I’m so pleased to follow my honourable colleague the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, to share more insights about the proposed Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act, 2024. I’d like to begin by recognizing the work that the minister has done on this important file and for her leadership in guiding us along the road to where we are today. She’s very quick to provide a lot of insight and a lot of acknowledgement in others, and she’s very humble, but her leadership has truly shepherded this bill to where it is today.

On a personal note, I’d like to also recognize the caring, professional team at the Leamington Veterinary Clinic, which is where my family has taken our beloved dog, Caesar, for over 13 years of exemplary care.

Thank you to Dr. Dana Korpasova and her team, and all veterinary clinics across Ontario, for the work you do to keep our beloved pets and our farm animals healthy and safe. You are truly invaluable in our communities and integral to our families. You’re critical points of contact, care, important resources, and friends. You’re helping inform us and guide us on where our legislation needs to go in the future.

Veterinary medicine has been regulated as a profession in Ontario since 1877, for 147 years now. Access to veterinary care that is regulated and overseen in the public interest is important to everyone.

In 2020, it was estimated that 58% of Canadian households owned at least one dog or cat—a figure believed to have risen over the past few years.

Veterinary care is also important to our food supply chain. In order to raise healthy animals, livestock and poultry, Ontario’s producers need access to comprehensive vet care for their animals.

Veterinarians and veterinary technicians also serve as important public health care components to prevent the spread of serious diseases, such as rabies, and for food safety.

As the minister noted in her remarks, the Veterinarians Act was last updated in 1989, 35 years ago. As we can appreciate, so much has changed since that time, particularly with developments in technology. Technological advances have certainly transformed many practices and approaches to care. Vet care is increasingly being provided by a team of qualified professionals, including both veterinarians and veterinary technicians.

Vet technicians have specialized education, training and experience in animal care that are vital to the care team in many veterinary settings. While registered veterinary technicians have an association that advocates on their behalf—the Ontario Association of Veterinary Technicians—the current legislative framework under the vet act does not formally recognize the role RVTs play in animal care.

I feel very fortunate that my community hosts the exceptional Ridgetown campus of the University of Guelph, which has long been one of the most highly regarded vet tech schools in Ontario and an important partner in my community of Chatham-Kent–Leamington. I’m very grateful to the faculty, staff and students at Ridgetown campus who have welcomed me into their classrooms to meet with, speak to and learn from everyone there.

The very fact that vet techs aren’t recognized by the Veterinarians Act is just one example of how this act no longer reflects modern vet practices. This is precisely why the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is proposing to update the current legislative framework for the vet profession, to open the door to establishing laws that are flexible and modern, and to support a veterinary sector that supports both pet owners and our thriving agriculture industry.

As the minister explained, these proposed changes are designed to improve access to vet care by letting the college define a broader scope of practice for vet techs and to bring veterinary technicians under the same regulatory college and legislation as veterinarians. This proposed legislation would streamline the complaints process, better define the scope of practice for vet medicine and improve transparency. Modernizing the veterinary profession will make it more responsive to public expectations around governance, transparency, oversight and, most importantly, trust.

Like many regulatory bodies in Ontario that oversee a profession, the veterinary regulatory college operates based on a self-regulation system. Members elect peers to serve on the governing council, together with non-licensed individuals appointed by the Ontario government. The principal object of the college is to regulate the practice of veterinary medicine and to govern members in accordance with the act. The regulatory college overseeing veterinary professionals has expressed its alignment to our proposed changes that aim to enhance ministerial oversight of the regulatory college’s governing council.

Like any legislation in place for decades, it’s imperative to revisit this legislation to ensure it continues to serve its purpose efficiently and effectively. It’s crucially important to consider, in these proposed changes, the needs of veterinarians, veterinary technicians, the public, and the agriculture and food industry. The minister described the consultation process very well, but I want to take a moment here to thank the Associate Minister of Housing for his work, the work he did last year to ensure voices from across our province were heard in the development of this important bill. I want to thank everyone who took part in the consultations, whether they submitted comments via email, took part in the virtual meetings or attended one of the regional live round tables—in particular, the stakeholder groups that worked with our ministry throughout this process. Thank you for your time; thank you for your patience. We hopefully are going to get this right together.

Mark Hamel, chair of the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, said, “I think it was a very thorough review and consultation process. I applaud the work that’s behind it and the timeliness of getting it to this stage and hopefully passed quickly. Again, it will provide great benefit to our producers and the” broader “agriculture sector.”

