While I agree wholeheartedly that Bill S-203 is woefully inadequate for failing to change some of the fundamental problems with the federal animal cruelty legistlation, your assertion that the criminal code doesn't protect wild animals from acts of animal cruelty is not correct.

In R.v. J.S, a 2003 decision out of Newfoundland, a young offender was charged with causing unnecessary pain to a crow (although he was acquitted when the witness couldn't identify him at trial).

There is also currently a case in the Kamloops area currently before the courts. Mark Bertram was charged with wildlife act hunting offences, as well as causing unnecessary suffering, for shooting a bear cub multiple times with an arrow, then returning and shooting it multiple times with a .22