The Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Bill has passed second reading in the Senate. The proposed bill generally seeks to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to recognize that every individual in Canada has a right to a healthy environment and that the Government of Canada must protect that right. The preamble of the bill states that the Government should work to reduce testing on animals. During the second reading debates on April 6th and 7th, Senator Pierre J. Dalphond highlighted the critique that although the preamble drew attention to animal testing, there ought to be specific provisions seeking to phase-out animal testing in Canada. Senator Dalphond reported that four Canadian animal protection organizations - Animal Justice, the Canadian Society for Humane Science, Humane Canada and Humane Society International/Canada - are working cooperatively to develop amendments to Bill S-5 that would address scientific testing on animals. He gave some examples of what the provisions may include, pointing to last-resort use of animal toxicity testing and asking whether protection should extend beyond vertebrates so as to “recognize evolving scientific knowledge about creatures like the amazing octopus, as profiled in the Academy Award-winning Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher.” He referred to the provision in the Civil Code of Quebec recognizing animals as sentient, as well as initiatives in the Senate to protect animals such as the legislation precluding the future captivity of whales and dolphins, a promised ban on the use of animals in cosmetics testing, and the proposed Jane Goodall Act, noting that “as scientific knowledge about animals increases, the circle of empathy towards them widens. In that regard, the Senate has played, and I hope will continue to play, an important role in enhancing respect for the species around us and in recognizing that, in the ecosystem that sustains us, they deserve our respect, as First Nations peoples understood long before us.” Read the text of the bill here, the status of the bill here, and Senator Dalphond’s speech here.
Spotlights
Legislative Updates
Federal Bill S-5 on Animal Testing Scrutinized During Second Reading
Federal Government Threatens to Use Species At Risk Act to Protect Quebec Caribous
With a recorded 5,252 woodland and mountain caribous remaining in Quebec, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the lack of protections from the Quebec government. Minister Guilbeault has given the province until April 20th to share an adequate plan to protect the caribous. If an adequate plan is not produced, Minister Guilbeault is considering using the safety net provisions of the Species At Risk Act (SARA) to issue an order to impose federal protections. The safety net provisions under section 34 and 35 of SARA allow federal authorities to impede on provincial jurisdiction where provincial laws do not effectively protect the species at risk. This would be the first use of the safety net since SARA came into force in 2002. Read more here.
With a recorded 5,252 woodland and mountain caribous remaining in Quebec, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the lack of protections from the Quebec government. Minister Guilbeault has given the province until April 20th to share an adequate plan to protect the caribous. If an adequate plan is not produced, Minister Guilbeault is considering using the safety net provisions of the Species At Risk Act (SARA) to issue an order to impose federal protections. The safety net provisions under section 34 and 35 of SARA allow federal authorities to impede on provincial jurisdiction where provincial laws do not effectively protect the species at risk. This would be the first use of the safety net since SARA came into force in 2002. Read more here.
Litigation Updates
Eleven Activists Found Guilty on Criminal Charges for Pig Farm Direct Action
A Quebec judge has found eleven animal activists guilty for a December, 2019 occupation of the Porgreg pig farm in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, near Montreal. The activists entered the pig farm, filmed poor welfare conditions, and staged a sit-in for six hours, before they were ultimately arrested and charged with various criminal offences. The eleven activists were found guilty of obstruction and breaking and entering; they were acquitted on several counts of mischief that had been claimed by the farmer. In statements given after the verdict, convicted activist Jenny McQueen voiced that although the judge seemed sympathetic for the animals captured on video, the judge found that the activists did disrupt the business and were therefore convicted. Sentencing has been scheduled for May 6th 2022. See the post-verdict statements here, and read more here.
A Quebec judge has found eleven animal activists guilty for a December, 2019 occupation of the Porgreg pig farm in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, near Montreal. The activists entered the pig farm, filmed poor welfare conditions, and staged a sit-in for six hours, before they were ultimately arrested and charged with various criminal offences. The eleven activists were found guilty of obstruction and breaking and entering; they were acquitted on several counts of mischief that had been claimed by the farmer. In statements given after the verdict, convicted activist Jenny McQueen voiced that although the judge seemed sympathetic for the animals captured on video, the judge found that the activists did disrupt the business and were therefore convicted. Sentencing has been scheduled for May 6th 2022. See the post-verdict statements here, and read more here.
Enforcement Updates
Activists Protest in BC SPCA Office Demanding Cruelty Investigations on Farms
During pre-trial proceedings of #TheExcelsior4, animal rights activists protested at the office of the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BC SPCA). A point of frustration for those following #TheExcelsior4 criminal proceedings is that the activists were charged, but the farm was not charged for the poor conditions captured by the activists. At the BC SPCA office, activists urged the BC SPCA to step down from its enforcement duties to allow for more government action targeted towards farm oversight. BC SPCA General Manager of Communications, Lorie Chortyk, responded that the office welcomed the activists, and she highlighted how both the activists and the BC SPCA have both called for more oversight of the agriculture industry in British Columbia. In particular, the BC SPCA has called for 24-hour video surveillance and third-party auditing. Eventually, police were called to disband the sit-in, and six activists were arrested for mischief. Read more here.
During pre-trial proceedings of #TheExcelsior4, animal rights activists protested at the office of the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BC SPCA). A point of frustration for those following #TheExcelsior4 criminal proceedings is that the activists were charged, but the farm was not charged for the poor conditions captured by the activists. At the BC SPCA office, activists urged the BC SPCA to step down from its enforcement duties to allow for more government action targeted towards farm oversight. BC SPCA General Manager of Communications, Lorie Chortyk, responded that the office welcomed the activists, and she highlighted how both the activists and the BC SPCA have both called for more oversight of the agriculture industry in British Columbia. In particular, the BC SPCA has called for 24-hour video surveillance and third-party auditing. Eventually, police were called to disband the sit-in, and six activists were arrested for mischief. Read more here.
