The city won’t be stopping people from owning as many dogs or cats as they want.
Coun. Aldo Ruberto wanted the city to look into limiting the amount of dogs and cats people can own. Ruberto said he’s heard about people owning more than 20 dogs or 30 cats in apartment buildings. Having that many animals in a small space isn’t fair to neighbours, the pets and because a lot of people have mental health issues, the owners themselves.
“There’s nothing in place to say you have a limit,” Ruberto said.
But council, which voted 6-5 against the limit, and administration said the idea wouldn’t work for a number of reasons. Mayor Hobbs didn’t mince words when he spoke.
“I think this is a real big waste of time,” the mayor said. “Are we going to start legislating how many people are in a household.”
Coun. Andrew Foulds said shelters already have to euthanize unwanted pets. He wondered about the logistics and enforcement of the bylaw. The Current River councillor said he gets more calls about nuisance squirrels than someone owning too many pets.
“Are we just going to start taking pets away?” he asked.
Development services manager Mark Smith said while there isn’t a specific bylaw on the amount of pets a person can have, there are many rules to help enforce problems that might arise from a person having multiple pets.
“We can deal with that,” he said of odours, noise complaints or other issues.
As for the mental health component, that will always be an issue Smith said.
“It’s also not possible to legislate away mental illness,” he said.
But Ruberto said bylaws have worked in other cities such as Calgary. He didn’t just put forward the resolution because it was a slow day.
“This isn’t some pie in the sky idea,” Ruberto said.
