Hello everyone, my name is Ryan and you're listening to The Vegan Report.
If you are an ethical vegan and you care to do more to end animal abuse, but you're not
sure what to do, then this podcast is for you.
Every week, discover passionate, thought-provoking and inspiring vegan leaders from all walks
of life who will inspire you to take action and help you find your voice, your own special
contribution to the animal rights movement.
Today, we are going to talk about animal rights and political activism.
And I have with me a very special guest whose commitment I immensely respect, Liz White,
the leader of the Animal Protection Party of Canada.
Liz began her career as a registered nurse.
She has spent over 30 years as a community activist and has worked on issues, including
advocating for the disadvantaged, animal protection and aboriginal land settlements.
In 1987, Liz began working with the Toronto Humane Society, an experience that redefined
her activism.
She is a founding member of Animal Alliance of Canada and has remained with the organization
for over 25 years.
In 2005, Liz became the leader of the Animal Protection Party of Canada.
Liz, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
Let me start by saying this.
I always thought that you cannot be an environmentalist who supports the animal industry.
If you say you care for the environment, my question for you is, are you vegan?
Well, I'm realizing more and more that this logic applies to other areas of society.
For example, in episode 9 of the show, I had a great conversation on veganism and Catholicism,
and that made me realize that it would be hard for me to take seriously a religious
leader who ignores one of the most reprehensible moral and ethical abuse of our time.
Which brings us to politics.
If you care about our democratic institutions, then you should not be supporting an industry
that spends millions and millions of dollars on a global operation to undermine our democratic
process.
And I'm thinking about the lobbying campaigns through which this industry captures our representatives
to implement unconstitutional policies like the ag-gag laws, or to make sure the government
keeps subsidizing them with our money, protecting them against the winds of the market.
Or I'm thinking also about this industry and how it weaponized forces like the FBI in the
US against vegan activists.
William the founder of Animal Partisan told us about this in episode 5 of the show, or
captured our public health institutions to make us believe that dairy and meat is required
for our good health.
In episode 4, Catherine tells us about how Vietnam has fallen to this industry's lies
on health through international development policies.
And the list goes on and on and on.
So my first question for you, Liz, is, is this an accurate depiction of what is happening
on the political front?
Did I miss something?
No, I don't really think you've missed anything.
Excuse me.
When you look at the whole situation from a moral, ethical, and political perspective,
and know what we're facing with global warming, it is absolutely true that unless we deal
with animal agriculture as part of the solution to global warming, we will never reach our
targets because animal agriculture contributes to at least a quarter of the emissions into
the air that causes all the wildfires and flooding and all that sort of stuff.
So it's really important that we get governments to look at it, if not from the animal welfare
point of view, which I think they should do, but certainly from an environmental point
of view and for bringing the planet back to a livable place for people who are coming
after us.
And I would argue, importantly, for the animals that are going to come after us that are going
to be equally impacted by what we're doing to the planet.
With regard to the industry, it's got a very heavy lobby at the federal level and at the
provincial levels all across Canada, and as a result have acquired substantial subsidies
to allow them to market their products more widely.
And because of the demand, we have systems that inherently are cruel to the beings that
we ultimately, some people ultimately put on the plate.
So it's a big Titanic to turn around.
It's a very, very big ship because people are pretty bent in their ways to actually
eat meat and leather and all that sort of stuff.
So I think we have a big job, but until we actually deliver the political part of it,
because that's where the politicians make the decision, we're not going to see the change
that we need.
When I hear words like subsidy, I have a feeling of boredom and I'm thinking, oh, this is something
about economics.
I don't really get it.
But can you explain why it's important to understand what's happening on that front?
The most common thing that people say to me when I talk about the political party is they
hate politics.
They don't like politicians.
They don't trust them.
They don't want to have anything to do with them.
They're going to turn their back on democracy and walk away.
And I say to them, that is a huge mistake because like it or not, if we really want
things to change for animals in Canada, we have to do the politics.
And it's the politicians.
They're the gatekeepers of all the legislation.
They decide who lives, who dies, when they die, in what manner, is it cruel, how they're
sold, what's done with them.
All of that is political.
And until we address that, there is no way that we are going to change the landscape
with regard to how we treat animals, particularly food animals, which of course accounts for
the largest number.
Well let's take maybe a few step backs before getting into the heart of this issue.
I'm curious about your own journey.
So when and why did you decide to become vegan?
And most importantly, why did you decide to take the extra step by becoming an activist?
I went, well, at the end of my nursing part, a friend of mine, Clay Ruby, he's a criminal
lawyer, was helping the Toronto Humane Society and asked if I would go down and do some public
relations stuff with.
I did and was there for just a few years.
But during that time, I was vegetarian and very proud of it.
And Gary Francione came to the Toronto Humane Society to do some work.
He's an activist in the United States and a lawyer.
And he said, you should be ashamed of yourself.
You do not know what you're talking about.
