Yes, 2.2 million.

I’m not trying to compare the two directly, but I know, on our farm—I like talking about farming; it’s one of the few things I have a lot of experience in—we had a very good relationship with several vets. Over my 35-year career, that relationship changed. When I started farming, vets were mainly ER vets. If there was a bad calving, if there was something we couldn’t handle ourselves, we called the vet. But as my farm, and I think as agriculture progressed—but I’m using my farm as an example, a dairy farm—as we got better at our craft and as our animals started producing more, we started using the vets a lot more in a consultative and preventative medicine role.

Once, on our farm, we milked 70 cows, which is a normal-sized dairy farm—it’s a little bit below average; right now I think it’s a little bit higher, but we had 140 animals altogether—we got the vet once a month on a regularly scheduled visit simply to do herd health. That took half a day a month, to check the cows: the ones that should be in calf, the ones that needed a postpartum check, to make sure their vaccines were up to date, check the growth curves on the calves, check the feed formulations. On modern farms, the feed, what we feed cattle—and that goes for all livestock; I know cattle, so I’m going to stick to cattle, but it goes for all livestock—it’s very carefully formulated, what you feed. That was a scheduled visit. We would book that six months or a year ahead. We would know what times we would be busy harvesting crops, and we’d know what times we wouldn’t be, and that’s when we scheduled them. It was much easier to get a vet to do that. It’s preventative—and not just preventative, but a productive relationship is always more beneficial for everyone involved.

But there’s also the other part of being a large animal vet—and a small animal vet, same thing, because if an accident happens to a small animal late at night, that has to be treated right away—we still had emergency vet calls, primarily when a cow was having a calf. I have delivered—and we have delivered—many calves over my lifetime, but sometimes something happens that is beyond the farmer’s capability. So we call the vet. That can be at 3 o’clock in the morning—often, calvings don’t happen at 10:30 in the morning; the difficult ones never happen at 10:30 in the morning—and then it’s much harder to get a vet.

We were very fortunate where I live. In the New Liskeard area in the district of Timiskaming, we’ve always had access to enough vets. It’s a hub of agriculture and we serve many other parts of northern Ontario, both equipment-wise—we’ve always been very fortunate. But there are many parts of northern Ontario where the vet is not coming or the vet won’t be able to come until the next day. In that case, the animal—in ultimate severe cases, the animal might have to be euthanized.

That’s why it’s so important that we have universal access to veterinarians as much as possible. It’s at a crisis, as it is in human health care. Veterinary access is in crisis proportions, particularly in livestock medicine because many vets now who are trained go to small animal. The working conditions, in many cases, are better, and I am not criticizing anyone for their career choices. Anyone who goes into veterinary medicine, whether as a veterinarian or as a vet tech, it’s a calling and it’s a tough job, because to do that job, you have to love animals and you are going to lose animals.

I’m sure almost all of us have lost a pet. We know what that feels like. Every farmer has lost whatever type of animal they raise. It’s not quite the same as a pet, but it’s close. It can’t be quite the same as a pet because it’s your job, so you have to have a little bit of a wall, but you still feel it. If you’re a vet or a vet tech, you feel that a lot, because you get into the profession to make animals healthier. I don’t think anyone gets into the profession of veterinary medicine without a love for animals. I don’t think so.

There are cases where animals face cruel treatment. In many cases, not all, it has to do with mental health issues with their caretakers. Mental health wellness for farmers—and not just for farmers—is also in crisis. When the farmer or the farm family is facing mental health issues, often the animals suffer. I’d like to thank the member for Waterloo for bringing that up. It wasn’t part of my presentation, but I’m glad that we’re talking about that, because it is a vital role that vets play.

There’s a reality show about vets. Some of you might have heard of this show—

Just as an example—I am not going to spend an hour talking about agriculture and vets without at least having one or two cow stories.

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.