Introduction
Most people consider human rights to be the rights that all humans have simply by virtue of being human. This anthropocentric approach fails to consider that nonhuman animals should also be afforded human rights, that no sentient being should be classified as property, and that animals should more appropriately be classified as persons. This paper will provide a brief history on animal rights laws, the current day situation, how animals rights legislation evolved in Canada, where Canada has done well in protecting animal rights, where Canadian laws and international frameworks are lagging behind other jurisdictions and what other countries have done to tackle those same issues, and what can be done to extend these frameworks to include nonhuman animals. Animal rights advocates are divided on the extent to which animal rights laws need to go to adequately protect animals. While Canada has made some progress, including updating anti-cruelty provisions, and having animal welfare legislation in every province and territory, more needs to be done for it to catch up to the progress other countries have made in recognizing the legal rights of nonhuman animals.
A Brief History of Animal Welfare Legislation
Reverend H. Primatt wrote one of the first pieces of writing on animal welfare, moral rights and cruelty to animals. In it he argued that animals, like humans, feel pain, and it is “immoral to harm one” (A Dissertation…, Royal Collection Trust). English lawyer J. Bentham expanded on this in the early 1800s: he argued that “the capacity for suffering is the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to legal consideration,” not things like the ability to speak or reason (Favre et al., 1993, p. 1). In 1822, British Parliament passed the first piece of animal welfare legislation in the modern world. The act, known as Martin’s Act, aimed “to prevent the cruel and improper treatment of Horses, Mares…and other Cattle” by making it a crime to subject the animals named in it to abuse or ill-treatment (Martin’s Act, 1822).
Current Day
The current debate regarding animal rights legislation centres on two extremes:
“(1) welfarism, the dominant current requiring the dignified treatment of animals aimed at reducing their suffering while they are used for human purposes; and (2) abolitionism, advocating for the total liberation of animals from their categorisation as ‘things’ and thus an end to their use and exploitation for human purposes.” (Lostal et al., 2024, p. 553).”
Humans use animals for many different things: as food, as pets, for scientific and medical research, for transportation, for work—the list goes on. Some believe that humans are entitled to use animals for such purposes, and the purpose of animal rights legislation should be to regulate the uses and mitigate suffering. Others believe that there are no valid human uses for animals because animals are persons and not property. There is a difference between “thin welfare rights” and “thick fundamental rights”: fundamental rights “protect their holder’s vital interests, such as their interest in having their bodily integrity protected,” while proponents of welfarism believe that protection from severe forms of mistreatment is sufficient (Fasel, 2024, p. 3; Lostal et al., 2024, p. 554).
There are debates around whether or not animals are deserving of moral and legal rights (per the welfarism and abolitionism perspectives), or if philosopher R. Descartes is correct, and animals are insensitive objects without the capacity for thought or feeling, they are therefore not worthy of moral consideration (Lostal et al., 2024, p. 555-556). Some scholars argue that the welfare approach has failed because legislative changes provide a false sense of security that the new laws have made animal exploitation more humane, so they allow animal exploitation to continue unfettered. Instead, veganism should be used as:
“the primary practical strategy for the gradual shift away from the property paradigm and as the foundation of a political movement that will support measures consistent with the ultimate goal of abolition.” (Francione et al., 2010, p. 10-11).
This view sees ethical veganism as the moral baseline for the movement, a “profound moral and political commitment to abolition on the individual level” as it shows the individual believes that “humans and nonhumans are morally equivalent”. (Ibid., p. 62). Other scholars argue that a protectionist approach is more effective than the welfare approach: while animals should not be considered property, they are also different from humans, and therefore “the moral value of animal life is less than the moral value of human life” (Ibid., p. 11).
Animal Welfare Laws in Canada
In 1822, Nova Scotia was the first jurisdiction in North America to pass animal cruelty legislation. Along with the formation of Canada as a country, federal animal cruelty legislation was enacted in 1869 (Hughes, 2000). Animals were addressed in the part of the Canadian Criminal Code (the “CCC”) that dealt with property-related offenses. Animals were considered property that humans could “own, buy, sell, confine, surgically alter, drug, impregnate, milk, and kill…within the limits of the law” (Skinner, 2020, p. 106). Concern for animals had more to do with the “interests of the people who owned and had a financial interest in them” rather than the animals themselves (Bisgould, 2011, p. 59). While the CCC has been amended several times, these provisions have not been modernized to sufficiently deal with the legal issues created by the “wide variety of human uses for animals” (Ibid., p. 57).
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) was created in England in 1824 (Ibid). SPCAs later formed around Canada and internationally. Provincial SPCAs and other humane societies enforce animal welfare in Canada through provincial legislation (Skinner, 108). The World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) where Canada has a delegate, is an intergovernmental organization focused on animal health and wellbeing (WOAH, 2025).
Sentient animals are “animals who are able to have subjective experiences including but not limited to pain and pleasure” (Fasel, 2024, p. 30). The province of Quebec recognizes animal sentience within its Civil Code and its Animal Welfare and Safety Act (AWS Act). The AWS Act recognizes animals as “sentient beings that have biological needs,” and acknowledges that humans are responsible both individually and collectively for ensuring animal safety and welfare (AWS Act, 2024). In a recent case in the province of Alberta, R v. Chen, a man who beat his puppy was accused of causing unnecessary suffering, contrary to the CCC (R v. Chen, 2021). The case went all the way to the Court of Appeal of Alberta, which highlighted the importance of understanding that animals are “sentient beings that are capable of experiencing pain and suffering and can be victims of violence,” and they are not merely property (Ibid., para. 33).