Academic Updates
Now Available Open Access Book Edited by Lori Gruen and Justin Marceau Featuring Canadian Animal Law Scholars Maneesha Deckha, Kelly Struthers, and Jessica Eisen
Maneesha Dechka, “Juvenile Smokescreens: Softening the Harm of Zoos, Aquaria, and Prisons through (Human) Children” Chapter 13 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: This chapter explores how human children soften the abusive edge of carceral spaces. Prisons, immigration detention centres, and zoos and aquaria are institutions that attract sustained public scrutiny from prisoner rights, migrant rights, anti-racist, and animal rights movements. Among other things, critics contest the messaging that these institutions and their proponents use to assure the public of the need for confinement and the ethical acceptability of the conditions captive animals and humans experience. These discourses, depending on the specific institution, highlight the larger public “law and order” interests of safety and border control, but also “progressive” interests of rehabilitation, conservation, and education. In highlighting these latter “progressive” interests, carceral institutions seek to humanize themselves and their work to bolster their social credibility. This “humane-washing” occurs through long-standing rationales about rehabilitation for offenders in the prison context, and more recent rationales about the conservation of nature and conservation education in the zoo and aquarium context. It also, I will argue, occurs through a specific type of marshaling of the human child. I apply a multispecies lens to consider how the real and imagined human child in the zoo and aquaria context, and narratives about what is in the best interests of human children in the immigration and prison context, figure into characterizing such carceral institutions as legally and socially legitimate spaces.
Kelly Struthers Montford, “Animals in Prison: Collateral Damage and Commodities of 'Rehabilitation’” Chapter 15 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: Animal protection organizations and lawmakers continue to invest in carceral responses to animal cruelty. This chapter argues that carceral responses will fail to meaningfully address animal cruelty because prisons are not human-only spaces. Instead, prisons prescribe a multitude of human-animal relationships, some of which train prisoners for labour fields that are explicitly premised on cruelty against animals. The chapter focuses on relationships between prisoners and liminal animals (such as feral cats, pigeons, gulls, rabbits, rats, prairie dogs, and coyotes), farmed animals, and animals used in prison animal programs, such as wild horse and dog training programs. The human-animal relationships that structure the prison are also placed within the contexts of settler colonialism and enslavement that are inseparable from the making of race and species in the Americas.
Jessica Eisen, “Litigating Animal Captivity: Habeus Corpus in the Carceral State” Chapter 18 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: The writ of habeas corpus is a legal tool with a complex relationship to carceral practices. The writ has functioned both to liberate illegally-detained individuals and to affirm the validity of underlying systems of legally-authorized incarceration. The so-called “Great Writ of Liberty” has thus survived and even thrived in a number of contexts where liberty interests have been systematically denied. Advocacy surrounding the use of the writ on behalf of non-human animals in U.S. courts has, however, tended toward aspirational, sometimes bordering on fantastical, accounts of the writ’s achievements in human justice contexts.
This chapter will introduce a corrective to this superlative vision of habeas corpus, its achievements in human justice contexts, and its potential for animal liberation. This study will argue that one well-publicized advocacy approach, taken most notably by Steven Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project, overstates the writ’s accomplishments, often relying on an incomplete account of the writ’s history to do so. In particular, this account of the writ’s successes tends to paint struggles against racial violence and inequality as complete, thus minimizing the import of urgent ongoing justice projects. Next, a historical corrective is offered, demonstrating how closer attention to the writ’s actual role in human carceral systems can enrich our understanding of the writ’s limits and potential. This account will emphasize that the writ of habeas corpus operates only to challenge illegal (rather than unjust) detention; that it operates only at the margins of legal confinement systems to contain rather than eliminate carceral practices; and that it therefore serves a role not only in challenging individual instances of confinement, but also in sustaining and validating ongoing carceral practices.
This more critical picture of habeas corpus, however, does not strip the writ of its potential as an advocacy tool for the interests of non-human animals. This chapter will argue that animal advocates might join other social justice movements in adopting a more ambivalent embrace of rights litigation. It is possible, often necessary, for advocates to turn to legal tools without adopting an uncritical posture toward law. Indeed, as with other ambivalent embraces of rights—including historical uses of habeas corpus—litigation is often a critical tool in bringing political attention to social injustices. This chapter will propose that the greatest potential offered by the writ of habeas corpus is a focus on liberty that invites advocacy spotlighting the experiences of animals living within human systems of violence and confinement. It is this prospect of exposing and exploring the harms of human domination of other species—not any fantastical account of the writ’s human achievements—that gives habeas corpus its most meaningful transformative potential.
Maneesha Dechka, “Juvenile Smokescreens: Softening the Harm of Zoos, Aquaria, and Prisons through (Human) Children” Chapter 13 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: This chapter explores how human children soften the abusive edge of carceral spaces. Prisons, immigration detention centres, and zoos and aquaria are institutions that attract sustained public scrutiny from prisoner rights, migrant rights, anti-racist, and animal rights movements. Among other things, critics contest the messaging that these institutions and their proponents use to assure the public of the need for confinement and the ethical acceptability of the conditions captive animals and humans experience. These discourses, depending on the specific institution, highlight the larger public “law and order” interests of safety and border control, but also “progressive” interests of rehabilitation, conservation, and education. In highlighting these latter “progressive” interests, carceral institutions seek to humanize themselves and their work to bolster their social credibility. This “humane-washing” occurs through long-standing rationales about rehabilitation for offenders in the prison context, and more recent rationales about the conservation of nature and conservation education in the zoo and aquarium context. It also, I will argue, occurs through a specific type of marshaling of the human child. I apply a multispecies lens to consider how the real and imagined human child in the zoo and aquaria context, and narratives about what is in the best interests of human children in the immigration and prison context, figure into characterizing such carceral institutions as legally and socially legitimate spaces.
Kelly Struthers Montford, “Animals in Prison: Collateral Damage and Commodities of 'Rehabilitation’” Chapter 15 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: Animal protection organizations and lawmakers continue to invest in carceral responses to animal cruelty. This chapter argues that carceral responses will fail to meaningfully address animal cruelty because prisons are not human-only spaces. Instead, prisons prescribe a multitude of human-animal relationships, some of which train prisoners for labour fields that are explicitly premised on cruelty against animals. The chapter focuses on relationships between prisoners and liminal animals (such as feral cats, pigeons, gulls, rabbits, rats, prairie dogs, and coyotes), farmed animals, and animals used in prison animal programs, such as wild horse and dog training programs. The human-animal relationships that structure the prison are also placed within the contexts of settler colonialism and enslavement that are inseparable from the making of race and species in the Americas.