John Stevens, CEO of the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association, shared this view, saying, “We’ve been very pleased and appreciative of the consultation to date from the ministry and from the minister’s office. We’ve been involved at every step of the way through the public consultations and have felt” we’ve been heard, and we’ve been going through this process together. “We’ve been sharing our inputs,” and the process undertaken so far has been wonderful.

It’s important to note that continued consultations and collaboration are actually built into this new act as the college puts this legislation and any regulations that come from it into practice, should this bill pass. We’re striving here to ensure the act can support both individual pet owners and the agriculture industry’s current and future needs.

An important aspect of the proposed changes is all about quality assurance, specifically, enabling the regulatory college to develop a formal quality assurance program, which will be overseen by a new statutory committee. This change aims to better ensure continual learning and competence of all members of this important profession.

The proposal mirrors what’s currently in place for professional regulatory colleges in human health care. For example, the member from Brantford–Brant must complete continuing education every year as a practising optometrist, and the member from Mississauga Centre participates in continuing education as a registered nurse. As a professional provincial police officer, I had to complete and pass mandatory annual training with specific qualifications. The same is true for accountants, for lawyers, for teachers and many other professions. This is designed to maintain public trust and assurance in the profession, as well as to ensure all active veterinarians and vet techs are up to date with the latest developments in animal care.

In addition to governance and quality assurance, the proposed changes would include the components dealing with investigations, professional misconduct, a member’s fitness to practise and suspected incompetence. The proposed changes would clearly enable a greater amount of information about a licence holder to be collected and, where appropriate, posted on the public-facing register. Again, this is very similar to other regulated professions.

Since regulated professions are specialists, many other people don’t have the technical knowledge to judge how well they do their jobs. The ability for the college to post information is intended to allow animal owners to check whether the veterinarian or vet tech they have is a member in good standing using proper protocols and practices, and that they’re up to modern standards.

The proposed changes would also bring about mandatory reporting requirements which would require any member who suspects that another member may be unfit to practise due to a health issue or other factor, to report this to the college. There would also be legal protections for members making such reports in good faith. Such a report could be used to bring about an investigation by the college if the college believes there is a need to examine the matter further or potentially discipline a member.

This bill, if passed, would also increase penalties for actions that could harm an animal, to better reflect the scope of wrongdoing. Fines for taking actions that could foreseeably cause serious harm to an animal without being licensed by the college would be set in legislation and carry serious fines up to: $25,000 for an individual on first offence and $50,000 for subsequent offences; $50,000 for a corporation on the first offence and $200,000 for subsequent offences. These are serious. Maximum fines for practising veterinary medicine without a licence would increase to the same levels.

Based on feedback received during our consultations, several significant points emerged that informed the proposed modernized legislative framework. Animal owners—including farmers, their family members and employees—need to be able to continue to provide care and treatment for their animals, and veterinarians need the continued ability to delegate tasks in a practice to a competent auxiliary—at their discretion and under supervision, of course. For example, this could be an experienced veterinary assistant at a companion animal hospital who is not a veterinary technician.

Bill 171 is part of a larger strategy to address the need for increased veterinary capacity in Ontario, particularly for farm animals in underserved parts of the province. As the minister mentioned, we have also launched a Veterinary Incentive Program to encourage newly licensed vets to practise in northern and underserviced communities and we’re investing in an additional 20 seats in veterinary school every year.

The College of Veterinarians of Ontario has worked with our government previously to reduce red tape through recent regulatory amendments which streamlined how vet facilities are accredited in Ontario. These efforts in the recent past have allowed vet practices to provide multiple levels of care to no longer need multiple certificates of accreditation, removing additional paperwork for practice owners. Together with the changes proposed in this bill, the Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act, we’re confident we will be successful in increasing access to vet care for animals across the province.

Madam Speaker, I have appreciated the opportunity to speak today on the Enhancing Professional Care for Animals Act. To better reflect the current practice of veterinary medicine, Ontario needs modernized legislation that embraces contemporary approaches to professional regulation and governance: in other words, one profession—veterinary medicine—comprised of two professionals—veterinarians and veterinary technicians—serving the public interest.

These proposed changes are part of broader efforts to support success for Ontario’s agriculture and food industry, and to streamline and simplify the processes for those doing business in Ontario.

