Breed-Specific Legislation in Canada

Ontario has prohibited pit bulls since 2005. Municipalities across the rest of the country impose their own breed rules. Both rest on a body of evidence that is weaker than most people assume, and the clearest critics of that evidence were the researchers who produced it.

What breed-specific legislation is

Breed-specific legislation, usually shortened to BSL, is any law that restricts dogs by breed or by physical appearance rather than by the behaviour of the individual animal. Measures range from mandatory muzzling, special licence classes and insurance minimums up to outright prohibition.

The defining feature is not severity. It is that the dog is judged by what it looks like, not by what it has done.

The data it was built on: counts, not rates

BSL was justified by tallies of which breeds appeared in reports of fatal dog attacks. The most influential of these was a CDC-authored study by Sacks and colleagues, published in 2000, covering United States fatalities from 1979 to 1998. That twenty-year breed tally is the document breed bans around the world leaned on.

A count is not a risk rate. To turn “this breed appears N times” into “this breed is more dangerous” you need a denominator: how many dogs of that breed exist. No such population figure has ever existed for any breed, in any country. Without it, a common breed and a dangerous breed produce the same signal.

The study's own authors argued against using it this way

This is the part that tends to surprise people. The researchers behind the fatality tally did not think it supported breed bans, and said so.

They described breed-based bite data as fraught with potential sources of error, and named the two flaws themselves: breed identification is unreliable, particularly for mixed-breed dogs, and a breed's bite rate cannot be calculated without consistent data on that breed's population and on the bites that never reach an emergency room.

Sacks had put it more bluntly in an earlier report covering 1989 to 1994: “Breed-specific approaches to the control of dog bites do not address the issue.”

The flagship dataset was used to justify exactly what its authors said it could not support.

The reporting problem, which makes the data self-confirming

A 2017 study in the Irish Veterinary Journal by Creedon and Ó'Súilleabháin compared bites from legislated breeds against bites from non-legislated breeds. It found no significant difference between them in the medical treatment the victim required, or in the type of bite inflicted.

What it did find was a large difference in reporting. Bites from non-legislated breeds were far less likely to be reported to authorities at all.

Follow that through. If a bite from a common family breed frequently goes unreported while a bite from a restricted breed is reliably reported, then the statistics that justify restricting the breed are partly produced by the restriction itself. The evidence base confirms the assumption that created it.

How the Ontario law works

Section 6 of the Dog Owners' Liability Act prohibits owning, breeding, transferring by sale or gift, importing into Ontario, and training a pit bull for fighting. Because an adoption is a transfer, the practical effect is that a pit bull cannot lawfully be rehomed in the province. See pit bull rescue in Canada for what that means if you are trying to adopt.

The Act carves out “restricted pit bulls”, being dogs already owned by an Ontario resident or born in Ontario within 90 days of the Act taking effect in 2005. Those dogs could remain with their owners under strict control conditions. Two decades on, that population has effectively aged out.

The definition is the weak point. The Act captures the American Pit Bull Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the American Staffordshire Terrier, and any dog with an appearance and physical characteristics substantially similar to those breeds. Classification therefore rests on a human judgement about appearance, not on a test. A mixed-breed dog with no bully ancestry can be classified as a pit bull, and a dog can be classified differently by two different people.

How it passed, and what the experts said at the time

The prohibition arrived through Bill 132, driven by then Attorney General Michael Bryant and passed in March 2005. It was opposed at the legislative hearings by essentially every organised group of animal experts in the province, and witnesses argued that a pit bull could not be defined at all.

The definitional problem was not hypothetical even then. Bryant himself was unable to identify a pit bull when asked to by the media, while sponsoring a law that made identification the trigger for seizure.

Did it work? The honest version

The strongest argument for the ban is a real number. Pit bull bites in Toronto fell from 71 in 2005 to 6 in 2010, a drop of roughly 92 per cent. Anyone dismissing BSL should be prepared to address that figure rather than ignore it.

