Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

I recognize the member for Kingston and the Islands on a point of order.

I go back to the member for Peterborough–Kawartha.

Resuming the debate adjourned on March 20, 2024, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 171, An Act to enact the Veterinarian Professionals Act, 2024 and amend or repeal various acts / Projet de loi 171, Loi visant à édicter la Loi de 2024 sur les professionnels vétérinaires et à modifier ou à abroger diverses lois.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

“Whereas in the natural resources sector, the federally imposed carbon tax has an impact on the cost of products such as sand, stone, lumber, and other building materials” needed to build homes, hospitals and schools in Ontario; “and

“Whereas not only does the federal carbon tax make raw materials more expensive, but it also increases costs across the entire supply chain...; and

“Whereas the federal government has decided to cut the carbon tax rebate for small businesses from 9% to 5%; and

“Whereas the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says that $8 billion will be collected from small businesses and only $35 million will be returned” in that rebate; “and

“Whereas for most businesses—56% of them in fact—will have no choice but to pass on those increased prices to the consumer because of the federal carbon tax and the HST to the consumers of the province of Ontario; and

“Whereas the federal carbon tax” imposed on the people of Ontario also affects “public safety; and

“Whereas the Ontario Provincial Police alone have spent almost $4 million on carbon tax; and

“Whereas the $4 million spent on carbon tax” by the OPP “could have put 40 new officers directly onto the front line; and

“Whereas that is only the cost borne by the OPP and is not” also borne by “first responders such as ambulance paramedics and firefighters that are on the roads multiple times a day requiring them to fill up their vehicles” as well; “and

“Whereas the federal government’s carbon tax has impacted Ontario’s public hospitals by increasing annual heating cost by $27.2 million for the year of 2022 alone; and

“Whereas that $27.2 million would be better spent on front-line services and improving the health care for the people of Ontario; and

“Whereas without the carbon tax hospitals would have been able to offer an additional 104,615 MRI operating hours, providing scans for an additional” 150,000 “patients;

“Therefore we, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:”

To urge all members of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to “urge the federal Liberal government to repeal the unnecessary increase in the federal carbon tax scheduled for April 1, 2024, imposed on the people of the province of Ontario.”

I fully endorse this petition, will gladly—

Meegwetch, Speaker. Just saying that I liked the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane’s—what’s it called again?—petition better than the long one there. Otherwise, we should bring popcorn out.

Speaker, it’s always an honour to speak on behalf of the people of Kiiwetinoong. Kiiwetinoong, as you know, is a very, very unique riding, which represents 31 First Nations—24 of them are fly-in First Nations—and then four small townships.

I know this topic, when we talk about Bill 171, An Act to enact the Veterinarian Professionals Act, 2024 and amend or repeal various acts, is important because, as we know—right off the hop, I will say that, for me, I will be supporting this bill, alongside with my colleagues, because it is very reasonable. It is a reasonable framework to improve the standards of veterinary care in Ontario. And not only that; it will lead to greater accountability to the public. But also, we have seen a positive start in a consultation process, with years of open and transparent public consultations that included veterinary professionals themselves.

Engagement and consultation is important. That’s the same work that should happen exactly when you deal with First Nations when you’re trying to do work on their traditional territories. That’s the same engagement process that we should follow when you try to extract minerals from our territories.

There was one time an elder spoke about consultation to me. He did it by a story, by a legend. He started talking about moose to me. He was telling me about what consultation meant. There was one summer; moose were gathering. Bull moose were gathering in the summertime. They were trying to decide, these bull moose, on how they can gather on an annual basis. So they decided on the summer; bull moose will come together in the summertime.

Then, the cow moose showed up and said, “What are you guys doing?” They said, “We’re trying to determine when we’re going to meet as moose.” The cow moose says to the bull moose, “No, we cannot meet in the summertime. There are too many flies, too many bugs in the summertime. Because there are so many horseflies in the summertime, there are so many mosquitoes and it’s too warm, we should meet in the fall when there’s less bugs.” That’s why the moose rut happens every fall. That elder told me, “Now that’s consultation.” This is what you should do for First Nations people.

But going back to the bill, though I cannot say the same about many of this government’s bills, this process has been followed for the bill. That should be an example for future drafting of legislation. Rather than doing it by yourselves secretively, rather than doing lobbyist-driven politics with backroom deal-making, there should be an open concept of proper consultation, proper engagement.

