Jill from PetSave joins Love the North for a direct conversation about what she believes is a major disconnect between government and the realities of animal welfare in Northern Ontario.
Her central argument is that Ontario already has animal-welfare laws, but laws mean very little without enforcement. Jill says rescue groups repeatedly see cases where complaints have been made, evidence exists, and animals remain in bad situations because the system does not respond effectively enough.
She also questions how taxpayer dollars are being used.
Jill says residents are already paying for provincial animal-welfare officers, municipal pounds, vehicles, salaries, investigations and court processes — yet rescues are still being called upon to take animals, find foster homes, pay veterinary bills and deal with large-scale neglect or hoarding situations.
In her view, that means the system is not structured properly.
One of the biggest problems, she says, is a lack of resources after animals are removed. Officers may have nowhere to place confiscated animals, which can make enforcement even more difficult. Jill says rescues with facilities and foster networks then become the fallback when the government system has nowhere else to turn.
But her criticism goes deeper than resources.
Jill says there is a major education gap between the people making policy and the people actually working in animal rescue every day.
She argues that someone sitting in an office cannot fully understand overcrowding, hoarding, uncontrolled breeding, veterinary costs, cruelty complaints and the shortage of foster and boarding spaces unless they are talking directly with the people dealing with those issues.
Her proposed solution is a task force that brings together:
rescue organizations, veterinarians, animal-welfare officers, provincial representatives and policy makers.
The goal would be to identify what is actually failing and rebuild the system around real front-line experience.
Jill is also collecting information on cruelty complaints across Northern Ontario that residents say were not properly addressed. She wants better documentation, stronger enforcement and more accountability for what happens after people call the provincial animal-welfare line.
At the same time, PetSave is dealing with another crisis: overpopulation.
Jill says Northern Ontario is saturated with animals needing homes, rescue facilities are overflowing, boarding costs are increasing, and PetSave has even had to move animals south to find adopters. She stresses that spaying and neutering remain critical because reducing the number of unwanted animals reduces the number that can end up neglected or abused.
Her overall message is that animal welfare cannot continue to rely on volunteers and rescue groups to compensate for weaknesses in the government system.
If Ontario is going to have animal-welfare laws, Jill says the province has to provide the structure, enforcement, resources and accountability needed to make those laws actually mean something.
#PetSave #AnimalWelfare #AnimalCruelty #AnimalRescue #Accountability #Ontario #NorthernOntario #Sudbury #TaxpayerDollars #SpayAndNeuter #LoveTheNorth
Animal Welfare in Ontario: Jill Says the System Is Broken and Rescues Are Carrying the Load
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Description
Transcript ~3,064 words · ~15 min read
And I go, "Listen, if I said something to you, you needed to hear it." That's the bottom line in the animal world.
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For me, right now, government, though, is animals. And animals?
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Animals. Like, whether it be our ministry, the Ministry(...) for Animal Cruelty,(...) even locally.
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Our city's doing a good job, but we need to get on more by-law. There's a lot of(...) homes out there right now that have too many animals, not fics, and they're gonna create those problems that I battle every day. And we need enforcement. That's right. So we need enforcement, and, you know, enforcement is everything. When people talk about, "Well, we need more laws," you're right, you could tweak a few laws that would...