Unless you become totally vegan, you are not accountable to the animals that you claim
to represent.
And so that was the turning point for me.
So I became vegan, I think in 88, maybe 89.
I can't remember now.
It's a long time ago.
But that was a turning point for me.
And I realized that if we didn't do something about it in a greater sense than just exposing
all of the cruelty, which is important to do, but to try and find a real solution for
it, can we get legislation that changes certain things?
Can we?
But what is it that we can do to move the yardstick along to help people consider becoming
vegetarian and vegan?
And so that was the journey.
So my goal with this podcast is to convince vegans to do more.
What would you say to those vegans who want to do more but don't know where to start?
Well, I guess I would say you start in your own neighborhood.
You have municipal politicians, provincial politicians, or federal politicians.
And those are people who are game changers in terms of legislation.
So I would recommend that people set up a meeting with their MP, MPP, and their local
person, and begin to explore the solution to some of these issues to see if the person
is at all open to it.
And it's hard to do.
I understand that.
It's really intimidating to meet a politician and to be prepared to talk to that politician
and learn to get the type of information that that politician wants and needs.
You know, without the cosmetic, when we won the cosmetic testing, that of course took
a very, very long time, but we finally found a politician, Yves Duclos, who was the minister
at the time.
And he helped tremendously to push that legislation over the finish line.
Now it's kind of small in many ways because not many animals are tested in Canada, but
the import ban into Canada has much greater impact.
And I think the second thing I would recommend is that you have to understand that this is
an incremental change.
You're not going to find a politician who will snap his or her fingers and there's no
more animal agriculture.
So my second thing is to do a bit of research.
Find out the areas where it's most likely to change.
For example, we have bird flu.
Bird flu can become a pandemic virus and begin to skip from animals to people.
I think we have very credible information on that.
And I think approaching the politicians about the intensification of raising chickens, both
as meat birds and as egg layers, that we can actually begin to make change there.
Because if nothing else, we can appeal to the threat to humanity as opposed to threat
to the birds.
But if we can move it in a direction so that it protects the birds, that is, I think, a
win in my regard anyway.
Yeah.
Let's be smart about it.
And I want to plug an organization called, I think, Animal Justice Academy.
And I got in contact with them this summer and they helped me prepare to talk with my
own MP.
And they were very helpful.
They addressed all of my fears.
And I had a great meeting with my MP.
It went great.
So yeah, maybe get in contact with Animal Justice Academy.
What people don't realize is that most politicians are like the rest of us.
They just hold a different type of power.
Most of them want to please and help their constituents.
Depends on the magnitude of what you're asking.
But for example, in Montreal, before the horse carriages were banned, working at the local
level to make that happen ultimately saved the lives of many horses that were used in
that industry.
So it's really important to fix something that you can win.
And it may take a long time.
I started working on the cosmetic issue in 1988.
So it took that length of time to get it over the finish line and done.
But we got it done.
And we'll get other things done.
So you have to be patient, persistent, chipper, polite, and don't ask for too much so that
you can build up a relationship with the politicians and make things happen.
Wow, where do you find that commitment?
How do you find that mental fortitude of continuing to work year after year, decade after decade?
I guess I'm not sure.
I just am kind of driven in that regard.
It really makes me very angry to see the kinds of activities that are done to animals, some
of it entirely unnecessary and achievable to turn around.
For example, in Ontario, we have train and trial compounds where they put 50 dogs or
more onto a coyote and chase the coyote and sometimes the animals torn apart.
We have Parks Canada going in Sydney Island in BC going to shoot all the deer on the island
by helicopter and with dogs on the ground.
These are issues that are imminently solvable.
And so when you see that kind of thing, incomplete inaction on the part of the government or
actually denial of what's actually going on, it just makes me really angry.
And so I just have to try and work on it to solve it.
I share that anger.
It's just something you cannot ignore.
You have to do something about it.
It doesn't go away.
So I understand that mindset.
What I would say to people though is use your anger and your depression and your fear and
all the things you experience when you see what happens to animals, turn it into a positive
thing.
You don't find something that you can do about it and take the work and do it step by step,
regardless of how long it takes.
And don't get discouraged.
Ultimately, you're going to find a politician who says, yeah, this is extraordinarily awful
and I'm going to do something about it.
And then you can actually work with that person to make it happen.
And so we just need to take that energy, which can be very negative and make it a positive
energy for change.
I love that advice.
So you are the leader of the Animal Protection Party of Canada.
And I want to know how did this initiative start?
How did we understand that we need an animal protection party?
And why is it important to have a political party devoted to the cause of animal rights?
Well, it started because way back about 20 years in Canada, you could not start a small
party many years ago.
You required 50 candidates to be able to run.
And you had to pay a thousand dollars per candidate to allow them to run.
So the barrier was so high that most small parties couldn't make that happen.
And then there became an issue with the Communist Party of Canada.
They went all, they fought the issue all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruled that it was a barrier, in fact, to democracy and to electoral politics.
