MOUNTAIN VIEW COUNTY - Mountain View County council has instructed administration to examine the national code of practice for kennel operations as part of possible updates to the municipality’s kennel section of the land use bylaw.
“There are things within this code of practice that we could highlight, realizing we are not experts on kennels and just trying to take all the information we already have at our fingertips to potentially make this stronger,” said reeve Angela Aalbers.
The move came by way of motion at the recently regularly scheduled council meeting, held in person and online.
In its recent annual report to council, the county’s municipal planning commission (MPC) asked the county's administration to “return a report regarding dog and cat kennels that proposed criteria for the number of dogs and cats permitted based on the size of inside facility and yard space on a per metre basis.”
The county’s current definition of a commercial kennel in the land use bylaw is a “development for the breeding, boarding, caring or training of small animals, normally considered household pets, excluding livestock. Typical facilities include but are not limited to pet boarding and pet training establishments.”
The definition does not outline a maximum number of animals a kennel can house.
The county’s Dog Control Bylaw restricts parcels ranging in size larger than 10 acres up to 160 acres, that are zoned agriculture or residential district, to a maximum of five dogs (and) agricultural and residential district zoned parcels less than 10 acres are restricted to a maximum of three dogs, council heard.
Council passed a motion directing administration to review the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s code of practice for kennel operations and “determine which elements should be considered for land use bylaw amendments with the next bylaw review, to address the municipal planning commission’s concerns.”
Coun. Alan Miller said, “I think it could be good if we could bring back the minimum space requirements.”
Coun. Greg Harris said, “An examination of (the code of practice) would bring forward some stuff that we could embed.”
Reeve Aalbers said, “I really do appreciate the municipal planning commission being this forward because that is the approving authority that deals with these applications. We want to ensure we deal with the concerns they have.”