But even with my support, I also want to acknowledge the history that we live in here in Canada. It may be not your history, but it’s our history as well. But it’s a colonial history of how our animals have been treated and the continued lack of access to veterinary care in the north.

I say this because veterinary care holds a very different significance for communities living in far northern Ontario, for communities living in the rural places. What I mean by that is not enough people know about the history of how animals, First Nations, sled dogs have been treated in this country. What we see today is very far different from what we know of how governments treated animals.

I say that because in First Nations, even in the Inuit communities, sled dogs were not pets. Sled dogs are not pets but working animals necessary to assume our ways of life, helping to transport hunting supplies, helping to move camp. But I talk about this because I think it’s just another example of the difference of how far we’ve come along in how we treat animals—when we talk about how colonization uses violence to aim, of taking First Nations, aim at the Inuit ways of life.

For decades, in the 20th century, as early as the 1920s and 1950s, there were government officials who came to our lands; there were the RCMP officers who came to our lands; there were the—I don’t know what the term was, but there were the MNRF officials who came to our lands. And what did they do? They killed our dogs. Do you know why they killed our dogs? So we had no means of travel, no way to continue our ways of life.

That’s the reality that I know. That’s the real history that I’m aware of. That’s why I say this is a very—fast-forward to 2024, this government, all levels of government, have come a long way of being colonial.

It was very clear, where my elders, my parents, tell these stories—where these government officials, RCMP, shot and killed our people’s dogs. The intent, again, was to disempower and take away our ways, take away our independence, take away our ability to hunt for food.

I’m just sharing this story because, again, it is part of our shared history; it’s part of that untold history that you never learned about in your history class, but it is our known history here, as First Nations people.

It is also very clear, this is one of the many, many violent tactics used by government to try to force us to assimilate, and we continue to see this in Kiiwetinoong, with the people I represent.

I think it’s also important—I started off with the number of First Nations that I represent in the riding of Kiiwetinoong. The riding of Kiiwetinoong is very unique, where there are a number of First Nations that are represented—I’ll say “First Nations,” but they’re also reserves. Because we are on-reserve, we are treated differently. We do not have access to veterinary services in Kiiwetinoong. There are animals that we have to send out by plane to send to a vet.

I spoke about the history, how we came about, and on how government treated our sled dogs, even though it really interfered on our ways of life relating to animals, relating to the land. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, back then, the officials—I can’t remember the name of the department back then—went further, where the government officials, bureaucrats and RCMP came and ripped out our traps. They came and ripped out the gillnets that we need to get our food, to be able to sustain ourselves and to have fish.

I speak about that because recently, one of the things—I put a motion forward recently for our government to recognize colonialism and Indigeneity as Indigenous determinants of health, which would help acknowledge that colonialism still impacts the lives and the health of First Nations people every day and to address the structural violence. Of course, this did not pass.

I want to do a shout-out to this dog; he’s got his own Instagram account, @mr_black.213. The .213 is the reserve number in Muskrat Dam. We are all numbered people, First Nations, but this dog has his number as well. So a shout-out to Mr. Black. They call him Blackie.

I think when we talk about northern Ontario, northwestern Ontario, Kiiwetinoong, there is so much more that needs to be done for veterinary services in Ontario. You know, when we talk about access to veterinary care, it is a major problem for livestock producers, and it is even worse in northern Ontario.

I just want to talk about—her name is Sara Epp. She’s a researcher who did surveys and interviews with many stakeholders and learned about their challenges and talks about how some of the producers have been asked by veterinarians to sign a waiver because in an emergency, they would not have veterinary care.

I think it marks that there’s a shortage. It’s very bad, and even today, I think some of the farmers are considering leaving livestock farming. And one of the things, too, is she heard that long-distance travel, distances between farms, was a major challenge for vets, and it’s even harder in the north, especially in the winter season.

One of the things that she found as well was that veterinarians told her that a one-size-fits-all approach does not work in the north and that northern Ontario needs solutions that are specific to its challenges. I am hopeful that the upcoming budget next week will announce more such initiatives to help communities in the north access veterinary care for our animals in the north.

