‘Animals need lawyers’

Victoria Shroff has been a pioneer of animal law in Canada for 25 years. She’s represented animals at all levels of court, became the first animal law practitioner to receive a King’s Counsel designation, and teaches an animal law course at the University of British Columbia and Capilano University. 

But when Shroff herself was a student, there was no animal law class for her to take. 

“We had things that maybe would have touched on aspects relating to animals, and tort and property courses, but nothing like it is now specifically advocating for the rights and responsibilities related to animals,” she says. 

The field just hit a significant milestone with the launch this fall of the animal law program at the University of Toronto, the first of its kind in Canada. 

Program director Angela Fernandez says the school has offered animal law courses in the past, but the new program provides students with a richer experience through seminars, fellowships, partnerships with animal advocacy organizations, and increased writing and research opportunities, enabling them to develop new scholarship in the field. 

“We have reached a tipping point in terms of the amount of activity that we're engaged in, and then the opportunities for students as well,” she says.

The program’s breadth of study encompasses a wide range of topics, including pet custody disputes, animal abuse, the role of animals in agricultural farming, wildlife conservation, environmental law, the impact of animals on health laws, and Indigenous cultural rights,.

“The approach we take is that animal law is really any law that touches and concerns animals,” Fernandez says. 

“It's not necessarily protective, I think of it like a spectrum.”

Shroff says the creation of the program helps legitimize animal law, much like how environmental law has become a mainstream area of practice over the last 50 years. 

“Animals need lawyers,” she says.

“That's where I think U of T's program really stands out for having this broader approach to the area. I think it's going to help animal law progress.”

Legally, property, socially, something more

Fernandez says the founding of the program reflects the changing attitudes people have towards animals and their relationships with them.

“It's a socially very important topic, and so to have it not reflected in the law school curriculum is a little bit off.” 

One example is how, legally, companion and domestic animals are considered property. Yet people don’t think of their pet cat as having the same legal designation as a car or piece of furniture.

“That's sort of the gap between law and society,” Fernandez says. 

“Companion animals, for sure, are family members for most people, but legally, they're still property.” 

A quasi-personhood classification or something greater than just property would better reflect society’s changing views on animals and the law, she says.

Kerri Thomson, Humane Canada’s manager of justice and legislative affairs, says designating animals as property is an access to justice issue. She points to cases where pets are being used for coercive control in domestic abuse situations.

“They are like the silent victims of those [violent] relationships, and their property status under the law puts them at risk.”

She has also drafted a community impact statement on behalf of animal sexual abuse victims, an issue she says is “prevalent” and usually only caught in conjunction with child sexual abuse crimes being uncovered. 

“While the act of bestiality itself is criminalized, it's not criminalized to have videos or pictures or that sort of thing.” 

Thomson, one of the organizers of the student symposium on the prosecution of animal abuse next month, wants to see the formal criminalization of online sexual exploitation material that features animal sexual abuse. 

“We've known for over 100 years that animal cruelty is wrong in Canada. The law has told us that, but the disconnect happens when they're just considered property,” she says. 

“A program like the animal law program at U of T gives a lot more legitimacy to animals as worthy of their own status under the law.”

Farmed animals pressing legal issue

Recent headlines about the thwarted sale of 30 belugas at Marineland to a theme park in China, as well as a report of dogs being used for medical experiments at a London research centre and hospital, have raised the public’s awareness of animal rights issues.

However, changes to laws have been slow, and Canada still has no national welfare law for animals, says Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice.

“All that we've done at the federal level really are a few Criminal Code provisions that apply somewhat narrowly, if someone is abstractly cruel to an animal, but there are no laws that set standards for how animals should be used and apply to their welfare.”

One of the starkest areas where this has become a problem in recent years is farming, she says, noting Canada raises close to 900 million farmed animals every year for food.

“Those animals don't have any regulations to protect their well-being while they're on farms, there are no standards for how they should be cared for, what veterinary care they’re entitled to, [and] what type of access to sunlight or fresh air they might have,” Labchuk says. 

Shroff agrees it’s a pressing legal issue. 

“It's actually urgent because of the tie in with climate,” she says.

“It's a unifying topic to really understand the treatment of farmed animals and how that reflects on society.”

Labchuk says that with a formal animal law program now teaching the next generation of lawyers, students are in a better position than ever before to receive the training they need to succeed as practitioners. 

“I'm just excited about the momentum in the field. It's such a different, far cry from when I was a student, and I’m very excited about what the future holds, especially with U of T and stepping into the fold in a more major way.”

Fernandez hopes the program will eventually be able to offer an animal law certification on students’ transcripts and develop an interdisciplinary centre with other departments.  

It’s a chance for students interested in many facets of law to examine these timely issues, which will hopefully translate into protections for animals.

“I would love in 10 years for it just to be very much a part of the landscape,” she says. 

“Students will come in kind of expecting it to be there.”