Jessica Eisen, “Litigating Animal Captivity: Habeus Corpus in the Carceral State” Chapter 18 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: The writ of habeas corpus is a legal tool with a complex relationship to carceral practices. The writ has functioned both to liberate illegally-detained individuals and to affirm the validity of underlying systems of legally-authorized incarceration. The so-called “Great Writ of Liberty” has thus survived and even thrived in a number of contexts where liberty interests have been systematically denied. Advocacy surrounding the use of the writ on behalf of non-human animals in U.S. courts has, however, tended toward aspirational, sometimes bordering on fantastical, accounts of the writ’s achievements in human justice contexts.
This chapter will introduce a corrective to this superlative vision of habeas corpus, its achievements in human justice contexts, and its potential for animal liberation. This study will argue that one well-publicized advocacy approach, taken most notably by Steven Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project, overstates the writ’s accomplishments, often relying on an incomplete account of the writ’s history to do so. In particular, this account of the writ’s successes tends to paint struggles against racial violence and inequality as complete, thus minimizing the import of urgent ongoing justice projects. Next, a historical corrective is offered, demonstrating how closer attention to the writ’s actual role in human carceral systems can enrich our understanding of the writ’s limits and potential. This account will emphasize that the writ of habeas corpus operates only to challenge illegal (rather than unjust) detention; that it operates only at the margins of legal confinement systems to contain rather than eliminate carceral practices; and that it therefore serves a role not only in challenging individual instances of confinement, but also in sustaining and validating ongoing carceral practices.
This more critical picture of habeas corpus, however, does not strip the writ of its potential as an advocacy tool for the interests of non-human animals. This chapter will argue that animal advocates might join other social justice movements in adopting a more ambivalent embrace of rights litigation. It is possible, often necessary, for advocates to turn to legal tools without adopting an uncritical posture toward law. Indeed, as with other ambivalent embraces of rights—including historical uses of habeas corpus—litigation is often a critical tool in bringing political attention to social injustices. This chapter will propose that the greatest potential offered by the writ of habeas corpus is a focus on liberty that invites advocacy spotlighting the experiences of animals living within human systems of violence and confinement. It is this prospect of exposing and exploring the harms of human domination of other species—not any fantastical account of the writ’s human achievements—that gives habeas corpus its most meaningful transformative potential.
New Article Highlights Importance of Indigenous Governance in Wildlife Conservation
Clayton T. Lamb, Roland Willson, Carmen Richter, Naomi Owens-Beek, Julian Napoleon, Bruce Muir, R. Scott McNay, Estelle Lavis, Mark Hebblewhite, Line Giguere, Tamara Dokkie, Stan Boutin, Adam T. Ford, “Indigenous-Led Conservation: Pathways to Recovery for the Nearly Extirpated Klinse-Za Mountain Caribou” (2022) Ecological Applications.
Abstract: Indigenous Peoples around the northern hemisphere have long relied on caribou for subsistence, ceremonial, and community purposes. Unfortunately, despite recovery efforts by Federal and Provincial agencies, caribou are currently in decline in many areas across Canada. In response to recent and dramatic declines of mountain caribou populations within their traditional territory, West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations (collectively, the ‘Nations’) came together to create a new vision for caribou recovery on the lands they have long stewarded and shared. The Nations focused on the Klinse-Za subpopulation, which had once encompassed so many caribou that West Moberly Elders remarked that they were “like bugs on the landscape”. The Klinse-Za caribou declined from ~250 in the 1990’s to only 38 in 2013, rendering Indigenous harvest of caribou non-viable and infringing on treaty rights to a subsistence livelihood. In collaboration with many groups and governments, this Indigenous-led conservation initiative paired short-term population recovery actions—predator reduction and maternal penning—with long-term habitat protection in an effort to create a self-sustaining caribou population. Here, we review these recovery actions and the promising evidence that the abundance of Klinse-Za caribou has more than doubled from 38 animals in 2013 to 101 in 2021, representing rapid population growth in response to recovery actions. With looming extirpation averted, the Nations focused efforts on securing a landmark conservation agreement in 2020 that protects caribou habitat over a 7,986 km2 area. The Agreement provides habitat protection for >85% of the Klinse-Za subpopulation (up from only 1.8% protected pre-conservation agreement) and affords moderate protection for neighboring caribou subpopulations (29-47% of subpopulation areas, up from 0-20%). This Indigenous-led conservation initiative has set both the Indigenous and Canadian governments on the path to recover the Klinse-Za subpopulation and reinstate a culturally meaningful caribou hunt. This effort highlights how Indigenous governance and leadership can be the catalyst needed to establish meaningful conservation actions, enhance endangered species recovery, and honor cultural connections to now imperiled wildlife.
Clayton T. Lamb, Roland Willson, Carmen Richter, Naomi Owens-Beek, Julian Napoleon, Bruce Muir, R. Scott McNay, Estelle Lavis, Mark Hebblewhite, Line Giguere, Tamara Dokkie, Stan Boutin, Adam T. Ford, “Indigenous-Led Conservation: Pathways to Recovery for the Nearly Extirpated Klinse-Za Mountain Caribou” (2022) Ecological Applications.
