Animal Protection
The Animal Protection Party of Canada’s (APPC) founding mission is to use political mechanisms to protect animals from being exploited, harmed, or killed by people.
Harming and killing animals is deeply embedded in human society such that it is considered by most people to be not only normal but also necessary for human well-being. That belief is, with few rare exceptions, false. What scientific research shows is that harming and killing animals is causing enormous suffering to people. It is a leading cause of premature human death, environmental destruction, climate change, and human conflicts. The suffering that animals endure is not in dispute.
The scientific research is also unambiguous: the more we reduce the harm and killing we cause animals at all levels—individual, societal, and global—the greater the benefits that accrue to people, society, and the environment, and, of course, to the animals themselves.
Canadian law considers animals ‘property’; consequently, they endure systemic use, abuse and cruelty. Animals have very little protection from exploitation despite a growing understanding that they are complex beings who suffer and experience
pleasure and pain—physical and psychological—in similar ways to human beings.
The current system does not afford animals even basic freedoms such as:
• freedom from neglect and suffering,
• freedom from pain, injury and disease,
• freedom from fear and emotional and psychological distress, and
• freedom from exploitation.
Animals deserve proper protection. This starts with recognizing and
entrenching their rights in our laws.
To this end, APPC would establish a Minister for the Animals to develop and implement policies and programs that would ultimately end their exploitation. Establish a Ministry for Animal Protection through the Minister for the Animals. The Minister for the Animals would hold an independent national inquiry to collect baseline data about animal use, abuse, and deaths; bring forward recommendations to improve the status of animals; and develop a schedule to diminish and eliminate their exploitation.
APPC would recognize all “life” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. APPC would entrench the right of all human and non-human life the right to a clean and healthy environment.
APPC is currently working on legislation designed to reduce the number of animals exploited for human purposes and to mitigate their suffering with the ultimate goal of ending all animal use and exploitation.
The Animal Protection Party of Canada proposes the following
actions by:
1. Phasing out and transition all animal agriculture sectors to plant-based sectors by 2030.
2. Opposing live trade for slaughter for such animals as horses, pigs, sheep and others.
3. Ending federal subsidies to and phasing out all animal use sectors.
a. This includes all sectors using animals in sport, competition, tourism, and
entertainment.
b. Animals raised and killed for their fur.
c. Land based animal agriculture
d. Fishing and marine aquaculture.
e. Animals used in experimentation.
4. Reinvesting federal subsidies from animal use sectors into alternatives to animal use.
5. Removing animals from the property section of the Canadian Criminal Code and provide them with their own category as “non-human persons.”
6. Creating a national registry for people convicted of animal cruelty to ensure inter-provincial consistency of sentencing.
7. Ensuring accountability and transparency in animal law by ending the charity driven model of animal welfare enforcement.
8. Replacing the Canadian Council on Animal Care, the National Farm Animal Care Council, and the Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums with new publicly accountable, animal-centred bodies free from animal-use industry influence.
9. Redirecting federal funding from animal-use models of scientific research towards animal alternative methods and research.
10. Actively promoting and educating the public on the health, environmental, and social benefits of a vegan lifestyle.
11. Ending the trade in exotic species and the wildlife trade in Canada.
12. Banning the breeding of animals for profit.
13. Through the Ministry for Animal Protection, create enforcement agencies to monitor transport of animals within Canada with powers to do random inspections, document, fine, and seize animals in distress.
14. Establish a network of federally funded animal sanctuaries to aide in the transition away from animal agriculture.
15. Enforce mandatory surveillance cameras in places where animals are kept on farms and slaughterhouses with footage captured being available to the public and admissible in court.
16. Engage in a review and invest in the education of veterinarians to redefine their role from making animals healthy for humans, to prioritizing the health and well-being of animals for themselves.
17. Abolish any existing ag-gag legislation, fines, and sentencing that may exist as unconstitutional.