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We need enforcement. We have by-laws, we have good laws, and we have more enforcement. Yeah, and that's it about the laws. So you can have 50 laws, but if you're not enforcing them, then really they're useless. And that's what we should be talking about. Yeah. And so, well, that would be the next episode, because, so we just... I don't know if I showed you... I showed you the dog last week. The ribs? Yes, that they said, "Oh, well, sorry, the dog was stronger, so the case is closed." So I said... Oh, that the Timmins' dog? No, Pear Sam. Oh. So I said to Pear, so I called these, and I said, "No, no, no. They can absolutely file charges after the fact. The surrender has nothing to do with it, whether they surrendered the dog, or whether they sent it to... You know, where the paws would have,
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you know, confiscated the dog and put it in a boarding counter, or a vet clinic, or wherever. The fact remains, the proof is there. He did an act to a dog that was unacceptable, and it's against the law. And there... So she called them back, and a new officer called and said, "Oh, no, no, it was just an inexperienced officer." She said, "Well, what made you change your mind, other than social media and the whole world getting mad?" And he said, "Well, it was an inexperienced officer." No. So we have big problems in the animal world. You know, it needs to get on political agendas. It needs to be done right. First of all, taxpayer dollars. That's what we're all... I mean, we're all taxed to death, and the economy's pretty tight. So if you're giving your tax dollars, you're hoping that somebody's spending them wisely. And when you give tax dollars, whether it be provincially, federally, or even municipally here in Sudbury,
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those tax dollars that we use in different levels of government for animals is not being utilized properly.(...) So we have ineffective systems. And because it's government, of course, it's like a headache to even try and talk to somebody, make somebody realize there's a problem, because what we need is restructuring. We need complete animal restructuring. Because right now, and COVID showed us this, we can just go out of control. When you go out of control, so when I talk about overpopulation, and that's overpopulation for now 15 years, taxpayers are paying for that. Taxpayers are paying for every count that's full over our local pound. We're paying for it provincially, when we have provincial animal welfare that doesn't work for us. We are paying, you know, I think there's like 30-some officers designated to technically Northern Ontario.
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We're paying them, right? We pay a vehicle. We pay for those wages. And what are we getting in return? So the dollar's not being spent properly. We could make just a few minor changes, and if they brought a task force together, a group of people to discuss what the real problems are, because there's a huge disconnect. They're always from government. Somebody in an office thinks they know the animal world. I used to think I knew the animal world pretty good. I was a pet owner, I thought I knew a little bit. I fell into rescue. Wow, you want your eyeballs opened up. Get into rescue, and you'll know exactly what goes on in the animal world. So there's a huge disconnect, and I don't expect those people to know. I don't, because they have no clue in there. There's no way for them to learn it. What they need to do is put those who do know that world, including veterinarians,(...) you know, policy makers,(...) animal cruelty officers,(...) provincial animal welfare ministry representatives, and rescue groups, because they can tell you so much. And the ministry right now relies on those rescue groups. Now, I think back 25 years ago when I was told, "Oh, rescue groups are illegal."
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There was just no space for us in any law. Nobody knew what we were. Somebody one day decided to say, "I'm a rescue group." And even when I fell into it and went, "Oh, I guess I'll be a nonprofit. Oh, I'm a rescue group. Okay, I'm a rescue group." Right? So when you look at that and you say, "We have so many problems, we can never possibly fix it because of the disconnect of education that our government has with the animal world."(...) They need to learn it and feel it. And that's why I pushed locally for them to terminate the contract, because they contracted out our pound services for decades, and a lot of cities did, and they still do. Every city should take it under their wing. Because if you talk to Melissa, who was the manager when they started, when they first brought in house,(...) she'll tell you what an eye opener was. And she's a smart gal, so, you know, she was overwhelmed. She said, "Oh my God, I had no idea." And nobody will have any idea until you actually experience it. So if you're going to make policy, you need to consult with the people who do know what the problems are(...) and how to solve them. Again, on the front line, you've got to ask the people on the front line. Always the front line worker knows it all, right? People in the phrase, "The ivory tower," it's those people in those towers who are making decisions that affect the lower people. In the animal world, the taxpayers pay for it.(...) The taxpayers pay for all our pounds, prevention and welfare, the court cases, the court charges that go on, and what are we getting in resolve?(...) The result is nothing.(...) Very little. So what we need to do is we need to bring on a task force, and I'm going to be, I'm collecting information now on cruelty cases that have not been addressed in Northern Ontario,
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and you're going to post our email.
