Dog Days – All Stick and No Carrot
Posted By Randy on March 18, 2012
With the current media interest bringing public attention to bear on incidents involving dog bites and others in which police have felt sufficiently threatened by an approaching large dog to shoot it on the spot, some municipalities in Nova Scotia are looking at reviewing and possibly overhauling their existing by-laws to bring them more in line with current realities. Today we’ll be looking at existing by-laws that affect dog ownership within the municipalities of Lunenburg County, and highlighting some areas in which administration and enforcement can be constructively improved. The areas of interest, presented in order of population size from largest to smallest are:
- the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg;
- the Municipality of the District of Chester;
- the Town of Bridgewater;
- the Town of Lunenburg; and
- the Town of Mahone Bay.
As discussed in earlier articles in this series, much of what is contained in these municipal by-laws is aimed at dealing with the fallout of cases in which one or more dogs have threatened or attacked people or other animals without provocation, chased or attacked livestock (most particularly sheep), damaged property, or constituted a nuisance with incessant barking. They include details of each municipality’s dog licensing policies, and penalties for non-compliance with any areas of its application. The roles of personnel tasked with enforcement are defined, and normally also the chain of command within municipal government so that it is clear whose authority is being wielded whenever the by-law is applied.
With one exception, the websites of each municipality we are looking at today make some level of specific reference to who is to be called for information on dog regulation policies and for filing complaints:
- The Municipality of the District of Lunenburg incorporates what they refer to as “Dog and Domestic Animal Control” as part of their “Protective Services” along with Emergency Measures and Fire Services.
- The Municipality of the District of Chester includes “Animal Control” under the umbrella of Public Works, along with Municipal Sewer Connections, Municipal Engineering/Specifications, Private Road Signs, and Fire Services.
- The Town of Bridgewater presents “Dog Control” as its own issue connected with enforcement of their Dog By-Law. Their website includes a contact page with the name and telephone number of the person responsible for dog control, and an answer to the question, “My neighbour’s dog roams and barks all night, can you help me?” on their “Answers” page.
- The Town of Lunenburg website makes no clear connection to dog control responsibilities beyond listing the e-mail address of the Town Manager next to “Dog Control” on their “Municipal Contacts” page, and including their “Dog By-Law” among all the other downloadable documents on their “Town By-Laws” page. Historically Lunenburg employed a dedicated By-Law Enforcement Officer under whose purview the Dog By-Law fell, and that person worked out of the Lunenburg-Mahone Bay Police Service office until it disbanded in favour of policing under contract by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2001. I do know that there was an overture to retain the services of a new By-Law Enforcement Officer a few years ago with a job description that would include parking enforcement, the role of Emergency Measures Coordinator, and Dog Control, and that this resulted in a person being hired, but that fizzled after a short time. By all appearances, the position has not been revisited.
- A search for “dog control” on the Town of Mahone Bay website turned up the page from which a copy of their “Animal Control By-Law” can be downloaded, but no specific dedicated content beyond that.
It should be pointed out, and the Town of Lunenburg’s situation serves to illustrate, that the realities of dog by-law enforcement have evolved over time, arguably due to the high cost of doing business that afflicts all areas of municipal service administration. This being the case, it should come as no surprise when the enforcement of a municipality’s dog by-law falls to a small portion of an already overworked staff member’s work load, or to a lowest bidder contract employee. Unlike other areas of law enforcement, there are no national or provincial standards that set out the minimum training and performance requirements, nor certification, of officials deployed in the name of a municipality to enforce its dog control by-law. In our opinion, this is a potential recipe for uneven and inconsistent interpretation and application of the force of the law which, coupled with the way the by-laws themselves are commonly written to begin with, opens the door for much injustice to potentially be done. We can never forget that justice must not simply be done, it must be seen to be done.
It certainly can’t be denied that enforcement of rules, regulations, and the laws of the land represent the single least popular aspect of government, at any level. Likewise, the application and collection of regulatory fees and taxation revenue run an exceedingly close second. While there will always be an outlaw component in society that will naturally veer onto the wrong path even when it makes more sense to stay on the right one, law enforcement becomes easier when coupled with well administered public education and support. This is why police agencies, fire services, building inspection authorities, and municipal emergency measures organizations budget resources to perform these functions, ensuring that the people living and working inside their jurisdictions understand not only the why and how of the rules that affect their lives, but who to talk to for clear, no nonsense information.
By comparison, the dog by-laws in Lunenburg County focus on enforcement and fees – all the money you’ll pay and the bad things that will happen if the rules aren’t followed – and while none of them are particularly ambiguous or hard to comprehend, they exist free from any structured public education programmes that might permit them to be administered in a more efficient, fair, and less confrontational manner. The advent of community policing programmes promoted and administered by specifically assigned community policing personnel came about because the modern model of policing has embraced the fact that people are more inclined to be preemptively understanding and cooperative when they are treated as part of the solution and not part of the problem.
In an upcoming article we’ll delve more deeply into the ways this can be accomplished, even without a complete rewriting of existing by-laws.
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