Letter for Minister Bennett to request stopping this inhumane treatment/slaughter of our beautiful horses https://www.horseshit.ca

The Hon. Carolyn Bennett House of Commons Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0A6 Dear Minister Bennett, I am writing today to draw your attention to an important issue - that of live horses being shipped as air cargo to Japan for slaughter. In December 2021, a mandate to ban this cruel practice was issued to the Agriculture Minister by PM Justin Trudeau. To date there is still no ban in place and the exports continue. Now is the time to ensure that this barbaric trade ends. I would like to see all parties pulling together to ban these horrific exports and, as my Member of Parliament in the riding of Toronto--St. Paul's, I ask for your support in helping to achieve this. The brutal practice of shipping live draft horses overseas as air cargo violates all decent animal welfare principles and it must stop. Please ask Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau to do her job and follow through on the Prime Minister's mandate without further delay! The horses are terrified. They often fall over on take off and landing. Some horses arrive deceased. Imagine making a flight beside your dead comrade and having nowhere to step except on a carcass. They are deprived of food and water for up to 28 hours. They are crammed into small wooden crates and can’t move or lift their heads adequately. They spend countless hours waiting to be loaded and offloaded in horrendous weather conditions- extreme heat and extreme cold. This is a betrayal of the worst kind. Horses are our companions and they are taught to trust us. They’ve fought wars for us, ploughed our fields, pulled our wagons. And this is how we treat them? And that's not all. At the end of the overseas flight, the exported draft horses are at the mercy of the laws and policies of a foreign country - butchered and fed to people raw. Canada doesn't have to be complicit in this. It's time to bring an end to the betrayal and the cruelty! In 2021,nearly 78,000 Canadians called for an end to this trade by signing petition e-3187, sponsored by MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith. Now a new petition, e-4190, initiated by singer/songwriter Jann Arden and sponsored by MP Alistair MacGregor, is online and rapidly collecting signatures. I look forward to your prompt response and a sincere promise from you that you will support an end to the exports of live horses for slaughter. Thank you. Yours truly, silva redigonda (https://www.horseshit.ca)