Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen relinquished his slot for private member’s business in Ottawa to make room for the final hour of debate needed on Bill S-203, affectionately known as the ‘Free Willy’ bill.
The bill would ban whale and dolphin captivity in Canada.
“We need to bring it back into the House and then vote on it, and it will then go to Royal Assent and become law,” said Courtenay-Alberni MP Gord Johns, the NDP Fisheries Critic. “Saving this bill, we’ve heard from literally hundreds of thousands of Canadians that want to end whales and cetaceans in captivity. These are genuinely concerned people that are worried in the last stage the bill might fail.”
Johns and his Island colleagues wrote a letter to Cullen asking him to give up his slot.
“He agreed to do it. The NDP’s committed to the welfare of animals. The practice of keeping these intelligent and beautiful, sensitive creatures in captivity must stop. They need to roam widely and dive deep in order to thrive. It’s a moral issue. We need to do the right thing, and that’s what Nathan Cullen has done.”
Besides banning captivity, Bill S-203 includes a grandfather clause for animals already in facilities in Canada. It would permit research, the rescue of animals in distress, and ban breeding and trade of reproductive materials.
Delays have left Cullen’s own bill, the Zero Waste Packaging Act, without sufficient time to pass through parliament. However, Johns said government is responding to his motion for a national strategy on plastics later this month.
“They’re looking at ways they can take some of his bill and incorporate that into their national strategy,” Johns said. “We’ve made a commitment in our platform to ban single-use plastics by 2022. We’re really hopeful.”
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