Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. The amendments to the Dog Act, I did have a constituency meeting in Fort Simpson and raised the issue. My constituency felt that the power was best left to the municipality. Now it’s before committee and introduced by government, the amendments.
It’s a very passionate subject, as I saw when I was very happy to attend the Fort Smith public hearing. Lots of people came out and shared their views and passion about it. They cited many, many examples of possible dog cruelty. It depends on your perspective too.
Our small communities, I travelled to them often, just like Norman does, and talked to the people and see how as an Aboriginal person we… I think the feeling is that in the small communities that the standards of larger communities and even national, I know that the committee got international comments there as well. To me, I always feel that they’re dictating to how small the communities and how Aboriginal cultures should dictate themselves. I always feel that’s something that’s fundamentally wrong.
However, I think the Dog Act came up for review because there was a loophole in there that was very difficult to convict somebody if there was an
act of cruelty, because our dog legislation really didn’t speak about that. I think that the amendments, the difficulty with the amended Dog Act as it is, is that we try to make it animal protection legislation and we cannot. That’s what people, I really felt that’s what people are looking for. I’m with them and I believe that and it’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to do animal protection legislation in this term. I’m hopeful that our government will certainly see to that in the next government because that’s something that we have to do.
With the new upgraded amendments it will dedicate lots of our government resources. I’m not too sure how the regulations are going to roll out because there’s enough of a change now. We have RCMP involved, possibly our ENR officers chasing dogs as well. I don’t know if that’s the best use of a GNWT resource when we have many, many other issues and concerns out there. To me it does do the job. It’s a good step towards animal protection legislation. To me it might be a little bit of overkill, because I feel, like my constituents, that it’s best left to the municipalities. All we have to do is make a few changes to make sure that people who do contravene the act, the ability is there for them to charge them and up to and including conviction. Yes, some of the fines were low but we didn’t have to go so high. Now I see that there’s a bit of a balance in there. I’m comfortable with that.
In general, I’m supportive of the Dog Act. We had three significant high-profile cases in the North and the incident that happened at Whistler just kind of heightens the need for us to amend the Dog Act and to have convictions with that. With that, I’ll conclude my opening remarks.