Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to reporters as he leaves a meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Monday, Aug. 18, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Patrick DoylePATRICK DOYLE/The Canadian Press
“You can’t be experimenting on dogs. They’re part of our families. Or cats. Go with mice, go with rats, no problem,” Doug Ford said recently as he announced his intention to ban most research on dogs and cats in the province.
The Ontario Premier was reacting to a report by the Investigative Journalism Bureau that beagles were being used in a medical research study at the Lawson Research Institute at St. Joseph’s Health Care in London, Ont.
A self-described “animal lover,” Mr. Ford called animal experimentation “cruel” and “unacceptable,” and said the new law would be “short and simple” – an outright ban.
Nobody likes the idea of cute little puppies being killed. But Mr. Ford’s populist pandering to emotion is anti-science rhetoric that serves no one.
If you’re going to fashion responsible public policy, you need more than knee-jerk responses to things that make you uncomfortable; you need to be a grounded in reality.
The beagles in question were not family pets. They were raised specifically for research, the same way we raise cattle, swine and poultry for food.
Opinion: The use of dogs in medical research is a tragedy
The research being done at St. Joseph’s (which has been discontinued because of the controversy, despite the institution having had its research approved by an internal animal-care committee in accordance with Canadian Council on Animal guidelines) might seem cruel on the surface. Researchers induced heart attacks in the beagles lasting up to three hours. Then they did imaging like MRIs to study the damage to the heart and understand how it caused heart failure.
This knowledge could ultimately result in much better care for patients who suffer heart attacks. That’s about 60,000 people a year in Canada alone.
Animal experiments – on rats, rabbits, dogs, chimpanzees and more – should be done ethically and humanely. But the research is justified because it can result in new treatments that provide significant benefits to humans.
Scientists aren’t killing animals for the joy of it, but because the new drugs or processes they are studying can’t be practically or ethically tested on humans.
Animals, particularly mammals, share biological and genetic similarities with humans, so using them in research studies can provide unique insight.
The benefits of animal testing are legion. Insulin, one of the greatest discoveries in the history of medicine, is still injected today the way it was in a beagle named Marjorie more than a century ago. The dog had her pancreas removed and was kept alive for 70 days with injections of insulin. As a result of that research, conducted at the University of Toronto, tens of millions of lives were saved.
Beagles rescued from a breeding and research facility wait for their medical procedures at an animal hospital in Maryland.Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Well, that was a century ago, critics will say. Surely, in the 21st century, we can use computer modelling, tissue samples and more to avoid killing animals. And indeed, many of those alternative research methods are now used. We use far fewer animals (especially mammals) in experiments than we used to. But, at some point, you have to test drugs and surgical techniques in live beings – and it shouldn’t be humans.
Research on animals has resulted in tremendous advances in cancer care and in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases like hepatitis C and HIV, Alzheimer’s, and much more.
Of course, not every experiment results in life-saving breakthroughs. In fact, the vast majority do not. But that doesn’t mean we should not test valid hypotheses.
One thing is certain: We will never make breakthroughs without research. And yes, some may involve animals. But research on animals involves rigorous protocols and review by ethics committees to ensure the welfare of animal subjects.
The Canadian Council of Animal Care reviews all federally funded research proposals to determine if there are alternative methods that don’t involve animals, to reduce the number of research animals used, and to minimize the pain and distress, for example by using painkillers.
The province of Ontario already has legislation and regulation to oversee animal experimentation, the Animals for Research Act. It doesn’t need a new law banning research.
One of the arguments of opponents of animal research is that animals can’t give consent. Well, dogs and cats don’t consent to be pets either. Yet Canadians own roughly 8.3 million dogs and 8.6 million cats. Not all of them are treated humanely.
By contrast, about 16,000 dogs are used in research experiments in Canada annually. If we stop that research, we lose the potential societal gains.
If animal research is evil, as some claim, then it is a necessary evil.
It’s great to be an animal lover. But caring about the well-being of humans matters, too.