How You Can Help
We need your help to send a message to Premier Doug Ford’s office. The Premier needs to hear that Canadians will not stand for this practice and that Ontario should NOT issue any more licenses for penned training and trialing.
Please call the Premier’s office. Please ensure your communications are respectful so that your voice will have a greater impact.
It’s important to submit comments to prevent these cruel facilities from expanding. It’s best to submit comments in your own words, but as guidance you can include some of these points in your submission:
- I firmly reject the province’s decision to allow new licenses and the transfer of licenses for train and trial areas in Ontario.
- Penned dog training facilities are cruel to the wild animals who are subjected to various methods used to train dogs to hunt.
- Wildlife should never be taken from their natural environments and held captive by hunters. It’s especially cruel to use rabbits, coyotes, and foxes as pawns for hunters to train dogs and hold competitions.
- Opening applications for train and trial spaces after 25 years is a massive step backward into the past. These facilities have no place in Ontario.
- Instead of opening new applications, the province’s existing 24 facilities need to be closed immediately.
Spread the word: Help more people take action by sharing this post with your communities and on social media!
If you live in Ontario: Call your Member of Provincial Parliament to express your concern.
TIPS: Stay Brief. State who you are and what you are calling about. Consider making no more than three Points. Be Respectful.
Not sure who your MPP is? Find your MPP using your address through this link: https://www.ola.org/en/members
Join us! Donate to help us spread the word about this issue. Donate today by clicking here.
The Issue
Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, is reinstating and encouraging a cruel dog training technique. This technique is one that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNR) has been phasing out since 1997: dogs running down terrified captive coyotes, foxes and rabbits.
This suffering and pain inflicted on the wild animals doesn’t begin with the terror of them being run down and sometimes killed by the dogs. No. It begins in the wild, where they fall victims to the traps used to ‘harvest’ them.
On April 14, 2023, in response to the MNR’s notice, we wrote Premier Ford and the Hon. Graydon Smith, Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry.
From our letter,
Animal Alliance was an active participant when changes were made to the Game and Fish Act and the passage of the now named Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act in 1997. We fought to have training and trialing compounds prohibited altogether.
“However, a compromise was reached. The Act prohibited the establishment of new dog training facilities using wild animals, but it grandfathered existing operations.
“The intent was to phase them out through attrition because MNR staff recognized the inherent cruelty of these operations which involved trapping coyotes, foxes, and rabbits to be supplied to operators of compounds, a fenced in area where dogs would be permitted to chase, harass and often kill these wild animals.”
Now, Ford has decided not to phase out the cruelty. Instead, he intends, according to MNR’s notice, to “amend the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act, 1997, and associated regulations, to allow for the issuance of licences of new dog train and trial areas, and to allow the transfer of licences.”
In other words, Ford is taking animals back to the 1997 operations—operations that MNR staff recognized as inherently cruel.