Northern Ontario Animal Welfare: Jill Says the System Is Broken — and It’s Time for Accountability

A new email address and I'm gonna advertise it. Oh, it's an email address? Yeah, so I want people to send me. I get so many calls that say, and automatically when there's an abuse case, well, call Provincial Animal Welfare Services, here's the number. Please make sure you have all the details, the address, so that you only have to make one call, and please make sure you follow up.

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I can't tell you how many people go, but I've called them four times. But I've called them six times. They never came, nothing's happened. So what we do is we(...) know there's cases because we've been involved in how many cases that should have been many charges filed and nothing's happening and animals died. Deaf ears. So, deaf ears. So what we're saying is now we want everybody to tell us exactly how many cases are out there. I wanna know because I'm gonna build a case for Northern Ontario that says here, Northern Ontario's not being serviced and give the minister a chance to correct it and then maybe explore their options after that if we don't get the service we need, right? What kind of options?

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So let's assume-- Do you need options? There's all sorts of options. I mean, the government fails you. I mean, if you go to their website and it says what Provincial Animal Welfare Society does, right, for the province, it says what they do. But they don't do that. And they're failing it in black and white. So it's just-- I mean, you have the proof, the videos, all the evidence is there. Why are we, what's the risk, the disconnect here? So it's time that somebody's gonna have to be on accountable for this. Oh, accountable is a big word. It is, it's huge word. And it's time that we tackle it, right? Because I'm just been frustrated over 28 years myself. And I get all sorts of calls. This has gone on in our phone lines every week for 26 years of pets saved and alive. And I'm just, I cannot stand it anymore. Because I guess the volume of abuse and neglect is so high because again, the volume from COVID, our volumes across the country are still in a population crisis and we will be for 10 more years. So when you see the amount of suffering, neglect, and abuse and intentional abuse, and now everybody's got a phone in their pocket. So 20 years ago, 25 years ago, you might've said, well, he said, she said, the neighbor doesn't like me, whatever, but now we're not there. Different story. And everybody has a lovely phone in their hand. They're taking video of it. There's proof evidence of it. So why are we not seeing charges? And(...) I just, I screenshotted one the other day saying, this guy, there's a talking about election time. We have the, there's a counselor up in Timmins who's running for counsel. And this guy actually was charged with animal cruelty, found to be guilty. They went on his property and found, I think nine of his 10 goats dead. And he's still running for counsel. Like, so I say, okay, we'll give human being what I want to represent my community. I want somebody who cares, right? Who cares about the issues, cares about our community. And you're gonna have this gentleman running for counsel who's been charged and convicted. And what did he get? Probation.(...) Probation. Nice. So that's essentially a slap on the wrist. A slap on the wrist. Nine goats died. She

So I want to know what's going on in Northern Territory. Cause I'll tell you, here's one I got,(...) and I'll show you, I have a picture of it. You're a composer in your podcast.

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I told her yesterday, it's a rescue that was involved yesterday. And she called me and I said, call pause. You know,(...) call Provincial Island Welfare. Show them the pictures. They have multiple workers who called saying they saw them beating the dogs. And nobody showed up for these dogs. And finally one was starved to death. And a new worker comes into it, calls the rescue. The rescue goes over and it's too far gone because it's so starved to death that body temp was down at 30. So it had to be euthanized, right? Yeah, our dog's supposed to be at 37. Same as us? Yeah, pretty much.

done. And nothing's done. So I'm tired of the nothing done. I'm thinking full on, you know, let's take the legal route if we have to, but somebody needs to start doing their job or maybe we still need to start replacing people. With people who can do the job. Yeah, replacing people because-- Let's call up for the resignations.

Anyways, so that's it. And then here's my grassy narrows pups. You,(...) the original mom we went up to get, we didn't get. Okay, because she is(...) this thing.

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So what's happening up there now? We're gonna go back. Really? Yeah, I gotta return the dogs I speed. Oh, okay. We're gonna go back. Those dogs are still here? I have two dogs. One's still nursing the pups.

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So here's one of the little pups in the bush. That was born out in the wild. So he's feral. Okay. You gotta get him quick, right? Because while he's young. Yeah. It's probably about five weeks. So when you capture him, what do you do with him? He comes back and he socialize. Civilize him? Yeah, socialize. Yeah, look how cute that little sucker is. He's cute as a bite. Mm-hmm. Poor little dog. Do you think he'll get adopted? Oh yeah. And here's the amount of bears there right now.