Abstract: Indigenous Peoples around the northern hemisphere have long relied on caribou for subsistence, ceremonial, and community purposes. Unfortunately, despite recovery efforts by Federal and Provincial agencies, caribou are currently in decline in many areas across Canada. In response to recent and dramatic declines of mountain caribou populations within their traditional territory, West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations (collectively, the ‘Nations’) came together to create a new vision for caribou recovery on the lands they have long stewarded and shared. The Nations focused on the Klinse-Za subpopulation, which had once encompassed so many caribou that West Moberly Elders remarked that they were “like bugs on the landscape”. The Klinse-Za caribou declined from ~250 in the 1990’s to only 38 in 2013, rendering Indigenous harvest of caribou non-viable and infringing on treaty rights to a subsistence livelihood. In collaboration with many groups and governments, this Indigenous-led conservation initiative paired short-term population recovery actions—predator reduction and maternal penning—with long-term habitat protection in an effort to create a self-sustaining caribou population. Here, we review these recovery actions and the promising evidence that the abundance of Klinse-Za caribou has more than doubled from 38 animals in 2013 to 101 in 2021, representing rapid population growth in response to recovery actions. With looming extirpation averted, the Nations focused efforts on securing a landmark conservation agreement in 2020 that protects caribou habitat over a 7,986 km2 area. The Agreement provides habitat protection for >85% of the Klinse-Za subpopulation (up from only 1.8% protected pre-conservation agreement) and affords moderate protection for neighboring caribou subpopulations (29-47% of subpopulation areas, up from 0-20%). This Indigenous-led conservation initiative has set both the Indigenous and Canadian governments on the path to recover the Klinse-Za subpopulation and reinstate a culturally meaningful caribou hunt. This effort highlights how Indigenous governance and leadership can be the catalyst needed to establish meaningful conservation actions, enhance endangered species recovery, and honor cultural connections to now imperiled wildlife.
Legislative Updates
Saskatchewan’s Animal Production Act Passes Third Reading
Introduced by MLA David Marit, Bill 73, Saskatchewan’s Animal Production Act [production, not protection] has passed consideration by the Standing Committee on the Economy, passed third reading, and now awaits royal assent. The bill seeks to modernize Saskatchewan’s administrative laws surrounding farm licensing, inspections, identifications, fencing, and stray animals. Such laws had not been comprehensively reviewed since the 1970s. In consideration of animal protection, under Bill 73’s Part 10 “Offences and Penalties,” the bill includes a specific offence under s. 10-1(1)(r) that no person shall fail to provide proper animal care as required in the province’s Animal Protection Act, 2018. Penalties for a first offence could result in a summary conviction of a fine not more than $15,000 and one year imprisonment, and penalties for subsequent offences could result in a summary conviction with a fine not exceeding $25,000 and one year imprisonment. Read the text of the bill here.
Introduced by MLA David Marit, Bill 73, Saskatchewan’s Animal Production Act [production, not protection] has passed consideration by the Standing Committee on the Economy, passed third reading, and now awaits royal assent. The bill seeks to modernize Saskatchewan’s administrative laws surrounding farm licensing, inspections, identifications, fencing, and stray animals. Such laws had not been comprehensively reviewed since the 1970s. In consideration of animal protection, under Bill 73’s Part 10 “Offences and Penalties,” the bill includes a specific offence under s. 10-1(1)(r) that no person shall fail to provide proper animal care as required in the province’s Animal Protection Act, 2018. Penalties for a first offence could result in a summary conviction of a fine not more than $15,000 and one year imprisonment, and penalties for subsequent offences could result in a summary conviction with a fine not exceeding $25,000 and one year imprisonment. Read the text of the bill here.
Federal Bill S-5 on Animal Testing Scrutinized During Second Reading
The Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Bill has passed second reading in the Senate. The proposed bill generally seeks to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to recognize that every individual in Canada has a right to a healthy environment and that the Government of Canada must protect that right. The preamble of the bill states that the Government should work to reduce testing on animals. During the second reading debates on April 6th and 7th, Senator Pierre J. Dalphond highlighted the critique that although the preamble drew attention to animal testing, there ought to be specific provisions seeking to phase-out animal testing in Canada. Senator Dalphond reported that four Canadian animal protection organizations - Animal Justice, the Canadian Society for Humane Science, Humane Canada and Humane Society International/Canada - are working cooperatively to develop amendments to Bill S-5 that would address scientific testing on animals. He gave some examples of what the provisions may include, pointing to last-resort use of animal toxicity testing and asking whether protection should extend beyond vertebrates so as to “recognize evolving scientific knowledge about creatures like the amazing octopus, as profiled in the Academy Award-winning Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher.” He referred to the provision in the Civil Code of Quebec recognizing animals as sentient, as well as initiatives in the Senate to protect animals such as the legislation precluding the future captivity of whales and dolphins, a promised ban on the use of animals in cosmetics testing, and the proposed Jane Goodall Act, noting that “as scientific knowledge about animals increases, the circle of empathy towards them widens. In that regard, the Senate has played, and I hope will continue to play, an important role in enhancing respect for the species around us and in recognizing that, in the ecosystem that sustains us, they deserve our respect, as First Nations peoples understood long before us.” Read the text of the bill here, the status of the bill here, and Senator Dalphond’s speech here.
The Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Bill has passed second reading in the Senate. The proposed bill generally seeks to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to recognize that every individual in Canada has a right to a healthy environment and that the Government of Canada must protect that right. The preamble of the bill states that the Government should work to reduce testing on animals. During the second reading debates on April 6th and 7th, Senator Pierre J. Dalphond highlighted the critique that although the preamble drew attention to animal testing, there ought to be specific provisions seeking to phase-out animal testing in Canada. Senator Dalphond reported that four Canadian animal protection organizations - Animal Justice, the Canadian Society for Humane Science, Humane Canada and Humane Society International/Canada - are working cooperatively to develop amendments to Bill S-5 that would address scientific testing on animals. He gave some examples of what the provisions may include, pointing to last-resort use of animal toxicity testing and asking whether protection should extend beyond vertebrates so as to “recognize evolving scientific knowledge about creatures like the amazing octopus, as profiled in the Academy Award-winning Netflix documentary My Octopus Teacher.” He referred to the provision in the Civil Code of Quebec recognizing animals as sentient, as well as initiatives in the Senate to protect animals such as the legislation precluding the future captivity of whales and dolphins, a promised ban on the use of animals in cosmetics testing, and the proposed Jane Goodall Act, noting that “as scientific knowledge about animals increases, the circle of empathy towards them widens. In that regard, the Senate has played, and I hope will continue to play, an important role in enhancing respect for the species around us and in recognizing that, in the ecosystem that sustains us, they deserve our respect, as First Nations peoples understood long before us.” Read the text of the bill here, the status of the bill here, and Senator Dalphond’s speech here.
