The City's response?

First its legal department advised Council that the City Charter did not allow it to control how dogs were kept. This was patently false as a reading of that section of the Charter makes clear...

Chapter 55, Section 324A: Keeping of Animals: (g) for regulating the keeping of horses, dogs, cows, goats, swine, rabbits an other animals, and for defining areas within which such animals may be kept or which the keeping of them is prohibited.

...and by the fact that the City had almost 40 bylaws on how dogs must be kept already on the books. The fact that the City is now about to adopt the bylaw without having to ask Victoria for a change to the Charter, is the final proof.