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And what I want to do is track all the cruelty cases, and the ones I haven't been dealt with, because number one, we don't have the resources up here. Number two, we know the workers are encouraged not to confiscate the animal because they have nowhere to put them. So government needs to look at what their structure looks like, how do you run an operation that confiscates animals, and yet you have no building to confiscate them to, right?(...) They know where to put them once you've confiscated them.(...) So the system is broken right there. So of course they're encouraged not to remove an animal because they have nowhere to put it. And if they do put it in boarding facilities, they're paying big bucks, right? Boarding spaces these days, since COVID, prices have gone way up because that space is now valuable. Everybody wants that space. You can't find, that's why a lot of in-home boarding started. People started looking after each other's pets. We get people who adopt at Pet Save, and the fosters will actually take them on holidays. People who previously fostered them will say, "Sure, if you go away on holidays, I'd love to have that dog back," right? And they pay them because there's no space. You can't call up today and find a boarding space. There's no spaces.(...) Ever have a case where the foster doesn't want to give the dog back or they have to? We do. No. And we say, "Return the dog and put in your application." We don't do foster adopt. I will not do the application with the dogs and the cats in the home. But remove it, bring it back and file your application and we do it in the same day. So that if they take them on, often if people say, "I'd like to foster a puppy for the weekend or a dog for the weekend," they come back Monday, they return the dog and they put their application right away. It's those who sit there for months and months and months,(...) fostering, and then they say, "And then we find somebody," and they say, "Oh, well, we were going to apply." I go, "Well, you should have applied three months ago." And that's where the awkward situations happen, right? Because people have honesty. So, but back to the cruelty. When I say about, "They have nowhere to put these animals," they confiscate them today. You go into a hoarding house, where would they have put my 27 dogs, for example, from the house side of the apartment I cared in flower milk? Where would we have put those dogs?(...) Right? Now, I know they're paying other boarding facilities, but they're relying on people like me because I have a large facility, I have a good network, and they were starting to call us all the time to have the people surrender. So, I'm now into one apartment where a worker called me, and God bless me, doesn't want to see the animals suffering. He goes, "These need to go now because this is not a good place." And if I showed you the pictures, and I mean, I could flood the net with horrific pictures and some rescues. Do I don't choose to do that? But, you know, when those cats needed to get out of there, that was a life and death situation. The ministry should have taken those cats, and they should have charged her because now she'll go do it again. That's a problem. These animal collectors, if they don't have a repercussion, to what they did, then they don't see anything wrong with it, which is kind of where our whole society is going, right? And that's why we're watching the cases in the courts right now, because we're going to publicize every one of them now. All the abuse cases are going to get publicized. Because it seems to be the only way that we get attention, because when you go the proper channels, as we direct people to do, when they call our line and say, "Hey, there's a girl." They go, "Okay, call this line." And we realize over the years that doesn't work. Nobody's listening. When you post it on social media,(...) suddenly you have the police involved, you have many calls going to a police station that you can't take. Those calls are too busy, right? They're tight on staff too, I'm sure.(...) But that's the only way we can get action now. So what kind of statement is that, right? Meanwhile, you go on the provincial animal welfare site, and it says we're here to protect the animals. Wow, Ariak? You're not doing a very good job.(...) So what we need is a complete overhaul in this province of the animal welfare, and I think it's time the minister(...) gets a taste of what's really going on. He really does educate himself(...) on what goes on. And the manager,(...) who runs the portfolio,(...) she needs to be(...) engaged with the people who do know, because you can only make good decisions if you actually educate yourself about the problem. And we keep putting all these band-aids on all these things that they think are working or are not working, and they keep changing, they don't even know what the needs are. So what they need to do, put your rescues together, right? Put the people in the know, put them around a table with the minister, make some meetings, find out how we can work together(...) to solve the problem. It would be better economically for a taxpayer, that's for sure. And we should be looking into punitive(...) costs, meaning that when you have an infraction, there's a fine for that. And those fines should go back into the animal welfare fund and ministry(...) to help fund, because I think if we had more money, we'd probably prosecute more cases, because we all know how expensive it is to prosecute a case. So by generating revenue in that department, because right now that department is just straight taxpayer dollars, it's all cost-inhibitive, right? There's no revenue coming in.
