Pitbulls: the SPCA is concerned the euthanasia of thousands of dogs”

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Patrick Bellerose

Wednesday, 21 march, 2018 16:03

UPDATE
Wednesday, 21 march, 2018 16:03

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The draft law on the supervision of dangerous dogs that could force the killing of thousands of dogs in shelters, said the Montreal SPCA by a parliamentary committee on Wednesday.

Despite a grandfather clause that allows existing owners to keep their pet, the bill provides nothing for the pitbulls that end up in shelters are animal.

As it will become impossible to adopt them, “these are the dogs that will find themselves banned from one day to the next,” says the representative from the SPCA in Montreal, Sophie Gaillard.

A few minutes earlier, she had declared in front of elected officials that the bill 128 would require the SPCA to be put to death systematically thousands of dogs that end up in our shelters each year, regardless of their behaviour.”

Dogs will always be sent for adoption elsewhere in Canada, but this solution is unrealistic because of their high number, judge Sophie Gaillard.

The legislative measure also provides for the possibility to send the animal in a research laboratory to be used in animal experimentation, she adds.

Human lives

Presents the hearings of the parliamentary committee for a second day in a row, the sister of Christiane Vadnais – the Montreal girl killed by a pitbull last year – has not been shaken by the possibility that the dogs be euthanized.

“It is a much more beautiful death than [the one] my sister has known, to be eaten alive”, has launched Lise Vadnais.

She emphasizes that she does not wish to “let the dogs die for nothing.” “But if they ask me to choose between euthanizing a pit bull and a human life, you will understand that my choice is quickly made,” says Lise Vadnais.

Opposition of Montreal

At the time of presenting the bill last year, minister Martin Coiteux was committed to ban the pitbulls, by regulation, as will the new law.

But the minister is now more elusive. Is that the new mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante, opposes such a ban based on race, just like the City of Laval.

Martin Coiteux is now trying to find “rallying points” with them, as they will be responsible for the application of the law. “It is important to work with our municipal partners because it is ultimately at the level of cities and towns that it is going to play,” he said.

The City of Montréal has, however, declined the invitation of Quebec to participate in the hearings on the bill. Administration Plant chose instead to send a memory, in which she proposes the creation of a national register of bites, awareness programmes in schools and stricter for the breeding and sale of dogs.