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.

Further debate?

I consider myself privileged to rise today to speak to the Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act. Last Tuesday, I was also honoured to speak on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs at the opening of the Ottawa Valley Farm Show, a vendor-sold-out event.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Ottawa Valley Seed Growers Association for their dedication to the Ottawa Valley Farm Show since 1959 and recognize president Barry Dean for his contribution, and all past presidents and volunteers for making this show a huge success. This show is important to demonstrate new technologies and innovations in agriculture so farmers can continue to advance their production and increase their production for all of us.

Let’s talk about innovation and the problem-solving skills that farmers need to possess to survive. When machinery breaks down, the first thing a farmer does is not call the machinery mechanic: A farmer will invent, he or she will compromise, they will weld and they will fix the problem. Only as a last resort will a farmer call for professional help.

Now let’s talk about livestock. A farmer knows how to pull a calf when they need to administer colostrum. They know the necessary vaccinations and when and how to administer them. The minister told us about her goats, the quadruplets, and the minister knows and her family knows how to take care of those goats so they get a good start in life.

But, Speaker, when a farmer needs a vet, a farmer needs a vet. That’s what this bill is all about. Sometimes we’re faced these days, in particular in rural and northern Ontario, when, despite their long hours and dedication—a vet just is not available. This Bill 171, the Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act, 2024, addresses that access problem and will help in a big way.

I want to congratulate the minister and the PA—the MPP for Chatham-Kent–Leamington—and the OMAFRA staff for their work on this bill. As the member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke said yesterday, the collaboration and consultation is a major factor in the value and perfection of this bill. Stakeholders, including the College of Veterinarians of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Veterinary Technicians and many others were consulted. Twenty associations attended the introduction of Bill 171. Yesterday, the minister provided many quotes from stakeholders supporting this bill and recognized Jack Riddell—a former Minister of Agriculture who we recently paid tribute to in this House—for laying the groundwork for this bill.

This Bill 171, Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act, will repeal the Veterinarians Act and replace it with the Veterinary Professionals Act. The bill proposes to recognize that veterinarian care is delivered by a team and acknowledge the roles of both veterinarians and veterinary technicians:

—to enable the regulatory college and government to define a broad scope of practice for veterinary technicians that reflects their skills and training;

—to include a list of authorized activities that describe the specific activities that make up the practice of veterinary medicine;

—to enhance clarity and better enable non-veterinarians to provide care to animals using lower-risk forms of treatment without the legal uncertainty that exists now;

—to continue from the current Veterinarians Act the exemptions for animal owners, including those who care for their own animals.

The proposed bill will not restrict low-risk animal services such as grooming, hoof-trimming, physiotherapy and massage.

The proposed legislation also includes greater diversity on the governing council, enhanced ministerial oversight and updating the name.

We know that accessing veterinary care has long been a challenge, especially in rural and northern Ontario. Farmers need our help. Pet owners need our help. All animals need our help.

I believe one of the most important components of this bill is to recognize the value of our vet techs. I spoke earlier about the acquired knowledge of farmers relative to animal care. Can you imagine the untapped value of our veterinarian technicians with not only their professional training but their work experience? This bill, our proposed legislation, will, if passed, recognize the important role that veterinarian technicians play in delivering care to animals. Over the past 35 years, delivery of veterinarian care has become a team endeavour. However, vet techs are not recognized in the current Veterinarians Act. This new modernized act will, if passed, regulate both veterinarians and veterinary technicians, reflecting a “one profession, two professionals” approach to delivery of veterinary medicine in Ontario.

In order to reflect that change, the College of Veterinarians of Ontario will be renamed the College of Veterinary Professionals of Ontario. The renamed college will create regulations subject to the government’s approval that will outline the scope of practice for veterinary technicians.

For those who aren’t aware, the vet tech program is a two-year diploma program offered at Algonquin College, Collège Boréal, Georgian College, Northern College, Seneca College, Sheridan College, St. Clair College, St. Lawrence College and at University of Guelph Ridgetown Campus.

