Show me the evidence

One curious thing about the Manitoba finance minister's strategy for persuading landlords to open more suites for pet owners: Mr. Selinger has offered no evidence that the policy would work.
And it's not as if it hasn't been tried elsewhere. B.C. has had pet damage deposits in its landlord-tenant rules for a couple of years.
If the Manitoba government wants to know how well the policy works, it could see what's happened in B.c.
I've asked B.C.'s housing department for data, to no avail. As well, citizens' groups and activists with whom I've communicated don't know of any studies measuring how many more rental units are open for pet owners now compared to before pet deposits. So, sadly, I have no hard data to test whether Selinger's proposed tinkering with the market might be a good move.
But the anecdotal evidence doesn't look good.
Consider a piece last year at a B.C. website. The author relates how few dog-friendly accommodations were available when she went apartment-hunting in Vancouver.
Furthermore, the exceptions tended to be sub-par (to put it mildly): "If it's dog-friendly, it's a grimy basement suite with poor lighting and the stale smell reminiscent of that classmate's house you visited in Grade 2 -- the classmate allowed to drink as much strawberry Quick as he wanted, who had no bedtime, and a mother who smoked inside."
Then there's this January 2009 item from a Vancouver newspaper's bulletin board: "On Dec. 2, West End resident June MacGregor and six other cat-owners in the Emerald Terrace highrise were served 14-day notices to remove their pets or face eviction. On Monday, their landlord delivered eviction notices dated for Feb. 28."
It doesn't sound like being able to collect an extra deposit made that landlord any more pet-friendly.
A journalist friend in B.C. told me what everyone else has been telling me: It's extremely difficult to find a pet-friendly rental unit in B.C. (She's a homeowner, if that matters to you, if that makes her perception more valid to you.)
So, has the pet deposit policy worked in B.C.? All the evidence I've found so far says N-O.