What the figure does not settle is the question the law was sold on, which was public safety overall. Removing a breed from a city mechanically reduces bites attributed to that breed; that outcome is close to guaranteed by the policy and does not, by itself, tell you whether fewer people were bitten. Critics of the legislation argue that total dog attacks did not fall correspondingly.

That is the real disagreement, and it is worth stating plainly rather than picking whichever number suits your position.

Outside Ontario

No other province has a comparable province-wide prohibition, which does not mean the rest of the country is unrestricted. Breed rules elsewhere are municipal, and they vary between neighbouring towns and change with a single council vote.

Because those bylaws are numerous, local and frequently amended, this page does not list them. Ring your own municipal office and ask two questions: whether any breed-based restriction applies at your address, and what evidence they use to classify a dog. The second question is the one people forget, and given how appearance-based definitions work, it is the one that decides whether your dog is affected.

Frequently asked questions

What is breed-specific legislation?

Breed-specific legislation, or BSL, is any law that restricts dogs by breed or by physical appearance rather than by the behaviour of the individual dog. Restrictions range from mandatory muzzling, special licence classes and liability insurance minimums up to outright prohibition. The defining feature is that the dog is judged by what it looks like or what it is called, not by what it has done.

What evidence was breed-specific legislation based on?

Primarily on counts of which breeds appeared in fatal dog attack reports, most influentially a CDC-authored study by Sacks and colleagues covering US fatalities from 1979 to 1998. A count is not a risk rate. Turning a count into a rate requires knowing how many dogs of that breed exist, and that population figure has never existed for any breed. The study's own authors said the data was, in their words, fraught with potential sources of error, and argued against breed-specific approaches.

Did the Ontario pit bull ban reduce dog attacks?

Pit bull bites specifically fell sharply in Toronto, from 71 in 2005 to 6 in 2010, roughly 92 per cent. That figure is real and should not be waved away. What it does not establish is that total dog attacks fell, which is the actual public safety question. Removing a breed from a city mechanically reduces bites attributed to that breed. Critics of the legislation argue the overall attack numbers did not follow.

How does Ontario define a pit bull?

The Dog Owners' Liability Act captures the American Pit Bull Terrier, the Staffordshire Bull Terrier, the American Staffordshire Terrier, and any dog with an appearance and physical characteristics substantially similar to those breeds. That final clause means classification rests on human judgement about appearance rather than on any test, so a mixed-breed dog with no bully ancestry can still be classified as a pit bull.

Do veterinary and animal welfare organisations support BSL?

The mainstream professional position is against it. The objection is consistent and practical rather than sentimental: breed cannot be reliably identified by sight, bite data is not collected in a way that supports breed comparisons, and resources spent enforcing an appearance-based rule are resources not spent on dangerous individual dogs regardless of breed.

Sources

Sacks JJ, Sinclair L, Gilchrist J, Golab GC, Lockwood R (2000). "Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998." The CDC-authored 20-year breed tally that breed bans worldwide were built on. Its authors warned against using it this way.
Sacks JJ et al. (1996). Report on US dog-bite-related fatalities, 1989 to 1994. Source of the line "Breed-specific approaches to the control of dog bites do not address the issue."
Creedon N, Ó’Súilleabháin PS (2017). "Dog bite injuries to humans and the use of breed-specific legislation: a comparison of bites from legislated and non-legislated dog breeds." Irish Veterinary Journal. Found no significant difference in bite severity, but a large difference in whether bites were reported.
Dog Owners’ Liability Act, RSO 1990, c. D.16, as amended by Bill 132, Public Safety Related to Dogs Statute Law Amendment Act, 2005 (Ontario). The statute itself. Section 6 carries the prohibition.

This page describes legislation in general terms and is not legal advice. Statutes and municipal bylaws change. Confirm the current rules with your municipality before acquiring a dog.