Yes, because I usually put one or two cow stories in if I’m not talking about agriculture.

There are some common ailments that specifically dairy cows, but all cows can get. Cows have four stomachs, but dairy cows are very prone—because dairy cows are athletes. Dairy cows are athletes. They work very hard. They are attended very well, but they work very hard, and if something goes off balance, they just don’t have a bad day and come back—not often.

One of the things that afflicts dairy cattle—and it’s also partly if you get the feed wrong. There are a couple of things. One of them is called milk fever. When a cow has a calf and they start—and if there are any vets watching this, they’re going to cringe, because my description of how a cow works inside probably isn’t accurate at all. But from a farmer’s perspective, how a cow works is, a cow has a calf and its mammary glands demand calcium, and if there’s a bit of an imbalance, it takes the calcium from its muscles and it gets something called milk fever. It can’t stand up. You can feel them get cold. Everyone has a different way of handling it. I wasn’t very good at intravenous, so I didn’t do it, so we put bottles of calcium under their skin, and that would hold them until the vet came and did intravenous calcium. Most of the time, the cow would get up, but—

Something else that cattle are very prone to, especially if they get milk fever—and I hope the vets give me some latitude here—is twisted stomachs. I hope no one in the Legislature has ever talked about cows’ twisted stomachs before, but I’m—

When I first started farming, the vet would—and you couldn’t tell right away if a cow had a twisted stomach, but you can tell on their faces when they’re not happy, and their ears are cold. As soon as you see ears cold, you know you have to start checking your cow out.

Every farmer had his own something that gets cows’ stomachs activated. It doesn’t just activate my French; it also activates a cow’s stomach: beer. Very strong coffee does, too. If you mix really strong coffee and—I don’t think Hansard will cover hand motions, but you put your arm around the cow, hold their nose up and—

Laughter.

Interjections.

My first vet, Dr. Pierce, retired, and then I went to the Temiskaming vet clinic, and they did it differently. So, when we had a cow with a turned stomach, there’s a way to tie a rope right behind their front legs. If you tie it tight enough, the cow will fall on its side and then you tie the four legs, so the cow is lying prone in the pen.

Anyway, you flip the cow over and then the stomach will go naturally to where it’s supposed to.

They have four stomachs but it’s only the second stomach that causes the trouble. I hope it’s the second stomach; I’m sure a vet will text me and say no, it’s the third or fourth. But anyway, I always thought it was the second.

Then, when they feel that the stomach is in the right place, when they hear it, then they will sew the stomach back in place from the outside, and it’s much less invasive. The cow bounces back much quicker. But it’s not as—how do I put it? It’s a skill to be able to do that. Some have a better knack at it than others; it’s just a skill. It’s just like Yak is a great speaker and some of us aren’t, right? It’s a skill. Anyway, it’s much less invasive.

By the same token, if you don’t have access to a vet, that cow is not going to make it, right? And even if you do preventive—and all farmers now do, regardless of what type of livestock you have. I’m pretty sure all farmers do regular herd health.

The ARIO Act had committee hearings. Yak, you were there.

But Mark Reusser was there from the OFA, and he mentioned something about vets. He’s a turkey farmer, and each time he gets a new flock, he also gets the vet to make sure that the birds are healthy. It’s kind of the same principle.

So it’s really important that everyone has access, that all livestock farmers—and all companion-animal people too, but for livestock farmers, it’s not only their business, but also, livestock is much harder to move. If you take my example of the cow with the turned stomach, if the nearest vet is 400 miles away—in my case, Cochrane is in the north of my riding; it’s about a three-hour drive for me to go from where I live to the north tip, and that’s the closest vet. So it’s a long trip for a sick cow and the chances of survival are less. Also, you’re trucking that cow back while it’s still in a frail state.

They are looking at ways to be able to do this because it’s a fact of life: We don’t have enough vets. We talk about this on all sides of the House: Animal agriculture is expanding in northern Ontario, but the vets haven’t. Because we’ve got a shortage of vets, it’s harder to get them. I give credit where credit is due: The government has created a program—I believe vets get $50,000 over five years. I think that makes sense.