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It's a little busier. It's all black. One, two, there's gotta be at least seven in that picture. Yeah. Probably more. Probably 50 to 20 bears in any human day up there right now.

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So they're feeding the bears on one side. And we're-- Oh, so they're finally catching on?

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Well, they're dead if they don't. I mean, for the people up there, yeah, yeah. But I ate left food there.(...) Yeah, but I remember they were feeding. Oh, they're, okay, so they're properly separating the dogs from the bears. Yeah, so you feed one side, we're gonna do the doggies here, we're gonna do the bears over there. Yeah. So when we get in there, we can put our traps. We don't want to trap anybody's cubs. Right. Right?

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So.

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Is the chief on board still? Oh yeah,(...) they said they'll wait for us to come back.

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They appreciate us coming back, and I just said I offered to pay anything on the reserves for Manitoba then. The first time was a shit show.(...) Yeah, we got 37 though. You got 37? So how many more do you think are up there?

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Well, we know there's at least five more dump dogs. So four or five plus the litter. So you got 10 to come out of there. Probably out of the dump. So how many are you bringing back, 37? Well, hopefully not more than 10, but(...) we'll see. No, I mean, how many, when the bark bus goes up there? Well, so we haven't called for the bark bus yet, because we're not sure we need it. Okay. But we could probably get them into Thunder Bay.(...) Get the bark bus into Thunder Bay? No, into,(...) we'll get them into Thunder Bay and fly them, very fly them up. Oh, okay.

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And then coming back, the plane's gonna bring back some more, like 10.

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Grassy narrows(...) again.(...) So anyways, there's just lots more, but that one with my, like I need to get,

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did I just take a picture of that? Yeah, there is. So there are that Northern Cruelty Complaint at Gmail, NorthernCrueltyComplaint at gmail.com, we just started. New email address, we wanna hear from everybody in the North about(...) all the cruelty cases with details. For animals. For animals. Yeah. Dogs and cats? Dogs and cats. Okay. Yeah.

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So you believe that counselor, he's running again for counsel. He's a convicted animal abuser. Yeah, and this is in Timmons? Timmons.

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Yeah, there's some colorful characters up there out here.

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(Laughing)

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knew it all. That's right. And that's the problem with the people.

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As soon as someone starts saying aye, aye, aye, I just, well then-- I'm out. Yeah, basically, because it(...) doesn't matter what you say. In rescue, if you think any person thinks that they can do rescue even with a team of 20 people, you're a joke. No you need more. We have hundreds of people that participate in our success every day. And without those people, hundreds of people between your foster parents, the volunteers at our thrift store, that make the money that make the shelter possible because it's an extraordinary shelter. Want a few in Canada to look like that. Or even perform with vet clinics in them. So I mean, we're-- Yeah, that's just another arm of everything. It's zero government funded. And again, the volunteers that show up for our shelter volunteers and our PetSmart volunteers to get the cats out into homes. And there's so many people that it takes to run rescue. We're talking even at PetSave, hundreds. When you think I have over 400 animals in care, well, I certainly couldn't put 400 animals in our building. If we didn't have foster parents that help us, help save animals, there'd be thousands more dead out there. So that's the difference between whether somebody gives you your time or doesn't give you your time. So anybody who thinks that rescues run by one person or two people or a team of, no, it's an army.

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How's Sean doing in Timmins with his rescue that he started? I see a little bits and-- Charged. He did? Yep. Oh no. Sorry, he's going to court.

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I try and stay on this side a little more. Really? Okay. I didn't know.

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It's a bit long.

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Did he get pissed at someone who hurt an animal? Well, no, they dumped it. She got caught dumping it. Yeah, so I remember-- She gets caught dumping it. Yeah, he caught her. Yeah, but they have video, I guess, of it. Somebody does it. And so then the police call and say, well, he's down at the station because now she's been outed and people know what she did. So now she's claiming me, but I had Alzheimer's. I don't remember doing that to my dog. That's awesome. Okay, so then, but has in text to a friend who says, "Well, I just told them that so I get my dog back." Oh, that text went to Sean. Copy that text. And now he's got his defense, right? She knew what she was doing. She dumped it. He got the dog. Now y'all fighting out in a police station,(...) right? And then I guess he's a little rebellious. He kinda got physical with the cops. So they ended up charging more than just thinking the dog.(...) Oh, man. So you do have to respect the law. Like I said, when they threatened, I had cops threatening to arrest me. I said, "Well, sir, just tell me how this works because I've never been arrested before. So just tell me what I gotta do." And I couldn't believe how mad he got over that. He got angry at me. And I said, "If you're threatening to arrest me, then do it. I need to call my lawyer. I've never had an experience like this. So do what you feel you have to do under the law. And we'll let the court system and my lawyers figure this out." But I think he thought he could threaten and I would get scared. I'm like, "No, if I take a stand on something, I take a stand on it." And so whether you, it might not always be the one that everybody wants to hear. It's not always, I'm a little blunt. No one to be a little blunt. But I always stay within the law.

