Tag: Podcast

“Veterinary social work is about walking alongside guardians through some of the most stressful and emotional times in their lives.”

In this episode of The Informed Animal Ally, we explore the growing field of veterinary social work — where human services and animal welfare meet. Dawn Campbell, a veterinary social worker with the Vancouver Humane Society, shares how supporting people through their bond with their pets can lead to more compassionate, inclusive systems of care. Together, we discuss how this approach helps ensure no one has to choose between their own wellbeing and their animal’s.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Dawn: I wanted to start by situating myself and acknowledging the land that I work and live on. I am a settler on the unceded territories of the q̓ʷɑ:n̓ƛ̓ən̓ (Kwantlen), q̓ic̓əy̓ (Katzie), Máthxwi (Matsqui), and se’mya’me (Semiahmoo) First Nations.

For me, a land acknowledgement is not about a quick statement at the beginning of a meeting. It’s about accountability. It means recognizing my responsibilities and committing to building daily, respectful and reciprocal relationships with Indigenous peoples.

What this means is looking honestly at my role in my social work profession and how it has played a role in upholding colonial policies and causing deep harm, and as a social worker, having to carry that history with me, and then also having to resist falling into fragility or defensiveness when confronted with it.

For me, that’s about consistent reflexivity, asking how my whiteness shapes the way I show up in spaces, how it impacts my perspective, and how others experience me because of it.

Part of that accountability also includes action, whether that means engaging in mutual aid or continuing to learn about Canada’s colonial past and its ongoing impacts.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action give us a roadmap and I encourage everyone to read them and find ways to situate themselves in their personal and professional lives.

This isn’t just a recognition, it’s about accountability. It’s about learning, it’s about respect, and it’s about striving to change harmful systems.

Chantelle: I really appreciate that because what we’re gonna be talking about today is a system that’s striving to make things more fair and just and inclusive for all people.

Chantelle: I would love to start with a backgrounder on the topic of veterinary social work.

For people who aren’t familiar with it, could you tell us what veterinary social work is and how it differs and aligns with other types of social work?

Dawn: Yeah, so essentially it’s social work in animal spaces. But if we wanted to go a little bit deeper, the term veterinary social work was developed by Elizabeth Strand at the University of Tennessee in 2002 when she also founded the first Center for Veterinary Social Work.

The program at the University of Tennessee focuses on four core areas:

• The link between human and animal violence;
• Grief and loss;
• Animal assisted interactions; and
• Compassion fatigue management.

So that’s the formal scope that veterinary social work focuses on, at least in this specific program.

But I do really like the definition that was brought forward in a webinar that was hosted by the Vancouver Humane Society. Veterinary social work was described as an area of social work practice that attends to the human needs that arise at the intersection of veterinary medicine and social work.

Webinar Replay: Exploring Veterinary Social Work in Animal Services

Watch the enlightening 60-minute webinar on the field of veterinary social work and its transformative impact on the animal services industry, originally held on Wednesday, June 14th! This webinar is hosted by the Vancouver Humane Society and features expert panelists Natalie Cruz from Boundary Bay Veterinary Specialty Hospital, Erin Wasson from University of Saskatchewan, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, and Dillon Dodson from Toronto Humane Society.

I think like that definition really stuck out to me because it was very simple, it was very broad, and that is really where we’re at is at that intersection.

This might look different depending on where it happens. It could be in a veterinary clinic, it could be in a community outreach program. It could be in a humane society. The shape of the work is determined really on the community needs, the setting and even the species involved.

I think that the values at the heart of this work mirror a lot of the social work values: the inherent worth and dignity of all beings, including animals.

And it’s also preventative work, so that could be offering grief support, advocacy, and connection before crises deepen.

Chantelle: Oh, that’s fantastic. I was originally involved with the webinar that we ran in 2023 about veterinary social work. A panelist described it as the same as other types of social work in a different setting.

It sounds like that’s very much in line with how you view it as well.

Dawn: Yeah, for sure. I totally agree. I think that social work can be in any space. So we can label this as veterinary social work, or we could just label it as social work because it’s just social work in an animal space and in an animal related context.

It overlaps with so many things, like I said, including crisis work, counselling, group facilitation, and even forensic (criminal justice) social work.

It’s really just meeting people where they’re at. And with this specifically, it’s when their relationship with their animal is at stake.

Chantelle: Yeah, absolutely. You work with the McVitie program, so everyone accessing the McVitie program services is basically in a state of very heightened emotional crisis.

