How You can Help!
Please contact your local MNA and your veterinarian and inform them about the new Regulation and how many important questions listed below remain unanswered. Let them know that the Canadian Kennel Club and CKC member breeders have highlighted serious flaws in the Regulation that will:
- Unnecessarily burden CKC members and dog owners with administrative duplication as CKC members must already abide by the requirements of the Animal Pedigree Act and are bound by clear procedures regarding enforcement and compliance to CKC bylaws, policies, CKC Code of Practice for Member Breeders and CKC Code of Ethics.
- Increase bureaucracy and paperwork to the existing framework and process.
- How will these requirements be regulated and enforced?
- How will you enforce the prohibition of parent-litter and sibling breedings for non-CKC member breeders who do not keep records?
- How will you enforce and regulate an exercise and socialization standard on breeders of 50 dogs?
- Further burden veterinarians who are already over-worked from caring for pandemic pets.
- Veterinarians would be expected to carry out additional responsibilities that would usually be undertaken by a CKC member breeder, without certainty of their availability and expertise/training on healthy dog breeding practices.
- Example: A cat or a dog kept as part of commercial breeding or raising operations must undergo a veterinary examination before breeding.
- It is difficult for conscientious breeders to obtain, within a reasonable time, an appointment to do the health tests recommended by the breed clubs. Considering that purebred dogs represent a minority of the canine population, what will be the delay when all dogs produced in Quebec will have to have such a certification?
- The proposed certification requirements are undefined. What criteria would a veterinarian use to approve a dog for breeding?
- Does the dog have an OFA certificate?
- Does the proposed pair have the right weight to determine the risks for the female dog?
- Can the veterinarian certify that the proposed pair does not have a father-daughter inbreeding coefficient; or mother-son if the unregistered dog breeder has no records?
- What health test is required for an unregistered dog?
- Example: As soon as the animal reaches the age of 7 years, an annual veterinary examination is required if the animal continues to breed.
- The certification is valid for up to 7 years. What do we do if there are changes in the interim?
- How these requirements will be implemented and enforced?
- Remove the choice for CKC member breeders who are experts on their breed to make decisions about practices and procedures based on breed-specific utility, to support the safety and welfare of their dogs in performance activities.
- Discourage accountable CKC member breeders—the majority of which are small, home-based heritage breeders with difficult-to-meet restrictive measures.
- Fail to address the management and traceability of mass-produced, unregistered dogs, sold without health tests, that have flooded the canine market in Quebec.
- How will you track unregistered dogs from random sources as most are not microchipped, which is a legal requirement for purebred dogs in Canada?
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