SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

Ontario Assembly

43rd Parl. 1st Sess.
June 4, 2024 09:00AM
  • Jun/4/24 10:00:00 a.m.

I want to thank the member for the question. This will be enforced by the animal welfare inspectors, the same way as always. Some of the important provisions that we’re putting in are allowing them to do their jobs.

I want to caution: The members opposite have a tendency to try to poke holes in our bills to find excuses to vote against them. This isn’t a very good bill to vote against. This is the kind of bill that I think the members should be supporting. We’re bringing in minimum fines: $10,000 if you’re operating a puppy mill or facilitating a puppy mill, $25,000 if that results in the death of a puppy. These are tangible tools that we’re giving our animal welfare inspectors and our front-line workers, resources they need to hold these bad actor puppy mills accountable.

So I’d caution the members: Don’t do what you normally do and vote against this just because you’re opposition. This is a good bill. You should vote in favour of it.

One of the important ones is around record-keeping. Bad actor puppy mills won’t have the ability to say, “Oh, I don’t know how old the dog is. I didn’t keep a record of it.” We’ll have record-keeping provisions maintained within, that they have to maintain or else face a fine—the $10,000 fine for having a puppy mill, $25,000 if resulting in a death.

But I want to say that my colleague believes in parliamentary democracy just like I do, just like every member of the PC caucus does. This is a case where we have amendments in the bill through the committee process that are really, really quite strong. That $10,000 for assisting and facilitating a puppy mill was something we didn’t bring forward in second reading, a gap that we knew that we had. We brought the amendment forward, the committee did the right thing, and we hope all members do the right thing by passing the amended bill.

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