People are concerned for the lives of their pets, their family members, their best friends. So they’re coming in, they’re stressed, they’re worried, they’re needing support and help, and they don’t have the funds to meet the needs of their animal that they care so much about.

It’s so important that we can support both the animals and the people who care about them.

I would love to hear about what a typical day looks like for you as a veterinary social worker in this context.

Supporting animal guardians through a pet’s medical emergency

Dawn: Yeah. As mentioned earlier, I work with the Vancouver Humane Society’s McVitie Fund team.

I assist with the operations of that program, and that can look different day to day.

Often, like you mentioned, we’re hearing from pet guardians whose animals are facing life-threatening emergencies. This could be anything from being hit by a car to maybe a cat in diabetic shock or a severe flea infestation. And so they’re already dealing with the stress and emotional toll that comes with seeing their animal in distress.

On top of that, many of these guardians are already navigating financial hardship, housing insecurity, and other barriers.

We’re helping them figure out what we can do funding wise. It is a veterinary assistance fund, but it’s not just about the money that we can provide to them for their animals to get veterinary care. It’s also about supporting the guardian emotionally.

Because this animal is in crisis, the person is too, and they don’t know what the outcome is going to be.

Collaborating with support workers

Dawn: Sometimes it’s not a guardian that reaches out to us directly. It can be a social service worker, it could be an outreach worker, a case manager who is applying for veterinary funds on behalf of their client.

What I’ve done in those cases is collaborating with the staff, resource sharing so that their clients—not only that client that they’re applying for, but for their other clients with pets—what’s in the community that can help for future care, like pet food.

And it’s about offering emotional support to the staff as well. Because I have found, and this is from my own other professional experience of working in the field, that these staff members are deeply attached to these pets also.

And so it’s supporting them through this process as well. You’re holding many hands.

Some days it’s grief support when the outcomes aren’t what they hoped. Other days it’s celebrating when a guardian’s pet gets to come home and they get the care that they need. We get wonderful feedback from people, very appreciative of our time and our resource.

Advocating on behalf of animal guardians

Dawn: So it could be crisis intervention, case management, advocacy.

I’ve advocated on behalf of a client with vet clinics on trying to get our funds spread a little further.

And at the heart of it really, it’s really just listening and recognizing that pets are a part of the family system.

Chantelle: You mentioned that a lot of people who access services for their animals are also facing their own complex challenges and they need services or they use other services for themselves as well.

How does veterinary social work help to bridge that gap between animal services and human services, and how does that improve outcomes for the animals?

Dawn: I think there’s a lot of work to be done. There are so many gaps in the system, whether an animal is involved or not.

I think that what I’ve taken away as a veterinary social worker, as well as also having worked in the social services field for quite a while now, is that one of the most powerful things is how pets can be the key to connection.

There’s been so many moments where someone wasn’t interested in talking about their situation, but the second you ask about their animal, everything shifts. Even if it’s as simple as helping them get food for their pet.

Once that trust is there, it opens up and you can start discussing about their own needs.

Supporting someone through their bond with their pet can be the foundation of broader healing.

I think that, not only is that what the work of veterinary social workers are doing, it’s something that can be done by people who are working in animal welfare agencies, in vet clinics, in social service agencies.

They can see that is a way in, and I think that can start breaking down the walls that are separating our agencies. And we can start bridging to one another. I think that’s like a good starting point and having conversations like these for sure.

Chantelle: Absolutely.

I feel like that’s such a universal experience for people who work with both animals and humans. That is almost the exact thing that we heard from last month’s guest, Jesse from Atira Women’s Resource Centre. She said that speaking with someone about their pet is such an amazing foot in the door to build a really strong connection with that person, be able to connect with them on other resources for themselves.

Dawn: Yeah, I mean when you think about it, if you’re out for a walk and who are you more likely to go up? The person who’s walking their dog or the person who doesn’t have a dog?

Chantelle: Could you walk us through a case where you supported an animal and their guardian?

Dawn: Yeah. This one is always one that will stay with me. Billy Bob is very close to my heart.

I had known this dog, Billy Bob for a few years. He and his guardian had been through quite a bit of hardship living on the street.

This was before I joined the Vancouver Humane Society, and I was working downtown Eastside in a supportive housing building. Billy Bob, a senior dog, had developed a large mass along the left side of his abdomen, just behind his front leg.

It was causing a lot of discomfort and was really affecting his quality of life. You could see that there was a significant change in his energy. Something was wrong.

