A comment generated by my last article prompted me to write this.
While Dalton McGuinty moans about the possibility of reaching the status of a “Have Not” Province in Ontario, he and his buddies have been quietly spending a fortune on DOLA and defending the bad law. Not only are dog bites, by all breeds, still occuring in Ontario, but Ontarians, your tax dollars have definitely been at some pretty pointless work.
I can't say how much the Province has spent; they don't like to flaunt it. I do know that the organizations fighting to overturn the law have spent well over $500 000. That's over HALF A MILLION BUCKS! Think of how many t-shirts and decals we have had to sell. How much we have had to beg for donations, and donate ourselves. Our unlucky Ontario resident members have had the privelage of paying twice, for our side with their membership, donations and volunteer hours, and for the government side with their hard earned tax dollars that government apparently feels quite free to spend on taking away their rights.
If we were to assume hypothetically that the government of Ontario had spent a similar amount on defending the law (btw, not counting all of the time and money spent drafting it) that would be over a million dollars total. Ask yourself, could that money be better invested in Ontario's economy?
A politcal party that wanted to DO good would have realized in the first place after so many experts told them, that this law was wrong. A political party that wanted to DO good would at this point admit that the law is not an effective means of dealing with dog bites and would stop wasting taxpayer dollars defending it. The McGuinty government isn't interested in doing good. It is interested in trying to look good to those people who buy what the media sells them about “pitbulls”, a breed that doesn't even exist. Right and wrong don't seem to matter to politicians. The ONLY thing that matters to a politician is staying in power at what appears to be quite literally, any cost.
Check out the left sidebar, and find the Donate link, and please donate to the legal challenge. Let's show them that we the taxpayers, who pay their salaries, aren't just going to quit fighting due to lack of resources.
The Ministry of the Attorney General refused all freedom of information requests, including those from MPPs, so we don't know how much they've wasted.
Given the tendency to – ahem – not economize, I'd wager that they've spent about $5 million minimum thus far, not including all the municipal cases which cost around $100K a pop, all the kenneling costs, all the wasted animal control hours, etc.
Yeah, probably around $10 million at least.
That buys a lot of education and enforcement of existing bylaws, doesn't it?
What a waste – of lives and money.
Sure would! I find it amazing that there hasn't been more of a huge public outcry on the wasted tax dollars among the general population, not just the dog owning public. It's something that really, the media should consider grabbing hold of since the law hasn't been effective and has only killed dogs, cost money, and caused a lot of grief for innocent, law abiding citizens.
I'm baffled by the mainstream media's stance on this entire issue. Instead of carrying water for unfit politicians and appealing to the ignoramuses among us, they should be doing some thinking and paying attention to the actual facts – which are not at all difficult to find.
It's so rare to see an intelligent, fact-based editorial about 'our little problem' that it creates shockwaves among the common sense community.
Media outlets becomre more irrelevant with each passing day – fortunately, we have the blogs and discussion boards on the internet which are gaining in the information market while mainstream media declines.
Corruption, all is corruption.
Except for us, of course :>)