Second Day

NOVEMBER 19th

We started off today in the chambers. MPPs finished up discussions about animals welfare from the previous day. Many shared stories about there own rescue pets or tragic examples of animal abuse in there riding.

With Bill 136, the government plans on hiring, funding, and training inspectors who will be in charge of investigating animal abuse or negligent cases and will also be answering the 24 hour animal welfare hotline.

If Bill 136 is passed, it will introduce the strongest penalties for animal abusers in Canada. This includes raising jail sentences and increasing fines to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Along with discussing the welfare of pets in Ontario, members also addressed wild and zoo animal welfare. MPP Kevin Yarde also mentions that the only piece of Ontario legislature that addresses exotic animals is the law against buying, selling, or breeding orcas and that more regulations need to be put in place.

Another bill that was talked about (but not yet introduced) is a bill against unnecessary procedures such as cat declawing. cutting off dogs tails or clipping ears etc… Recent studies have shown that these procedures are unnecessary, animals are at higher risks of getting infections, and these surgeries may cause chronic pain.

After this, members of the gallery were introduced, and then the new pages (us!) were introduced. Then, question period began. The main topic of question period was education cuts. Many key points were made by Marit Stiles (Davenport). She talked about the negative effect of classroom cuts including larger class sizes and fewer teachers. She mentioned the negative effect of less face to face classes and more online courses while Stephan Lecce claimed they were simply utilizing modern technology.

Later in the day some other issues were mentioned such as dangerous ice on highways and Veterans from the Korean war being treated like second class citizens.

In the afternoon, we had legislative process class and then group A headed to the chamber to continue till 6 while my group had math lessons and than were dismissed at 4:30

I look forward to another day here at Queens Park! Bye!

FUN FACT: You need to have at least 12 MPPs elected to be recognized as a party in the chamber. Because the Liberals only have 5 seats and the Green party has 1 they are not recognized as parties. This means there are certain privileges they don’t get (for example, they get less time allotted to speak and less funding).