heat for over 24 hours. The call centre staff in Sudbury could not locate Rossport when I called, despite the community having a unique postal code, and was triaged as an emergency.”

Let’s just think about this for a minute. Because the person at the end of the call for provincial animal welfare officers was in Sudbury—that’s about 12 hours from Thunder Bay and 10 hours from Rossport, and they had no idea where Rossport is. Anybody who has travelled on the North Shore of Superior would know Rossport. It’s what’s called an unorganized community, but it is very much a community and clearly a community that cared, because so many got on the phone to try and address this issue.

So on September 3, they called the OPP again and “were told the OPP would not respond as animal welfare was the responsibility of the animal welfare service. The humane society was also called and the resident was told they would not respond outside of Thunder Bay city boundaries.” Rossport’s about two hours outside of Thunder Bay so it doesn’t qualify. “As it was, the two OPP officers who responded on September 2 ... did an admirable job in capturing the aggressive dog running loose in the community....

“The situation was a total breakdown for the protection of animals that were in distress and constituted a public safety situation in an unorganized community. As Rossport does not have bylaws or enforcement officers to deal with these situations, residents must rely on provincial agencies to deliver their mandated duties....

“By not having an officer respond on September 3, they are not going to be able to view first-hand the conditions the dogs were left in (it’s like having the police show up 48 hours after a murder and allowing the scene to be sanitized).”

The other piece of this was that when they did finally reach someone, the officer said, “Well, the next day is a statutory holiday. Today’s the 4th. We’ve got a statutory holiday, so we’re just not going to come.” I can’t actually imagine anybody coming all the way from Sudbury to Rossport.

So there is a problem of not having animal welfare officers where they’re needed throughout the region.

Now, the next letter I’m looking at is from somebody who works for PAWS. He’s on leave for mental health stress, and that stress has come from not being able to rescue animals he knew were in distress. So cumulative post-traumatic stress disorder is what he’s dealing with.

He says, “Ontario public service ... has been nothing but incompetent due to me and my children having to go without pay for months at a time due to ... lack of communication with other entities.”

So, apart from the specific incidents that he’s talking about, the bulk of what he’s talking about is that this changeover from the OSPCA to PAWS has not resulted in better care; it’s resulted in worse. What we know is that the cost for PAWS is actually quite a bit more than it was before, but we’re seeing fewer results, we’re seeing fewer charges, and we are seeing traumatized workers.

So partly, he writes, “It has taken OPS a year to pay employees back for expenses” and the process at this time still had not taken place. “In Thunder Bay, where I was based since 2014, veterinarians and boarding facilities will not work with animal welfare services now because they don’t pay their bills or the processing times are ridiculous” and “this is province-wide, and their stats and information sent to the government are made up.”

Now, obviously, something like this letter is hearsay, but it does suggest that there are problems in the service that need to be addressed and need to be addressed at the Solicitor General’s level.

He goes on to say, “They were pushing inspectors to write more orders, seize more animals, and lay charges.... I’ve been doing this since 2014 and many others who were let go at the beginning because they spoke out against upper management on the legalities....” Again, I won’t go into that too much, because it’s a specific case.

But he does go on to say, “The government states they care about their staff and their first responders, but it seems to be all talk. It’s said by the remaining staff we are not saving any animals, just processing dead bodies.

“I waited five months for a warrant which, as per the legislation, I didn’t even require because the senior staff didn’t know what they were doing. I had to tell my senior investigator how to lay a charge which I had to send mine to him for approval, but they didn’t know ... how to write one....

“The warrant never came, and my partner was let go because he questioned the managers,” but he says he “was one of the best inspectors in the province.”

The point is, it’s funny that they “could write warrants in” their “sleep before ... and they were always approved by the senior justice of the peace at the courts and didn’t need a five-month approval process where animals go on suffering and dying of starvation. And yes, this is still ongoing” now. He was “finally given the approval and went to the property, and I walked into a barn full of dead and emaciated pigs. It haunts me to this day, the pain these animals suffered needlessly.”

I met that gentleman. He did come to our office, and those are stories that are very hard to hear, because he already knew that this was taking place and because of mismanagement—who knows what—he wasn’t given the means to actually address the problem and now has to live with what he saw and the pain and suffering of those animals.

“Other advocates have voiced frustration about PAWS since it was created in 2019, taking over for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals....

“In animal abuse cases, some enforcement tools at their disposal include orders, provincial charges or criminal charges.

“But according to data obtained by CBC Hamilton through a freedom-of-information request, PAWS investigations are leading to far fewer orders and charges compared to when the OSPCA oversaw animal welfare.

“Ross, from the Ministry of the Solicitor General, didn’t give possible reasons for the drop in the number of charges ... but said the team is ‘highly trained,’ and some requests fall under the jurisdiction of police or local bylaw enforcement.”