And so the act was changed to allow one candidate and a number of people who said that they
belonged to the party to become a party.
So we went to our members and asked if they wanted to do that.
They thankfully said yes.
And so we were able to meet the threshold and start the party.
But in my mind, the goal of a political party is to get into power.
And I don't see the animal party of Canada getting into power.
So what is its usefulness?
But first of all, in countries where they have proportional representation, they have
elected animal rights people, particularly in the Netherlands, with the Party for the
Animals.
They've elected well over 60 individuals to the European Union, to the parliament, and
all the way down to the water boards.
And so they have... so then I'm asked, okay, so the assembly's got 300 people and you have
five animal rights people elected to the assembly.
How can you possibly make change?
And what we're seeing in the Netherlands is you can make a lot of change.
I mean, the government is considering phasing out animal agriculture in many respects.
And they're doing many, many different things with regard to research animals and a whole
number of things that never happened before.
And so you've got to ask yourself, does the presence of five people in the legislature
make a difference?
And the answer is quite clearly yes.
Now in Canada, you're absolutely right.
Under the current system, we will not probably get elected.
There are just too many barriers to it to actually achieve that.
It took the Green Party 30 years to get somebody elected, and they've only been able to get
a few seats elected.
So our fight is to get proportional representation.
And in fact, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, there's a superior Supreme Court challenge
on fair voting.
We've supported that initiative extensively and will attend it.
So the way you make change isn't always just talking about animals.
It's talking about process.
It's talking about political action and political power and how you use it.
Beyond that, we are there during elections when nobody else is talking about animal agriculture
or any other animal issue for that matter.
And so I think we make a difference in terms of getting people thinking.
At the federal level, we have a number of people who are running.
We've had up to almost 20 candidates, and those candidates are out there talking the
line about making a country a compassionate country.
And that's why we talk about Animal Protection Party as a compassionate political entity.
And just out of curiosity, if we had a proportionate system of democracy, how many candidates we
would be able to elect?
It would depend on how many people we got running.
It would depend on the riding and the possibility in that riding.
Depend on a whole bunch of different things that we, hurdles that we would have to look
at and see if we could get over.
But I do think that the way the votes are counted, it means that if we work really hard
and get more votes than we normally do, that we have a very great possibility of actually
having possibly one person, possibly two people.
And then we would be in the situation like the Animal Party for the Animals, where you
can actually begin to mold the kind of debate that takes place in parliament.
Okay.
It's, you know, one of my political heartbreak is having supported the government of Justin
Trudeau, the liberal government of Justin Trudeau.
And one of the reasons I supported him in his first campaign to become prime minister
was because he promised a proportionate system of election.
And then of course, he just break his promise.
And yeah, it's things like that that make people tired of politics, you know, their
little betrayals of their representatives.
Just in that point, I've been, I've been part of doing political work for a very, very long
time.
I was a city councillor, City of Toronto ran that campaign.
I have to say, you know, we need to cut politicians a little slack.
It's a very hard job.
You can imagine the number of people coming to them saying what they want that politician
to do.
And most of the time, it's going to be difficult to do that.
And so we need to set aside that kind of feeling and begin to figure out how to approach these
people, what it is they're looking for and whether they can help.
I do think it was a very big betrayal on the part of Prime Minister Trudeau to back down
on the proportional representation.
On the other hand, I would just say he's the one government, he's banned cosmetic testing
and the import.
He has going to amend the testing regulations for a much broader range of products.
And he's going to end the transport of live horses to Japan if that piece of legislation
goes through.
So more than any other government actually in the last few years has actually brought
in legislation that actually directly impacted animals.
And so I find when we talk about that, most people say, ah, that was just one thing.
That was easy.
Yeah, not many animals.
I think what we have to do is to give the government a lot of credit for doing something
that clearly was not that easy to do and that we begin to build on that as opposed to dismissing
it or as opposed to saying it wasn't good enough or it wasn't whatever.
It isn't that we should betray our values and our morals.
We shouldn't do that.
But we need to understand that we have to work with these people.
And if we can do it in a productive way, like our coalition did with Minister Yves Duclos,
the government came away with a very positive experience.
They were putting their toe in the water.
Were they going to get something to bite it off or were they going to be able to flourish
as a result?
And it was a fantastic experience even for Minister Duclos.
And so I think we can begin to change that dynamic with politicians by being supportive
and helpful as opposed to angry and dismissive.
I agree.
I'll try to be more positive on my outlook.
So you mentioned the Netherlands.
Do you know how many countries out there have an animal rights party?
And how is their fight going?
I don't remember the exact number, but we, I think Australia, it's a lot of countries
in Europe, Portugal, Spain, countries that you would say might be harder.
Like Spain has a bullfight or that kind of thing.
They think, maybe not.
But these are people who have actually got elected in countries where there's proportional
representation and they're doing some great work.
I would recommend anybody go to the website, Party for the Animals.