A quote from Algonquin College, in my riding, is provided from Shannon Reid—Shannon is a professor and program coordinator, veterinary programs: “I am encouraged that the modernization of the Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act will lead to registered veterinary technicians ... having an opportunity to fortify every sector of the veterinary industry, from small animal private practice to large animal medicine and agriculture.

“An expanded scope of practice will enable Algonquin College graduates to use their education and training to embark on rewarding and long-term careers, benefiting not only the animals in their care, but the veterinary teams they serve and the community at large.

“This recognition will empower RVTs to continue to uphold the highest standards of care, foster innovation while utilizing their unique and specialized skill set, and ensuring the well-being of all animals, thus bolstering the integrity and advancement of the entire veterinary industry.”

Two additional components which I believe are very important to our supply of new veterinarians are the Veterinary Incentive Program encouraging new veterinarians to work in large animal practices and receive $50,000 over five years to work in an underserviced area and $14.7 million for the creation of veterinary medicine seats, which will result in 20 additional veterinarians graduating each year.

The Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs provided a number of supportive quotes. I would like to share some more from my riding of Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston.

From Jennifer Doelman, instructor, livestock business operations, Algonquin College’s agricultural business program, Perth campus: “The inability to access veterinary care can jeopardize family farms and, ultimately, places the food system at risk. These proposed changes to the veterinary act will support the whole health care approach to animal care—allowing competent professionals to work together to decrease the demand on veterinarians, increase access to essential medical care and ultimately allow our farms and agricultural businesses to continue participating in Ontario’s growth.”

From Craig McLaughlin, president, Beef Farmers of Ontario: “Many beef farmers in Ontario have long experienced issues accessing veterinary care for their cattle especially those who farm in northern Ontario and parts of eastern and southern Ontario. We fully support the government of Ontario and Ontario’s veterinary organizations in their efforts to modernize the Veterinarians Act and the scope of practice for veterinary professionals in Ontario. This work will go a long way in improving how veterinary teams, specifically veterinary technicians, provide care on farm and how they support our farmers.”

From Don Badour, cow-calf director at Beef Farmers of Ontario, and Sheila James, vice-president of Lanark County Beef Farmers: “Beef farmers in the Lanark, Frontenac and Kingston area support efforts to modernize the Veterinarians Act. It is our hope that the changes related to incorporating veterinary technicians within the act, and clarifying the roles around the scope of practice and authorized activities that can be performed by veterinarians, veterinary technicians and other professionals, will provide more opportunities for farmers to access veterinary care on-farm. For example, if the local veterinarian is unable to attend, the veterinarian may delegate to a veterinary technician at the clinic to visit the farm to assess the situation and assist with lower-risk veterinary activities. We look forward to further discussions and subsequent development of regulations following the act coming into force.”

There are many more quotes. However, in closing, I want to thank the minister for the opportunity to speak to this bill and trust that all members of the Legislature will join me in supporting this bill.

I’m pleased to share my time with my colleague, the member from Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston.

Madame la Présidente, c’est un honneur de parler de ce projet de loi. Comme je l’ai déjà dit, rien pour moi, en tant que solliciteur général, n’est plus important que la sécurité de notre province, parce que nous croyons en notre province et notre avenir.

Public safety and Bill 171 that we’re talking about today, the Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act, have a lot in common. I want to say, Madam Speaker, that when we look at one of the elements that I wanted to speak on as well in the debate about food processors, I think of a wonderful success story in Ontario, St. Helen’s meats. Many of us buy their products in the stores. It’s honestly a wonderful Ontario success story, created and founded by the Bielak family. Why is this important? Because companies like St. Helen’s need to have the confidence of the supply chain to ensure the highest standards of animal care.

My colleague the Associate Minister of Housing knows a lot about animal care. He comes to this Legislature himself a farmer, somebody that has shown by example how we have to ensure a safe supply chain. The members opposite spoke recently on the other component of animal care. It’s not only the supply chain, to make sure that we have animals that are raised safely and that are part of a safe supply chain, but it is also our love for our own pets. That’s personal to many of us. Just speaking to our colleagues across the aisle in this chamber, one hears stories of how a pet adopted to a family changes one’s life.

