If the SPCA fights this it may have to try to make Jiji the "psychological suffering" court test. The PCA Act defines "distress" (causing distress is the offence) in purely physical terms. She was clearly fed, no charge of dehydration has been made, not injured, not in physical pain, and had no rotten teeth (too young). She's a puppy, so she will not even act psychologically injured, so winning will have to be on the unwritten, but now widely held belief, that what was done to Jiji was cruel and caused "distress", even though it is not specifically described in the PCA Act. In other words, a new precedent would have to be set by a judge. That amounts to new law. Long ago, AAS suggested to the provincial government that the Act be amended to specifically include psychological suffering. We also suggested that the needs of animals bred for companionship be defined separately from other animals' needs. We have since decided that no amount of "improvement" is a solution: as long as there is animal-owning there will be laws around animal-owning that will be legally argued and challenged for more centuries, and that is an industry itself.

Winning the Jiji case on psychological suffering would open a big can of worms. If this law were permitted for dogs, then activists would argue that it applies to all animals, which puts all farmers, ranchers, slaughterhouses, zoos, trappers, hunters, etc in an untenable position. This real fear is what is holding up the amendments to the Criminal Code.

This case could go all the way to Supreme Court if the SPCA stands its ground, and if it attracts "stakeholder" (the meat industry) money. It is meat eaters who may prevent the law from ever ruling in favour of psychological suffering. The billions of dollars that meat eaters give to meat producers in exchange for meat, is the major reason that laws cannot include psychological suffering. There are other financial interests at work to prevent any improvement in animal cruelty law - the trapping, fur, hunting, zoo, and pet industries for example, but none of those has the money and the enormous political power that the meat industry has. Everyone who buys meat is preventing laws from changing.

The other powerful player in preventing animal cruelty laws from including psychological distress is the pet industry. In that industry, it is pet owners' money (yours and mine) that makes the industry wealthy and a powerful lobby in Ottawa. Most parts of this industry, the distributors (pet brokers), the retailers (pet stores), and the service industries (vets, trainers, accessories and pet food producers and sellers), have grown very rich on pet owners' billions. Only the producers (breeders) for the most part, are not getting rich. The producers are often from the lowest, least educated class. You could call them the hidden third world sweat shops of the pet industry (which all pet owners legitimize by owning pets). Like the children and the poor in third world countries, with few exceptions, they seem content with their place in the industry.

The animal welfare industry is just another part of the pet industry if it does not urge an end to the owing of other species by humans. Only when humans are not allowed to own other species will cruelty to animals end. By pressing lawmakers and judges to view what was done to Jiji as cruelty, the SPCA could further this goal. If it is cruelty to keep Jiji in a small enclosure, her psychological need for normal interaction with others of her own species unmet, then other animal industries are open to legal challenges on that ground too. That is the Pandora's box that Jiji could open. We hope that the SPCA does its best to resist returning Jiji to her owners, even fighting all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.