Animal Welfare in Ontario – Looking back at 2025

It has not been a good year.

The animal welfare crisis is out of control. Rescues drowning in debt and burnt out are closing their doors at alarming rates. The provincial government refuses to work with them to bring about meaningful and sustainable change.

Broken promises of change mean vulnerable animals continue to be neglected and abused. The Provincial Offences Act delivers very little in the way of justice to people who intentionally harm animals.

Despite being covered under the Criminal Code of Canada (Sections 445.1), most police services have little understanding of the role they play in protecting animals. In most cases stating they do not deal with animal issues as they direct the public to Provincial Animal Welfare Services (AWS). And AWS who despite exponentially growing public funded budgets continue to show dismal response times and very little actions to protect the animals.

The system is broken, the train is running downhill without any brakes and politicians frequently turn the other way when asked about the issues.

Ontario Does Not Recognize Animal Sentience:

Rescues are Left to Pick Up the Pieces of a Failed System:

“A crisis like we have never seen before and with no light at the end of the tunnel”. This sentiment shared time and time again by animal rescue organizations as they continue to battle to protect animals. Despite being asked to step up when Provincial Animal Welfare Services fail to act, rescues in Ontario get no support from the government. Rescues are drowning in debt and are closing at numbers unimaginable. Rescues are starting to see that a more collaborative and strategic approach to drive change is the only way to turn the tide.

The PUPS Act Fails to Stop Puppy Mills:

Ontario allows the expansion of Penned Hunting:

Despite public outcry and a ban put in place in 1997, Premier Doug Ford allowed the issuance of new facility licenses. Banned throughout Canada, Ontario appeased special interest groups and allowed this cruelty to expand.

Basic Standards of Care – How is “adequate and appropriate” Measured?

Bill 75 to Amend the Ontario Animals for Research Act – Fails to Protect the Animals.

Bill 75 still allows labs to go to municipal pounds, animal controls and some humane societies and get dogs and cats for their experiments.

Dishonourable Mentions:

• Ontario, under Premier Doug Fords guts the Endangered Species Act and slashes wildlife protections in the name of “development” and “unleashing our economy”.

• Roadside zoos are still completely unlicensed in Ontario. This allows for animals to be mistreated and inhumanely kept as entertainment objects and not overseen as living and breathing animals deserving of protections. In Ontario, you can’t build a patio in your backyard without a permit, but you can open a zoo imprisoning exotic animals without a provincial license, permit, or oversight. Laws are so weak in Ontario that authorities can’t even close down a zoo, no matter how badly the animals are suffering.

• The province continues to fail the mammals being held in inhumane and deplorable conditions at Marineland.

• Farm animals are still left with poor protections as farmers are allowed to “oversee themselves”. Many standard and “generally accepted” farm practices are exempt from provincial animal welfare laws, meaning that practices that would be illegal if done to a dog or cat are completely legal when done to a pig, cow, chicken, or other farmed animal. This includes causing pain and distress, and cruel confinement housing like battery cages for hens, or gestation crates for pigs—practices widely recognized as some of the most inhumane aspects of industrial farming. Letting farms make up their own rules is a giant loophole, leaving farmed animals in Canada vulnerable to many egregious practices that are “generally accepted” within industry circles. Farms are also often exempt from environmental laws like Canada’s federal price on carbon, nuisance laws, labour and employment laws, and much more.