But we saw in the case of Rossport that, in fact, there wasn’t really coverage. There wasn’t anything there to support those animals or help the people who were aware of what was happening to those animals to do something about it, because there was also no food and water for them.

From 2015 to the end of 2018, the OSPCA conducted 64,000-plus investigations and issued 16,000-plus orders, and laid almost 2,000 provincial and criminal charges. From 2020 to June 30, 2023, I believe this is, PAWS conducted at least 70,000 investigations, almost 7,000 orders, but only laid 667 provincial and criminal charges.

Now, it’s pretty clear to me in reading about the Rossport case—it’s laid out in quite a bit of detail—that charges would have been warranted in that case, but there was nobody there to actually follow through again and look after the animals.

PAWS has an annual budget of roughly $21 million, far more than the $5.75 million budget of the OSPCA. That is really the question: Why is PAWS, with a vastly larger budget, issuing fewer orders? The data suggests the province needs to provide more support for animal welfare services and be more transparent—so it might not be about more money, it might be about money better spent.

Jennifer Friedman, a former OSPCA lawyer who now practises privately says that it’s troubling to hear the drop in charges and orders, especially given what many of her clients are telling her.

What needs to change? Coulter says that PAWS needs far more than its roughly 100 inspectors to thoroughly and quickly investigate cases across Ontario. She noted that the Toronto Transit Commission has more inspectors, with 110. But the TTC is located in Toronto, so if you compare that to having 100 inspectors over the entire province, you can see why the law is not being applied even as it is without even this new law in place. She added that more training and protective measures for inspectors are also needed. I think that’s probably a good place to stop.

I do want to note and thank the member from Kiiwetinoong for his comments on the situation in First Nations communities with dogs and the lack of access to veterinary care. I was really pleased to hear about Matawa’s pilot project, and I hope that part of that pilot project is training community members to be able to give vaccinations. We know that having fully trained veterinarians available to go to communities as often as needed is difficult, even though we will be getting more veterinarians trained in Thunder Bay. One of the suggestions that’s come to our office is that if more community members could be trained to administer those vaccinations—obviously they can’t do spaying which requires a different level of skill and training, but to at least give the vaccinations, then they could be eliminating the spread of parvovirus and other parasites and problems.

In regard to the bill itself, it’s a step forward. I would like to see it have more teeth, and I’m hoping that when it goes to committee that will be possible, and that the idea of having licences for dog breeders is really thoroughly considered and hopefully put in to the legislation before it comes back for third reading. I think there’s a very practical aspect to having those licences, in that, if you go to a place, it’s easy to see a licence, it’s very quick to determine whether it’s a legitimate facility or not.

I think I’ll stop there. Thank you for the time and the opportunity to speak to this bill.

Further questions?

I really appreciate the member’s comments explaining how extremely impactful it can be when you see something that you just love so dearly being hurt.

I think a lot of times that we’re in this House, we debate bills and people out there, who are not always watching, are kind of wondering why we are talking about something like this. So I just wonder if the member can explain to those who might catch this in their searching why a bill like this is so important and why they should care about it—especially those who have cats. I have cats and we love our cats. Shout-out to Loki. But explain to us why a bill like this is just really important, why it should matter to them.

Thank you for your comments. I also hope to see similar results. The part that worries me is that—you might be right; perhaps that is why the number of charges has gone down. It’s difficult to say.

What I’m concerned about is the number of inspectors and what’s going on in PAWS, because it sounds to me like all is not well and that the cost has gone up, but the well-being of people doing the inspections is not being looked after. And then there are geographical gaps where there is no service whatsoever.

Again, it’s always in the application. Do we have the tools to make sure that the mills are stopped, that they’re found and that it’s possible to actually observe what is going on? That’s really my concern.

My friend from Thunder Bay–Superior North spoke about transparency in animal welfare services. I’m wondering if they’re satisfied with the level of transparency that this bill brings and how that will help with agencies in the Thunder Bay area.

Thank you to the member for Thunder Bay–Superior North for her presentation on the amendment to the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act, 2019.

When I think about pets, when I think about puppies, when I think about dogs, I remember there are 134 First Nations in Ontario; in my riding, we have 31. I never really thought about this until now. I remember going from door to door; I don’t know if it was during a campaign or just a regular door to door. I remember one recommendation that I got from the community members. They said, “Make sure you take a hockey stick.” I said, “Why?” “Because of those rez dogs. Because of those dogs.” I had to actually turn back because all of a sudden, you hear barking. All of a sudden, they come together. Then, all of a sudden, they start barking at me, so I had to turn back.

Is this bill going to help to address that issue for on-reserve rez dogs and on-reserve people to make sure that they’re safe?