Animal Justice Presents Recommendations for Winnipeg’s Proposed Responsible Pet Ownership Bylaw
Animal Justice presented recommendations to Winnipeg’s Responsible Pet Ownership Bylaw during consideration at the Standing Policy Committee on Protection, Community Services and Parks. In January 2022, Winnipeg Animal Services proposed recommendations including setting standards for “doggy daycares,” banning lethal wildlife traps, and regulating dog and cat breeding. The Committee voted to: (i) eliminate the City’s pit bull ban; (ii) introduce an urban chicken keeping pilot project; and (iii) delay regulatory changes to exotic pet ownership for another year. Animal Justice staff lawyer Kaitlyn Mitchell made submissions supporting elimination of the pit bull ban but opposition to an urban chicken keeping program and deferring the improvement of exotic animal ownership regulations. Submissions by Animal Justice, the Winnipeg Humane Society, the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Humane Society International/Canada, Zoocheck and others are available here. Read Animal Justice’s media release here.
Animal Justice presented recommendations to Winnipeg’s Responsible Pet Ownership Bylaw during consideration at the Standing Policy Committee on Protection, Community Services and Parks. In January 2022, Winnipeg Animal Services proposed recommendations including setting standards for “doggy daycares,” banning lethal wildlife traps, and regulating dog and cat breeding. The Committee voted to: (i) eliminate the City’s pit bull ban; (ii) introduce an urban chicken keeping pilot project; and (iii) delay regulatory changes to exotic pet ownership for another year. Animal Justice staff lawyer Kaitlyn Mitchell made submissions supporting elimination of the pit bull ban but opposition to an urban chicken keeping program and deferring the improvement of exotic animal ownership regulations. Submissions by Animal Justice, the Winnipeg Humane Society, the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Humane Society International/Canada, Zoocheck and others are available here. Read Animal Justice’s media release here.
Federal Government Threatens to Use Species At Risk Act to Protect Quebec Caribous
With a recorded 5,252 woodland and mountain caribous remaining in Quebec, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the lack of protections from the Quebec government. Minister Guilbeault has given the province until April 20th to share an adequate plan to protect the caribous. If an adequate plan is not produced, Minister Guilbeault is considering using the safety net provisions of the Species At Risk Act (SARA) to issue an order to impose federal protections. The safety net provisions under section 34 and 35 of SARA allow federal authorities to impede on provincial jurisdiction where provincial laws do not effectively protect the species at risk. This would be the first use of the safety net since SARA came into force in 2002. Read more here.
With a recorded 5,252 woodland and mountain caribous remaining in Quebec, Federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, has expressed his dissatisfaction with the lack of protections from the Quebec government. Minister Guilbeault has given the province until April 20th to share an adequate plan to protect the caribous. If an adequate plan is not produced, Minister Guilbeault is considering using the safety net provisions of the Species At Risk Act (SARA) to issue an order to impose federal protections. The safety net provisions under section 34 and 35 of SARA allow federal authorities to impede on provincial jurisdiction where provincial laws do not effectively protect the species at risk. This would be the first use of the safety net since SARA came into force in 2002. Read more here.
Litigation Updates
Moose Jaw Couple Fined for Animal Abuse
Dyan Gellert and Robyn St. Laurent both pled guilty to provincial animal abuse charges after an investigation resulted in the seizure of two live dogs, seventeen live cats, and forty-five deceased cats from their shared home in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The two were fined $1,000 each for the offences and a five-year animal ownership prohibition was ordered. Protesters gathered, outraged by the low sentence, but the prosecutor as well as the Executive Director of the Animal Protection Services of Saskatchewan highlighted the weight of the prohibition order, which allows animal protection officers to check in and enforce compliance with the order, thereby preventing future animal suffering. Read more here.
Dyan Gellert and Robyn St. Laurent both pled guilty to provincial animal abuse charges after an investigation resulted in the seizure of two live dogs, seventeen live cats, and forty-five deceased cats from their shared home in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The two were fined $1,000 each for the offences and a five-year animal ownership prohibition was ordered. Protesters gathered, outraged by the low sentence, but the prosecutor as well as the Executive Director of the Animal Protection Services of Saskatchewan highlighted the weight of the prohibition order, which allows animal protection officers to check in and enforce compliance with the order, thereby preventing future animal suffering. Read more here.
Eleven Activists Found Guilty on Criminal Charges for Pig Farm Direct Action
A Quebec judge has found eleven animal activists guilty for a December, 2019 occupation of the Porgreg pig farm in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, near Montreal. The activists entered the pig farm, filmed poor welfare conditions, and staged a sit-in for six hours, before they were ultimately arrested and charged with various criminal offences. The eleven activists were found guilty of obstruction and breaking and entering; they were acquitted on several counts of mischief that had been claimed by the farmer. In statements given after the verdict, convicted activist Jenny McQueen voiced that although the judge seemed sympathetic for the animals captured on video, the judge found that the activists did disrupt the business and were therefore convicted. Sentencing has been scheduled for May 6th 2022. See the post-verdict statements here, and read more here.
A Quebec judge has found eleven animal activists guilty for a December, 2019 occupation of the Porgreg pig farm in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, near Montreal. The activists entered the pig farm, filmed poor welfare conditions, and staged a sit-in for six hours, before they were ultimately arrested and charged with various criminal offences. The eleven activists were found guilty of obstruction and breaking and entering; they were acquitted on several counts of mischief that had been claimed by the farmer. In statements given after the verdict, convicted activist Jenny McQueen voiced that although the judge seemed sympathetic for the animals captured on video, the judge found that the activists did disrupt the business and were therefore convicted. Sentencing has been scheduled for May 6th 2022. See the post-verdict statements here, and read more here.