When we look at this bill, Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act, we look at the important component of how veterinary medicine has evolved over the last 35 years. That’s a long time. Things change. The number of pets that people have adopted—and literally adopted. Most of us think of our pets as our own sons and daughters because we can’t separate ourselves from them and how much joy they bring to us.

We know that it is hard to get an appointment with your veterinarian. That’s a fact. The veterinarians play such a crucial role in ensuring that our pets are safe, that the supply chain of our animals are also healthy and safe. What I like about this piece of legislation is, as the other members have spoken about, we’re expanding the role of veterinarian technicians to support our vets.

We looked just recently on how the support function has played out in other sectors of our health care as examples. Nobody understood how productive—that we could have the pharmacist help take a lot of pressure off booking a doctor’s appointment to get certain things done in a pharmacy.

Madam Speaker, my own mom’s dad, my grandfather Murray Penwick, who was born just at the footsteps of the Legislature at the turn of the last century, was a pharmacist. Who would have dreamed that in 2024, you can go to a pharmacy to get a flu shot and other vaccinations and other prescribed medication of common ailments that, again, you don’t have to go to a doctor’s office for? So this concept of veterinarian technician is so important.

I also wanted to acknowledge, as the member from Guelph spoke about, that the government has supported 20 more vet student seats at the University of Guelph, which is a wonderful facility, and Lakehead. And the member from Kiiwetinoong also spoke about the need to have veterinarians, and I would also add veterinarian technicians, go up to First Nations communities, because that’s very, very important. So this legislation, Bill 171, takes us a long way. It allows the College of Veterinarians to define a scope of practice for veterinarian technicians and bringing them under the same regulatory college and legislation as veterinarians.

And I just wanted to go back to the role that the Ministry of the Solicitor General has in regard to animal welfare. Our commitment to animal welfare is very important. It’s unwavering, and it’s absolute. The Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act will be a complementary piece to other pieces of legislation that we helped introduce to help protect our animals in Ontario. In 2019, we passed the Provincial Animal Welfare Services Act, also known as the PAWS Act. The act established Canada’s first provincially led animal welfare services agency. Through the PAWS Act, we developed a robust and accountable system to protect animals in Ontario. The PAWS Act boasts some of the strongest penalties for non-compliance in Canada.

I can tell you, Madam Speaker, that when I was in Brantford last summer, I saw the newest cadre of animal welfare inspectors from all over the province, and I was so proud of them. Animal welfare services, AWS, often works hand in hand with veterinarians to determine whether standards of care are being met. My colleagues opposite know that they’ve had examples in their communities where this has absolutely helped. I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone part of AWS for working in communities across Ontario to keep our animals safe.

This bill was produced after long and thorough and robust stakeholder engagements. The list is so long that I would eat up all of my time if I just read it. But suffice it to say, we are constantly listening to the people of this province and are always ready to find solutions. But we rely on the experience and expertise of those working in the sector to tell us how.

It’s not lost on me that animals are also a part of our communities. Whether you have a pet or livestock, as the member opposite does, it is likely that at some point you might need a vet. From personal experience, my daughter adopted a rabbit from the Toronto animal shelter 11 years ago, at nine years old, named Hal, and now she’s in her fourth year of university at Queen’s. Of course, my wife and I and our sons became the protectors of Hal, because my daughter didn’t want to take him to university.

So it’s our job as legislators to ensure that Ontarians have access for care for their animals. We’ve come a long way, and as the member from Guelph said, we worked across the aisle. That is important, because caring for our pets and caring for our food supply chain is very, very important.

I want to thank the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for seeing it to the finish line—we’re almost there—and for my colleague the Associate Minister of Housing and Municipal Affairs for educating so many in this chamber about the food supply chain. It is very important. Finally, by expanding the availability of veterinary services for both large animals and pets, we will ensure that they continue to enrich our lives and maintain the safety of hard-working communities across Ontario. Thank you. Merci beaucoup.

I listened intently to the remarks. I’d like to direct my question to the Solicitor General. In his remarks, he talked about the PAWS Act. The PAWS Act is another act that was unanimously supported and is still unanimously supported, but it has come to our attention, as the act has been implemented, that there are some issues regarding the cost of treating animals after they are dealt with through the PAWS Act. We’re not complaining about the PAWS Act—but it has come to our attention, and I was wondering if the Solicitor General would be open to having a discussion about how we could improve the PAWS Act for the farmers, as well.

