The 68-year-old accused was the owner of a 14-year-old Shitzu, Sarah. Sarah was found in severe conditions of dehydration and emaciation, with a ruptured eye, leg wound infection and maggot infestation. She was taken to the vet by a family friend of the accused, where she was euthanized.
The accused was charged for neglecting to attend to Sarah’s health condition; the Crown sought a 90-day jail sentence followed by a 12-month probation order, requiring him to attend counselling, and a lifetime animal prohibition order under s. 24(3). The accused denied the alleged offence of neglect by claiming his own mental and financial conditions prevented him from properly attending to Sarah’s needs and protested against the animal prohibition order, arguing that he had always been an animal lover and lacked the mens rea to cause any suffering to his pet (para. 6). However, because provincial offences are strict liability offences, the lack of mens rea is not a defence.
Determining that the accused’s moral culpability was low due to his mental state at the time of the offence but still relying on the principle of denunciation and deterrence, the Court determined that appropriate sentencing was a $5000 fine, a two-year probation, and lifetime animal prohibition order. The Court noted that the accused had not expressed insight into his actions and continued “to feel he has been unjustly interfered with by the authorities and maintains his beliefs about animals being allowed to die “naturally” (para. 17). It also noted that the animal prohibition order would be most useful as a deterrent because the accused’s “need to care for animals is so compelling he has taken to keeping bees while under bail conditions which prevent him from owning pets” (para. 40). Any yet, the accused also demonstrated a “a history of neglecting important things that required his attention”: when Sarah’s sister Susie passed away, the ground was too frozen to dig a grave so the accused kept her body in his house for months until his former wife prompted him to dispose of it, therefore that would be reasonable grounds to believe that if the accused were to obtain another animal, “he may again become blind to its needs” (para. 41).
https://canlii.ca/t/kgr6s