Dead-dog daisy chain

We dare to hope that Jacques-Cartier MNA Geoffrey Kelley and his Ministry of Agriculture committee have a mandate to remove Quebec's shameful stigma as Canada's puppy-mill capital.
But we wonder whether Mr. Kelley has the determination it will take to break Quebec's dead-dog daisy chain.
Announced last week, the committee will look at such measures as a breeders' registry and a more rigourous inspection process. It will include the major players in the breeding and pet-store industries, many of them represented by the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council. It will include Anima-Quebec, the agency nominally empowered to enforce P-42, Quebec's impressive - on paper, anyway) animal-cruelty law. It will include animal-welfare organizations, such as the SPCA.
But will it include the silent partners? How about the pounds that sell un-neutered purebreeds to the breeders and healthy mutts to research labs before consigning the rest to the gas chambers? How about stores that sell the offspring of mills like the notorious Lamarche and Pinard facility that once cursed Ste. Justine de Newton with its presence?
Will Mr. Kelley's committee include voices from the networks of shelters and rescues that pull dogs from this self-regulating juggernaut? Will he react with sympathy and horror to their stories from the trenches, or will he play to the millers around the table and dismiss the rescuers as a tiny bunch of whiny zealots and professional do-gooders with too much time on their hands?
Maybe we're conspiracy theorists, but the timing of this announcement is remarkably coincidental with the fact that Nicole Joncas is back in court March 3 with her challenge to the constitutionality of Quebec's so-called animal-protection system.