Nearly a year after initially not gaining support for a bill that would repeal the ban on 'pit bulls' in Ontario,Cheri DiNovo has introduced another bill* that would amend the Dog Owners Liability Act that would remove the ban on 'pit bulls' from the legislation.
Good luck to DiNovo and the residents of Ontario.
The breed ban in Ontario went into effect in October 2005 and was spear-headed by then-attorney general Michael Bryant - -who at this point is awaiting trial for his role in killing a man on a bicycle last year.
In the past year since DiNovo's most recent bill was denied, a lot of evidence of the failings -- and costliness - of Ontario's breed ban has become very evident.
Last month, the Toronto Humane Society released numbers that suggested that there has been no decline in the number of dog bites in Ontario since the ban was enacted. The community of Brampton has confiscated dogs and housed them at taxpayer expense for months even though the dogs' breeds were mislabeled and false -- and that they have unjustly confiscated dogs on a somewhat regular basis. This, along with several cities in the province determining that the law was just not enforceable.
And several cities have had to deal with protests in their own cities about the law (even though it is a provincial law) - with one mayor noting that he wanted to go out and protest the law with the protesters.
The bill may go nowhere -- but there does seem to be growing support among the residents of Ontario to repeal the bill. So hopefully the MPPs will begin to listen.
*Also, one note to clarify a factual error in the article I linked to above. The article states that similar bans exist in Austria and England (which is true) but Florida actually has a state law PROHIBITING any city in the state from enacting breed-specific legislation - -and killed a bill that would have removed that prohibition last week.
More on this from BrindleStick.
More from The Toronto Sun.
And more from me later related to this.
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