His guardian, Duffy, had been quite worried for some time and didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have the financial resources to get Billy in.

I had applied for funds through the McVitie program.

I remember the moment, when we get the initial funds were approved. And I remember telling him. The relief in his voice was unforgettable. I remember him saying it was like winning the lottery.

We had that moment and I remember having that moment with my coworkers also about agreeing that, how often do we get to say yes to something?

This is somebody who has been entrenched in homelessness, and stigmatized and discriminated against for it. And to be able to be like, Hey, we’re gonna get, we’re gonna get your dog to the vet. We’re gonna figure out what’s going on.

When we brought him to the vet it was clear that the best course of action was to remove the mass completely. It was very big. It was like the size of a grapefruit, if not bigger, and it was posing a real threat to Billy’s life and it was gonna be a lot more money than $500. And we were able to get additional funding from the McVitie program, and that surgery saved Billy’s life. It really did.

After they had sent tests off for that mass, it had shown that it was a low grade cancer and that added another year and a bit to Billy’s life.

Billy got to be there for Duffy when Duffy passed in the hospital.

We would’ve never have been able to have that if we hadn’t gotten Billy in and taken care of.

For me, that really highlights what veterinary social work is about—what social work or helping people in general is about.

It’s not just about the medical care for an animal, it’s about walking alongside the guardian through what can be one of the most stressful and emotional times in their life.

We thought we were gonna lose Billy, and if we hadn’t gotten that surgery, we would’ve been looking at end of life care.

It also shows that supporting people and their pets happens in old spaces, not just in formal animal welfare settings. And it’s a reminder that being resourceful on behalf of your clients can make a difference between life and death for an animal and hope or despair for their guardian.

The McVitie Fund is a small fund, and being able to access it makes a really huge difference in people’s lives.

Chantelle: Connecting with guardians directly as well, I know people in the program, yourself included, get those stories directly every day.

I remember a conversation where our other colleague Ishtmeet shared in our team group chat she had just got off the phone with a guardian. And she had been able to approve funding for the guardian’s dog. As she was hanging up, the guardian said with a shake in their voice, oh baby, you’re gonna be okay.

It’s such an impactful thing in people’s lives, and I’m so grateful that we have donors who are able to contribute to this fund and make it possible.

Chantelle: Can you share a little bit about your own journey into this field and what drew you to the intersection of human and animal wellbeing?

Dawn: I mean, I could go way back to teen years and tell you that I wanted to be a vet tech and I volunteered in a vet clinic. I volunteered for Langley Animal Protection Society. I grew up on a farm. I was like obsessed. I was like, I am going to work with animals. That’s my dream.

And then things changed and I came onto a path of social services and working with people, and then somehow I came back to animals and people.

But I’ll be honest, I didn’t know that veterinary social work existed until I was in my fourth year of my social work degree. By then I was already working in the social services field for quite some time and I kept seeing the same thing over and over again in my work, which was that people with pets were falling through the cracks.

Their pets were rarely considered when supports were put in place.

So when I was doing some research around where I would wanted to do my fourth year of practicum placement and I had no idea, that’s when I stumbled across veterinary social work and started to learn more about it.

After doing some research finding out that there was no placements available in Western Canada, I advocated to create my own.

My field coordinator for the practicum approached the Vancouver Humane Society. And you guys were very open to the idea. That’s how I came into doing a practicum with the Vancouver Humane Society—just the openness and willingness from VHS and from my university to take on an unconventional practicum placement.

And then at the end of the practicum, I was graciously offered a job, and now I’m here and I have so many goals and dreams of how I want to see this expand, how I want to see veterinary social work expand here in Western Canada.

And so that’s the most recent part of the journey, but ultimately it was about seeing the consistent gap in the system of pets and people being left behind basically, and having to choose.

It was really hard to see, and I was just like, there’s something that needs to be done and I’m gonna do it.

Chantelle: I understand it’s really important to be able to address those gaps and not let people and animals fall through the cracks. How does this approach address systemic service gaps, especially for marginalized communities in their companion animals?

Dawn: What I see happening in social work in these spaces is really addressing policies and procedures through education.

As an example, many shelters and housing programs don’t allow pets, and the ones that do, there’s no policies or procedures in place on how to support people who own pets, and how to handle the pets. And staff are often not trained from a strengths-based approach that addresses both the wellbeing and the safety of the animal and the person.

