Consider This Northumberland - November 1: Animal Welfare / Hamilton Township Ratepayers Association

Since July, the Northumberland Humane Society in Port Hope took on the duties of animal welfare investigation and enforcement. With that announcement came a timeline. The province said there was some new legislation in the pipeline and the situation would be reviewed in the new year. Well, this week the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act 2019 (notice the acronym is PAWS.) was announced by the solicitor general. It means there will be some changes coming in January. To help us understand the legislation and the impact locally, I am pleased to have in studio, Kate Lennan, general manager of the Northumberland Humane Society and co-host of the Weekly Whiskers here on 89.7 FM.

A group of concerned citizens came together in 2015 in an effort to take a more positive approach to engaging with the Hamilton Township council. There was a long history of citizen activism in the township dating back to the 1990s that was inspired mostly by the amalgamation talks of the day. In between then and more recently, the group would be activated around a single burning issue, according to some. This is what the citizen’s council wanted to change. So for the past few years it has looked to impact the relationship between the citizens and the council. It was just a year ago a new council was sworn in with a new mayor and some pretty well-known faces. Here with me today are two people who have been watching things pretty closely over that time, Faye McFarlane and John Davison, two member of the executive of the Citizen’s Council for the Hamilton Township Ratepayers Association.