Ontario, Quebec, Montreal and Rampant Stupidity

Before anything else, I have a question.
Is Denis Coderre, Mayor of Montreal, setting himself up as a "law and order" candidate for a run at the Quebec provincial legislature, possibly leadership of the Quebec Liberals and a shot at being Premier?  Is he doing that by legislating law-abiding dog owners into second-class citizenship and killing unoffending dogs?
And is the Quebec Liberal government colluding with him in his ambition with the provincial "breed" specific law that allows municipalities to pass stronger laws (and kill more unoffending dogs)?
If so, let's hope Karma is a bitch.  With big teeth.

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Ontario has been killing dogs solely because of appearance for a number of years, with no improvement to public safety and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars down the rabbit hole.  More on that later.

Now Montreal and Quebec have decided to fall down the same rabbit hole of ignorant, ineffective, unfounded, unjust, inhumane, vague, shoddy, and fiscally irresponsible law.

So-called "breed" specific law is bad law.  It is subjective law, based on one person’s opinion of a dog’s appearance.  One person’s “pit bull” is another person’s “Labrador Retriever”.  This subjective law would be unfounded, unjust, inhumane, vague, shoddy, proven ineffective and proven fiscally irresponsible.

Good law is objective.  It regards only the behaviour of a dog and its owner, not the appearance of the dog.  Objective law is sane, fiscally responsible and enforceable.

There is no such thing as a “pit bull”.  That is a slang name for a dog of a certain shape which encompasses numerous purebred and thousands upon thousands of crossbred and mixed breed dogs – also known as mongrels or “mutts”.  The four pure breeds named in the usual “breed” specific legislation (“BSL”) (which should more properly be called type-specific legislation) are so rare that I doubt many have met one. 

Law-abiding people are legislated into second-class citizenship under BSL.  Thousands and thousands of unoffending dogs are killed solely because of their shape, because of BSL.

BSL abrogates citizens' rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – lack of due process, profiling, and guilty without a trial.  It restricts the ability of law-abiding people to move about Canada as they wish.  All this is solely because of the shape of their dogs.

BSL ignores dog experts who know that BSL is bad law; that the behaviour of a dog and the dog’s owner should be the focus of the law, not a dog’s shape.  BSL ignores the experience of other jurisdictions that BSL is ineffective and fiscally irresponsible. 

Any visible minority or gay politicians who vote for a law that discriminates against others who have done no wrong are raving hypocrites.

If you are a religious person, please explain to me how you can justify killing God’s creatures when these creatures have done no wrong.

One fact is that a dog’s shape does not predetermine or predict its behaviour, just as a human's shape does not predetermine or predict the person’s behaviour. 

Another fact is that the owner is always responsible for his/her dog’s behaviour.  It is the human element that determines a dog’s behaviour, not the dog’s shape.  Dog experts have testified to this at hearings on BSL and have been repeatedly ignored by politicians and the media.

BSL has been repealed in many jurisdictions, most notably the Netherlands.  The City of Toledo, formerly a death camp for dogs of a politically incorrect shape, ceased to enforce its BSL.  There are many other jurisdictions that have repealed their BSL because of the facts.  State after state in the U.S.A. has prohibited BSL.

Criminals, by definition, will just switch breeds.  Will you keep banning breeds until there are no dogs left?

In summary:  So-called “breed” specific legislation is unfounded, unjust, inhumane, vague, shoddy, proven ineffective and proven fiscally irresponsible.  It legislates law-abiding people into second-class citizenship based solely on the shape of the property they own - their dogs.  It kills dogs solely because of their shape.  It does nothing to reduce dog bites and attacks by dogs of other breeds and types.

In fact, the concentration on “breed” causes bites and attacks by dogs of other types to go almost unnoticed.  These victims deserve justice as much as any other, but they do not receive it due to this idiotic focus on the shape of a dog. 

In the media- and politically-fuelled hysteria about the shape of a dog, most people miss that this type-specific legislation makes law-abiding people into second-class citizens, abrogating their Charter rights, and that it has killed many thousands of unoffending dogs solely because of the dogs’ appearance. 

Much as one judges a person by behaviour and not colour, you can behave logically and rationally by judging a dog and its owner by the dog’s behaviour or you can behave irrationally and illogically by judging a dog by its shape.

The only sane, fiscally responsible and enforceable dog law is one that focuses on a dog’s behaviour, not its shape, and appropriately punishes the owner for any bad behaviour of the dog.

Stop the insanity, educate yourself about dogs, and focus on enforcing the laws you have.