The New Brunswick SPCA says it may not have the resources to fully enforce the province’s animal protection laws this year.
“I don’t know how we are going to handle it,” executive director Hilary Howes said.
Howes says since the province passed a new law banning 24-hour tethering of dogs in December 2014, the SPCA spent more than $80,000 investigating 321 tethering complaints in 2015.
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“The tethering laws that came into effects in December 2014 substantially increased our workload,” he said.
The province provided a $40,000 transitional grant to the SPCA in 2015 to help pay for enforcement of the new law, but Howes says the grant has not been renewed for 2016.
“We are one of the few SPCAs in Canada that does not get a grant for the enforcement work that we do,” he said.
The province says it is no longer funding enforcement because the number of tethering calls in December and January decreased significantly compared to last year.
Howes says while that is true, the number of complaints is also lower in part due to extremely mild winter weather.
“What if we have another bad winter? This is an organization that is already running very lean, so I am very concerned about it’s future,” he said.
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