It’s always an honour to rise in this House to speak on behalf of the great people of Toronto Centre. In particular, today, I’m pleased to speak on Bill 159, Preventing Unethical Puppy Sales Act.

I am very pleased to see a bill of this nature appear before us. Like many who have spoken before me—this House seems to be filled with animal lovers and, in particular, dog lovers; I count myself as one of them. Having had three dogs in my life, one rabbit, two cats, three turtles and 31 tropical fish—at many different times, I’ve had a menagerie. And I can tell you, as we all know, they deserve our protection.

That’s why I think this bill is important. I look forward to seeing it go through committee and seeing what else comes from it, including perhaps some amendments to further strengthen it.

When I was contemplating what I wanted to say about the bill, I reached out to constituents on social media, as we all do sometimes. I wanted to hear from my constituents, to see what they had to say about the issue of banning puppy mills in Ontario. Very proudly, I want to let you know that many of my four-legged constituents got their humans to respond on their behalf and to let me know that they strongly support seeing the protection of animals—especially puppies being banned from abuse.

We heard from:

—Cooper, a rescue chihuahua pug and the mascot for the St. James Town Residents Council;

—Misha, a very sweet basset hound who loves hanging out at the Cherry Beach dog park and all the other east end neighbourhood parks between Corktown and St. James Town;

—Rocco, an eight-month-old goldendoodle rescued from a puppy mill, who has some health issues, but those issues that came from the puppy mill overbreeding don’t keep him down, and he just keeps on going;

—Zenia, a rescue dog from St. Lucia who lives in the Village and loves Barbara Hall Park and Riverdale Park;

—Rocky, a rat terrier adopted from the local Toronto Humane Society, who does get nervous from time to time, but she is curious and loves to go for walks around Regent Park;

—Louise, a rescue miniature pincher mix from Texas, who loves playing with her doggy friends at Toronto Centre’s off-leash dog parks.

I was very pleased to be working on the expansion and the improvement of dog infrastructure when I was at the city of Toronto as a city councillor. I count that as some of my most proud moments.

I could go on, Speaker, because 50-plus canines actually had their humans write into us, and I might just come back to it, because they’re too cute to ignore.

But I do want to get to the substance of the bill, because I think that is important and why we’re here. This bill contains several changes to the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act that serve to protect dogs, which I support and many of us do support in this House. Some of these changes include:

—banning the breeding of a female dog more than three times in a two-year period, or breeding more than two litters from a female dog’s consecutive heat cycles, as well as banning the breeding of a female dog that is less than 12 months old;

—banning the breeding of a female dog for the first time before its second heat;

—making it illegal to fail to isolate a dog from other dogs or animals where there are reasonable grounds to believe that the dog is suffering from a contagious disease or is at high risk of developing a contagious disease, including failure to ensure there is no contact with objects, including food and water containers, that are used by other dogs or animals, except,

—separating a puppy from its mother or substitute mother before the age of 56 days, except as otherwise recommended by a veterinarian in writing for health reasons;

—instituting a minimum penalty for operating a mill, set at $10,000;

—instituting a minimum penalty of $25,000 if the mill operation leads to the death of a dog, or of euthanasia by a veterinarian.

This is all very commendable, and I think that this is a fantastic foundation for us to build upon, and I hope that we can do that work at committee, because I know that when the bill goes to committee, there are a number of people who still want to see improvements to the bill—sorry, we’re on second reading. But the advocates want us to do more, so I wanted to give my platform to them, as I share their comments with the House today about what more animal welfare advocates want to see in this bill and how they think that we can work collaboratively to improve this piece of pending legislation.

They pointed out that breeding that takes place in the province is done under conditions that will now be prescribed, and that the ideal breeding conditions that could lead to pure and in-demand breeds being sold by pet stores is almost non-existent. So, clearly, that is one section of the bill that could see a significant improvement, because unless we are able to name the problem, we won’t be able to fix the problem.

