Ontario eyes Winnipeg's pit-bull ban

Winnipeg's decade-old ban on pit bulls is receiving attention in Ontario as that province considers a provincewide ban on the dogs in the wake of a vicious attack last weekend.

The Toronto man was out walking a pair of pit bulls for a friend when he was knocked down and mauled by the dogs. The attack ended only when police shot and killed the animals.

• FROM CBC TORONTO: Province contemplates ban on pit bulls

Tim Dack, who enforces Winnipeg's pit-bull ban as head of the city's animal services agency, says Ontario legislators should look at adopting a ban similar to Winnipeg's.

The ideal long-term approach would be to educate dog owners about how to control their pets, he says, but there comes a point when the government must ensure public safety.

"When we're having people attacked and our children in danger or just citizens in general in danger by a breed of dog, sometimes government has to step in and say, 'No, we can't have these dogs anymore,'" he says.

• CBC INDEPTH: Banning dangerous dogs

Dack says Winnipeg had dozens of pit-bull attacks every year through the 1980s. All that changed after the city outlawed the dogs in 1990.

"It's reduced our pit-bull attacks to zero," he says. "In the beginning, there was certainly a lot of arguing and gnashing of teeth, if you will, from pit-bull owners and dog-advocate groups about the ban itself, but it died down over a year or two."

Dack says many of the pit-bull owners have since switched to another breed that is sometimes considered aggressive: the Rottweiler. Although Winnipeg does see a few Rottweiler attacks each year, Dack says the dogs have not caused the same type of problems pit bulls did.