Browsing back through some of the Hansard documents from the time when the Ontario Liberal government was introducing Bill 132 to the legislature, I came across a quote from Michael Bryant during the November 4, 2004 debate of Bill 132.

I grew up with big dogs — German shepherds. We had three in our house at one time. They scared some people, there’s no doubt, when they barked and someone showed up at the door. They were trained. They never attacked. They never hurt anyone.

Really, Michael, there are some days when you should have just kept your mouth shut, like the time when you thought you could “pick the pit bull” in five seconds when seasoned American Pit Bull Terrier breeders had to think carefully when viewing the same pictures!

There is a phrase in mathematics: “If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C”. You can take that one step further by saying, “If A equals B and B does not equal C, then A does not equal C”.

Same goes here. The logical conclusion from Mr. Bryant’s statement is that his German Shepherds (assuming that they were purebred GSD’s, of course) did not attack anyone and did not hurt anyone BECAUSE THEY WERE TRAINED.

Conversely, from his own statement, we can assume that, if they had NOT been trained, it is possible that they could have attacked someone and perhaps hurt them.

Therefore, despite the fact that, on camera, Mr. Bryant has stated that German Shepherds are not dangerous dogs, his own argument leads us to conclude that those dogs were inherently dangerous and had to be trained in order to not attack or injure someone.

Now, this is not my own personal point of view about his family’s dogs. They were probably really nice dogs. This is what I say we could conclude from Michael Bryant’s own statement in the legislature.

Even as a dog trainer, I believe that most dogs settle into their families just fine. They may have been formally trained using traditional correction methods, they may have been formally trained using positive motivational methods such as clicker-training, or they may have been informally trained by the owner, who might have owned dogs before or who might have followed a neighbour’s advice or who applied the same rules to the dog as they did to their kids.

My belief is that most dogs don’t threaten or bite, very few are really dangerous, and even less bite seriously.

But, it appears that Mr. Bryant’s belief is that his own family’s German Shepherds would have been dangerous had they not been trained.

So, Michael, is it really the breed or is it the owner, the environment, and the training? Sounds to me like your true beliefs slipped out of hiding for a second.