Article content

The city of Montreal plans to enforce its new animal-control bylaw, which includes a ban on anyone buying or adopting pit bull-type dogs not already in their possession, with an eight-person canine patrol.

The city’s 2017 $5.2-billion operating budget, tabled on Wednesday, provides for eight full-time equivalent employees for animal-control patrols in the 19 boroughs.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Eight patrollers to enforce Montreal pit bull bylaw Back to video

But if the roughly 16,000 hours of bylaw enforcement the patrol will conduct next year sounds small, a roving team of gumshoes hired by the city during the summer to follow the scent of pet scofflaws managed to issue 1,182 tickets to their owners in a three-month period, the city says.

The offences, which fell under individual borough animal-control bylaws that were still in force at the time, were mostly for not having a required dog licence and most of the rest were for not having an animal on a leash.

The city doesn’t have a tally of the fines issued with the 1,182 tickets, spokesperson Geneviève Dubé said on Friday. Each borough had its own animal-control bylaw before October, so the fines varied from borough to borough, she said.