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How do you have revenue? You don't...(...) So, you know, we need to look at... There's so much we can do in the animal world in this province if we just changed a few minor things,
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but we need somebody to start listening. And we need somebody who's parked to say, you know, "We have a real problem and we need to gather the information before we make any more changes, decisions," or, you know, because we just keep floundering one bad decision after another because they just lack the education of what's really going on. So... And I think they do know to an extent... I mean, you got the 1-800 line, so statistically, you know how many calls are coming in every day.
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But what do you do with those numbers? And I would bet that those... The numbers of response is quite low, and the numbers of prosecution is probably even minuscule off the amount of numbers that go in there. And it seems like they wait until an animal's dead before they actually address it. So they've been called, called, called, and then the animal's dead, and it's like, "Oh, well, I don't have to take the animal now because it's already dead," and then they go in. Well, that's too late.(...) You know, a lot of the complaints we're getting, they've called two, three, four times. And even on the recent one that happened in Perry Sound, which is under investigationality, if we reopened that investigation,
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they were called multiple times to claim that they have no prior calls on that.(...) So we'd love to see what that 1-800 line looks like, right? The provincial... The PAWS, a toll-free line? Animal Welfare, the toll-free line? If you see animal cruelty, report it. But what I encourage people to do first is get a video, because you have to have proof. You have to have proof you made the call, proof that you gave the video, you say, "You know, where do I send this video? I want somebody to see this video." So, you know, like I say,(...) we're really struggling because the population's being so high, and that's why it's so important to spay, because when you reduce populations, bad owners have less access to them. But when there's millions of pets, then everybody has access to them. And there's lots of freebies online. I see so many litters. I had another one here in town yesterday I was addressed with, and, you know, we just need to stop having dogs, like puppies. You know, there's nowhere for these dogs to go. Northern Ontario is saturated, and we've been shipping them into Southern Ontario to find them homes. We're now advertising in sites. I just adopted two into Toronto this week.
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There's no good, like the good homes here, I mean, yes, there's good homes, and yes, we adopt every day, but certainly not the volume that we need to to meet the demand. So, I'm officially gridlocked today. I've been paying boarding on dogs and a kennel for the whole month of September. And that's expensive to me, right? And that's it. I don't want to see my donation dollars going to pay boarding charges because my building's overflowing, right? So, winter's coming. Mm-hmm. And the demand is going to go through the roof, and I'm closed to intake.(...) Sad.
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And that's the thing, people in our community, you know, they watch us stray cattle all summer long, and then the first cold day, the phone runs off the hook. And they all want us to take in in one day, everything in the city. Well, it's not going to happen. You got an X amount of intake cages, so, you know, we can only take in, and as we spay neuter and we get them back out, then we take in the next one. And so we encourage people, if you're seeing strays, call today. Don't wait till November 1st when it's freezing outside, and then, you know, 40 people are on the line that morning, saying, "We all have a cat that's been here for months." Let's get them off as soon as possible before they get injured, before they reproduce. And so there's lots that we can do as a public.
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But, you know, back to animal welfare, we need to stiffen-- we need enforcement. And we're not getting enforcement because the structure, how it's set up, is ineffective, and it fails the animals right off the bat.(...) So that's why we're seeing them--it's more like duck out and only take the absolute worst to the worst. Well, that's not acceptable. Yeah, there's two. If we say we have provincial animal welfare laws and here's our laws, then our government needs to step up and meet those. Instead of letting stuff fall through the cracks. Absolutely.(...) Any last words, Jill?
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No, just like I said, take care of the video, folks, because it's the best evidence that we have out there. Lots of pictures, lots of video, and, you know, again, please don't litter, spare, neuter your pets.(...) There we go. Spay--er--er--span
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