They run a group of all the parties, have representatives to this group of all the parties,
animal rights parties.
And they do some fantastic work, fantastic training.
And I would say for anybody who's listening to this podcast, anywhere in Canada, if you
want to become a candidate for a party that has a great platform, progressive in every
sense of the word, call me, email me.
And we do a little interview.
We have a form to fill out and we evaluate people in that regard.
So it would be great to have somebody.
It's a hard go.
Okay.
I won't say otherwise.
We don't have a lot of big support systems.
We're not a big wealthy party.
So you're kind of out there on your own in the riding and it's kind of intimidating,
but I find that once people get into it, they actually enjoy it.
I'm curious, apart from a passion for animal rights, what does it take to be a candidate
for the Animal Protection Party of Canada?
Well, you have to be vegan.
There's no point in putting a candidate up who doesn't live the values of the party.
So you have to be vegan.
There's a number of other things.
People who are rudely, very outspoken, we tend to shy away from because we want the
politicians to have a good experience with the candidates that come to their meetings
and who come to talk to them.
But mostly the criteria is set out in Elections Canada.
If we agree that you're a candidate, the basic thing that you have to do is you have to go
and collect signatures of a hundred people within your riding that say, okay, I would
like this person to run in my riding.
And so that's really the only thing.
Even that is really intimidating to people.
But I would say to everybody who's considering this, it's really important not to talk,
we talk to people who believe what we believe, but it's really important to talk to people
who have a different opinion and to be able to exercise that in a controlled way so you
can have a reasonable conversation.
It's one thing to think that what you're saying is terrific and believable and all that sort
of stuff.
But I can tell you when you get up in front of an audience of 300 people who might not
like what you're saying, it's really hard.
But it's really good if you can do it in a way that is not threatening, not pointing
fingers, but being inclusive in the discussion and having a respectful discussion.
And I've had a number of all candidates meetings that have been really interesting because
most of the people in the audience were hostile in one of the riders that I ran in.
But at the end of the day, when the whole thing ended, people came up to me and thanked
me for being there, for putting an alternative point of view across, for being able to listen
to what people were saying and then in turn listening to what I was saying.
It's like that saying, you make peace with your enemies, not with your friends.
So yeah, it's very interesting.
And I would bet that becoming a candidate would be such an educational experience in
one's life.
It would bring a lot of growth in your personal and maybe even professional life.
Well, it's easy to talk to friends.
It's much less easy to talk to people who don't agree with us.
And I would argue that at the end of the day, we advocate for animals.
The end of the day, it isn't going to affect the money that we bring in, the work that
we do, the pensions that we have.
And so if somebody disagrees, we can just go home, go to bed and get up and do the same
thing the next day.
What we're advocating is a shutdown of people's livelihood and people tend to fight a lot
harder to protect their livelihoods.
So we need to reach out to those people who are troubled by what people are saying and
see if we can begin a dialogue about how to move from an intensive animal agriculture
industry to a plant-based industry.
And one that is environmentally friendly, because just because you go to plant-based
doesn't mean you're environmentally friendly if you're running an intensive plant-based
agricultural system.
So we need to move in a number of different directions.
And I think what we're looking at is figuring out how many, what are the vegan, what does
the vegan industry look like?
What does the agricultural part of it look like?
What does the processing part of it look like?
Because we need to figure out what economic contribution that makes to Canada.
With that in mind, then we can go and talk to governments because they have an economic
interest in moving that forward.
And I think that we could go and talk one-on-one farmer to farmer with people who are doing
vegan work to actually make change through the agriculture, the intensive animal agriculture.
It's a big move.
It's really hard to do.
But at the end of the day, I think we need to figure out how to move that along.
What's the division, the goal ahead?
Have you ever thought of a future where we're successful in our cause?
It's a question I have asked other activists.
Would you support a law banning completely animal exploitation and eating animals?
Or do you see a future where it's just illegal to even purchase bacon or something like that?
Do you ever think about a future like that?
Absolutely.
A colleague of mine is exploring the idea about what the planet would look like if we
let animals live.
He hasn't finished it, but he's looking at that.
I do think it's much better to do it slowly as opposed to having it imposed.
Because you need to bring all the communities along and get buy-in for why it's being done.
Otherwise, we did a campaign and ended the spring bear hunt in Ontario in 14 years.
It was a tumultuous time.
The hunters went crazy.
The outfitters went crazy.
And 14 years later, it was overturned.
My experience is the wind was great, but if it doesn't last 14 years, the bears didn't
get killed in the spring, but now they do again.
It's really important to figure out how to get buy-in from the whole community.
I think it's better to go slow and to bring people along, not to threaten them, but to
make them inclusive in the whole situation in order to allow the changes that can be
made to stick.
Bear hunting is one of those things that is just barbaric.
I was visiting my parents who live in the north.
Here I was hiking in a national park and then I started talking with one of the employees.
