Criminalize Animal Abuse Images: Protect Animals. Protect People.
Across Canada, animals are being used as instruments of fear, tools of coercion, and targets of violence. Our laws have not kept pace with the reality victims face. Whether through physical harm, threats, or the online circulation of cruelty images, animals are being exploited in ways that endanger both their lives and the safety of the people who love them.
This year, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women delivered a landmark federal report recognizing animal mistreatment as a form of coercive control, a critical acknowledgement of the Violence Link and a step toward better protection for victim-survivors.
Humane Canada’s testimony before the Committee highlighted how abusers frequently harm or threaten companion animals to intimidate victims, trap them in dangerous situations, and prevent them from seeking help. The Committee has now recommended that Canada formally recognize this pattern of abuse and ensure police and justice system professionals are trained to identify it.
The Challenge
In Canada, the creation, sharing, and possession of animal cruelty images is still not explicitly illegal.
These images, often graphic, exploitative, and created for intimidation or profit, are spreading online at an alarming rate. The RCMP has warned of a disturbing increase in this content, which is used to:
Normalize violence
Radicalize youth
Exert coercive control over victims
Silence, threaten, or blackmail individuals
Desensitize communities to harm
This is more than an animal welfare issue.
It is a public safety issue, a gender-based violence issue, and a community well-being issue.
When animals suffer, people suffer. And when people are at risk, animals are almost always in danger too. The Violence Link is undeniable, and these images represent one of its most visible and harmful expressions.
Read our latest press releases:
Recognizing Animal Mistreatment as a Form of Coercive Control
Humane Canada is building a national emergency response network and engaging Canadians to ensure animal welfare is part of emergency planning from the very beginning, not as an afterthought.
The Solution
Humane Canada welcomes the federal recommendations recognizing animal mistreatment in coercive control, but meaningful progress requires closing the loopholes that allow abuse to flourish online.
That includes criminalizing the production, distribution, and possession of animal abuse images - clear, straightforward measures that protect animals, strengthen community safety, and ensure our legal system recognizes the full reality of violence.
Now is the time for Parliament to act.
Now is the time to protect animals and the people who love them.
Now is the time to make cruelty, online or offline, illegal in Canada.
ADD YOUR VOICE
We are calling on the federal government to close a dangerous gap in Canada’s laws by criminalizing the creation, distribution, and possession of animal abuse images. These images are being used to normalize violence, radicalize youth, and exert coercive control over victims, yet today, they are not explicitly illegal. This loophole puts both animals and people at risk, and Parliament must act now.
PLEASE ADD YOUR VOICE by writing to your Member of Parliament and urging them to support legislation that finally makes animal abuse images a crime in Canada.
The Future You Can Help Build
This isn’t just about closing a loophole in the law. It’s about reshaping how Canada confronts violence, online and offline. A future where animals are protected from exploitation and harm. Where abusers can no longer use cruelty as a weapon. Where victims are safer, justice systems are prepared, and communities are shielded from the spread of violence.
A future where compassion is written directly into our laws.