According to the animal rights and welfare advocates, the key piece to any statute or regulation will have to be placed on enforcement and inspection. As we all know, because we’re lawmakers, unless we see adequate investments to inspection and enforcement, then any bill is really not worth a lot if we actually cannot make it do what we want it to do.

The bill doesn’t include funding to better resource or equip provincial animal welfare services, or PAWS, inspectors, and so the question will be, who is going to enforce the standards? If the bill is not improving the enforcement and investigation, that is certainly one area of improvement.

Currently, provincial animal welfare inspectors are badly understaffed. This has been widely reported now. The CBC has recently put forth a fairly lengthy investigation where they go deeper into the story, where they go behind the scenes to be able to understand what is wrong with this system and why we see that inspections pertaining to animal welfare have gone significantly down.

Under the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, the OSPCA inspectors issued 16,148 orders and they laid 1,946 provincial and criminal charges between 2015 and 2018, while PAWS inspectors only laid 6,970 orders and laid 667 provincial and criminal charges between 2020 and 2023. So, the animal advocates are saying the government is talking a big game about protecting animals, and they’re asking you to do a lot more.

How can we do more? How can the government work towards giving the real teeth to the legislation if there aren’t adequate staff who are properly trained and on the field to then investigate and enforce? I recognize investigation and enforcement takes time. This is not something you can do over the phone. You’ve got to go in there like the CBC investigative journalists to go and dig deeper. Then, the charges are laid, and then at some point in time, you’ve got to deal with prosecution, because fines don’t just happen.

That’s why, when the CBC did an entire investigation into the drop in cases, advocates who then spoke to them have said PAWS is so understaffed that they often show up and take action only if the media shows up and there’s a public outcry. Now, clearly that’s not a winning condition, and that’s not going to make the legislation more effective. So, we have to listen to the advocates who are part of the system of democracy that holds each and every single one of us accountable, because they’re the ones who are pushing for the change.

Ashley DaSilva, who is the founder of the Hamilton-based group Fur Warriors, said that the inspectors need more support from the province.

“As a result, she said, it can feel like PAWS will only take action when there’s enough public scrutiny.”

So we’re forcing citizens to actually go off and protest and at their own time and energy lead the charge with the media.

“She pointed to a video that appeared to show a Hamilton man whipping his dog, Merlin, and dragging the dog down a sidewalk in late June.

“It took a week for police and PAWS to remove the dog from the owner, and he now faces provincial charges. But” Ms. DaSilva “is doubtful any of that would have happened without the media attention and public pressure.”

They state, “If you don’t cause a stink, nothing happens. What happens to the dogs that don’t have videos?”—which I think is a really important question. What happens if the act of cruelty is not caught by someone who has a camera? We need to have inspectors on the ground and in the field doing their work.

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

“‘There’s a great deal of frustration.... They’re hoping animal welfare services would do more.’”

Amy Fitzgerald, University of Ottawa professor and animal welfare researcher, said it’s “particularly unlikely” the drop in PAWS charges and orders was because there were fewer animal abuse incidents. She pointed to how domestic violence was rising during the pandemic.

It’s also important for us to note that PAWS does not necessarily share the calls that it receives and that inspectors may be using more discretion when issuing orders or charges. So really, you don’t have the type of scrutiny or even audit procedure that one needs to have in order to know whether or not the system can be running more effectively.

It has also been noted that PAWS needs more than its current staffing allocation of 100 inspectors to thoroughly and quickly investigate cases across Ontario. Just think of it: 100 inspectors for a province as large as Ontario. The contrast to that is that the Toronto Transit Commission has about 110 inspectors just for our transit system, which is a much smaller geography that has to be covered. It has been commented on that more inspectors need to receive additional training, and they need to think proactively on how they can prevent the matters of animal abuse.