In their Animal Protection Index (API) review of Canada’s “legislation and policy commitments to protecting animals,” World Animal Protection (WAP) rated Canada well in the areas of veterinary services and laws against causing animal suffering (API, 2025). There is also Animal Health Canada (AHC), a non-profit national organization funded in part by federal, provincial and territorial governments “to provide collaborative guidance on a cohesive, functional and responsive farmed animal health and welfare system in Canada” (Frye, 2025).
Where Canada is Still Lagging Behind Other Countries
The relevant CCC provisions have not been modernized to mirror progressive animal rights legislation enacted in other jurisdictions; animals are still not seen as sentient beings. Canadian animal welfare laws are still a patchwork of provincial and federal laws that do not adequately provide legal protections for animals (Skinner, 2020). The API has pointed out that “there is no legislation applicable at the federal level dedicated to positive requirements for animal welfare” (API, 2025). This, along with “the variability in legislative and regulatory animal welfare protection across provinces, means there is no consistency in Canada in the level of protection offered to animals” (Ibid.). SPCAs are also stretched thin in terms of manpower and resources. They are required to enforce laws around their entire province, while additionally being responsible for “animal rescue, adoption, shelter, health, and public education” (Ibid., p. 108).
Much of Canada's land was ceded by way of treaties between the Indigenous peoples and settlers (though much land is still unceded). It can be argued that settler colonialism, "a structure organized with the explicit aim of eliminating Indigenous relationships to land" (Hiller et al., 2018, p. 48), allowed the land to be "subsumed into the Canadian nation state through misinterpreted and/or dubious treaties" (Kepkiewicz, 2020, p. 262). With these treaties came treaty rights to use the land as it had been used prior to being ceded, including the right to hunt and fish. Animal rights advocates see it as unfair that these treaty rights take precedence over animal rights reforms being made to federal and provincial laws (Kymlicka, 2015). Indigenous peoples’ rights involving animals are enshrined in the Canadian Constitution and in the Indian Act (Kanji, 2017). The Canadian case R v. Van der Peet acknowledged that while Indigenous peoples have long lived “on the land in distinctive societies, with their own practices, traditions and cultures,” (R v. Van der Peet, para 4), their rights must ultimately align with the sovereignty of the Crown.
The need for jurisprudence to codify what Indigenous peoples’ rights are means that “[w]hile Aboriginal rights must be proven, the state’s authority to adjudicate those rights is taken as given” (Kanji, 2017, p. 3). Indigenous peoples have a special relationship with the land and animals that does not need to be at odds with animal welfare rights. Both see animals “as subjects owed moral respect, whose relations with us should be based on mutual negotiation, not domination or coercion” (Kymlicka, 2015, p. 185). Canada needs to work with Indigenous peoples to create better animal welfare laws.
Updating the International Human Rights Law Framework
Belgium recently amended its constitution to recognize animals as sentient beings (Nakanishi, 2025, p. 11). There has been “thorough judicial dialogue on animal welfare and freedom of religion” in Europe, leading to stronger animal welfare measures aimed at reducing animal suffering when animals are slaughtered as part of religious practices (Ibid., p. 2). In 2022, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court made a ruling in a case “that animals, as elements of nature, are subjects of rights” (Lostal et al., 2024, p. 548). Ecuador was the first country in the world to recognize the legal rights of wild nonhuman animals, and the need for such rights to be codified in legislation. In 2021, Spain amended its Civil Code to recognize animals as sentient beings (Oliva, 2021).
The international human rights law framework needs to include nonhuman animals. The WOAH does important and impactful work. However, it cannot create internationally applicable legislation that can be enforced on violating countries. International legislation is also an issue from the perspective of state sovereignty. Favre suggests an “umbrella treaty approach” or framework agreement that “would enable animal welfare issues to gain international recognition and protection by setting the general guidelines and policies regarding the treatment and use of animals,” (Favre, 2012, p. 237) without “undertaking substantive obligations” (Ibid., p. 253). Favre and a few others finalized a draft of this proposed treaty in 1988, containing a convention called the Convention for the Protection of Animals (ICAP) (Ibid., p. 259). ICAP paved the way for the eventual creation of the UN Convention on Animal Health and Protection (UNCAHP.org, 2025) in 2019, “a unique initiative to globally protect animals at the UN level” (Ibid.). As of 2025 this is as far as UNCAHP has gotten. The hope is that UNCAHP will be “adopted by the UN General Assembly in or before 2029 and ready for implementation into the national legislation of member states” soon after (Ibid). Many UN member states have already agreed to implement UNCAHP in principle through their acceptance of the WOAH standards on animal welfare (UNCAHP First Pre-Draft, 2018).
Conclusion
So, what needs to happen next? Canada must remove animals from the property section of the CCC and create a separate section dealing with criminal acts against animals. It also needs to create comprehensive federal legislation so that there are consistent animal welfare laws across the country. Internationally, UNCAHP needs to be adopted by the UN General Assembly as a binding and enforceable international animal welfare treaty that member states can implement into their national legislation. Animals cannot speak or advocate for themselves. Animals are reliant on human beings treating them well, not abusing them, and facing consequences when they cause them unnecessary suffering.
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