He told me about bear hunting and how there was a market of even Americans going every
season to Canada in order to hunt bears.
So let's get talking about the fights of your party and how to support those fights,
even if it's not as a candidate.
And let's start with bear hunting.
What is that?
Why is it happening and how can we stop it?
Well, bears are considered trophy animals.
And the provinces all across Canada have marketed it to Americans to come up for a trophy hunt.
And it's also unlike any other hunt, is done in the both both in the spring and in the
fall, mother and cubs come out of their den in March and it starts mid-May.
The cubs are tiny.
She usually goes to the bait site alone, puts the cubs up the tree.
Hunters say that they know that that's a female bear and won't shoot that animal.
But in fact, many females are killed.
Many females with dependent cubs and rescue groups all across the country are faced with
the notion of what do we do with these orphan bears, bear cubs?
Most of them just die because they can't defend themselves and they don't know what to eat.
So and in the fall, of course, that's when the bears are most active because they have
to put on a huge amount of weight in order to go into hibernation because they lose a
huge amount of weight when they come out in the spring when there isn't much food.
So they bulk up in the fall.
And that's when they're hunted for two months, two and a half months.
So in Ontario, because we had the spring bear hunt ended, they extended the fall hunt into
August.
So mid-August to I think the end of November.
It depends on where you're hunting.
But these animals are now being hunted for a much longer period of time than they were
previously.
So it's very, very troubling.
In fact, in B.C., the government there is looking at possibly lifting the ban on grizzly
hunting, even though grizzly bears are at risk animals.
And so at the end of the day, we won a bunch of stuff, but it didn't last.
So that's why we need to have the parties because that's where the legislation happens.
Unfortunately, for bear hunting, it's a provincial matter.
So it would have to be at the provincial level.
That's where our other organization, Animal Alliance, will run campaigns parallel to the
election to see if we can stop some of these activities.
And I mentioned about getting involved without being a candidate.
What form does it take?
You can become a donor for the party.
The maximum you can give is $1,700 this year.
This goes up $25 each year.
Most people don't have that kind of money.
So a monthly donation of $10 would be wonderful.
And then if the person in the riding that they're looking in wants to actually engage
in an issue, just call.
Call me and I will actually walk you through the process and how to do it, show you how
to do.
You know, much of it is related to I do tons of ATIP requests and freedom of information
requests because what politicians sometimes tell you isn't exactly what happens.
So it's good to go armed with actual material.
At the federal level, you can do ATIP requests and you don't have to pay for them.
It's all free except for a $5 deposit.
At the provincial level, that's not the case.
So you might have to put out of pocket.
However, some help in that regard.
We can help you with that too.
Amazing and giving is a simple way.
You know, giving money is a simple way to make an impact and your party is making an
impact.
So let's talk about a victory of yours, which is the ban on cosmetic testing.
You said it started in the 80s.
How did it start and how did it come to a victory?
And by the way, congratulations and thank you for this good work.
It started because I knew some people in the New Democratic Party in Ontario and talked
to one of the persons there.
They were in opposition and he agreed to put bring forward a private members bill.
Then in 1990, this is a long time ago, Bob Ray and the NDP actually took power in Ontario
for the first time ever and Elmer Buchanan, who was Ray's Minister of Agriculture, we
met with him.
He was wonderful.
He decided that he was going to move and ban cosmetic testing and that would have been just
in Ontario.
And so we worked right up to the very end.
It was going to move forward and then Premier Ray stepped in and said, no way.
And so that killed it immediately.
So we decided that we would try at the national level because then it would impact all of
Canada.
And at the end of the day, we worked with a group of people.
We had a coalition of people, including the industry.
So a lot of people might not like that very much.
But we went to various ministers at the time with this coalition of people who were all
supporting, including the industry, who were all supporting this ban.
So at the end of the day, it was an easy victory for the government with nobody really in opposition.
And so that's why it became a very positive experience.
And why the opposition?
I feel like this is an easy, yes, let's ban cosmetic testing.
We don't need it.
And it's actually truly horrible in the spectrum of suffering.
This is something very acute.
So why?
Why do people hesitate on supporting, hesitated on supporting this ban?
If you're a politician and the cosmetic industry comes to you and say, look, if you ban us
testing on animals, we cannot assure the safe delivery of the cosmetic because some of it
needs parabens, very, very difficult products that actually do need to be tested in some
manner or other.
The difference, I think, today is that there has been an explosion of change in non-animal
alternatives, NAMs.
There's a recognition that animals are not the gold standard for most animal testing,
not just cosmetics, but education and training and testing and even biomedical research because
each animal, even though they all look the same because they're genetically a replica,
they're all individuals.
They all react to stress, housing, food, et cetera, they react differently to those changes.
And so it makes a result from one mouse not to be predictive for another mouse or another
rat or another dog.
And so I just attended the World Congress on non-animal alternatives and there is an
explosion of people looking at alternative ways of doing these kinds of tests, finding
that it's less expensive, more accurate.