Another thing that’s just happened is—I talked about this in my first session on this bill but we’ll talk about it a little bit again—again, similar to human health care, it’s harder to get doctors in remote areas, so it’s harder to get vets in remote areas. Where I live, close to New Liskeard, Temiskaming Shores, I don’t consider it remote, but other people maybe would. For years, we’ve had the Northern Ontario School of Medicine so that we get people who grew up in rural Ontario, grew up in northern Ontario, go to medical school, know how great a place it is to live, and it’s easier to not only attract them but to retain them, because they’re used to that, the lifestyle that we love so much.

With vets, it’s the same thing. A program has been created that you can do your first couple of years of veterinary school at Lakehead in Thunder Bay and then go to the University of Guelph, which is the veterinary school of Ontario where all of our vets are trained. But having a campus in Thunder Bay will attract people, hopefully, as the Northern Ontario School of Medicine does, from northern Ontario or from rural Ontario. And hopefully they will be more attracted to large animal agriculture than people who, if you’ve never been exposed to large animal agriculture—you love animals and you get trained to be a vet—it’s a bigger transition. If you’re used to small animals, great, but if the only exposure you’ve had to large animals is through the veterinary course, there’s less of a chance of you becoming a large animal vet.

I mentioned this this morning, too, and I think it’s worthy of mentioning again: To become a vet, to get into vet school, it’s really tough. Now, I was a farmer my whole life, but you know what? I never would have had the grades or the smarts to be a vet—ever. I love animals, but it’s really, really, really tough. I said this morning I don’t think the bar needs to be lowered, but it needs to be shifted. I don’t know exactly how to say this—and I’ve talked to lots of people about this in the farm world—we have to somehow also take the lived experience into account.

So an example—I always use personal experiences, but I hope that I can relate to people by using personal experiences: My kids didn’t want to be vets, and I’m not sure—some of my kids might have had the grades to make it; they didn’t get it from me, but they got some brains—but my kids did see all these things happening. My kids helped with cows with twisted stomachs. My kids helped cows calve. They did all these things. So they have a lived experience that some others might not have. And by the same token, I’m sure there are people who have lived experience with small animals that my kids didn’t have. But if we’re looking for large animal vets, we have to, over the long term, take that lived experience into account. It’s a bit like this place, right? Lived experience should count, and I think it does.

I’m really going on a tangent now, but one of the great things about this place that I didn’t realize—when I got elected here, I assumed that everyone else was going to be a lawyer or a poli sci grad. I’ve got nothing against lawyers and poli sci grads. I’ve got a daughter who’s a lawyer.

Interjection.

I have some cow stories, but not all of them—

That’s why the veterinary techs are now part of a regulated profession under this bill. That’s also very important, so that you know when someone has a designation they’ve had the training to actually be worthy of that designation. That’s really important. I said this at the start: This is a regulatory bill about regulating vets and regulating vet techs. That’s what this whole bill is about.

The minister talked about the importance of agriculture in Ontario. Those of us who are actually in the industry know the importance that veterinary medicine plays. Something I just noticed, at a glance, but something else veterinary medicine plays a very important role in is disease outbreaks. There are things like avian influenza, swine fever, BSE—mad cow disease, but it’s bovine—I’ll stick with mad cow disease. You need veterinary expertise to be able to understand and control—“control” is probably the wrong word, but—

Interjection.

I’m going to go back to something I’m the best at, and that’s talking about my own farm. I remember when I started farming and I took over my dad’s farm. Younger, more aggressive, I wanted to up the production in the cows, but I didn’t fully understand feed formulations as much as I should have and I had—we’ll go back to twisted stomachs—eight cows in a row. When I started milking, we milked 30, and when you have eight out of 30—I just about lost the farm, and it was my own management, right? Because I didn’t understand and, at that point, I didn’t have a good enough relationship either with my feed—

I’ll give you one last example, Speaker: Avian influenza is very—that’s not a cow disease; “avian,” that’s a bird disease. But we have wild birds flying around that also carry it, so that’s one of the reasons why many people are worried about backyard flocks of chickens, because they could be vectors for avian influenza. You don’t think about that, but they could be.

Anyway, I’ve only got a few seconds left, so I’d like to thank you very much for allowing me to speak for this long.

