Erin O’Toole surprises with Conservative platform on animal welfare

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This article was published 02/09/2021 (1737 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the surprises of this week’s election campaign was Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole’s decision to focus on animal welfare.

It’s not that he said anything radical. His platform on this issue is relentlessly middle of the road.

But it is surprising that he said anything at all. Most politicians stay away from animal issues. They are too likely to bring grief.

Here is what O’Toole said.

He would ban puppy mills and outlaw the import of animals bred inhumanely. It’s not clear what he means by “puppy mills.” Is he referring to all those who breed dogs for sale or just those who fail to live up to unspecified standards?

He would also give the Canadian Food Inspection Agency more power to enforce existing animal welfare regulations.

In theory, this could be quite important. The CFIA oversees the transport of food animals such as pigs. Most are shipped under overcrowded conditions that do not take animal welfare into account. The CFIA could demand that those shipping pigs and chickens and cattle do more to improve the living conditions of these animals.

In theory.

In practice, the agency is already under pressure from the livestock industry to avoid regulations that might interfere with profitability. That pressure will not ease if O’Toole becomes prime minister.

The Conservatives would ban the practice of using animals to test the safety of cosmetic products. One such test involves dripping caustic substances into the eyes of a rabbit until it goes blind.

In an effort to justify animal cruelty laws, the Conservatives would link them to crimes against people. Their plan would allow violence against pets to be treated as an aggravating factor in spousal abuse cases.

It would also spend $10 million a year to train judges and lawyers about the links between violence against animals and violence against people.

It would educate children about the importance of animal welfare. And it would set up ways for women fleeing domestic violence to keep their pets.

But O’Toole’s platform deliberately avoids two important issues. One is reform to animal cruelty laws. The other is an animal’s right to be treated as more than mere property.

For more than 30 years, individual MPs (and in one case an entire Liberal government) have attempted to strengthen animal cruelty laws. But their efforts have been stymied by the powerful animal industry which has argued that any effort designed to protect non-human animals would end up giving them legal rights.

A beefed-up animal cruelty law, the critics said, would make it illegal for fishermen to use worms as bait. It would also, they said, interfere with the preparation of kosher and halal food and make it more difficult to use animals in lab experiments.

Some of the criticism was ridiculous, but some was not. The very fact that animal protection laws existed suggested that non-humans had more rights than, say, asparagus.

In any case, the result was an unwillingness of many politicians (including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau) to actively identify themselves as animal welfare advocates.

All of which makes O’Toole’s decision to raise the issue even more surprising.

Camille Labchuk, executive director of the animal rights organization Animal Justice, says this is the first time animal welfare issues have made it into an election platform. She notes that the Conservative platform has nothing to say about factory farming, one of the most important animal welfare issues of the day. Still, she said, she was pleased that O’Toole raised animal issues at all, and hoped that other leaders would follow suit.

Thomas Walkom is a Toronto-based freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Reach him via email: walkomtom@gmail.com