The drug companies are the leaders in it because it's shocking, but 90 to 95% of the drugs
that were of benefit to the animals are of no benefit to people or in fact are problematic
for people.
And so the industry is pouring millions of dollars into dead end kind of research.
So they're seriously looking for change.
The biggest numbers of animals in research is used in the biomedical field and that's
a much harder area to actually bring about change, but there is a lot of work being done.
So I'm very hopeful that things are going to change fairly quickly over the next five
or six years.
With Dr. Jens Voeld, who's running the Faux Nursing Trary here in Quebec where I am, we
talked about experimentations on monkeys and chimps.
What is the situation right now concerning testing on primates?
Well, let me back up a little bit because in Canada we have very bad...
We have really no legislation that would protect animals in research laboratories.
The Canadian Council on Animal Care is the governing body, but it's voluntary.
You can't atip it and not all the companies, private companies don't have to belong.
So in fact, we have no idea how many animals are being used in Canada, what they're being
used for, what kind of invasive procedures are happening.
If you look at the undercover work that was done by Last Chance for Animals for ITR, which
is a testing laboratory in Quebec near Montreal, I think, you look at how those animals were
treated, which was shocking.
They were abusive beyond just the testing part of it.
That organization is part of the CCAC and continue to hold their certificate of good
animal practice, regardless of what we saw in that undercover thing.
So the problem is that we have very little leverage to know exactly what's going on and
how things are being done.
The only way...
Ontario has an Animals for Research Act, which we can do with freedom of information, and
that has exposed a number of really problematic things in research laboratories with regard
to animal welfare.
And the other big thing, so if people want to learn about the Canadian Council on Animal
Care, they can go to the Animal Alliance website.
It has a whole report on the deficiencies of...
But the big, big thing that I think really exposed in a big way was our Department of
National Defense report called Defenseless about the use of 10-week-old pigs in trauma
training.
So they knock the pigs out and then they eviscerate them, irradiate them, chop off their legs,
cut their guts out, all sorts of different things, and then try and sew them back up
and learn how to do trauma when there's absolutely alternatives to that process.
So it just exposes the problem.
And the reason why we got the Department of National Defense is anybody, any research
facility that gets government funding can be a tit or a foit.
And at the end of the day, it just shows you that there is virtually no protection for
animals in research laboratories.
Animal care committees are supposed to be the drivers to care for the animals, to make
sure they're being treated properly and so on.
The information that we got out of Ontario's Animals for Research Act is that these animals,
most of the animals...
Not most, animal care committees can be dysfunctional, not meet, never go into the lab to look at
the animals, approve greater numbers that you were used rather than lesser numbers,
all sorts of different things that run contrary to what animal care committees are supposed
to do.
And so it makes it really difficult to kind of get a handle on what's happening.
That's the thing.
There might be laws forbidding certain unethical behaviors, but are they applied?
There are no laws that require ethical behavior.
It is supposed to be that the core of protecting research animals is the animal care committee.
Okay.
So the Department of National Defense has a number of different areas in which they
use animals for testing and research.
And yet there's only one animal care committee to monitor that whole range of numbers of
animals that are used by the Department of National Defense.
And that's one that we can figure out.
We don't have information on any of the other testing labs.
We've done an ATIP request on the numbers of non-human primates that are being brought
into the country.
And there's this whole debate going on about the short-tailed macaques that are coming
from Cambodia, whether they're from the wild, whether they're from the streets, whether
from a breeding facility.
And so we'll figure out whether that's happening by the ATIP request that we will have ultimately
fulfilled.
At the moment, I mean, any normal citizen, me included, unless you really dig around,
cannot find anything out about what happens to these animals.
Just briefly, there was one investigation report from Ontario, from the Ontario, and
they had a non-human primate.
Don't know what species, because they didn't say it.
They redacted all that.
This non-human primate had contacted a MRSA, which is, you know, anyway, they didn't know
what to do with his animals.
So he was shut in a room in a tiny little cage and left because that MRSA can be passed
on to other non-human primates.
And obviously the person who was doing the inspection said that that wasn't acceptable.
But how long was that animal there like that?
Where was the animal care committee?
How could that possibly happen?
And so you realize that when things like this break down, that there's just nothing there
that really demands them to do something right for that animal.
Well, I mean, you just have to visit the shelter and see how people who are supposed to be
loving their animals take care of them.
And then you think that if this is the level, then what should I expect from an industry
that only cares about profit?
And also that's why we should advocate for giving the legal status of a person to animals,
because if they're not people, according to the law, then they don't have legal rights.
Yeah, they're considered objects.
But if listeners want to know more about the plight of non-human primates, they can listen
to my episode one of the podcast with Dr. Jens Vold.
She draws a good portrait of the situation.
I want to discuss something I consider one of the greatest threat to animal rights activism.
And I'm talking about the ag gag laws.
