A boy and his dog.

There is a poem by Edgar Guest called “A Boy and His Dog”. The first verse goes like this. “A boy and his dog make a glorious pair, no better friendship is found anywhere. For they talk and they walk and they run and they play, and they have their deep secrets for many a day. And that boy has a comrade who thinks and who feels, who walks down the road with a dog at his heels.” Today, Jack Russell terrier Seymour would be two and a half years old, and would be at the heels of Nick Rose. They would make a glorious pair.

But the person who is accused, who said it was an accident after fleeing the scene, who lucked out by the ongoing shortage of judges and court services staff in our province, applied this week for the charges to be dropped arguing that his right to be tried in a reasonable time had been violated. Section 11 of the Charter of Rights guarantees that any person charged with an offence has the right to be tried within a reasonable time. There are no such protections for the rights of victims of crime.

Our injustice system has struck again and not only set an accused free and clear of being tried for an alleged horrifying, vicious, cowardly attack on a boy’s dog, but in doing so has completely crushed the confidence of a little boy in adults’ ability to make things right. How can he have any respect for the law when it was not there to protect his rights, only those of the person who killed his puppy?

Sadly, we must remember these are courts of law, not courts of justice, and in this case the constitutional rights of the accused trumped the killing of this innocent animal in front of the children who loved him.

We know that fewer than 1 percent of animal abuse complaints in Canada are successfully prosecuted. A report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) shows Canada has the worst animal cruelty laws among the 14 countries surveyed including the Ukraine and the Philippines. The problem is that animals are considered property and property crimes are not considered to be serious by the courts. But, those crimes that are deemed serious have also benefited from the speedy trial rule. An RCMP officer charged with dangerous driving while impaired was thrown out in November 2010, two people charged with cocaine trafficking thrown out in May 2010, many impaired driving charges have been stayed because of court delays due to government underfunding of the judicial system. Currently, more than 30,000 traffic tickets await trial dates and nothing has been done to address nearly 16,000 criminal cases in the province that are older than six months. (Justice Delayed: A Report of the Provincial Court of British Columbia Concerning Judicial Resources). British Columbia was the only province in Canada to suffer a reduction, 17.35 per cent, in its judicial complement over the years 2005 to 2010. Other than saying he is “troubled by this” what is our Attorney General going to do about it?

While the judge said that the charges had been hanging over Cody Wellard “like the sword of Damocles”, there is just cause to suggest the constant threat and imminent peril is really hanging over the people of British Columbia who are living amongst criminals whose crimes have gone unpunished.