http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/peter_worthington/2010/05/18/13998156.html

Thursday, May 20, 2010

News Columnists / Peter Worthington
Strip OSPCA of policing power
By PETER WORTHINGTON, QMI Agency

Last Updated: May 18, 2010 7:24pm

Despite the OSPCA’s protestations that their decision to euthanize 350 animals with ringworm at the Newmarket shelter was “misstated” and “misunderstood,” protesters are not buying the explanation. Even after they said the number killed was only 99.

At a press conference yesterday, Conservative MPP and former cabinet minister Frank Klees (Newmarket) got to the nub of the issue when he said a registered charity should not have the extraordinary policing powers that the OSPCA has.

As it stands, OSPCA inspectors can move into a home without a warrant if they think an animal is being mistreated.

Klees and others are right to want policing powers detached from a charity like a humane society. At best it’s a conflict of interest, at worst a tyranny.

Klees was taking no sides in the OSPCA-THS dispute (blood feud is more like it) — simply anxious to correct a wrong that has existed for years and needs revising.

As it stands,

the OSPCA answers to no one and is its own oversight — which in the case of 350 animals originally condemned to death, is evidence that their oversight is flawed.

When asked about the hullabaloo over euthanasia at the OSPCA, Community Safety Minister Rick Bartolucci said he has “no authority over the OSPCA.” If so, that must change.

The NDP’s Peter Kormos and Cheri DiNovo have long raised questions on behalf of animals and the OSPCA, as has Tory Garfield Dunlop. The McGuinty government allocated $5 million to the OSPCA last year, which seemed to make that body even less accountable.

Klees and others feel that if an investigation is warranted into the workings of the THS, an investigation is also warranted into the workings of the OSPCA in various parts of the province.

The question now is will the McGuinty government react?

Although the OSPCA insists there was no recourse but “to act swiftly and dramatically” with euthanasia to contain “this virulent strain of ringworm,” they’ve not produced veterinarians who confirm this.

Newmarket vets Niki Low and Shalini Ramsubeik of the Gorham Animal Hospital believe the animals could have been saved if treatment had been available.

The OSPCA later said “human error” was involved. Reportedly, the shelter manager has been fired — odd, indeed, if euthanasia was the only recourse to control the ringworm outbreak.

Jim Sykes, chief operating officer at the OSPCA was quoted in the Sun saying the killing of 350 infected animals would have saved 2,000 animals that could have been dropped off at the shelter in the next four months — surely something of an exaggeration.

Now that the shelter is temporarily closed, no animals can be dropped of — a fact that probably saved the lives of the 1,000 of the animals Sykes mentioned, since the OSPCA’s kill rate is 50% to 60%.

Prior to joining OSPCA headquarters, Sykes was president of the Hamilton Humane Society and was importing dogs from Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, which has resulted in an increase in heartworm from infected dogs which have not been adequately screened. Hamilton area vets are alarmed and, in cases, indignant.

The whole mess adds up to the need for an independent inquiry into how the OSPCA is run, but more vital, the need to remove policing powers from a charitable organization, and put this function under the authority attorney-general.

That reality seems so obvious, that it hardly needs arguing.

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