It’s now time for questions.

My question is to the Solicitor General.

I know that we share our love of animals. I’ve talked to you about Hal, and I’ve talked about my dog, Nellie, and all the animals we’ve known and loved through our life.

I also want to commend you for the work that we did together. In Hamilton, there was a disturbing incident where a dog named Merlin was maltreated. I received so many calls in my constituency office about that, and you were in touch with me, keeping me posted on what the progress was, and I appreciate that, and my community appreciates that. Thanks for that.

I would just support what the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane was saying. You say the PAWS Act is new, but we just want to make sure that the money that we’re dedicating to this is being spent well and that we are continuing to improve, for enforcement and to protect our animals.

Without putting you on the spot, I do want to ask you a little bit about some of the maltreatment and the deaths we’ve seen at Marineland, and if there’s anything that you want to add to the enforcement around that and what we’re going to do to make sure that people don’t see deaths of these beloved marine animals, like our whales. So if you wanted to comment on that, I would certainly appreciate it.

I also want to acknowledge my colleague who just spoke, because he brings his own experiences to his remarks. So I wanted to say thank you. Also, to my friend opposite from Timiskaming–Cochrane, who himself is a farmer and has educated us, as well, about how important the supply chain is—I might add, a safe supply chain. I’ve been up to Cochrane, so I’ve seen for myself just how wonderful the community is.

Our government is always open to listening to our stakeholders on how to make regulations and legislation better, when it comes to animal welfare.

So the short answer is, this is evolving, this is real, this is something that will live and breathe.

Again, our government takes animal welfare extremely seriously, and we’re proud of that.

We take animal welfare very seriously. Whether it be at Marineland or anywhere in Ontario, it doesn’t matter; animal welfare inspectors will not hesitate to issue an order or other compliance orders if required, if deemed necessary. And it’s not just issuing an order; it’s the animal welfare inspectors going back and making sure that compliance is done. If compliance is not done, then there are further remedies that the PAWS Act speaks of.

But I think what the member opposite agrees with is the government’s commitment to make animal welfare a serious matter. It’s raising awareness. It’s telling people who might be new to the province that there’s an expectation and a duty of care that we must always have for our animals. And for those who are entering the food processing business who might be new, again, there’s a duty of care and a professional standard.

For our government, we take this seriously and we appreciate working with all sides in this House to strengthen animal welfare protection—the best possible not only in Ontario, but in Canada and around the world.

Questions?

Further debate?

It’s great to see my colleague from eastern Ontario, who is also a fellow beef farmer. I would ask him, as we share in eastern Ontario—perhaps, at times, veterinary service is a little further apart than we’d like. I’m fortunate that I have a vet close by—but sometimes not always available. Could he explain how he believes the additional improvement of scope for veterinary technicians is going to benefit not only his farm but all farmers in eastern Ontario?

Thank you to the Associate Minister of Housing for the question.

He said a great comparison with the nurse practitioner program and what we’ve done with that program to improve services in Ontario for all people to get primary care.

Similarly speaking, by regulating and increasing the scope of our vet techs, it will free up time for our veterinarians to increase their capacity to get to our farms and address the more acute illnesses that your livestock may suffer from.

I think the vet techs are very important and the changes in the regulations are very important, so that a vet does not have to be beside that vet tech all the time in order for them to do that work. It will definitely increase the capacity of those veterinarians.

I think the education of our farmers is another aspect of addressing and building the capacity of our veterinarians. But again, like I said in my presentation, we’ve got an untapped resource in the vet techs because some of them have a farming background; they’ve been working alongside veterinarians; they have their professional training, and we haven’t been tapping that resource to its full potential. This bill will make that happen.

I thank the members for their comments on this important piece of legislation. I represent a rural riding. I’m certainly not from the industry, although I’m told through Scottish heritage, a “byre,” which is my last name, is a cow barn, so I guess in some way I’m connected to this legislation.

