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.