“Michèle Hamers, campaign manager at World Animal Protection Canada, said the wording in the province’s legislation is too broad and impacts what inspectors can do on the scene. For example, the legislation defines distress as an animal being:

“—in need of proper case, water, food or shelter;

“—injured, sick, in pain or suffering;

“—neglected, abused or subject to undue physical or psychological hardship.”

She further goes on to unpack the guidelines, where she provides that “guidelines defined for various species and that only allow various animals to be kept as pets. Those steps” should and “would make the system more proactive.”

Also highlighted for us was the need for more transparency, one of the missing key drivers that led to PAWS being taken over by the privately run OSPCA. Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, who I had the esteemed pleasure of working with when we worked on the national shark fin ban of importation and use of shark fin products in Canada, an advocate who is a leading voice on animal rights, welfare and well-being in Canada and internationally, has said this about the case of transparency when PAWS took over: Things have “gotten far, far worse.”

Ms. Labchuk says Animal Justice has filed many complains about Marineland, a theme park in Niagara Falls, but never heard back from the province. If you wanted to demonstrate that you care about animal welfare, there’s a great example right there that you can take action on. Why is Marineland still operating?

“Labchuk said PAWS should have a website, issue an annual report each year and, if it’s in the public interest, issue media releases when it issues orders, seizes animals or one of its investigations leads to charges.” Tell us what you’re doing. If you’re doing such a great job, share the news as broadly as you can.

“Labchuk also said PAWS legislation needs more regulations governing animal breeding, farms, zoos and other industries.”

It is important for us to be able to see the baseline of productivity. If we don’t know what is happening, and you have people who are saying that not enough is being done—and these are not just random people; these are people who have dedicated their existence to protecting animals and animal welfare—there is obviously room for improvement.

It’s important for us to also recognize that this government has not been treating all dogs equally. There are some dogs you want to protect and other dogs you don’t. In fact, this government moved to regulate and expand legal pen dog hunting, a practice that was in the process of being phased out. Many advocates feel that it’s unsafe for dogs and it is unnecessarily cruel to the prey of animals, who are hunted in these pens with no way to escape. And yet the government went out of their way to include a clause in Bill 91 to more deeply enshrine those types of facilities into law, in essence legalizing animal cruelty.

Two animal rights organizations have requested a review of that legislation. So there will be more to be discussed about that because that story is not going away and clearly, if lawyers have deemed that they have enough of a case to go forward, this is going to be a very costly and time-consuming process for the Ontario government once again.

There is so much more in Ontario that can be done to increase animal welfare. In February of this year, Quebec banned all non-essential and cosmetic surgeries on pets, including ear cropping, tail trimming, vocal cord removal and cat declawing. These regulations in Quebec are just a formalization of an already widespread rejection of those surgeries among veterinarian professionals.

And it’s not just Quebec. All over the world, these surgeries have been banned or actively discouraged. Ontario is now the only province in Canada that does not ban cat declawing. It’s very difficult to find a veterinarian willing to do the procedure, but it’s not because it is banned by this government but because of veterinarians’ own professional expertise and their own code of conduct and their compassion. Without a formal ban, you can still find someone—a surgeon—to do the procedure.

Quebec is by no means perfect, but Ontario could do more by following their lead and studying what they’ve done well. The Quebec legislation also bans the euthanasia of an animal by inhalation, leashing an animal without a collar, mating animals whose sizes are incompatible and feeding meat to pet pigs. All of these measures in Quebec make a lot of sense, and they have done it after consultation and review of subject matter experts.

So, clearly there is much more that can be done here, and I want to extend a massive, big thank you to all of the advocates working behind the scenes to increase animal welfare and protection in Ontario. There are countless organizations that advocate for the humane treatment of animals, for them to be safe, to be clean, to be treated when they’re sick, to be provided with the enrichment that they need to grow and learn, and given the love and care that we all know that they thrive on.

