I listened intently to the remarks from the minister and from the parliamentary assistant.

We are largely in favour of this bill. It lays out ground rules for the regulation of veterinarians and regulation of vet techs—very important. But there’s—and this is a legitimate question—a carve-out for chiropractors. I didn’t hear it in the remarks, so I’d like if we could have an explanation of why there’s a carve-out for chiropractors, which seems to be a human designation as opposed to a veterinary animal designation.

I’d like to start off my remarks by perhaps ruining the suspense and saying that we will be in favour of this bill, not only for some of the measures that are included, but for the way the bill itself has been presented and—I said this in committee on other legislation—the fact that this has had extensive consultation among all stakeholders. We also consulted the stakeholders, and not everyone agrees with everything, but everyone who was interested got to have their input, and that’s really important; I give credit where credit is due and criticism where criticism is due. This has not always occurred in some of the other bills that this government has presented, and as a result, some of those bills have had to be rescinded. We are in favour of the content of the bill, but just the way it’s done—this is the way, when you’re developing legislation, that it should be done: Talk to the stakeholders, bring forward a comprehensive bill on one core issue or related issues. I’m not trying to make a pun here: There’s no poison pill in this vet bill, and that’s important.

Regardless of where we sit in this House, we are all here for the same reason: to make better legislation, to modernize legislation, to create new legislation. We are all parts of the partisan political process, but at the end of the day, we all have the same goal.

I believe that this bill is an example. I just want to repeat myself that this bill is an example, and I give credit to the minister and parliamentary assistant and their staff and to all the people who took the time to consult on the way this bill was presented. There might be changes needed in the future. We are all human; no one is perfect, and no piece of legislation is perfect either.

This is a very important piece of legislation. When you’re talking about veterinary medicine and the people who take care of our animals and our companion animals, our service animals and agricultural livestock—and actually, some of us have experience with all three. It’s hard to describe, but there’s a difference. Everyone here knows, but maybe some people don’t know—if there’s anybody watching this—that I’m a farmer by trade, a dairy farmer for 35 years. So we had livestock, and we had a very close relationship with our vets. But we also have pets and had a different relationship with the vet with pets.

I’m going to be fairly—“blunt” is the wrong word, but realistic. Often, a farmer has a different relationship with an animal than a pet owner. For a time, my wife—we took over a service dog that was—someone with a wheelchair had a dog; it wasn’t really a service dog. The dog was very well trained, but the dog became too much to handle. From that experience, we learned that someone who has a service animal has an incredibly different relationship than just a pet—not “just” a pet—or livestock. It was totally different—a dependence. To truly understand the impact that veterinary medicine has on everyone’s lives, particularly on people who practise it and the people who work with animals, but on everyone’s lives, you have to understand that.

It is incredibly hard to become a vet. Incredibly hard, and some would say perhaps too hard. Again, I’m being really—for many years, we haven’t—and I give credit where credit is due: There are going to be now more seats to teach vets. I think we need more, but we have started. The bar is incredibly high to be a vet, and it needs to be. It’s an incredibly skilled job.

But the bar, it doesn’t need to be lowered. This isn’t in this bill; I just want to say this. It doesn’t necessarily need to be lowered, but it needs to be shifted perhaps a bit, because it’s not just—and particularly for rural vets, livestock vets; actually, most rural areas are underserviced, because when you have a lot of rural, you don’t have a lot of houses. You have less people, and there’s a reason.

But the practice of being a vet or a vet tech—and I’ll get to them this afternoon. There’s much different treating an animal in a veterinary clinic in a city or a town than there is calving a cow at 25 below, 20 miles outside of town. That’s a reality. That’s something that, unless you’ve grown up or been exposed to that—a lot of people who are incredible vets look at doing that and, quite frankly, they pick small animal—

I want to compliment my colleague for his remarks. I think we have all in this chamber learned much more about dairy farming than we ever thought we would when we arrived in this place—

But the member knows that Ontarians everywhere are facing significant affordability challenges. The cost of veterinary care is a big barrier for low-income people in their ability to own pets. I want to give a shout-out to veterinarian Dr. Martha Harding, who has clinics in London, Kitchener and now Hamilton to serve low-income pet owners and those on social assistance.

So my question is, is there anything in this bill that will help facilitate the creation of more of these non-profit veterinary clinics that can help low-income people afford the cost of owning a pet?

Thank you to the member for her remarks.

I am confident that the member from Oshawa agrees with the benefits of a quality assurance committee, and I would also believe that the member also agrees that continued education for a regulated profession does align with other regulated professions, like doctors, lawyers, for example.

My question to the member is, do you believe it is an important feature to ensure that those who administer animal care have the most up-to-date education?

Thank you to my colleague for his remarks this afternoon.

I just want to point out that in my riding of Perth–Wellington, there is more livestock than people—probably 10 to 1, if I was to guess. So we are massive, massive exporters of food across the world.

As some members know, I grew up on a dairy farm. Obviously, vets visited that farm often. I remember growing up with Jim the vet and others over the years—helping service our family farm, ensuring our animals were, as the member mentioned, healthy and safe.

I was wondering if you could talk a bit about the vet technicians. One of the first doors I knocked on when I was running turned out to be a vet technician’s, and they mentioned how they wanted to be able to help their community more. So I was wondering if the member could expand on that.