I guess one question I would ask is, how are we supporting students from the north who want to become veterinarians? How can we make existing streams of funding for veterinarians in the north more effective? I ask those questions because life is already expensive for people living in northern Ontario and especially within the fly-in First Nations, and we need to remove any barrier any way we can.

When we talk about fly-in First Nations in Kiiwetinoong, even with the north, access to veterinary care is not equal. The first time that Sandy Lake First Nation, which is also a fly-in reserve, a fly-in community in Kiiwetinoong, ever had veterinary services was 2015. It actually made the news. It was news to get a veterinarian on-reserve in Sandy Lake. Community members lined up for five days so that their pets could be spayed, vaccinated or neutered. At that time, they had 238 dogs receive veterinary care at the clinic, which was open 14 hours a day.

They were even able to spay and neuter the stray dogs. Those are the ones that we call “rez dogs.” There’s a show called Reservation Dogs; everybody should watch it. I can’t remember which service it’s on, or which stream. But yes, that’s what we call stray dogs: rez dogs.

But going back to those 238 dogs that got vet services: That clinic took a year of work just to organize. I think it recognizes the difficulty for fly-in First Nations to keep their dog populations under control without adequate access to veterinary services.

The role and the relationship with the dogs has changed over the years. Where they used to be means of transportation and companionship, some dogs roam freely as strays and some are pets. I think when we talk about vet services on-reserve in far northern Ontario, it is a source of stress for communities that if their pet got injured or sick, they could not get immediate care for their pets, the way you can have this access in cities or in places like this.

My time is up. Meegwetch.

Further debate? Oh, sorry—questions. I apologize. Questions?

Our government knows that receiving veterinary services can be challenging for many farmers and for pet owners. That’s why we’re investing $14.7 million to add 20 new seats to the doctor of veterinary medicine program at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. We’re also providing grants of up to $50,000 over five years to new veterinary graduates, to encourage veterinarians to practise in underserviced communities.

I’d like to ask the member opposite if he agrees that the proposed changes will help assist in addressing some of the veterinary service gaps that he mentioned during his remarks.

Thank you for the question. To have 20 seats in the north, such as Thunder Bay, would be very helpful. What would be more helpful, as well: There are so many First Nations, so many of us, in the north. I think if you had specific seats for Indigenous people to become vets, it would be so awesome. I think that’s the best way, because we want to be the ones servicing our dogs. Our people, the First Nations people, want to be the ones to help their pets.

There’s always room for improvement in anything, I think—such as this bill; such as your question. The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. Let’s do it for the pets. Meegwetch.

Rez dogs are very important in the north because they provide whatever—we’re in a reserve, right? We’re in a reserve. We’re in the north. If there are bears coming, if there’s polar bears further up north in Kiiwetinoong, like in Fort Severn, if there’s other animals that come to the communities, such as wolves, they’re the warning. They warn the community members if there’s other animals that are coming within the reserve.

But also, rez dogs can be scary as well. I think that’s where the importance of—we need to have a control system where we need to manage the dogs because dogs will attack children, will attack people as well. They will bark at people, so it’s two-sided.

Again, when I listen to the debate, when I look at the bill itself, I recognize that. I think, again, it’s an opportunity—not just veterinarians, but also the veterinary technicians—to be able to travel up north to do the work with the recognized scope. I think that’s a plus, it’s a bonus, and I think the way this government engaged with the veterinarians is the same way you should engage with First Nations when you want to make good legislation, so meegwetch for that question.

In all seriousness, there are so many issues in the north: housing; clean water; overrepresentation of our people, people who look like me, in the jail system. But I think long-term care is a big issue. We have to travel hundreds of kilometres away to access long-term care. I know, back in 2018, we were promised that we would be getting a long-term-care facility in the north. We are still waiting today for the 76-bed facility that was promised.

I think it’s important to acknowledge that even at Fort Severn, which is right on Hudson Bay—just imagine if they came to Thunder Bay from Fort Severn. That’s 700 kilometres. I think, further apart, that’s just continued oppression, continued colonialism, when you take away our elders from their homelands and to an urban place like Thunder Bay. Thank you for the question.

I think this is a good bill, a good process but, in other areas, not so good because that that will certainly give you—meegwetch.

Further questions?

Further debate?

