Almost a month ago I wrote a post about the Animal League Defence Fund publishing a book about animal protection laws across North America and the fact that they had a report ranking animal laws across Canada and how Nova Scotia had rated pretty high.
This week the Chronicle Herald and the CBC caught up and both did stories about the report, which is interesting.
The Chronicle Herald said that "The report said Nova Scotia ranked high because its laws allow judges to order abusers to reimburse the costs of care for an impounded animal, place restrictions on the abuser’s ability to own animals in the future and imposes increasing fines on repeat offenders."
For the story, the Chronicle Herald interviewed Mary Hill - secretary for the NS SPCA - and she said - "Upon closer reflection you have to bear in mind this is comparative and it says a lot more about the ranking of the other provinces that are lower on the list than it does about our legislation. It just means the other provinces have worse legislation."
I don't know if I quite agree with this - maybe we DO have good legislation in this province - but maybe what we have in Nova Scotia is a really shitty Justice department. Has that occurred to anyone? I know that anytime animal abuse cases have come up - it seems that the crown attorney's office has always come up short - saying that they can't do anything, they can't provide a burden of proof, they can't do this, they can't do that - when there's all this glaring evidence that the person has very obviously abused animals. It makes no sense. I'm no lawyer, but common sense has to come into play somewhere.
That's an interesting thought, Joan. The facts might be somewhere in the middle. As long as abusers get away with a slap on the wrist cause the existing laws are not enforced, there is a problem. People that abuse animals are not nice people - not to other humans either. One would think that Justice, by now, would take notice and apply the law, pluck those people off the streets, or get them the help they need.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, I agree that there is lots of room to improve the lot of animals legislatively. Abuse is not just physical harm, as all animal lovers know, but also neglect.