I covered it a bit in my speech, but when we’re short of vets, or even if we’re not, the veterinary technician can perform tasks that could, in emergency situations—or even in consultative situations, but certainly in emergency situations—save an animal’s life. And that is a big step forward. It makes a big difference in rural Ontario if we can call and—I always go back to: It’s similar to a doctor and nurse practitioner. It’s very similar; very similar.

To the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane: I love your stories. Even more importantly, I love that you were a Masterfeeds customer for so many years; thank you for that.

I’ll cut to the chase. The member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke said it best: I think a lot of this legislation has to do with expanding the scope for veterinary technicians, which I’ll talk about in a few minutes. The vet act hasn’t been changed for 35 years, so my question is, what do you see in the future that will need to take place as animal agriculture consolidates? We’re going to need different types of vets. What do you see in the future, looking at dairy herds down the road? What are the needs going to be for veterinarians down the road, and/or veterinary technicians?

Speaker, as we’ve heard this morning and this afternoon, now is the time for the modernization, advancement and improvement to the vet act, and I’ve appreciated hearing and listening to the many comments that have been made, all supporting this particular piece of legislation. As we all have heard, the Veterinarians Act has not been substantively updated since 1989, and I want to take a moment to thank the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for her foresight—again, emphasizing foresight—in bringing Bill 171 forward. It was long overdue, so kudos to her and her team.

If passed, the Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act would provide a much-needed update to the legislation that governs veterinarians throughout Ontario. As the former parliamentary assistant, I heard from key stakeholders that I’ll talk about in a few minutes, representing organizations such as the College of Veterinarians of Ontario, the Ontario Federation of Agriculture the Ontario Association of Veterinary Technicians, amongst many, many other key stakeholders, about the need for change with this particular legislation. Their feedback was clear, and again, the vet act absolutely needs to be modernized.

I’d also like to acknowledge my colleague the member for Chatham-Kent–Leamington, who is also the deputy House leader, for his role and work as parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. He’s doing a great job and, I know, advocating well for veterinarians and animal health right across this province. I know he has worked hard and supported the minister in helping craft and develop this legislation.

I’d also like to give—and I believe they’re close to you, Speaker—a big shout-out to the entire team at OMAFRA, from the deputy minister and his team, who did a great job, and the chief of staff and her team in the minister’s office. Thank you.

In particular, I’d like to thank Ryan Puviraj—I’m going to call him my wingman—who travelled with me throughout the province, keeping me on the straight and narrow. He certainly was a great support. We had a lot of fun listening and learning to the people advocating on behalf of the changes that were needed to our particular vet act in Ontario.

Let me go back in a little bit of time. I’m not going to tell all kinds of cow stories—but maybe a few, like my friend from Timiskaming–Cochrane. They were great stories. The only thing I would say about—how he did the twisted stomach was a little bit archaic, but there are different ways.

We talked at one time in this Legislature about all kinds of animals—avian, livestock, pork. We even talked about poultry husbandry at one point. I think we even talked about turkey breeding back in the spring of this year or fall of last year.

Agriculture and food is near and dear to my heart, having spent my life around it. My grandfather was a farmer in the Ottawa Valley—not too far from the member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke. I grew up around animals, and I love them. To this day, I have beef cows. I have a farm in that riding—I have had for years—and I have purebred Polled Herefords, so I can tell a lot of vet stories throughout my life.

My first story of remembering what a vet didn’t do: I was probably under five, and I was at the farm at Highway 17 and White Water Road. It’s a blueberry farm now, but that was my grandfather’s farm. I remember that Aunt Lizzie—his aunt, actually; great-whatever she would be—had a dog with porcupine quills in its snout. I remember she was saying, “Call the vet. Call the vet.” My grandfather, coming from the Depression era, said, “It’s going to cost money. We can do this.” So at the age of four or five, I can remember bending down, scared to death, holding on to the muzzle of this collie mix mutt or whatever it was, and my grandfather holding it and pulling those darn quills out with tweezers—and it was kind of gross, but he didn’t want to spend the money. So the need for vets has been around for decades. The dog lived; I’ll tell you that.

I, too, thought about being a vet at one point in my career. But as my teacher said in one of my report cards, “Robbie, school”—

Interjection.