Believe it or not, your constituents will agree with you and the animal advocates if you work together to take those actions. Just as I’ve noted, many of the canines in my community had their humans write in to tell us that they support the legislation, but more can be done.

So, as I conclude, I just want to continue to give a little bit more love and a shout-out to both the canines out there, but also to the workers and the volunteers who keep Ontario’s shelters, rescues and fosters going. It’s often heartbreaking and delicate work to get an animal who has been through so much abuse and trauma, and to watch them try to be able to love and trust again.

This happened with my own dog. Her name was Tara. She was a black Lab-pit cross. She had been adopted and returned to the Toronto Humane Society three times by the time I picked her up. I don’t know what it was, but I had to take her home. When I read that she had won the award for being there the longest—at the humane society—with very little dog experience in my background, I decided to take home this 65-pound dog and I loved her to the very end.

We all have stories similar to that on why pets make the difference for you, and you can stand up for them by doing the right thing and improving the legislation.

Questions to the member for Toronto Centre?

I’ll just start by suggesting to the member from Hastings–Lennox and Addington that he take some advice from our associate minister and put those tins of food in his pocket. Then your cat will pay attention to you.

One of the things I wanted to talk about is—again, back to the associate minister, who has got some expertise on animal nutrition—the positive parts in this. There are a lot of elements in it to strengthen enforcement, with bigger fines and bigger penalties—enforcing and making the bad actors pay attention, hurting them where it hurts: in the pocketbook.

But also on the positive side, I’d like to get your comments on identifying what good best practices are for a responsible breeder, and educating the public on what those are so they know the advantages of purchasing an animal from a responsible breeder, and those elements that are within the bill and how you think those will help with reducing the number of—hopefully someday eliminating—the bad actors in the puppy mill business.

I want to thank my colleague for her fantastic presentation. We have talked about enforcement. Questions have been asked about that as well. I know there has been well-intentioned and well-meaning legislation that the government has tabled many times to change a behaviour or to change a practice, but enforcement is key to that.

One of the government members talked of doubling of fines and whatnot, but can the member speak to how the probability of being fined is often more important than the actual fine itself? If you double or triple fines but you don’t have the enforcement, you don’t have the inspectors doing the work, then will people often change their behaviours if they’re not going to get caught?

I want to thank the member for her speech today on this debate.

Does the member agree that we should not be breeding female dogs at a very young age?

To my colleague from Toronto Centre: You’ve touched on a variety of issues in your presentation today. Could you address again some of the improvements that you think are needed in this bill to address larger issues that we’re grappling with in this society?

I thank the member from Toronto Centre for their comments today. You made the comment that the—I’ve lost it. There was one part of your message that I was thinking about, and I was going to make a quip about it, but unfortunately I’ve lost it at this point.

I can tell you that I’ve received a number of emails specific to this particular piece of legislation. Unanimously they all said, basically, “Hurry up; get it done.” We know that the president of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has 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 the province.

So does the member agree that we need to move this forward?

Mr. Speaker, the Preventing Unethical Puppy Sales Act introduces minimum fines for harmful dog breeding practices, including $10,000 for the bad actors operating puppy mills; $25,000 if these violations result in the death of a dog.

Simple question: Does the member recognize the necessity for minimum fines for puppy mills?

Under standing order 59 for the benefit of all members in the House:

—on Monday, April 22—this is for the week of April 22 of course—in the afternoon we’ll be debating Bill 188, Supporting Children’s Futures Act, 2024;

—on Tuesday, April 23, in the morning, again, resuming debate on Bill 188, Supporting Children’s Futures Act; in the afternoon, opposition day number 4;

—on Wednesday, April 24, in the morning, Bill 188, Supporting Children’s Futures Act; in the afternoon, the same bill; and

—on Thursday, April 25, in the morning, we’ll be debating private bills; in the afternoon, third reading of Bill 162, the Get It Done Act, 2024.

I recognize the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington under standing order 59.

