The Plane Boss! the Plane!

An announcement of new legislation being introduced here in Nova Scotia caught my attention recently, leading me to do a little searching which produced something that I find interesting. Considering the history of Halifax, and Nova Scotia in general being a seaport kind of place, it might seem somewhat late the NS Gov’t is introducing legislation to regulate tattoo parlours in the province. The legislation itself is not that fancy in that is simply enabling regulations to be created to regulate the industry.

This bit of news caused me to wonder what other jurisdictions have done regarding tattooing so I did a bit of searching (via CanLII) of all Canadian jurisdictions, which revealed that there are 13 acts across the country that cover tattoos or tattooing. What I found interesting is that of those 13 statutes; 9 dealt with to tattoos for animals or livestock, 3 are in regard to humans and lastly Nova Scotia has had legislation regarding the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo prior to having anything regarding about humans actually getting tattoos. There are 60 regulations across the country that cover tattooing; of that 60; 40 have to do with tattoos on animals or livestock and 20 have to do with tattoos on humans.

Make of all this, what you will. Perhaps, this should not have come as a surprise to me given the importance of livestock in this country and our affinity for pets; but maybe because it is Friday, or possibly because the silly season has hit law schools, this struck me as meriting mention.