I appreciate the member from Kiiwetinoong’s presentation and I would remind him—and I’ll ask the question at the end—that for underserviced areas in this province, this government is already providing $50,000 over five years for those underserviced areas for veterinarians that have out-of-pocket costs—number one.

Number two: We’ve created 20 more spaces for veterinary students, hopefully from Ontario, to learn their practice and follow a career of veterinary medicine.

But the important part of this bill, in my opinion, is that we’ve expanded the role of veterinary technicians. And in the north—which is so important, I know—I think that is going to help.

I’ll ask him the question: Explain to us how you think that part of the bill could help you and your region.

I really enjoyed your speech, but you raised a couple of things: You raised the fact that we still have water advisories in First Nations, including as close as Brantford, and then you talked about how they used to come in and shoot the dogs that would pull the sleds that would bring—whether it be your supplies or your food.

Is there anything that was going on in the north that talked about long-term care that you’d like to raise?

I know the member opposite has touched on transparency and diversity of voices as being issues of concern. In terms of the legislation that’s put forward here, there is a broadening out of the regulated college so that it’s not just focused on veterinarians but also on veterinary technicians etc. So it’s bringing more regulation, more professionalism to the sector and, I think, also bringing more voices to the table. As we all know, being in government or politics, we’re here in the chamber, but there’s a lot more people who are beside us and behind us that people don’t see that are part of the process—no different than the medical profession, legal profession etc.

Do you think this bill brings about better transparency and professionalism to the voices within the veterinary community?

Point of order, Speaker.

So, from me and all your family, Lilly, we want to wish you a very happy champagne birthday. Thank you.

It’s always an honour to rise. I don’t have a happy birthday wish for anyone, but I’m certainly happy to debate Bill 171, Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act.

I just want to say that I was listening to the member from Kiiwetinoong’s debate remarks, and his remarks really highlight the consequences of having a shortage of veterinarians across Ontario, but especially in the north. And so, one of the reasons that I’ll be supporting this bill is, it’s an important step towards addressing that shortage—but it’s not going to be a sufficient step, and I’m going to talk about that in my remarks.

I do want to say that this is an important step forward in professionalizing and modernizing veterinary care in Ontario and, in particular, recognizing the role that the college plays in providing regulation and governance and doing that in a way where technology is changed.

I think schedule 2 of the bill is particularly important—expanding the scope of registered veterinary technicians. When you talk to humane societies, when you talk to veterinarians—the ability for technicians to operate at their full scope of practice is a really important step forward, and it will hopefully allow more team-based veterinary care. I’ve been a strong advocate of team-based care, especially primary care, for people, and I believe we need more team-based care for animals as well, whether it’s in agriculture or with our pets.

Speaker, I want to take a moment to talk about the fact that in Canada, each and every year, 350 veterinarians retire and less than 350 veterinarians are educated to replace them, and that has been happening year over year over year.

As a matter of fact, at the University of Guelph—I’ll just say, the Ontario Veterinary College is Canada’s top-rated veterinary college, a top-five veterinary college in the world, and the oldest veterinary college in all of North America; an outstanding treasure for our province and, obviously, for the city of Guelph, which I proudly represent—they have graduated 120 vets per year for the last 15 years. They need to graduate more vets. They are going to start to graduate more veterinarians, but I think we need to even increase the number they’re going to graduate. I want to talk about the process that has enabled them to have a few more vets that they’re graduating, and it relates to the comments from the member from Kiiwetinoong. I think it demonstrates what can happen in this House—and it sometimes too rarely happens in this House—when we can work across party lines to get things done.

I want to give a quick shout-out to the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, who I approached probably two years ago, and I said, “People at the University of Guelph are telling me we need more veterinarians and we need more veterinarians in the north, and they have a proposal they put forward to partner with Lakehead University to make that happen.” And I’ll give a shout-out to the member from Elgin–Middlesex–London, who I also approached, as a graduate of the University of Guelph, and said, “Can you help me work on this? We’ve got to convince the minister”—who was pretty easy to convince—“but then we have to convince the Minister of Colleges and Universities that this is a good program to support.” And we got that minister on board. Then, leading up to the budget last year—and I know budget day is next week—we all did, I think, a pretty strong push to the Minister of Finance that that should be included in last year’s budget.

To me, it’s an example of how we can work across party lines and how an MPP who may be in opposition but can still advocate for something good in their riding can actually work with government to get something in the budget.