I think it’s great we’re debating this bill and talking mostly about our puppies and our dogs and a bit more about the bill. It’s a good way to end the week, and I love everybody’s story about their dogs and their pets and how much affection they have for them.

I have to give a shout-out to Kealey, my black Lab who’s watching at home I’m sure right now. Somehow she has this uncanny knowledge of when I’m going to be home about five minutes before I get home. Whatever day, whatever time, she’s at the front window before the car is visible—well before. I don’t know how that works.

A shout-out to Jackie who was our other black Lab who remained a puppy well into her teens. She lived to 15; we lost her a few years ago. That’s why we got Kealey. Kealey was a bit of a surprise. I’m going to talk about my first dog in a second, but I want to talk about the bill.

There are good things in this bill with regard to puppy mills and with regard to the fines here. I think animal health is very important. We all agree on this. We all have affection for the animals whom we’ve domesticated. I want to juxtaposition that later in the debate to some things that we have to turn our minds to.

I will be supporting this bill, so let me just put that on the record right now. There are very good things in this bill. It could be a bit stronger. A lot of what will make this bill work is what happens outside of here with regard to enforcement.

Here’s the story about my first dog. I’ve got to do this quick. I don’t have too much time—I could go on all afternoon. I was working in the grocery store, managing a grocery store in Kanata. This beagle wandered into what was called the “car pickup” and didn’t want to leave. I guess it sensed food, and it wanted to hang around. So I called the SPCA. Well, it was in the evening and they weren’t open; they weren’t available. No one was there to pick up the dog—and I didn’t have the money. So I take the dog home. I took the dog home for four days and became attached to the dog I think, because when I eventually found the owner, which is another story altogether, and the dog went home, apparently I fell into a slump and my family was all worried about me.

About two months later, my dad says, “I’ve got something I want to show you.” I said, “Sure. Great.” He says, “We’ll go out next week, midweek, and I’ll show you.” One week passed and we missed it, another week passed—three or four weeks, and he finally says, “We’re going to do it this morning.” So I get in the car with him. We’re driving south of the city in Ottawa and he stops at the bank machine. “What the heck is he doing?” I’m thinking.

We’re driving to this place called Patterson’s Berry Farm. They have pumpkins and berries, and this is around Halloween time, and the only thing I can think of is, there’s a picture on my parents’ fridge of my dad with a pot-bellied pig at Patterson’s Berry Farm, and I think, “Oh, my God, he’s bought a pot-bellied pig.” That’s all I could think. I got out to the farm, and it’s pumpkin time. All the moms and dads are out there with their kids, and my dad’s with his kid. The kids were like five and six with the pumpkins. I’m a 37-year-old. I’m there with my dad—I feel a little awkward because I’m older that most of the kids, but I feel like one of the kids. My dad says, “Come with me.” So he takes me around to this barn and we go in the door. He pulls out a little collar and says, “I never bought you a dog”—when I was a kid, and so I had to go into the pen and the dog came to me. She got the little collar so I could pick her up a couple of weeks later because it wasn’t time for her to leave.

Anyway, her name was Marty. So Marty and I were very close. We shared many baguettes, bags of Cheezies and other foodstuff that you’re not supposed to feed dogs. We had a relationship that was really built a lot on food and a common affection, lots of naps together. She was quite an amazing dog. We used to joke—the last dog, Jackie, thought she was a puppy. Jackie thought everybody else was a puppy, but Marty thought she was a person, because she would be looking at whoever was talking in a group.

Anyhow, she was about 10 years old, and she kept getting sick. Eventually, I went to the vet and the vet said, “We can’t do much for her. Bring her back on Monday.” She hadn’t been eating and she was sick, so I got her into the car. I went, “We’re going to the cottage,” because she loved the water. So we’re driving to the cottage. She’s lying in the back. She hasn’t eaten anything for days and days. We stop at Dairy Queen. We get ice cream cones. The dog pops up in the back seat, ends up having an ice cream cone.

