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Results: 1 - 15 of 38
View Sven Spengemann Profile
Lib. (ON)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister Goodale, we're coming up on the end of the parliamentary term. I just want to take a moment to thank you and your senior team, on behalf of the people of Mississauga—Lakeshore, the riding I represent, for your work and through you, the women and men, the members of our civil service, who do this incredibly important work in public safety and national security day by day.
A couple of days ago I had an opportunity to meet with a group of amazing grades 7 and 8 students at Olive Grove School, which is an Islamic school in my riding. It was part of CIVIX Canada's Rep Day, which is a day to bring elected representatives into the classroom.
There was a great discussion. One of the points we discussed was violent crime, and specifically gun violence. I know Minister Blair will be with us later on. We straw polled the students on the issues that are of importance, and when it came to gun violence and violent crime, almost every hand went up among grades 7s and 8s.
We have a $2-million commitment towards a program to protect community gathering places from hate-motivated crimes, but we also have the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence. What are we doing at the moment with respect to addressing the root causes of violent crime, and also to make sure there is a level of security for grades 7 and 8 students who belong to a faith-based school so that they feel safe when they study in their community and in their centre of learning?
View Ralph Goodale Profile
Lib. (SK)
That's a very important question, Mr. Spengemann, and there are several answers to that.
Thank you for flagging the good work of the Canada community outreach centre within my department. Their whole objective is to coordinate and support activities at the community level across the country, some run by municipalities, some run by provincial governments, some run by academic organizations, some run by police services that reach out to the community to counter that insidious process of radicalization to violence.
Some of their work is purely research; other is program delivery; other is assisting groups that provide the countervailing messages to people who are on a negative trajectory towards extremism and violence. The Canada centre has been up and running now for two and a half years, and it has done some very important work.
The specific program I think you're referring to is a different one. It's the security infrastructure program which, when we started in government three and a half years ago, was funded at the rate, I believe, of about $1 million a year. It was a good initiative but fairly limited in its scope. We have quadrupled the funds, so it's now up to $4 million a year. We've expanded the criteria for what this program can, in fact, support.
One of the recent changes, for example, is to allow some of the funding from the security infrastructure program to be used for training in schools or in places of worship or community centres where that training can actually assist with knowing what to do if there is an incident. It's like a fire drill in school. How do you react, say, to an active shooter or to an incident of violence?
It was found, in the case of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh last fall, that training in advance made a real difference in that situation. There were people on the scene who knew, because they had been properly trained, exactly how to react to an active shooter situation. It's the considered opinion of people in that synagogue that the training made a material difference in saving lives.
We have adjusted the terms of the security infrastructure program to allow for that to be part of what the program can pay for, in addition to closed-circuit television, better doors, barriers and other protective features within the design of a building, and the renovation of the building itself to make it as effective as it can be to keep people safe.
View Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Profile
Lib. (ON)
I mentioned the yellow vest movement, and I read a hateful comment that was an incitement to violence. There are many, obviously, that you can find across the Internet if you can bear to go to the comments sections.
We heard testimony from Michael Wernick that he was very concerned about violence in the upcoming election. Does it go beyond those sorts of online comments? Are there real, credible threat assessments, and should we be concerned that there is to be violence in the upcoming election?
Dan Rogers
View Dan Rogers Profile
Dan Rogers
2019-02-26 16:57
What I can say, from the national security and foreign intelligence perspective, is that, although a lot of what we've talked about today is in the cyberspace, of course we look for threats of all kinds that might be directed toward Canadians, whether that's terrorism, cyber-attacks or other types of malign foreign activity that we might see perpetrated against Canada or Canadians. In that space there are existing mechanisms. This isn't a new challenge for us. If we see those types of things, we'll report them. CSIS, the RCMP and others have the mandate to investigate those within Canada should they occur. The intelligence function that we and others will have will provide them with any information we see, so if it comes up we will be vigilant and we'll make sure they have that information.
