Section 6 of Bill 50 will result in community shelters that either don't want to be affiliated with the Ontario SPCA, or shelters that the Ontario SPCA itself doesn't want as affiliates, being stripped automatically of their names by the Legislature.

It could happen to The Toronto Humane Society or other any other humane society across the Province, without a hearing procedure or appeal to the courts provided for in the Bill.

Losing your name is losing your identity. Fear of being stripped of names used in communities for generations will stifle debate and discussion.

The Ontario SPCA favors one voice for animal welfare in Ontario, but we know that our strength as a movement is in its many voices. We ask the Ontario SPCA to re-think it's support for Bill 50 which could result in hurting other humane societies.

Ontario’s animal welfare movement does not belong to the Government or to he Ontario SPCA. It belongs to the communities that built shelters without Government or OSPCA money, organizations which have earned the right to call themselves “humane societies”, and the right to speak out on their own on the issues of the day.

For more information click here to see Tim Trow's letter to Rick Bartolucci

Other important concerns for the animals Bill 50 ignores:

• Nothing for lost animals experimented on in laboratories
• Nothing for animals and birds in the wild
• Nothing for millions upon millions of farm animals and birds
• Nothing for any other animals that Cabinet may decide to exclude

Dear Friend of the Animals:

Now is the time for humanitarians across Ontario to stand together.

Each of us should email our own MPP's urging removal of section 6 from Bill 50. We owe it to the animals who cannot speak for themselves and who will need us to speak out for them in the future as we have done in the past.

-Tim Trow, President, The Toronto Humane Society