Because of this, people often avoid accessing services altogether. And I think that is a place where veterinary social work can really come in and address that.

Not only are social workers in general trained in strength-based approaches, but the animal piece of it is working with organizations to create policies, procedures, and training education for staff and so that everyone is supported.

Another way we can address this is acknowledging the fact that people facing hardship and homelessness are especially stigmatized for having a pet.

I’ve had countless conversations where people have been said, if someone can’t house themselves, they shouldn’t have an animal. But hardship does not mean someone can’t be a good guardian. I’ve seen so many people put their animals’ needs before their own.

I also think that it’s important to recognize that neglect and abuse happen in all kinds of settings. It happens in farms, zoos, family homes. Much of it is hidden. Yet when someone living on the street has a pet, people are quick to assume neglect.

What that tells me is that the problem isn’t actually with abuse. It’s with visibility. And when visibility is punished, it becomes discrimination against structurally excluded or disenfranchised population.

And so I think that in veterinary social work, social work in general, we can raise that awareness. We can challenge those belief systems and that stigma and say that everyone is deserving.

I wanted to also mention that veterinary care is very expensive to everyone. We have people applying to our program that have high income, and that just shows how inaccessible veterinary care has become.

And that’s for many reasons. There is a veterinarian shortage happening, the staff shortages are happening in Canada. There’s emotional distress, compassion fatigue, burnout, wages. There’s many things that are contributing to the inaccessibility to veterinary care. It’s not just the cost of it. There’s other factors as well, and so I think that we can address those pieces.

Chantelle: You mentioned earlier some ways that veterinary social work is collaborative with other sectors.

Such an important part of the work is to collaborate with other sectors like public health, social services, other animal services. Can you talk about that kind of collaboration and how working with other sectors approaches a guardian’s challenges and needs in a more holistic way?

Dawn: Social workers in general thrive on collaboration. We are connectors to various stakeholders, including housing providers, social service agencies, healthcare services.

From the lens of a veterinary social worker, we’re looking at connecting with humane societies, with veterinarians, and helping see where pets fit into the bigger picture in how supporting animals also strengthens human wellbeing.

We see this work happening from other organizations, such as Community Veterinary outreach, Paws for Hope, and Atira. They don’t have social workers on staff in those programs per se, but they are practicing social work principles by meeting people where they’re at and supporting both human and animal needs.

And so we’re seeing the collaboration happening and the partnerships being created in community. Continuing that is making sure that we are putting the community’s needs first and coming in from a place of listening and supporting what’s already working.

Chantelle: I love that concept of meeting people where they’re at.

Dawn: It’s a harm reduction approach. It’s such a powerful concept. It’s coming in with putting the person first, not coming in with an agenda. Not coming in with the answers. Not being like, I’m the expert in your life.

They’re the experts in their lives.

Chantelle: Yeah. Everyone’s coming to the program from a different place, and there’s going to be a different solution that makes sense for each person’s situation.

Dawn: Exactly. Just to add onto that piece, animal welfare is moving away from saviorism and charity, and shifting the lens to solidarity and mutual aid. Really recognizing that resilience and love and connection are things that we need to amplify over struggle. Struggle is very important to recognize, but we have to look at these other things as well.

Chantelle: As you mentioned, the concept of meeting human service needs and animal service needs together is not at all new.

People have been working with both humans and animals for many decades. Like you said, the term veterinary social work was coined in 2002, so more than two decades ago. How has the field evolved since then, and what’s unique about how it’s growing in Canada today?

Dawn: I think that, like we’d mentioned earlier in the US veterinary social work became more established through the University of Tennessee’s program, whereas in Canada, we’re still shaping what it looks like.

As I mentioned, that there are organizations who are leading the way in this, and they’re doing the work that’s deeply aligned with social work practice, and really addressing housing and health needs alongside animal care.

We’re also seeing, on an academic level, veterinary colleges offering veterinary social work services. This is introducing veterinary students to social work early in their training.

And it means clients and staff and teaching hospitals are being supported.

We’re seeing organizations like the Toronto Humane Society, who has developed a structured social work program and offers a social work practicum placement there, and their team provides crisis support, grief processing, service navigation, advocacy and leadership.

On a national level, Humane Canada is doing incredible work to integrate one health and one welfare approaches. These frameworks recognize that human health, animal health, and environmental health that are interconnected.

We’re building something unique that reflects what our own communities and systems and priorities.

Chantelle: You mentioned so many of the organizations that I wanted to flag as well. We both brought up the veterinary social work webinar a while ago that the VHS put on in 2023.

