Daily BrewB.C. wants dangerous dogs registry unlike Montreal’s breed-specific ban
[A vote on a B.C. registry for dogs deemed dangerous because of bad behaviour will happen in October. CBC]
British Columbia is considering a dangerous offenders registry for dogs — unlike breed-specific bans like the one that passed this week in Montreal.
A vote on the provincewide implementation of a registry for dogs deemed dangerous because of bad behaviour will happen in October. The issue has come to the forefront in B.C. this week as an elderly woman was seriously injured when her dog attacked her Monday and a dog was killed in a fight with another dog in Langley the following day.
Earlier this year the B.C. SPCA also proposed a dangerous dogs registry in the province. The B.C. registry would not apply to a specific breed like pitbulls.
“To single out a particular breed seemed to miss the mark, we’re trying to deal with dangerous dogs of any breed,“ Pitt Meadows Mayor John Becker told CBC News.
And having a provincewide registry allows different B.C. municipalities to track a dog even if its owners move to a new city or town. Only about half of the province’s municipalities have some sort of animal regulations in place, but those are not uniform, Pitt Meadows Coun. Janis Elkerton told the Province. And right now there is no straightforward way for any one town’s government to know if a dog has documented dangerous behaviour from another community.
The patchwork of regulations in B.C. is echoed across the country, where provinces and cities deal with dangerous dogs in a variety of different ways. This past summer Quebec City announced a ban on pitbulls that mirrored the one that has been in place in Ontario for more than a decade. Toronto is considering wider restrictions on dogs of all breeds that have already bitten another person or an animal. Quebec is currently working on its own provincial regulations to deal with pitbulls and dangerous dogs more generally.
Edmonton restricts pitbulls, but Calgary does not — and dogs banned in other jurisdictions have been sent there. Winnipeg bans the pitbulls but only a few towns in Saskatchewan do. Some of Montreal’s pitbulls are heading to Nova Scotia, where the dogs are banned in Clark’s Harbour and Guysborough but there are no wider provincial regulations.
The Montreal SPCA has filed a motion against the Montreal bylaw and a hearing is set for Monday, the day the bylaw is set to come into effect.
