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Thursday March 12, 2015

March 11, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Thursday March 12, 2015Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 12, 2015

Killing rats and licensing cats

(by Andrew Dreschel) Talk about calling in the SWAT team. The ever resourceful Coun. Sam Merulla wants to enlist captured feral cats in the city’s growing battle against swarms of rats.

Merulla’s idea is to expand the local SPCA’s program of trapping, neutering and returning stray cats to the street by strategically placing feral colonies in rodential hot spots.

“If you have an abundance of cats in those areas, those mice and rats are dealt with quite efficiently,” he says.

Last year, the SPCA’s trap-neuter-return (TNR) program treated 355 cats deemed unsuitable for adoption. So far this year, 34 cats have also become program alumni.

Widely-practised across North America, TNR is a humane way of managing fast-breeding wild cat populations and reducing euthanasia rates. But Merulla, a member of the SPCA’s board of directors, wants it ramped up and run by the city’s animal control services in partnership with the SPCA.

The idea came to him when the public health department recently identified rat infestations as an emerging priority and service demand during its budget presentation to council.

According to Merulla, it feeds into the motion he’s bringing to Wednesday’s council meeting for a study on licensing cats to promote responsible pet ownership, control overpopulation, and shave big dollars off the tax levy.

Currently, dogs in Hamilton require licensing but not cats. If they were, Merulla says the revenue could be used to grow TNR and other programs aimed at reducing euthanasia as much a humanly possible.

“The No.1 objective and purpose of all this is to hit the same target as Calgary and become one of the lowest kill-rate cities on the entire continent.”

The Hamilton-Burlington SPCA does not kill cats or dogs. That’s done by city-operated Animal Services, where both intake and death rates for cats is vastly higher than for dogs. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)

Posted in: Hamilton Tagged: cats, City Council, council, feral, Hamilton, Lloyd Ferguson, rats, Sam Merulla

Thursday March 27, 2008

March 27, 2008 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 27, 2008

Red Hill Parkway legal fight still on, says council

Councillors have voted to continue a controversial lawsuit against Ottawa involving the building of the Red Hill Valley Parkway.

It has also removed a cap on legal costs plus decided to keep the costs from public view until the suit’s end.

Councillors voted 8-6 yesterday to support a staff recommendation to keep the lawsuit going after a two-hour closed door meeting. The decision must be ratified by council tonight.

Hamilton launched a $75-million lawsuit against Ottawa and 70 bureaucrats in September 2004, alleging they conspired to delay building the $225-million expressway by using the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to block it. Ottawa filed a defence in 2006 denying the allegations. The highway opened last November.

Council also backed recommendations to lift the $450,000 cap for the legal costs; cease public reporting of ongoing costs by citing solicitor-client privilege until the action is over; renew efforts to mediate a settlement with the federal government; and reject Ottawa’s Jan. 30 offer to end the lawsuit and have both sides pay their own costs.

Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who came into office promising to kill the lawsuit because he did not believe it was in Hamilton’s best interests, was disappointed. He had a motion to end the lawsuit, but it never made it to the floor. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

 

Posted in: Hamilton Tagged: cats, council, expressway, flock, Fred Eisenberger, Hamilton, herder, herding cats, mayor, Parkway, Red Hill, shepherd, valley

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This website contains satirical commentaries of current events going back several decades. Some readers may not share this sense of humour nor the opinions expressed by the artist. To understand editorial cartoons it is important to understand their effectiveness as a counterweight to power. It is presumed readers approach satire with a broad minded foundation and healthy knowledge of objective facts of the subjects depicted.

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