We got her to the cottage. I picked her up out of the car and I carried her down to the beach. She went for a little swim. She got pretty tired, so I brought her up, put her on the front porch. She stayed there for the weekend and was visited by all the family—dozens of people. And then we brought her to be put to sleep. She was very close to my mother-in-law—we spent a lot of time at her home when our kids were young—so my mother-in-law, my dad, who had bought the dog, and I were there when she was put to sleep. So it was very crowded in that little veterinary office.

And that’s how much—I’m not telling you a story that’s uncommon or unusual. We have this affection, because we get so much affection from them and there’s so much love. You can pet them; they’re ours, and in a sense, they’re free—they’re free to roam in the domain of our homes, our backyards, the fields where we can take them to do that.

So, in some ways, it’s easy to do this. It’s easy to do this bill because of the affection that we have for animals, and the cruelty that we see is something that hurts us, and sometimes more than when we see the same kind of thing happening to people. I can’t explain the phenomenon.

I can remember when—look it up; I’m not going to go through the story because we’ll be here until midnight: Bam-Bam the deer. It was a deer a family had taken in, and the ministry had to come in and take it away because they had it in a cage, and you can’t cage wild animals, right? Go and check it out. It’s an interesting story. Or if you want, one day, I’ll buy you a beer and tell you the story—or a glass of wine.

Here’s the thing, and the member from Toronto Centre brought this up: animals in pens. I’ll start with penned dog hunting. Why did we open that up again? Two decades ago, we closed it down. The animals that are affected, that it’s cruel to, well, they’re not our domesticated pets, but they’re still animals. It’s not a right practice. I don’t think we should be doing it. I don’t think the government’s ready to revisit it. It’s not the right thing to do. And I’m not saying this to criticize the bill or—it’s just, I really don’t think it’s the right thing to do. I think most reasonable people would think the same way, especially if we thought of them the same way—coyotes and other animals—if we thought of them as our pets. They’re still animals.

The second thing is—I want to bring this up—another penned animal. Marineland: I think it’s important that we bring that up. There have been 17 whale deaths in Marineland—I think I’ve got the number right—and there have been more undersea mammals that have died. As a matter of fact, there have been more mammals that were transferred out of Marineland, more whales that were being transferred out of Marineland that died. And at the same time they were being transferred out, the ministry said—the ministry has been investigating since 2020, four years. The ministry said that, essentially, the sea mammals, the marine mammals, were not doing well because of poor water quality—poor water quality.

Again, penned animals: You can’t pet a whale—well, at least maybe not safely, a killer whale.

Why is that? It’s not right. And the ministry won’t disclose—it doesn’t appear as though we’re enforcing, and then it comes back to this enforcement in this bill. I don’t want to—we raised the fines in long-term care a couple of times, our government, your government. “We’re going to be harder. We’re going to fine people when things go wrong.” Things go wrong; nobody gets fined. That’s the thing about this bill: If it’s going to work, you’ve got to put money into it. You’ve got to have enforcement.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say out of the bill is, we all love our pets. And we should. And we’re really lucky to have them and they mean really important things in our lives. They’re part of our family. But there are other animals that are equally worthy of our consideration, who we don’t have a relationship with, but they are beings. They exist. And penned dog hunting—just not right. I mean, if you put this bill up and you had a picture of penned dog hunting, you’d go, “What? This doesn’t make sense. You’re doing this and you’re doing this?” It’s not right.

Marineland: I know why we’re having a problem with Marineland. It’s because it means jobs. And that’s important. I think it’s important. But it’s time for us to say, “Well, we’re going to be good and right and stop this practice, and we’re going to make sure people have jobs.” Yes, it’s a problem. It’s not unsolvable. It takes two groups of people to get together to do that. I think it’s the right thing to do. I think it’s reasonable.

