Contact your MP!

Ineffective S-203 passed on Wed Apr 9th!! We need your support with calls, letters, emails and petition sig’s to MP’s to help get effective animal cruelty legislation like C-373 (now C-229) in place after more than 116 yrs of useless laws!

What can you do to help:

Write a letter (postage free to the House of Commons), email or call your MP!
Link to find your MP’s mail, email and ph #:

See how your MP voted on useless S-203 – WSPA
(Great link to easily see how your MP voted and send a letter!)

Sample letter (please personalize and put in your own words to have more impact!):

Dear (MP),

A number of your constituents have signed a petition to stop the Senate Bill S-203 dealing with animal cruelty as it lacks the teeth to effectively prosecute abusers, and yet the Government ignored our wishes and passed it on Apr 9th. The NDP introduced two amendments to delete the bill, but they were not successful.

In fact, this bill was opposed by more than 150,000 Canadian citizens from across the country who signed a petition in support of a private member’s Bill C-373. A rash of high-profile animal abuse cases over the past year shocked us by the savagery of these offences.

Bill S-203 was opposed by every major animal welfare organization in Canada including our veterinarians and humane societies. It makes absolutely no sense to pass a bill that is opposed by our frontline workers, S-203 is simply not good enough, we need effective legislation like C-373 (now C-229) in place to reflect the values of Canadians.

The CFHS, CVMA and IFAW, have been actively fighting for several years to update Canada’s animal cruelty laws that haven’t substantially changed since 1892. They are strong proponents for legislation like Bill C-373 (C-229) or C-558, that not only increases penalties for animal cruelty offences, but closes the loopholes in the Criminal Code that make it difficult for enforcement agencies and the courts to convict animal abusers.

Under past laws, conviction rates of animal cruelty complaints were only one quarter of 1% due to the antiquated wording of our 116- year- old legislation. Bill S-203 does nothing to change these statistics – it merely adjusts the fines for inflation.

I have provided this link to Pet-Abuse.com for you to review some current high-profile cases. This site also indicates the low conviction rates of these cases.

This federal government has made dealing with violent crime a cornerstone of their mandate and yet continues to ignore the documentation linking acts of animal cruelty and violent crimes against humans, particularly women and children. In my mind, animal cruelty, particularly premeditated mutilation where tools were used such as flammable agents, weapons, rope, duct tape etc., are serious in nature and should be viewed as a threat to the safety of our society.

Dealing with animal cruelty is not a partisan issue. Please represent your constituents by supporting effective animal cruelty legislation like C-373 (C-229), S-203 is simply not good enough.

As my representative, I ask that you will:

1) Convince others that the Conservatives need to introduce a bill similar to C-373 (now C-229) and make it government legislation.

2) Continue to work on this issue and address the other flaws within our cruelty laws such as training animals to fight each other, removing the term ‘wilful’ from the neglect section , taking animals out of the property section, and creating a definition of ‘animal’ etc.

Sincerely,

(YOUR NAME)
(YOUR ADDRESS)

P.S! Remember letters to editors help also!!