ANIMALS’ CHARTER
Animals, both domestic and wild, touch all aspects of our daily lives, and we use our power to control them by law. Law is our language of natural justice, a language that speaks for the vulnerable and the weak. Yet our past is tainted by injustice towards those targets we have made victims of prejudice, including black people, children, Jews and women. Today, while we grant rights to all Homo sapiens, we still deny rights to all animals.
Animals are denied rights because speciesism – the assumption of human superiority – prevents them from climbing our ladder of law. Our common law is the basis of the legal systems in many countries, including Canada and India. Our self-serving sense of superiority can be seen in R v Menard (1978), a case in the Quebec Court of Appeal involving a defendant who ran a business euthanising animals by motor exhaust, a practice that caused pain and burns. Judge Lamer confirmed: “The animal is inferior to man, and takes its place within a hierarchy which is the hierarchy of animals... It will often be in the interests of man to kill
