Why the OLA Continues to Fight for Better Animal Care Legislation in Ontario by Tom Black
Tom Black
In a press release March 4th, 2019, the OSPCA said “they were no longer going to do on-farm investigations and enforcement of animal cruelty laws”. They said the present OSPCA model, wasn’t working. The fact is, the OSPCA Act was ruled unconstitutional in a court challenge by the OLA in January 2019 and that may have had something to do with their decision. The other possibility is they were having problems raising money because the OLA had taken them to task for the last fifteen years, helping to shine a light on their devious tactics. This meant that they could not raise enough money to support their army of pro-PETA fanatical recruits to their ‘brown-shirt-army’ whose underlying goal was “no animal agriculture”.
I know that there were good, well-meaning OSPCA operatives that tried hard to do this important job with honour and without prejudice, but the words in the act left this legislation wide open for abuse by those with a hatred for animal agriculture. They looked on farmers as animal abusers and went out of their way to be malicious when given the opportunity to enter farms. The legislation also never considered the well-being of the targeted animal owner’s physical or mental health.
Now I hope that no one believes these “animal rights” extremists are going away. No folks! They are looking for a new deal with a lot more money and power to accomplish their goals. In the same press release, the OSPCA said that they wanted to assist the Ford Government in establishing “maximum protection” for animals. They will recommend “stronger regulations, establishing animals as sentient beings with their well-being, health and treatment protected under the law”. A sentient being can roughly be defined as a person. So, their intent is to give animals all the rights afforded to people. In other words, there would be no more animal agriculture.
I have heard many groups say that they would like to have two sets of rules. One set for pets. The other for farm animals. The problem is that any animal can be kept as a pet. So, once you establish a set of rules for pets, those rules will quickly apply to all animals, including wild animals. I would like to see two sets of rules. One for animals and one for people, period. If a house cat is being abused, it is wrong, and if a barn cat is being abused, it is wrong. The focus must be on what is abuse. This must be clearly defined in any new law or changes to the regulations that come forth. All definitions of abuse must leave the use of animals in agriculture, service, sports and hunting intact, with well-designed laws that protect animals and people from abuse.
I know that this government is very concerned about cost and they don’t want to spend any new money on anything, but there is a high cost to the people in agriculture from animal rights protesters using the OSPCA to torment and torture hard working people in all fields of animal agriculture. That is the money side of it, but the mental stress in inmensurable, but is probably reflected in the high suicide rate that is now showing up on the farms.
The fix is not simple, nor should it be, but our citizens deserve our full effort to do it right. Even the name implies cruelty. Perhaps we should call this new legislation “The Animal Care Act”.
We in the rural areas do not get much from our taxes. Cities demand more and more for transit and for failing infrastructure and governments feel compelled to give it to them. However, this is life and death on the farm and this time we need some attention and money to fix this long-standing relationship between the people and the animals we live with.
