TORONTO and CAIRO: Leading international activist Ric O'Barry, who has made his voice heard from Japan to Egypt to Canada, is now urging the North American country to ensure that new laws are established to protect captive animals. O'Barry was a former dolphin trainer who has now turned his attention to the poor treatment of captive animals across the planet. He was the star figure in the Academy Award-winning documentary “The Cove” that detailed, horrifically, the mass slaughter of dolphins in Japan's Taiji fishing town. Countries like Guatamala, Brazil and Haiti are ahead of Canada in terms of protection laws for marine mammals, he said. “For a country as advanced as Canada to not have offered any protection whatsoever is just shocking,” he added. O'Barry, who trained dolphins that were used in the TV show “Flipper” in the 1960s, became a critic of captivity after the death of Kathy, one of the dolphins. In Egypt, he visited the country to lend a hand in the ongoing battle over the poor treatment of dolphins on the Red Sea in dolphinariums. Ahead of his arrival two years ago, dolphins were being kept in local swimming pools awaiting their transfer to a dolphinarium. His visit inspired a number of young Egyptians to make their voices heard. “I now check and writ as much as I can on the situation facing animals in Egypt,” new animal rights activist Mahmoud Khalil told Bikyamasr.com. “I learned and was inspired by his [O'Barry's] visit to Egypt because I didn't know we could really do anything.” O'Barry said problems at Ontario's Marineland have come up repeatedly in recent years. Now, he hopes the public will put pressure on the government to make some changes. Parents should do it for their children, who are witnessing a “spectacle of dominance” at these parks, he said. Whales and dolphins are confined to small spaces — basically a “bare concrete box” — with no connection to their natural environment, he said. Parks like Marineland should be abolished and the captive animals allowed to live out their lives in dignity, he said. “So if you don't want to do it for the animals here in Canada, do it for your kids,” O'Barry said. “Pass some kind of legislation, something to offer some kind of protection. There is none here, none whatsoever.” The rules in Ontario are so lax, anyone can acquire animals and set up a zoo in their backyard, said Rob Laidlaw, executive director of Zoocheck Canada. “The regulations as they stand now are vague, they are weak,” he said. “Nothing is defined in the regulations and they need to be upgraded.”
