City of Hamilton supports reversal of pit bull ban
Published December 5, 2019 at 2:35 pm
The City of Hamilton is endorsing a bill that would see the reversal of Ontario’s pit bull ban that has been in place since 2005.
The City of Hamilton is endorsing a bill that would see the reversal of Ontario’s pit bull ban that has been in place since 2005.
Councillor Sam Merulla introduced the motion at Wednesday’s (Dec. 4) General Issues Committee meeting (GIC), asking that the mayor and council officially support the Private Member’s Bill introduced into the Ontario Legislature last month which is seeking to reverse the ban.
The motion says that the current legislation doesn’t “address the root cause of vicious dogs, which is often attributed to the handler or owner of the dog.”
When speaking to his motion, Merulla said that ban is “wrong-headed” and that the pit bull breed doesn’t get a fair representation in the media; “they’re “demonized,” he said.
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The bill was introduced at the provincial level by Chatham-Kent-Leamington MPP Rick Nicholls last month.
The bill passed its second reading with 36 votes in favour and 12 opposed.
A statement from Nicholls’ office points out that while many people associate the term pit bull to mean a single breed, it’s actually an umbrella term that includes: Staffordshire Bull Terriers, American Pitbull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, and American Pitbull Terriers.
“Many Ontarians are very concerned that we have legislation in place that euthanizes dogs based solely on their breed,” the statement said. “This has come at expense to the taxpayer as enforcement is costly, cogs up the provincial court system, and throughout Ontario the ban is not equitably enforced.”
This is not the first time that efforts have been made to repeal the ban; in 2011, three political parties co-sponsored a bill that would bring an end to the ban, but it was not passed.
The ban, Merulla said at Wednesday’s GIC, doesn’t address the problem of the owners or the breed’s handlers.
Therefore, the motion asked that staff be directed to “review the feasibility of changes to the Responsible Animal Ownership By-law to include professional obedience training for dogs, with the participation of the dog’s owner and the feasibility of reduced licensing fees for large working dogs (i.e. Rottweilers and Pit Bulls) to mitigate public safety concerns and report back to the Planning Committee.”
The motion passed with a vote of 9 to 4.
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