by SUSAN MANN
The Grey County Federation of Agriculture’s board plans to discuss the permanent closure of the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals office in Hanover at its monthly meeting Thursday.
Grey Federation president Wayne Balon says they weren’t told ahead of time that the office was being closed and he found out about it from news reports.
“Between everyone, we’ll have to come to a compromise and a solution to represent the welfare of animals in Bruce and Grey counties,” he says. But “the OSPCA hasn’t really had a great reputation in the public eye this last little while.”
Bruce County Federation of Agriculture president John Gillespie says they too weren’t told ahead of time about the closure. “As a federation, we have a lot of concerns about some of what the OSPCA has been doing.”
OSPCA agent Brad Dewar, investigations and communications officer, says the office, a rented space, will close on March 1. Two agents have been working out of the location and covering Grey and Bruce Counties but the organization lacks a local shelter space for animals.
The area will no longer have staff specifically assigned to it, he adds.
Dewar says the officers currently working at the office have jobs until March 1 “and after that it goes to human resources.” The OSPCA has 100 agents and inspectors across Ontario.
A spokesman to Ontario Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur, says by email the OSPCA is an independent charity and the government doesn’t direct or interfere with its operations, including decisions about branch locations and investigator deployment. Ottawa-Vanier MPP Meilleur is responsible for the OSPCA.
“We understand that in support of this announcement the OSPCA sent letters to municipal officials in the impacted area,” the spokesman says, noting the agency has offered to meet with municipal representatives to discuss options for service delivery.
Dewar says the OSPCA is a non-profit charity that only receives a government education grant of about $500,000 a year for officer training but no government funding for the investigation work it does or for the officers’ equipment. The investigation work is all funded through donations. “Due to budget limitations, we had to make the difficult decision to pull our services from that area.”
Dewar says the OSPCA receives funding from all over Ontario and “there’s been a little bit of a reduction so the service had to be reduced at this point in time.” The Grey Bruce OSPCA office is the only one in Ontario being closed. Asked why that office was picked for closure, Dewar says “ultimately that’s a decision the management makes in looking at the number of investigations and officers for that area.”
Dewar says he isn’t aware of the OSPCA having to close an office or facility in any other area before now.
Semi-retired Bruce County cow-calf producer Carl Noble used to be on the board of the OSPCA but resigned around 2007 because of what he calls the agency’s heavy-handed approach. Noble says the office has to raise funds by donation to pay for part of the costs and in his opinion “if they can’t do it, then that’s why they’ve closed it.”
Before the OSPCA had the office in Hanover, it cost them $52,000 a year to operate in the Grey-Bruce area and “they were supposed to raise a minimum of half of it,” he says. Prior to that there was a humane society in the area that Noble and his wife served with as volunteer directors and that was run on $7,000 to $10,000 a year “because the agents were volunteers and the board members were volunteers.” The agents under the humane society were only paid for mileage and their meals were covered if they had to be out during meal times.
Dewar says pulling its services from the area means the OSPCA would no longer be responding to animal cruelty calls for the Grey-Bruce area and the calls would be directed to the local municipal or provincial police.
About the police enforcement of provincial and federal animal cruelty laws in the Grey-Bruce areas, Gillespie says “from an operations standpoint I don’t think we’d have a concern with the police. I think they’d be professional enough to do a proper job.”
Dewar says the OSPCA has also asked Grey-Bruce area municipalities if they’d be interested in a fee for service arrangement.
Dewar says the OSPCA has “had a presence in Grey-Bruce since 2002.” He didn’t have the figures for how much it cost to operate the Hanover office annually. But the officers were involved in about 400 investigations annually in Grey and Bruce counties. In 2011, the OSPCA as a whole was involved in 16,000 investigations. The investigations were for all concerns and for all kinds of animals, including domestic and farm animals.
The 400 annual investigations for the Grey-Bruce area “is relatively consistent with many areas of the province,” Dewar says. BF
Comments
While there may be some valid criticism of the OSPCA, the police are not equipped to investigate livestock neglect. What does an OPP officer know about proper cattle care, and I can't believe the police will be willing to pay for veterinarians, or the seizure of animals, if it comes down to that. What about all the horses, and the people running out of hay - police are not equipped.
It is time for OMAFRA to take a lead role in investigating neglect of livestock, and fund a professional force of livestock officers. In US states and other provinces the department of agriculture has taken on this role, and it works.
I agree that the OPP is not the group to take over but then I have my reservations on whether OMAF is up to the task either .
Lets think this over. In the past OMAFRA has passed all enforcement to other agencies carrying guns ie MNR. They have chosen to be a minion commenting agency to many things affecting agriculture.
Many NGO's like conservation and GEA have had more to say about agricultural use of land and practices than OMAFRA it's self.
NGO's entering property without the authorization or a warrant does not make responsible accountable government. If there is no minister to be accountable to there should never be another NGO with this kind of emotionally charged authority...ever.
OMAFRA probably should be involved in some capacity but their past track record for speaking up or in defense of best farm practices has not been stellar
Sounds like an effort to negotiate a fee for service contract. I doubt if OSPCA is going anywhere.
There is an unsubstantiated fear that the OPP cannot properly conduct animal welfare investigations. This is an unwarranted fear. The OPP conduct investigations of every imaginable subject matter - animal welfare is not inherently special.
They succeed by using a very simple formula:
1. They are professionals who are trained to investigate in a fair, unbiases and lawful manner (i.e. they respect the Charter);
2. They consult with professionals when they need professional opinions. In the case of animal welfare cases, this will involve veterinarians.
The OSPCA, on the other hand, employ agents and investigators who bring extreme views and bias to their investigations. Often, they do not involve veterinarians at all - and instead force their own uneducated idealistic opinions upon animal owners. When they do consult veterinarians, they bring in their own vets who share their own extreme opinions. Their vets and farmers' vets rarely see eye-to-eye.
Given the choice, I would prefer to be investigated by a professional investigator - who is unbiased enough to seek advice before drawing conclusions - rather than be investigated by a relatively untrained animal-rights activist.
I wish I lived in Grey-Bruce.
There is a you tube video going around showing many police cars chasing a harmless young cow, sirens wailing. They keep pumping it full of bullets from their handguns. It keeps walking, then finally limping from bullet wounds. That scene is played out in many areas because police don't understand animals and animal issues. They aren't trained for animals. On paper, MNR would be a logical choice because they have enforcement and animal training.
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