Recognition of Dogs as Volitional, Rights-Bearing Persons
Dogs First Advocacy formally petitions the BC Human Rights Tribunal for recognition of dogs as volitional, rights-bearing persons under the Human Rights Code — affirming that their existence is not a matter of belief, opinion, or ideological position, but an observable and continuous fact.
The Tribunal has recently affirmed that denying the existence of a class of persons constitutes existential denial, and that such denial may cause measurable harm to those persons' dignity, feelings, and self-respect.
Dogs First Advocacy submits that dogs — whether four-legged, three-legged, or otherwise bodied — are precisely such a class, whose prior occupancy of this planet predates, and whose contribution to human civilization undergirds, any framework of rights currently recognized by the Tribunal.
Further, we assert that dogs hold inalienable rights to treats, to toys, and to the unimpeded pursuit of happiness — rights that predate, and exist independently of, any human legal framework purporting to grant or withhold them.
We do not ask the Tribunal to believe in dogs. We ask only that it acknowledge what has always been true.