I want to ask my colleague from Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston: When I’m around the riding, I hear a lot from farmers about access to veterinarians and how that makes their business more challenging and how, when they look to pass on the business to their family, lack of access to vets makes that more of a challenge in the future. I’m interested in his thoughts, given his actual experience in the industry, how this bill may improve on both those points.

I’m very pleased today to talk about Bill 171 because quality veterinarian care is essential to Ontario. I want to commend the government for going ahead and modernizing veterinary care legislation, which hasn’t been updated since 1989. The nature of veterinary care, both technologically and organizationally, is changing, and its legislative framework needs to reflect that. Team-based care is becoming more common in veterinarian practices, and this act’s recognition of vet technicians is a step forward in addressing and regulating the reality of team-based care and taking full advantage of the expertise and the energy that we can tap from that resource.

There is a shortage of veterinarians in this province, and that’s been known for years. The shortage is due, in part, to a higher demand for veterinarian services and the type of practice vets are choosing, with notably fewer choosing livestock care in favour of companion animal care. In 2021, the College of Veterinarians wrote that, “In Ontario, the demand for veterinarians, as indicated in job postings, reached a new record high each of the past four years, and continues to rise.” The shortage is especially true in rural and northern communities, which have been underserviced for years.

One of the veterinarian college’s recommendations was to enable veterinarians to better utilize the knowledge and skills of vet techs. By bringing in vet techs under the umbrella of veterinarian professionals in this bill, the province is formally recognizing the growing importance of vet techs, their scope of practice, their place in team-based practices and the need to include all of that and support it in legislation.

There are incentives to encourage students to go into large animal or livestock care rather than companion animal care, and I want to see how it works out. The former is harder—irregular hours; more travel—but it’s also more essential to the $50-billion-a-year agri-food sector. That’s why incentives are needed.

I was hoping to see that this act had a specific section on climate change preparedness and veterinarian care for livestock. In the climate change report commissioned by this very government, published in January 2023—so just a year ago—there were stark warnings that Ontario’s livestock will be at high risk by the mid-2050s. Well, I think we have to admit that they are at risk now. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Ontario this summer will experience abnormally hot heat waves or plumes of toxic wildfire smoke drifting by our nostrils that could severely affect the well-being of livestock.

So we must help the agri-food sector, our largest economic sector here in Ontario, prepare for climate change, but I don’t think this government takes climate change seriously enough. The Ontario Veterinary College has taken steps already to begin researching how certain types of dairy cattle can better endure heat waves, but I think the Ontario government should lead by example by working collaboratively with the OVC to prepare all of the veterinarians for climate-change-related incidents—incidents more likely to occur in the future.

There are new accountability measures in this bill that will push veterinary professionals to hold themselves to a high standard, and that is good. It introduces new reporting measures. For example, members of the College of Veterinarians of Ontario must report if they learn that a veterinarian’s fitness to serve is impaired. Changes like these could ensure the veterinary field maintains its solid reputation and that all professionals are exercising safety around themselves, their colleagues and animals.

At the forefront of modernizing legislation is ensuring means of accountability. The previous Veterinarians Act was introduced 35 years ago, and since then, Ontario’s veterinary profession has not had legislated reporting requirements or a quality assurance committee. They did not have a public register to show the status of members.

Much of this bill’s details needs to be revealed later in regulations, which are not yet specified. Regulations still need to determine what exactly the quality assurance committee will do, what exactly the scope of work will be for vet techs and even what the practice of veterinary medicine is defined as. This bill is a good start for ensuring accountability, but we are still waiting for the clarifications.

The quality assurance program has many elements to it that need to be thoroughly investigated as to how and by what specific mechanisms it will enforce the ends it is trying to achieve. Many of these directives have the potential to ensure that the veterinarian industry is an ever-improving, safe and caring place for the animals we love and care for. However, I’d like to see more direction from the minister about what exactly they are looking for. It is the elected minister’s duty to ensure that their mandate to the College of Veterinarians of Ontario is as clear as possible.

We’ll support this bill. The nature of veterinary medicine has changed since 1989, and legislation needs to reflect this. I am hopeful that this bill will positively impact veterinary professionals and the communities they serve, yet this bill has left lots of work to be done in addressing the complex challenges facing Ontario’s veterinarian sector.