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And if I'm not, then I'm held accountable just like everybody else. And if you're willing to put that on the line and you're willing to take your punishment when you fail. I mean, when I guess being ticketed, being my ticket, I'm guilty. I don't try to get out of it. Some people hire lawyers. I'm like, "Nah, I did it. I'm guilty." Pay the ticket beyond the day. You follow the rules. I try to follow the rules as much as possible. Sometimes it doesn't always make sense. And sometimes, well, that's where(...) things sometimes go over on the other side. But do you know what? Very rarely, because if you stay within the laws and that's what I say about making our animal laws work for us. Right now, that system is so broken. I have no idea why we're paying all these cruelty officers a good wage. I don't know how they cash their checks on the backs of all these animals that have died out of cruelty and how they actually look at that money and think they earned it. They didn't earn it. They didn't help the animals. The animal's dead. It's been abused. It continues to be abused. So just quit your job and go home because it'd be the same difference for us. Really, at this point, you could go home and there is gonna make zero difference in our world. But just give them their check anyways. No, don't give them the check. Put it in the animals for God's sake, right? Or find somebody who's gonna do the job. Find somebody who's gonna do the job. Find somebody to do the job. If they can't do the job right themselves, and if it means ministerial changes, like we need to replace the minister and get somebody with eyes on this, I realize we've got trade wars and sovereignty issues going on in politics, but let's not forget about our own, in our own borders. We're great to criticize in what a wonderful country we are, but have you seen our animal laws? Have you seen what our court systems are doing with their animals? Have you seen the lack of care in the animal world?(...) I'm thinking Canada doesn't rank too high on that. And it can. And there's actually just(...) a handful of things we can do to make it so much easier, so much better for the animals and so much more cost efficient for taxpayers, because at the end of the day, folks, taxpayers are paying for everything, right? We're paying for it. It's part of our taxes that are going to the province that put out the provincial animal welfare. It's all taxpayer dollars. So we need to get those dollars working for us. Right now, it's a waste of money. For the amount of cases they actually pursue, confiscate and charge is minuscule to what is actually out there.

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On the highway, there's some signs your tax dollars that work. Have you seen those?(...) Yeah, well, you don't see a paw print under that, that's for sure. No, there's no paw print. It might be the payment. It's usually something.(...) So exactly, we need to get our tax dollars working. And if(...) the minister can't get a handle on this, then maybe we need to find someone who can, because this needs to stop. People are trying to blow over. Rescues are getting hugely frustrated. We're going to see boiling over point here. And then people go, well, they're so aggressive. And you go, but listen, we talked to you for 20 years. So right, so when you talk to somebody and you complain about something for 20 years and nothing changes, well, that's where the word frustration comes in. So that's where rescues are at this point. It's like, are you kidding me? And they're calling out rescues. So the government is relying on rescues to do their job. They're like, okay, well, we'll go in and tell them they have to give it up and they need to surrender it to you. And it's an easy out for the government. But they're taking advantage of rescues who have zero government funding. That's right, you're self-funded. We're self-functioning. All rescues have to raise their own money. So if we're raising our own money, why is the government paying somebody else to go to the house and ask them to give up the dog? I might as well go myself and save that taxpayer, all that money for that worker, right, to go to the house.(...) That's not a bad idea. Well, they start paying the rescues because they should, because that's who's doing the real work in this province. So, and we have to deal with all the follow ups of all the hoarding houses. I mean, just go online and see how many groups deal in hoarding houses. Well, these either should have been looked after by municipal governments under their bylaws, or it should have been looked after by the provincial government under provincial animal welfare. So take your pick. Somebody else other than rescues should have been responsible for that. So we're doing their work, but we don't get their money.(...) So either you start finding the people who are doing the work, or you start doing the work yourselves and doing it efficiently. Well, it seems like it's been busted up for 20 years. What's gonna change? Well, it's been broken for decades. It's never been a good system. And you know, when I kept coming back to this, but you know, you park, you get a parking ticket. Yeah. You get a parking ticket. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see you have-- Maybe once. Maybe once you drive. (Laughs) I don't like them. Right? No, I don't either, but you get a ticket because you broke the law. Yeah, but what's even better-- So, we get to do it.(...) What's even better is when you get a parking ticket and your vehicle's not even there.(...) (Laughs) I had that happen. I was. Because I was looking at the sign, and some of the signs in(...) Toronto,

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they're(...) tricky. They? And(...) I came out, the vehicle was gone. That's another process altogether.