View Nathaniel Erskine-Smith Profile
Lib. (ON)
Mr. Sutherland, I don't know if you can speak to Mr. Wernick's comment and maybe give us a bit more detail. Is it based on just social media commentary and how nasty it tends to get or is there a real threat at issue here that the comments were in relation to?
Allen Sutherland
View Allen Sutherland Profile
Allen Sutherland
2019-02-26 16:58
I think Mr. Wernick was speaking from a personal view. He started his comments that way. I would say the worry that he expressed is one broadly shared by people who look at issues around social inclusion, not just in Canada but around the world.
View Fin Donnelly Profile
NDP (BC)
At our last meeting, my colleague Murray Rankin quoted a letter of support written by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, which said, “There is overwhelming evidence of a direct link between abuse of animals and violence towards people, especially other members of the family—children, spouses, elders.”
Can you please speak to this evidence? How can we use this information to better keep children and other vulnerable people safe?
Teena Stoddart
View Teena Stoddart Profile
Teena Stoddart
2019-02-07 9:26
I'm so glad you asked me that. You all have a handout before you of research on the violence link.
Violence towards animals has a link to every violent crime that any police organization investigates, and on this handout, you'll see partner abuse, gangs and youth. General investigations are what we call “district investigations”. They can be assaults or minor offences, major crime, forensic identification and sexual assaults. SACA here stands for sexual assaults and child assaults. In each one of those, you will see research quoted.
This is just a sample of research. I have a research review. I interchange these ovals here depending on who I speak to, because there is so much research out there on the violence link. There are decades of it.
If you want me to, I can go over any individual thing. You can see that for partner abuse it's 89%. We have new Canadian research that talks about how 93% of partner assault cases involve animal abuse. As Monique St. Germain and Lianna McDonald said, animals are used to control the victims. We see that in every crime. We see it in gangs with younger members. We see it in partner abuse and child abuse cases. They're used to control victims. Even if the dogs are not being assaulted or used to penetrate children or whatever, they're used to control the victims.
In terms of major crime and school shootings, it shows up in 43% of school shootings. On the Parkdale shooting, two weeks before that he was found in his backyard taking pellet practice at wild animals. I think it was gophers or groundhogs or whatever. A neighbour reported it. Nobody went to investigate it. Had they gone to investigate and held him for a psych assessment or whatever, 17 children would still be alive today.
I can speak to any of the individual cases, but I do have a literature review of all the research we've looked at. I'd be happy to leave it with you.
View Fin Donnelly Profile
NDP (BC)
If you could provide the committee with any of that research, I think it would be helpful for this study.
View Murray Rankin Profile
NDP (BC)
View Murray Rankin Profile
2019-02-05 9:35
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here.
I'd like to start with you, Ms. Cartwright and Humane Canada, and acknowledge with thanks your organization's 40 years of advocacy and all of your member humane societies. You do amazing work for which we all should be grateful.
For Canadians watching at home and others, you correctly said that Bill C-84 is a modest bill. Dr. Crook has talked about it being a first step and Ms. Labchuk has called for a complete overhaul. Canadians might ask why we are here with these two clauses, essentially. The answer, of course, is that the Liberal majority chose to defeat Mr. Erskine-Smith's Bill C-246, which would have been more comprehensive, which would have done the comprehensive reform that the minister has once again committed to, but we are two years later and no closer to that review. I really appreciate and support Mr. Erskine-Smith's suggestion that there be an all-party, non-partisan commitment to this, some kind of committee, and I would be pleased to be a part of it.
The first question relates to what Ms. Cartwright said about the prevalence, the connection between sadism and bestiality being most impactful upon children. Professor Crook, you also, in a letter supporting Bill C-246, wrote as follows for veterinarians: “There is overwhelming evidence of a direct link between abuse of animals and violence towards people, especially other members of the family—children, spouse, elders.” What is that evidence? Both of you have referred to it. I'd like you to speak a little more, each of you, about where that comes from, perhaps starting with you, Ms. Cartwright.