When Steve Paikin, on TVO’s The Agenda, last year, asked me, “Mike, what’s one good thing?”—because I was giving the government a pretty rough time on the budget last year, and Mr. Paikin asked me, “Can you tell me one good thing in that budget?” I said, “Funding for the University of Guelph and Lakehead University to partner together to graduate 20 additional veterinarians each and every year over the next four years—hopefully, 80 additional veterinarians—with a focus on serving the north.”

I want to say to the member from Kiiwetinoong, my hope is that members from Indigenous communities go to Lakehead, start their first two years in that program, and then come down to Guelph and tell them to reach out to the member for Guelph, go to his office. He’ll be there to support them, welcome them to Guelph, hopefully show them a good time in Guelph for the two years they study in Guelph, so they can return to the north and provide care for the dogs you talked about and also provide care for the large animals in the growing farm sector we see in northern Ontario. And that’s something Ontario desperately needs. It’s something I can get behind and I think all members of this House can get behind.

But I want to make one final push to the finance minister before next week’s budget: Our post-secondary educational sector needs more resources and support. I know the government announced some additional funding, but it’s going to be insufficient. Universities like the University of Guelph, who do so much to educate students and their research, does so much to promote our food and farming sector—and the Ontario Veterinary College does so much to support our ag sector and people’s pets. Let’s increase the number of spaces at OVC so we can even graduate even more veterinarians to serve the people of Ontario.

The member opposite just gave me a great reminder—and I want to also say happy birthday to the member’s niece.

I thought at this time I might as well say happy birthday to my mom, Lina. I won’t say how many years old she is, but she’s quite a young lady, and she’s a pretty awesome mom. I’ll make sure to get a copy of Hansard and send this to her, because she’ll probably be pretty excited about that. So, thank you, and thanks for the reminder.

I appreciate the member opposite’s presentation. We agree on most things, not everything. But when it comes to our love and absolute support of the University of Guelph—being a graduate, we certainly share that in common.

As I said yesterday in my remarks, throughout the pandemic, it has been stated that we had over a million more pets or dogs in this country, obviously needing support for veterinary care, animal health. Where I think this legislation really helps is the expansion of vet technicians. Think of them as nurse practitioners in a veterinary sense. So can you speak to that in terms of how that will not only help companion animals, but on our large commercial farms as well?

I would thank the member from Guelph, particularly for bringing up the importance of the work that’s done at the University of Guelph, not only the veterinarian college, but the Ontario agriculture centre.

As you mentioned, we had the folks here from OCUFA yesterday, the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations. I was lucky enough to have met with a woman that works at the Ontario Agricultural College who said that Guelph is running a deficit, and it’s having a direct impact on faculty members at our institution. She works in the plant agriculture lab, and they’re losing three plant-breeding faculty, which means that important crops for Ontario agriculture will have no public breeding and research, including corn, which is a predominant row crop grown in Ontario, and the research that they do to identify resistant strains.

So they were here saying that the universities need to be properly funded, that we are losing our edge that we have had in research and training, because our universities are all running a deficit. Can you speak to how this directly speaks to being able to implement and act on the intention of this bill, which is to have enough veterinarians and vet technicians to serve our animal friends?

Yes, I appreciate the member’s question. Expanding the scope of practice for veterinary technicians is critical to helping address the shortage of veterinarians we have. Absolutely, think of how important it is to have on our health care professionals for human health operating at their full scope of practice, and they continue to push the government to do that. But it’s a good thing that we’re doing with vet technicians in this legislation, and I think it will create more opportunities, especially for team-based care. Prior to the pandemic, we had one in five veterinary practices actually reducing their hours of care. This will help reverse that trend.

You’re absolutely right: They’re going to be losing three positions. That’s going to directly affect research, especially for grains here in Ontario, which will negatively affect our agricultural sector, especially when it comes to disease-resistant plant breeding. So to me, it just highlights why it’s so important to invest in our colleges and universities.

The University of Guelph, like so many universities right now, are going through program reviews which may mean the loss of certain courses and programs. Certainly we’ve seen a reduction in staff, which directly affects research, which then directly and negatively impacts our agri-food sector, which is a $50-billion contributor to our economy.

Time for questions.