Wunderdog reached out to the Calgary Humane Society to learn more about the model. Director of Operations and Enforcement Brad Nichols wrote the following:
From the day I doffed my graduation robe, entering the world of law enforcement, unintentionally focused on animal-related enforcement from a practicum placement with a rural county on Calgary’s borders, there was a peripheral awareness of the attention Calgary was getting for its approach to animal control.
This was of some interest to me as I was fulfilling an adjacent position on the other side of the Calgary border. The concept did not seem so revolutionary to me: focus the legislated consequences of undesirable canine behaviour on the owners, influencing their animal management through deterrence and punitive fines. Perhaps the innovation was lost on me as the bylaws I was enforcing had just been amended to model after Calgary and it was all I knew in practice.
The aforementioned main tenet of the Responsible Pet Ownership Bylaw (RPO) would become foundational to rejecting the concept of Breed Specific Legislation as a knee-jerk reaction to relatively rare dog attacks. One thing I knew about my professional value set is that innocent dogs should not lose their freedom or lives as a result of the actions of other members of their breed, which, often times, wasn’t a breed at all, but rather a description of a certain type of dog, making enforcement of any such law difficult and ethically compromising.
Today, 18 years into a career in Animal Protection with Calgary Humane Society (CHS), we have proudly crafted another internationally lauded ‘Calgary Model’. This model, which began to get some attention around 2016, was less legislation-oriented and more inter-agency collaboration and enforcement-strategy focused. While there is a clear division in responsibility between the City of Calgary Animal and Bylaw Services and Calgary Humane Society Protection and Investigations, distilling the difference down to protecting people from animals on the Bylaw end and protecting animals from people on the Humane Society end, there has always been an interplay between agencies.
Over the pandemic, CHS had opportunity to do a line-by-line review of draft RPO amendments and make recommendations for animal welfare considerations, many of which were implemented.
CHS provides animal protection training sessions to Bylaw recruit classes to increase their awareness toward recognition of actionable or reportable offences. Bylaw also provides transport support, when needed, on a large-scale animal cruelty seizures and police-initiated removals.
CHS did, at one point, receive a significant annual grant, but that was cut in about 2017. Since, CHS receives not a single government dollar, despite carrying out Provincial law enforcement. When adding all the back-end medical care required for all seized victims of animal cruelty, it is very close to a million-dollar operating budget for animal protection. We are extremely fortunate to have donor support to facilitate the programme and an executive willing to invest in it appropriately.
Writing this, it sounds like an embarrassment of riches, having the yin and yang of animal law enforcement in a single jurisdiction setting the standard for their respective areas of mandate. With that comes a responsibility to share what works for replication in other areas, which I am proud to do with this publication.