What’s happening at Marineland is cruel. It’s not just the fact that whales or other sea mammals, marine mammals have died; it’s the fact that they’re penned in, just like Bam-Bam the deer couldn’t be penned in and the ministry rushed in—I won’t go into the story right now. It’s the law. It’s a rule, right? How come you can’t keep a deer in captivity, but you can pen in a coyote or a whale for show, make them do tricks? I mean, it’s 2024.

Anyway, to the minister: I’ll support the bill. I congratulate him for bringing it forward. But let’s think about these other things, because they’re not right. We shouldn’t be doing them, and we should revisit whatever decisions that we’ve made on that.

I thank you for your time. I know it’s late in the afternoon, but I thought that needed to be said.

Questions to the member for Ottawa South?

Further debate? Further debate?

Mr. Kerzner has moved second reading of Bill 159, An Act to amend the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act, 2019. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Second reading agreed to.

Orders of the day? I recognize the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington.

It is therefore 6 p.m.

Report continues in volume B.

Yes, I think the measures in there will make a difference, but they’ll only make a difference if you enforce it. That’s the only way. It’s like the long-term-care fines and—on us, too. We raised the fines. Nobody was getting charged. So, it’s a thing where we make laws here, and then once we get outside, we don’t put what we need behind it. And I believe all members of this House want something behind it, so it’s not a criticism.

So, about putting animals down: I had a cat. We got a cat, which I said we weren’t supposed to get. My wife and my daughter went out and got the cat. We lived in an apartment building, eight-storey. My wife had the cat, Deedee, out on the balcony and the cat—the screen door slammed, the cat jumped off—eight storeys. I got down there; its leg was broken. I took it to the vet. Long story, the cat survived. It cost me way more money than they said it would.

So 13 years later, the cat’s ready to pass away, and I’m the one who has to take the cat in. The cat and I were indifferent. I didn’t want the cat. I’m bending over putting the cat in the crate, and I’m sobbing. I’m choked up. I’m like, “Why am I crying?” We never really liked each other. But it’s true.

Like I said, there are problems that are happening in Marineland right now. There are corrective measures that could be taken. It’s hard for people to get information about what’s going on.

I think it’s a legitimate concern for all of us, in supporting this bill and wanting it to be effective, that there will not be what’s needed there to make the bill effective. I think the government has to put an emphasis on that and let all of us in here know what exactly they’re going to do to make it work.

And then, of course, when you’re producing puppies and the market slows down or dries up—as it has in some cases—then you have some really disastrous situations where animals suffer.

It’s always great to hear the member. His speeches are always very personal, and it’s always a pleasure.

I just wanted to ask: I know that you were asked a question about enforcement, and I’ve already asked one about enforcement as well. But if you really want to change bad behaviours or bad practices, can you talk a little bit about why it’s more important—or it’s as important—to increase the chances of being caught by having enough inspectors and having active inspections, and not just doubling or tripling or even quadrupling fines, but making sure that there are inspectors out there and getting the job done?

I very much enjoyed the honourable member’s comments. We could all go through the painstaking moments when we take our dogs to the vet for that final time. Just when you think you’re a tough, big, old guy, you sit down and you break down and you cry like a baby, but, you know, it’s good because you love them.

The business of this act, to me, the punitive fines that these unethical bad actors—their unethical behaviour is really bad. Do you agree—are the minimum fines, $10,000 to $25,000, enough? Should they be more?

And the next part is—when I spoke, it was about the bad breeding practices, which, to me, is the absolute worst part. What they end up creating in this world are dogs that just don’t have a chance in life. Do you agree that we go far enough in this bill in those particular measures?

My condolences to your cat.

Puppy mills often fail to keep a dog with contagious diseases away from other dogs or animals. Does the member agree that dogs raised in these types of deplorable conditions are not suitable to be bred, and that this matter is negatively contributing to the conditions of dogs in the province?

On a point of order: Speaker, if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at 6 p.m.