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(Laughs) Maybe that's called a stolen vehicle. I don't know what's happened, but anyways, you get it back, but-- You still got the ticket. You still got the ticket.

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Plus, plus, plus. Oh, you got towed. Toad. Toad. Impounded. Oh, nice. Yeah, and then it runs on the meter, how long you're there for. Anyways, so anytime I park somewhere, I,(...) you know, not to go off the pet-safe topic, but I try to look at the sign and make sure, make sure it's computing. Read it twice, make sure it's cracked. Yeah. Before I-- Because I still wanna, you know, I don't wanna have to walk after. (Laughs) Well, you know what, though, like if we went to a system of, you know, you're breaking these particular laws and you get a payment charge, you're charged with a fine. If it's black and white. Yeah, if it's black and white, lay a fine. It'll help, those fines will regenerate revenue, which will come back to help pay for proper programs. Because right now all we're relying on is taxpayer dollars and that's a waste of money, right? So there's also the system where when they confiscate something, if somebody appeals it, it ties up an animal sitting in a cow for months waiting for court, you know, court process to occur. No, they should have automatic rules that you can automatically confiscate without the option. They can't really come back and say, "Well, you took my dog." Well, yeah, I took your dog because based on the law, you weren't following the law, so we've confiscated your dog. And we have police officers, we have(...) banned offices that confiscate dogs and give them to us and it's a full legal confiscation. So this provincial animal welfare, the way they've got something to set up, like I never understand, they make me dizzy because it seems like it works this way some days and some other days, well, it doesn't really work that way. And I know that they're encouraged not to confiscate animals because they don't have anywhere to put them. So the whole system is broke because we don't even have a proper structure to be able to either deal with your current laws. They either need to change the laws or build yourself a building and start getting confiscations done appropriately. But again, a lot of these, you know, it comes down to the municipality, you know, they can be by-law infractions as soon as they hear 25 or 30 pads. And they go, "Well, that's definitely a by-law." But they go, "Well, because it looks really messy in there, that now becomes a cause, it's not the by-law." So you have these governments trying to shift off, right? Well, it's more him, it's more her. And at the end of the day, it's the animals sitting in the middle suffering. So I don't know how many hoarding houses we've done that both should have stepped in, right? Both at some point, somebody had the right to step in there. And yet we ended up cleaning it up. The whole thing? The whole thing. Even the hoarding situation? Oh, hoarding situations, tens of thousands in back bills, tens of thousands in boarding charges. So no, no, like it's serious money. Like our operating budget is over a million and a half a year. PetSate has to raise over a million and a half dollars a year to operate at the level that we operate today. Are there any other business cases, as they call them? Business cases? Yeah, business cases seems to be a word that they throw out. Well, the only business cases, we need to get funding to rescue them, but you can make them who you're gonna ask for money, the government, they're gonna say, "No, that's like we already pay a municipality." Because unfortunately, animals are seen as pest control, believe it or not, as a municipal, in a perspective of pest control, meaning that the by-laws are put in place to clean up the pests in your city. So that's why municipal governments are tasked with looking after those problems. And so when they're given the task, they're like, "Okay, we have X amount of dollars to put into it." Right, they have budgets. So, but I think what happens, we've gotten so far out of control in the numbers, everybody's so far over budgets, nobody's doing anything now. It's like, well, that falls to the rescues and we shouldn't be doing, we shouldn't be cleaning up this. The numbers, like what I do, is equivalent to what our separate pound does. Right?