Enforcement Updates
Activists Protest in BC SPCA Office Demanding Cruelty Investigations on Farms
During pre-trial proceedings of #TheExcelsior4, animal rights activists protested at the office of the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BC SPCA). A point of frustration for those following #TheExcelsior4 criminal proceedings is that the activists were charged, but the farm was not charged for the poor conditions captured by the activists. At the BC SPCA office, activists urged the BC SPCA to step down from its enforcement duties to allow for more government action targeted towards farm oversight. BC SPCA General Manager of Communications, Lorie Chortyk, responded that the office welcomed the activists, and she highlighted how both the activists and the BC SPCA have both called for more oversight of the agriculture industry in British Columbia. In particular, the BC SPCA has called for 24-hour video surveillance and third-party auditing. Eventually, police were called to disband the sit-in, and six activists were arrested for mischief. Read more here.
During pre-trial proceedings of #TheExcelsior4, animal rights activists protested at the office of the British Columbia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BC SPCA). A point of frustration for those following #TheExcelsior4 criminal proceedings is that the activists were charged, but the farm was not charged for the poor conditions captured by the activists. At the BC SPCA office, activists urged the BC SPCA to step down from its enforcement duties to allow for more government action targeted towards farm oversight. BC SPCA General Manager of Communications, Lorie Chortyk, responded that the office welcomed the activists, and she highlighted how both the activists and the BC SPCA have both called for more oversight of the agriculture industry in British Columbia. In particular, the BC SPCA has called for 24-hour video surveillance and third-party auditing. Eventually, police were called to disband the sit-in, and six activists were arrested for mischief. Read more here.
Two Ontario Residents Arrested After Abandoning Kittens in a Trash Bag
Waterloo Regional Police Service initiated an investigation after five kittens were found abandoned, four tied in a trash bag and one visibly injured beside the bag. The kittens, who appeared to be from the same eight-week-old litter, were taken to the Humane Society of Kitchener Waterloo & Stratford Perth, where they were given medical care. Following the investigation, a thirty-seven-year-old woman and a forty-one-year-old man were both charged with causing and permitting distress to an animal. While the two accused individuals face provincial charges, the Humane Society reminds the public not to abandon animals for any reason. Read more here.
Waterloo Regional Police Service initiated an investigation after five kittens were found abandoned, four tied in a trash bag and one visibly injured beside the bag. The kittens, who appeared to be from the same eight-week-old litter, were taken to the Humane Society of Kitchener Waterloo & Stratford Perth, where they were given medical care. Following the investigation, a thirty-seven-year-old woman and a forty-one-year-old man were both charged with causing and permitting distress to an animal. While the two accused individuals face provincial charges, the Humane Society reminds the public not to abandon animals for any reason. Read more here.
Academic Updates
Now Available Open Access Book Edited by Lori Gruen and Justin Marceau Featuring Canadian Animal Law Scholars Maneesha Deckha, Kelly Struthers, and Jessica Eisen
Maneesha Dechka, “Juvenile Smokescreens: Softening the Harm of Zoos, Aquaria, and Prisons through (Human) Children” Chapter 13 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: This chapter explores how human children soften the abusive edge of carceral spaces. Prisons, immigration detention centres, and zoos and aquaria are institutions that attract sustained public scrutiny from prisoner rights, migrant rights, anti-racist, and animal rights movements. Among other things, critics contest the messaging that these institutions and their proponents use to assure the public of the need for confinement and the ethical acceptability of the conditions captive animals and humans experience. These discourses, depending on the specific institution, highlight the larger public “law and order” interests of safety and border control, but also “progressive” interests of rehabilitation, conservation, and education. In highlighting these latter “progressive” interests, carceral institutions seek to humanize themselves and their work to bolster their social credibility. This “humane-washing” occurs through long-standing rationales about rehabilitation for offenders in the prison context, and more recent rationales about the conservation of nature and conservation education in the zoo and aquarium context. It also, I will argue, occurs through a specific type of marshaling of the human child. I apply a multispecies lens to consider how the real and imagined human child in the zoo and aquaria context, and narratives about what is in the best interests of human children in the immigration and prison context, figure into characterizing such carceral institutions as legally and socially legitimate spaces.
Kelly Struthers Montford, “Animals in Prison: Collateral Damage and Commodities of 'Rehabilitation’” Chapter 15 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: Animal protection organizations and lawmakers continue to invest in carceral responses to animal cruelty. This chapter argues that carceral responses will fail to meaningfully address animal cruelty because prisons are not human-only spaces. Instead, prisons prescribe a multitude of human-animal relationships, some of which train prisoners for labour fields that are explicitly premised on cruelty against animals. The chapter focuses on relationships between prisoners and liminal animals (such as feral cats, pigeons, gulls, rabbits, rats, prairie dogs, and coyotes), farmed animals, and animals used in prison animal programs, such as wild horse and dog training programs. The human-animal relationships that structure the prison are also placed within the contexts of settler colonialism and enslavement that are inseparable from the making of race and species in the Americas.
Jessica Eisen, “Litigating Animal Captivity: Habeus Corpus in the Carceral State” Chapter 18 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: The writ of habeas corpus is a legal tool with a complex relationship to carceral practices. The writ has functioned both to liberate illegally-detained individuals and to affirm the validity of underlying systems of legally-authorized incarceration. The so-called “Great Writ of Liberty” has thus survived and even thrived in a number of contexts where liberty interests have been systematically denied. Advocacy surrounding the use of the writ on behalf of non-human animals in U.S. courts has, however, tended toward aspirational, sometimes bordering on fantastical, accounts of the writ’s achievements in human justice contexts.
This chapter will introduce a corrective to this superlative vision of habeas corpus, its achievements in human justice contexts, and its potential for animal liberation. This study will argue that one well-publicized advocacy approach, taken most notably by Steven Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project, overstates the writ’s accomplishments, often relying on an incomplete account of the writ’s history to do so. In particular, this account of the writ’s successes tends to paint struggles against racial violence and inequality as complete, thus minimizing the import of urgent ongoing justice projects. Next, a historical corrective is offered, demonstrating how closer attention to the writ’s actual role in human carceral systems can enrich our understanding of the writ’s limits and potential. This account will emphasize that the writ of habeas corpus operates only to challenge illegal (rather than unjust) detention; that it operates only at the margins of legal confinement systems to contain rather than eliminate carceral practices; and that it therefore serves a role not only in challenging individual instances of confinement, but also in sustaining and validating ongoing carceral practices.