Barbara Cartwright
View Barbara Cartwright Profile
Barbara Cartwright
2019-02-05 9:36
Certainly. There has been about 50 years of research into the links, when an animal is suffering, with what is happening around that animal and the kind of suffering that happens there. A great deal of it has come out of the United States, until very recently. We now have a professor here in Canada, Dr. Amy Fitzgerald, who is at the University of Windsor. She is doing the same or similar research that we see in the United States, to get us some Canadian data on the links, particularly between animal violence and domestic and interpersonal violence. It's not surprising that it's similar to what we see in the States. What is surprising is that it's actually a little worse here. By that, I mean, the instances of women reporting that when they're in a violent situation, their animal is also in a violent situation. Sixty-five per cent of women report delaying leaving a violent situation because of their animal, because of concerns about the safety of that animal. The animal is used to extort or coerce the partner or spouse and the children, typically, into different acts that they may not want to commit. It is also shocking, in the cases of those women who did leave, that almost a third of them report going back for the animal, to either check in on it or to resume living with the abuser because they cannot get their animal out.
We see very strong relationships between those two forms of violence because, of course, an animal is part of the family. It's a vulnerable part of the family and as you likely all know, there's a great deal of love that goes between humans to their animals. It's a very easy target for an abuser to use to coerce the abused, unfortunately. There is a great deal of evidence.
There is also the formation of the Canadian Violence Link Coalition here in Canada. It was started last year. Humane Canada helped bring that to the forefront. We also launched the first conference in order to study and bring forward all of the different academic research that's going on and that supports the links between animal violence and human violence. We see it ranging not only from domestic violence, interpersonal violence, but all the way up to probably the classic that most people think of, the serial killer. While not all abusers are serial killers, all serial killers are animal abusers. That evidence exists and it's a common step up from animal abuse if they have a propensity for serial violence. I shouldn't just say serial killers; it's serial violence; it's serial rapists as well.
Alice Crook
View Alice Crook Profile
Alice Crook
2019-02-05 9:39
I would add that the way we see this really direct link is first of all, as Ms. Cartwright said, that women will delay leaving situations because of fear for the safety of their animals.
Quite a few veterinary practices and animal welfare organizations have arrangements with domestic violence shelters to take in animals when they can't.... Most shelters will take in animals when the women and the children are there. Veterinarians see that. As far as the link with bestiality is concerned, it's one of the ways that abusers try to control their victims, whether they're animals or children, so both. What is documented, unfortunately, is that abusers will force the child or the spouse to interact with animals in a sexual way to humiliate them, to witness the injury to the animals. The animals, the children and maybe the spouse are vulnerable, so it's all linked to the abuser's approach of trying to control and intimidate the animals. There's a lot of documentation for that.
View Iqra Khalid Profile
Lib. (ON)
Ms. Cartwright, you also drew a connection between abuse against animals and abuse against humans, especially children. What are the implications of that observation in terms of how crimes against animals are dealt with in Canada?
Do crimes need to be more tailored to the contextual approach saying that if somebody's abusing an animal in a home, for example, there is a stronger likelihood of there being child abuse? Do you think that our Criminal Code needs to take that into account, in terms of designing its crimes and sentencing?
Barbara Cartwright
View Barbara Cartwright Profile
Barbara Cartwright
2019-02-05 9:46
I think more needs to be taken into account in the actual enforcement of the laws. If the laws are strong for children and animals to protect them, then they will be effective.
Where we see it falling apart is that our enforcement authorities aren't necessarily working together. Our community responses to child protection and animal protection need to work more closely together. For example, when an SPCA officer goes into a home to respond to an animal cruelty call, have they looked at the child? If they see something, their duty to report it and call in child protection is important. Likewise, we need to see it the opposite way. If someone has gone in under a child protection call, are they looking at the animals, and can they report?
This is part of why we started the Canadian Violence Link Coalition. We have 10 diverse, different streams of society coming together in the Canadian Violence Link Coalition, to better strengthen the work across those lines so that we have a strong response to all forms of violence, because it is so critical.
If the laws are strong and we have co-operation amongst the different agencies, then we'll be able to better protect all those vulnerable animals and people, and have safer communities.
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