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And like I say, I used to do a lot more work up north because our community wasn't in as bad a shape. But now our community is more. But now our community is so bad that I have to, my work up north ends up having to be rerouted into southern Ontario, where I can put the volumes down into the major population cities, right? Like there's a lot more population in southern Ontario to be able to adopt out pets. That's why a pet for us, for us to adopt out a dog, to find a good home, while they're slimming some pickings these days. We still adopt every day, I'm not making it like there's nothing, but it's certainly far less than it used to be because we have too many animals in separate out. Okay. Right? The surrender line is just full. I mean, just every morning it starts up. So how's the grassy narrows things going? So grassy narrows, we, the actual dog, we went up to get in the first place to start this whole thing. Oh yeah. Is the dog we didn't get. Oh, so he's still at large. She was at large and she was pregnant. And then she had babies, so then we couldn't find her babies. So when we realized she'd had the babies just before we got there, we couldn't take her, right? Cause then we don't know where the babies are in the forest. And so she had them hidden. So they just surfaced this week. The puppies are now moving around. And little puppy has surfaced and we have a picture of him or her. So that puppy now, we had taken in our first load, we had 37 that the community wanted to remove. And so of those 37, two of them were moms that had babies. So our agreement is to spay and return them to them. So we are spaying and returning those two. So when we go back to return them, we're going to look to finish up the last few adult dogs in the dump, including the mom and the original pups that we went up for.

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The two moms that you're returning, are they returning to homes? Yes, they were owned by somebody. And because Northern communities, especially like this one is 18 hours North. So it does not have access to vet care. The closest vet is six hours away. By airplane?(...) No, no, they're not an island. They're actually-- You can drive there? They're not access, yeah. But they're just so far up there. And they're on the Ontario-Manitoba border. So they don't have really access to vet care. And actually they deal with the vet in Manitoba because it's closer and it's more affordable for spay programs for them. So I have said to them, I'll partner with you and I will raise money to pay to spay dogs in your community at that vet in Manitoba, because he's giving them an incredible price. It makes no sense for me to spend way more money to bring them down here when they can get it done right there. And it's way cheaper than even the gas. It would cost me to go there and back. Just gas alone, it'll remind our people.

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So the proximity is huge. Yes, so they're just grassy arrows as a community way up there. And apparently there's four or five surrounding areas as well. And I've talked to a couple of the rescues up there who are working with those communities. So we're looking to try to, we're gonna partner with everybody and try to work as a team because you have more success when you come up as a team, right? Oh yeah. And then we've got our spay neuter clinics and we're starting to plan our flying communities for spay neuter clinics. And so we're hoping to get into the few very soon in the Northern regions. So we'll be fundraising and if anybody wants to make a donation to help our Northern dogs, it's petsaveincinc.subbrie.gmail.com. And if you wanna send a donation for our Northern dogs, we really appreciate that because winter's coming. Can you just send like a knee transfer? Knee transfer. Okay. Just go right to that email. Petsaveinc.subbrie.gmail.com.

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Okay, yeah, we'll pop out on the screen. And the funds from there will, yeah, the funds from there will help us travel to these Northern communities with our vets to bring wellness clinics. The vaccinations, vaccinations are so important in these communities because once a parvo will break, you know, reaches the community, it wipes out dozens of dogs. So, and it's a horrible way for them to die. We would love to be able to prevent that with simple vaccinations. So sending our vets up there. So, you know, they're on our radar now and we'll look to add them to the list of First Nation communities that we work with in the North that we will try to give them access to that care. What do you do for the dogs that are in the dump and you can't capture them? Can you just-- Jack them. Oh. While we're feeding them right now. Can you just dart them with the parvovax?

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No. Out of a potato gun? No, and unfortunately there's no way to, it's not like bears,(...) the dark ends, no, no, it doesn't work like that. Not for dogs. No, no, not for dogs. So we have traps and actually one of our people, Carol has a homemade trap and she has a homemade trap. It's very different than your traditional traps. And it works amazing. So we'll spend hours just watching that trap waiting for somebody to-- Is she there pulling the string? She does. Oh yeah? It's a homemade one. Old school. And it is, it's like a big case and she props it up and she's got the rope on the string. She just sits there? She's parked way out and she's holding on to that rope and the moment those dogs get into there, boom, she pulls the stick and-- Does she ever get distracted and, you know, is she watching YouTube? No, no Carol's like a really dedicated-- She's on it. Oh man, she's on it. She's probably the best trapper, her and Debbie Beaumont in the city. So yeah, Carol Metzew and Debbie Beaumont, we're very lucky in the community. They trap up cats, dogs, as soon as I get something on the line, I just text them and say, "Here's an address, a name." And they go out and trap them up and bring them in. So, you know, that's how we, slowly everybody participates and cleans up the-- Again, that's the power of the PetSafe network. Absolutely, trappers and all.

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