This more critical picture of habeas corpus, however, does not strip the writ of its potential as an advocacy tool for the interests of non-human animals. This chapter will argue that animal advocates might join other social justice movements in adopting a more ambivalent embrace of rights litigation. It is possible, often necessary, for advocates to turn to legal tools without adopting an uncritical posture toward law. Indeed, as with other ambivalent embraces of rights—including historical uses of habeas corpus—litigation is often a critical tool in bringing political attention to social injustices. This chapter will propose that the greatest potential offered by the writ of habeas corpus is a focus on liberty that invites advocacy spotlighting the experiences of animals living within human systems of violence and confinement. It is this prospect of exposing and exploring the harms of human domination of other species—not any fantastical account of the writ’s human achievements—that gives habeas corpus its most meaningful transformative potential.
Maneesha Dechka, “Juvenile Smokescreens: Softening the Harm of Zoos, Aquaria, and Prisons through (Human) Children” Chapter 13 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: This chapter explores how human children soften the abusive edge of carceral spaces. Prisons, immigration detention centres, and zoos and aquaria are institutions that attract sustained public scrutiny from prisoner rights, migrant rights, anti-racist, and animal rights movements. Among other things, critics contest the messaging that these institutions and their proponents use to assure the public of the need for confinement and the ethical acceptability of the conditions captive animals and humans experience. These discourses, depending on the specific institution, highlight the larger public “law and order” interests of safety and border control, but also “progressive” interests of rehabilitation, conservation, and education. In highlighting these latter “progressive” interests, carceral institutions seek to humanize themselves and their work to bolster their social credibility. This “humane-washing” occurs through long-standing rationales about rehabilitation for offenders in the prison context, and more recent rationales about the conservation of nature and conservation education in the zoo and aquarium context. It also, I will argue, occurs through a specific type of marshaling of the human child. I apply a multispecies lens to consider how the real and imagined human child in the zoo and aquaria context, and narratives about what is in the best interests of human children in the immigration and prison context, figure into characterizing such carceral institutions as legally and socially legitimate spaces.
Kelly Struthers Montford, “Animals in Prison: Collateral Damage and Commodities of 'Rehabilitation’” Chapter 15 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: Animal protection organizations and lawmakers continue to invest in carceral responses to animal cruelty. This chapter argues that carceral responses will fail to meaningfully address animal cruelty because prisons are not human-only spaces. Instead, prisons prescribe a multitude of human-animal relationships, some of which train prisoners for labour fields that are explicitly premised on cruelty against animals. The chapter focuses on relationships between prisoners and liminal animals (such as feral cats, pigeons, gulls, rabbits, rats, prairie dogs, and coyotes), farmed animals, and animals used in prison animal programs, such as wild horse and dog training programs. The human-animal relationships that structure the prison are also placed within the contexts of settler colonialism and enslavement that are inseparable from the making of race and species in the Americas.
Jessica Eisen, “Litigating Animal Captivity: Habeus Corpus in the Carceral State” Chapter 18 in Lori Gruen & Justin Marceau (eds.), Carceral Logics: Human Incarceration and Animal Captivity (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Abstract: The writ of habeas corpus is a legal tool with a complex relationship to carceral practices. The writ has functioned both to liberate illegally-detained individuals and to affirm the validity of underlying systems of legally-authorized incarceration. The so-called “Great Writ of Liberty” has thus survived and even thrived in a number of contexts where liberty interests have been systematically denied. Advocacy surrounding the use of the writ on behalf of non-human animals in U.S. courts has, however, tended toward aspirational, sometimes bordering on fantastical, accounts of the writ’s achievements in human justice contexts.
This chapter will introduce a corrective to this superlative vision of habeas corpus, its achievements in human justice contexts, and its potential for animal liberation. This study will argue that one well-publicized advocacy approach, taken most notably by Steven Wise and the Nonhuman Rights Project, overstates the writ’s accomplishments, often relying on an incomplete account of the writ’s history to do so. In particular, this account of the writ’s successes tends to paint struggles against racial violence and inequality as complete, thus minimizing the import of urgent ongoing justice projects. Next, a historical corrective is offered, demonstrating how closer attention to the writ’s actual role in human carceral systems can enrich our understanding of the writ’s limits and potential. This account will emphasize that the writ of habeas corpus operates only to challenge illegal (rather than unjust) detention; that it operates only at the margins of legal confinement systems to contain rather than eliminate carceral practices; and that it therefore serves a role not only in challenging individual instances of confinement, but also in sustaining and validating ongoing carceral practices.
This more critical picture of habeas corpus, however, does not strip the writ of its potential as an advocacy tool for the interests of non-human animals. This chapter will argue that animal advocates might join other social justice movements in adopting a more ambivalent embrace of rights litigation. It is possible, often necessary, for advocates to turn to legal tools without adopting an uncritical posture toward law. Indeed, as with other ambivalent embraces of rights—including historical uses of habeas corpus—litigation is often a critical tool in bringing political attention to social injustices. This chapter will propose that the greatest potential offered by the writ of habeas corpus is a focus on liberty that invites advocacy spotlighting the experiences of animals living within human systems of violence and confinement. It is this prospect of exposing and exploring the harms of human domination of other species—not any fantastical account of the writ’s human achievements—that gives habeas corpus its most meaningful transformative potential.
New Article Highlights Importance of Indigenous Governance in Wildlife Conservation
Clayton T. Lamb, Roland Willson, Carmen Richter, Naomi Owens-Beek, Julian Napoleon, Bruce Muir, R. Scott McNay, Estelle Lavis, Mark Hebblewhite, Line Giguere, Tamara Dokkie, Stan Boutin, Adam T. Ford, “Indigenous-Led Conservation: Pathways to Recovery for the Nearly Extirpated Klinse-Za Mountain Caribou” (2022) Ecological Applications.