Yeah, that was the reason why I approached my MP this past summer.
So what are those?
And why are they so dangerous for our cause?
Well, the worst of the ag ag laws is Ontario.
Okay, so they provide the farmer with the right to arrest somebody if the person's on
the farm.
People get fined for trying to document the condition of animals, even in the trucks that
go by so they're not on the farm.
And so animal justice is going in as the main.
We've acted as interveners in the process.
And that court case takes place at the end of October, beginning of November.
And I think it's one of the most important court cases because animal at the bill 156
actually actually, you come away from it, thinking that animal rights people are thugs
and do illegal activities.
So what is sorry, Liz, what is that bill?
Who wrote that bill?
And who introduced that bill to the Ontario government under Doug Ford?
So Doug Ford is member of the Progressive Conservative Party.
They're elected with a majority government.
It was passed in his first term.
Because there were some people who went on to the farm to document the current situation
on whichever farm they chose, and there were a number of undercover things.
Mercy for Animals went into Maple Lodge Farms.
And I think it was Last Chance for Animals that went on to a goat farm.
So all these exposés were kind of rolling out showing that farmers who say they love
their animals, but none of us could measure that quite as love, given the condition that
these animals were in.
And it also they exposed a number of dairy operations and pig operations in Alberta and
BC.
And so there was this rising fear, I guess, amongst the farming community that would actually
impact their industry.
And I think it could.
But the only way that they chose to deal with it was to shut down all observation of the
condition of the animals as opposed to say, OK, we don't need this bill.
We have a trespass bill.
We'll trespass on properties.
We can deal with that.
But we want to be more open and transparent about the condition of these animals and but
chose the other way.
So I think this is the most regressive bill that I've read because it impacts every aspect
of what animal rights people do, including documenting on the farm or just watching the
trucks go by and documenting the animals.
There's a couple of people that sit out in front of St. Helens Meats.
They handle a lot of spent dairy cows.
So these animals are in pretty bad condition.
And so but some of them have had huge fines for doing that.
And luckily, they've continued to go back.
But you risk everything, your money, everything by doing it.
And thankfully, some people do because short of doing that, you can't really show how the
animals exist.
And now they want to pass a similar bill, but on the federal level.
And they say that it's for health reasons.
We don't want you to enter the slaughterhouses and buildings because you're going to contaminate
the place.
So yeah, what do you think about that?
I think it's utter nonsense.
Most of the time, people go in there and just sit and and document what's going on.
And if people are really worried about biosecurity, there isn't one vehicle that has gone into
those plants where people have given the pigs water or taken pictures of the cows that have
turned back because biosecurity was violated.
And in fact, when you look in these trucks, they're so filthy, dirty from these poor animals
and the stress that biosecurity is a joke.
In fact, on the transfer of bird flu, there have been some look at that.
And the spread of bird flu came from cross contamination from one vehicle entering a
barn and cleaning it up, going to the next bar, entering that barn, cleaning it up, and
so on and so forth.
So the transmission doesn't come from animal rights people.
We're not even we don't want to have anything to do with eating the animals.
So it's ridiculous, really.
It's ridiculous, but it's fascinating because it's like they take a threat, which is viruses
coming from slaughterhouses and their industry.
And they're making it look like it's the fault of animal rights activists.
And we're risking public health.
We're a threat to public health for everyone else when they're the cause for so many what
we call zoonotic diseases.
And this is something your position, your party takes position against.
And I think it is essential, I think in politics, now that we have gone through COVID-19 and
understood what is at stake with the pandemic, I think every political party should think
about the risk of zoonotic diseases.
So you're taking a position on that issue.
What is that position?
Can you expand on that?
On the issue of transference of zoonotic diseases, you mean?
Yes, of the public health threat that the industry represents.
I just read an article the other day, which said we haven't learned anything from COVID-19,
from the coronavirus.
That we are in denial about the risk on the bird flu side.
Sometimes talk about animal welfare issues with a barn.
They have 40,000 chickens in it.
And that's a small barn compared to the states.
If there's an indication that there's bird flu there, how do you euthanize humanely 40,000
chickens?
So we know it's not done humanely.
They have to shut the barn door, turn off the air supply, and heat up the barn and suffocate
the birds, 40,000, or they bury them in foam in the barn, depending on what species of
bird we're talking about.
And so there is this fear, but they don't want to do anything really about it.
And I think we're sitting on very, very tenuous circumstances.
I went to the City of Toronto, we went to the City of Toronto a little while ago asking
them to shut down backyard chicken operations.
That was over a number, we started a number of years ago, a number of years ago, nobody
thought there was a problem, you know, we're just being silly.
This time it worked, because at least the public health person said there is a real
risk of transference of bird flu from the animals to people and the start of a pandemic,
we shouldn't do this.
So the city banned backyard chickens, but that is so small in comparison to the large
agricultural package.
And so far, I see no indication that anybody is really doing anything real about it.
