Humane Canada promotes the enactment of federal, provincial and municipal legislation that protects animals from cruelty and provides a legal framework to ensure animals are treated humanely and with respect.

Canada is widely considered to be a progressive, civilized country with plenty of laws on the books to protect its citizens from various forms of violence, disorderly conduct and theft, but we have a dismal record when it comes to protecting animals from cruelty, abuse and neglect.

While countries all over the world have updated or enacted effective animal welfare legislation, Canada lags behind in making equally substantial legal improvements to better protect animals.

Here are some of the considerable changes to the federal animal cruelty law (the Criminal Code) that we have achieved with your support:

• Achieving greater protections for police, military and service dogs
• Closing the bestiality loophole
• Getting those convicted of bestiality to be required to be on the sex offender registry
• Improving animal fighting offences
• Banning the captivity of whales and dolphins

Featured articles

Criminal Code amendments

Humane Canada has been calling on the government to amend the animal cruelty sections of the Criminal Code of Canada for more than 25 years. In 1999, the government launched a consultation process to gather input on what changes were needed to the animal cruelty provisions, which were originally enacted in…
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