Abstract: Indigenous Peoples around the northern hemisphere have long relied on caribou for subsistence, ceremonial, and community purposes. Unfortunately, despite recovery efforts by Federal and Provincial agencies, caribou are currently in decline in many areas across Canada. In response to recent and dramatic declines of mountain caribou populations within their traditional territory, West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations (collectively, the ‘Nations’) came together to create a new vision for caribou recovery on the lands they have long stewarded and shared. The Nations focused on the Klinse-Za subpopulation, which had once encompassed so many caribou that West Moberly Elders remarked that they were “like bugs on the landscape”. The Klinse-Za caribou declined from ~250 in the 1990’s to only 38 in 2013, rendering Indigenous harvest of caribou non-viable and infringing on treaty rights to a subsistence livelihood. In collaboration with many groups and governments, this Indigenous-led conservation initiative paired short-term population recovery actions—predator reduction and maternal penning—with long-term habitat protection in an effort to create a self-sustaining caribou population. Here, we review these recovery actions and the promising evidence that the abundance of Klinse-Za caribou has more than doubled from 38 animals in 2013 to 101 in 2021, representing rapid population growth in response to recovery actions. With looming extirpation averted, the Nations focused efforts on securing a landmark conservation agreement in 2020 that protects caribou habitat over a 7,986 km2 area. The Agreement provides habitat protection for >85% of the Klinse-Za subpopulation (up from only 1.8% protected pre-conservation agreement) and affords moderate protection for neighboring caribou subpopulations (29-47% of subpopulation areas, up from 0-20%). This Indigenous-led conservation initiative has set both the Indigenous and Canadian governments on the path to recover the Klinse-Za subpopulation and reinstate a culturally meaningful caribou hunt. This effort highlights how Indigenous governance and leadership can be the catalyst needed to establish meaningful conservation actions, enhance endangered species recovery, and honor cultural connections to now imperiled wildlife.
Clayton T. Lamb, Roland Willson, Carmen Richter, Naomi Owens-Beek, Julian Napoleon, Bruce Muir, R. Scott McNay, Estelle Lavis, Mark Hebblewhite, Line Giguere, Tamara Dokkie, Stan Boutin, Adam T. Ford, “Indigenous-Led Conservation: Pathways to Recovery for the Nearly Extirpated Klinse-Za Mountain Caribou” (2022) Ecological Applications.
Abstract: Indigenous Peoples around the northern hemisphere have long relied on caribou for subsistence, ceremonial, and community purposes. Unfortunately, despite recovery efforts by Federal and Provincial agencies, caribou are currently in decline in many areas across Canada. In response to recent and dramatic declines of mountain caribou populations within their traditional territory, West Moberly First Nations and Saulteau First Nations (collectively, the ‘Nations’) came together to create a new vision for caribou recovery on the lands they have long stewarded and shared. The Nations focused on the Klinse-Za subpopulation, which had once encompassed so many caribou that West Moberly Elders remarked that they were “like bugs on the landscape”. The Klinse-Za caribou declined from ~250 in the 1990’s to only 38 in 2013, rendering Indigenous harvest of caribou non-viable and infringing on treaty rights to a subsistence livelihood. In collaboration with many groups and governments, this Indigenous-led conservation initiative paired short-term population recovery actions—predator reduction and maternal penning—with long-term habitat protection in an effort to create a self-sustaining caribou population. Here, we review these recovery actions and the promising evidence that the abundance of Klinse-Za caribou has more than doubled from 38 animals in 2013 to 101 in 2021, representing rapid population growth in response to recovery actions. With looming extirpation averted, the Nations focused efforts on securing a landmark conservation agreement in 2020 that protects caribou habitat over a 7,986 km2 area. The Agreement provides habitat protection for >85% of the Klinse-Za subpopulation (up from only 1.8% protected pre-conservation agreement) and affords moderate protection for neighboring caribou subpopulations (29-47% of subpopulation areas, up from 0-20%). This Indigenous-led conservation initiative has set both the Indigenous and Canadian governments on the path to recover the Klinse-Za subpopulation and reinstate a culturally meaningful caribou hunt. This effort highlights how Indigenous governance and leadership can be the catalyst needed to establish meaningful conservation actions, enhance endangered species recovery, and honor cultural connections to now imperiled wildlife.
International Updates
Animal Welfare [Sentience] Bill Reaches Final Stages in United Kingdom Parliament
The Animal Welfare [Sentience] Bill, has completed all steps in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and is now in its final stages. The bill, which will legally recognize animal sentience, is now awaiting royal assent. The bill would seek to create an Animal Sentience Committee, which would be able to influence policies related to animal welfare. See the bills progress here.
The Animal Welfare [Sentience] Bill, has completed all steps in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and is now in its final stages. The bill, which will legally recognize animal sentience, is now awaiting royal assent. The bill would seek to create an Animal Sentience Committee, which would be able to influence policies related to animal welfare. See the bills progress here.
Other Updates
Montreal SPCA Gets Support from Opposition Party to End Residential No-Pet Clauses
The “Keeping Families Together” campaign initiated by the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) has gained support from one of Quebec’s opposition parties. Mannon Massé, a member of Québec solidaire, has voiced support for a legislative change that would render any residential no-pet clauses null and of no effect. The SPCA’s Director of Animal Advocacy and Legal Affairs, Sophie Gaillard, highlights how low-income Quebec residents are particularly affected by no-pet clauses, which have the effect of forcing residents to choose between their companion animals and affordable housing, effectively breaking up families made of human and nonhuman members and leading to large numbers of abandoned animals when people move. Support from Québec solidaire may pressure the Quebec government to take action on no-pet clauses in residential leases. Read more here.
The “Keeping Families Together” campaign initiated by the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) has gained support from one of Quebec’s opposition parties. Mannon Massé, a member of Québec solidaire, has voiced support for a legislative change that would render any residential no-pet clauses null and of no effect. The SPCA’s Director of Animal Advocacy and Legal Affairs, Sophie Gaillard, highlights how low-income Quebec residents are particularly affected by no-pet clauses, which have the effect of forcing residents to choose between their companion animals and affordable housing, effectively breaking up families made of human and nonhuman members and leading to large numbers of abandoned animals when people move. Support from Québec solidaire may pressure the Quebec government to take action on no-pet clauses in residential leases. Read more here.