Jurivision is pleased to launch this new visual publication featuring a legal article from the Revue générale de droit. This innovative project is the result of a collaboration between Jurivision and the Revue, with financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). These visual publications help mobilize legal knowledge while highlighting the authors who publish their work in the journal.
The Act to improve the legal situation of animals, a landmark piece of animal law in Quebec, was adopted unanimously by the National Assembly in 2015. This law changes the legal status of animals in the Civil Code of Québec and establishes a new statute, the Animal Welfare and Safety Act, which creates a stricter penal framework to better protect animals.
In this visual publication, Daphnée B. Ménard, a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa, explains how companion animals are better protected than farm animals under the legislation, and how the legal criteria are not applied consistently across animal species.
Her analysis of the parliamentary debates surrounding the adoption of the Act to improve the legal situation of animals shows that economic and social factors are at the root of the new legislation, and that economic interests also explain its limitations.
These observations are drawn from her article “ Un loup dans la bergerie – Pourquoi les animaux domestiques ne sont pas tous protégés de la même manière ”, published in the Revue générale de droit.