We feel very strongly that these proposed changes will help bring about a veterinary profession that is more responsive to public expectations in governance, transparency and oversight.

We are so pleased that the work done to develop the proposed act has been accomplished through close collaboration with those who are directly impacted by it. We are confident that the process of consultation on modernization of the Veterinarians Act has effectively shaped these proposed changes.

Key to the success of the consultation process on the act was the participation of the College of Veterinarians of Ontario, the Ontario Association of Veterinary Technicians and the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association as well as the veterinarians and vet techs themselves who took time out of their busy professional lives to participate in the process and the consultation, as well as other animal care providers, humane societies, farmers and pet owners. We’re so grateful for their collaboration and for their professionalism in this process. As always, we are committed to listen to stakeholders and to incorporate their insights, and as we continue to do so, we will ensure the proposed changes will better serve everyone in the province over the long-run.

The new legislative framework we propose aims to take a balanced and risk-based approach to the practice of veterinary medicine while continuing to protect animal health and well-being. We are confident these proposed actions will help us keep growing Ontario together.

Thank you for your time today. And on a final note, this process is collaborative, and that is a word to describe listening to stakeholders, to pet owners, to livestock owners, to farmers, veterinarians, vet technicians and that whole circle of continual care. By embracing that wisdom collectively, we think we have a diligent, prudent and comprehensive piece of legislation that can be accepted, can be agreed to; it can bring Ontario into the future, and we hope that we will have collaboration and we’ll have success from across the aisle and from everyone in this House to take vet care into the future.

Thank you to the member across. Those are serious allegations. We take all animal care very seriously, but the actions of that corporation don’t pertain to the bill before the House.

In fact, this legislation is enabling. It empowers veterinary technicians and veterinarians to practise to the full scope of their training and experience.

So although it’s very unfortunate and also is a serious concern, it doesn’t pertain to the matter at hand. Thank you for your question.

Thank you to the member for that very relevant question. That whole continuum of care has to include farmers, it has to include the people that—it could be pet owners. Sometimes, modernizations include that continuum, using technology and using the people that have some experience, some training through different mediums—it could be through technology or through a veterinarian technician—to triage, care for and provide that whole wraparound level of care to extend that, especially in farming communities, remote communities and underserviced areas.

Sometimes the veterinarian could be an hour- or a two-hour drive away while there is an animal emergency. To have someone in close proximity to provide that care, under professional guidance, is critical. This act addresses that.

Now they have enabling legislation to reach out to connect to someone with the care and say, “We don’t have a vet on hand right now. We have an animal emergency,” or “We have some concerns for the safety of animals.” I can connect to someone with a level of care to provide that care to the animal and be fully protected under the law. Thank you for the question.

This enabling legislation, first and most importantly, enables veterinary technicians to practise a level of care to the full scope of their training and experience, where sometimes in the past it was limited. Little procedures that a vet tech can certainly take care of for your pets and for my pets had to be under the care and direct supervision of a veterinarian, who may be more apt to be taking care of more serious surgical concerns. So this enabling legislation allows everyone to do the care and to practise that care to the full scope of their training.

That’s what the college regulates, and that’s where the legislation takes us. Other areas of care are important. That’s one component, but I don’t think it’s really critical to the bigger conversation of advancing and modernizing animal care.

Good morning, Speaker. I’d like to offer a warm welcome to Sean Geene from my riding of Chatham-Kent–Leamington, father of page Alyssa. Welcome, Sean, and thank you for supporting your daughter.

I really appreciate the commentary and the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane sharing his experience and also sharing some good questions—to question a good bill to make sure it’s the best it can be.

Now, we talked about farmers being able to do routine, non-invasive procedures, and the fact that this bill safeguards that. Will the member agree that, within this proposed act, we are certainly enabling livestock farmers and even pet owners to perform those routine, non-invasive procedures, to safeguard that very important part of raising healthy livestock and pets?

Thank you, Speaker: Chatham-Kent–Leamington. I would invite you to come down and anyone else to come down and see our area.

I want to stray from the topic of the Oshawa kangaroo because that doesn’t have anything to do with this bill. It’s interesting, ripped from the headlines, but there is something that the member from Oshawa touched on that will bring some relevance here. Does the member for Oshawa agree that through streamlining the complaint process and clarifying the role of investigators, we’re actually strengthening the ability to investigate instances of animal welfare?