Because and by the way, I talked about this with Colin, who was a worker of this industry,
he's now a microbiologist, he's working in the health sector.
And he was talking about it is only a question of time before this backyard chicken situation
will get to, you know, disease transmission pandemic crisis.
And many virologists have said, you know, it is only a question of time before the big
one before a big pandemic.
And by exploiting animals by doing this, by going through, you know, doing this animal
exploitation thing, by supporting this industry, we're just playing the odds.
So yeah, what can we do about it? Concretely? Do you have any actions?
That's a real toughie.
I think you, you know, you got to live your own values and, and just by virtue of not
buying into the industry at all.
I think if, if people have the opportunity to go and document, I mean, you know, we have
these spent dairy cows that are going into St. Helens, some of them are in grim, grim,
awful stuff.
And some of them are downers, which should not be transported.
And even complacent to the CFIA doesn't really rectify that situation.
So I think the more we find that stuff, the more we expose it.
And I think the industry has been smart in that they have blamed wildlife for the spread
of the, of the bird flu.
The latest article that I saw research done on that is that it hasn't come from wild animals
at all.
These birds are locked into a barn.
And so it's, it's, it's clearly within the purview of the industry.
And I think they're playing with our health, their health, and obviously the bird's health
in a very reckless way.
And what about the end of the antibiotic era?
I guess there is more momentum around that.
I've heard people talking about the antibiotic, the end of the anti, so the, you know, the
superbugs and things like that.
Right.
That they can't, yeah.
Because I've been hearing people talking about this since, I don't know, 10 years ago, you
know.
So this is not as recent as the discussion on pandemics.
Have we made some progress around that or are we just as blind as we were?
I think we're running pretty blind.
We have the federal government set up committee to look at these anti, the antibiotic resistant
bugs.
But I don't think that they've really done anything about it.
I mean, you can't keep animals in intensive conditions without using antibiotics, growth
promotants, you know, milk enhancements, all those sort of things that A, compromise the
ability of the animal to fight off whatever disease there is.
And then of course, the antibiotic becomes resistant to, it becomes resistant to the
antibiotic.
And so I think there's, I think they continue to play a very scary role in the whole issue
of pandemic.
It's, you know, with COVID, it was easy to point your finger at another country and blame
another different people from us for actually passing on the, but the large animal agriculture
industry is going to be the feeder, I think of another pandemic.
I hope that's not true, but I think that is a good possibility.
And I think we're going to see, think about it with these antibiotic resistant drugs.
When you go into the hospital and you have an infection, you get these antibiotics, if
those are no longer active, what does that mean?
What does that mean?
Even from a self-interested point of view, if you can't get an antibiotic that's going
to deal with you, with having a bug, what does that mean for the population?
And so, I mean, even from a self-motivated point of view, I would suggest that people
get busy and start doing something about it.
I was told by a physician, we limit prescribing antibiotics to people because we don't want
this antibiotic resistance state in society.
And I thought it was just such a funny joke because here we have millions of animals being
injected with antibiotics daily and you're limiting the prescription of antibiotics to
humans.
This is crazy.
Well, the vast majority, I think, I don't know the percentage, but way up 80, 90% of
antibiotics produced are for agriculture animals.
It's got nothing to do with human beings and it's to allow them to raise them intensively.
I think a government that would just ban the use of antibiotics as a way to allow intensive
animal agriculture would begin to make that change.
People have to make that change pretty quickly.
So yes, it's a threat, but it's also a challenge.
And I hope that people who are listening feel like maybe this is for them.
This is the area where they want to make a difference.
This is calling for further action.
So Liz, did you want to add something before we end this conversation?
Well, I would encourage anybody who has this burning desire.
And that's, I think, how most of us feel to go out there and do something to or try to
protect the animals that you're most interested in.
I would recommend that you go for it full tilt because we need many, many, many more
people who are willing to look at the political side of it and to figure out how best to do
that.
I would recommend people just to begin to immerse yourself in some of the politics before
you even deal with the issues that you want.
Go work in a campaign.
Go canvas.
Go try these various things.
Sign up as a volunteer for your MP or your MPP to help with various things.
Listen to what people are saying.
Figure out how people move these issues forward.
And then apply that learning to your own desire to begin to make change for animals.
And so a lot of it isn't actually documenting.
You have to do that.
But most of it is figuring out how you get that information to the politician who might
actually move the thing forward.
And that's a skill in itself.
But I would argue it is the primary skill that you need to actually make change.
So I would recommend that people become political.
Great.
That's an invitation.
So Liz, thank you so much for having been a guest and for having answered my questions.
This was a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
It was a pleasure talking to you.
Thank you everyone for listening.
I hope you feel inspired by this conversation.
Liz has truly challenged my cynicism toward politics, whether you are Canadian or not.
If you want to follow her footsteps and make a difference, make sure to visit the description
below where I left some relevant links.
Subscribe to the podcast now and don't miss out on next week's episode covering anonymous
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