We had three different veterinary social workers on that panel that are from other organizations and clinics that are leading the way. Natalie Cruz from the webinar was the first veterinary social worker in BC at Boundary Bay Veterinary Specialty Hospital.

We had on Erin Wasson from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine who’s been such a trailblazer getting this field on the radar in Canada and introduced veterinary social work into the school in Saskatchewan.

We had Dylan Dodson from the Toronto Humane Society. As you mentioned, they’re doing great work.

Chantelle: This is such a subjective question, but I’d love to get your take on it. Where do you see the field heading in the next five to ten years, and what is needed to support that growth?

Dawn: I see it playing a major role in shaping policy and training across social service sectors.

As I mentioned before, there’s not a lot of guidance on how staff in the social services sector can support their clients who have pets. I think that partnerships with social service agencies are a real tipping point. I think that when housing programs, food banks, and health services integrate pets into their models, we’ll start to really see systemic change.

I also see this field adopting a true social model of care for animals just like we do with humans, and recognizing structural barriers, not just individual failures.

I think that anti-racism and cultural humility is also very crucial. Veterinary colleges are already embedding equity into their training, raising awareness about the human-animal bond and the importance of inclusion.

I think that we are starting to reframe how we support staff. So instead of relying only on compassion fatigue, we need to recognize empathetic distress, which is a very real emotional toll of caring deeply, day after day. I see that in the animal welfare field and in the social services field, where there’s this push for self-care.

Burnout and compassion fatigue are considered an individual problem when in reality it’s a structural problem. It’s a systemic problem. So shifting that to better support staff in both sectors. I think that work is being done; we’re recognizing it and it’s happening.

I think that we’ll see more support in remote and northern communities and Indigenous communities in ways that are sustainable and culturally safe. That means not coming in and telling communities what to do, but really coming in and listening and allowing knowledge keepers and community members to identify what their need is. And our role is to stand alongside them and support sustainably and build solutions together.

Some of the most transformative organizations are already modeling this approach. And I believe this is where some of the most transformative work will happen in the next decade.

One last piece would be dismantling the silos that we’re currently in on both sides. I think that we are treating both sectors as separate worlds, and we’re not; we are overlapping every day. I think that the future of veterinary social work is breaking down those walls and creating integrated, holistic systems of care.

Chantelle: We always like to end off by giving our audience something that they can do to take action.

Say if someone works or volunteers with animals, where would you recommend that they get started to learn about resources like a veterinary social work program that may be available in their community, which they could refer people to?

Dawn: That’s a really great question, because I think the resources are out there, but they’re still very few and far between.

A good educational piece on learning more about the field or becoming more involved is watching the webinars like the one that the Vancouver Humane Society did, as well as the Canadian Association of Social Work. They did a webinar back at the beginning of this year on the expanding role of veterinary social work in Canada.

Looking into what Humane Canada is doing and going to their conferences is a really great way to not only network, but learn more about what everyone is doing.

There’s this thought that you have to get specialized training to be a veterinary social worker. You don’t. Like I said at the beginning, this is social work in animal spaces. If you’re a registered social worker and you have a passion to work with animals and to support people and their pets, that’s it.

There’s courses. I took an animal welfare certificate course through the Thompson Rivers University. It’s an online certificate. I really liked the course.

Those are some ways of networking. Or just being persistent, reaching out to organizations and seeing what kind of social work they’re doing, seeing what social work programs they’re running.

As a closing, at the heart of all this is that I believe animal welfare is a social service, and I think it should be funded as such.

We already see animals showing up in family law with custody agreements for pets. We’re seeing how housing policies impact whether people can keep their animals. And we know about the violence link, the clear relationship between animal abuse and interpersonal violence.

These are all social issues.

They’re not separate. Supporting animals is supporting people. If there can be any takeaway today, I think that it would be that it’s a social service. No one should ever have to choose between their own wellbeing and their pet.

Animal services and human services are two sides of the same coin.

Providing resources for humans improves life for the animals they care for, and vice versa. This month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally welcomes Jesse Smith from the Pet Outreach program at Atira Women’s Resource Society to share some stories about working with the community to support people and their companion animals together.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Chantelle: We have been looking at the wide world of animal advocacy and protection in this series, and today we’ll be diving into one aspect of this work that we’ve touched on before, which is the intersection between animal work and social work/community programs.

To explore this topic with us further, I’m very pleased to welcome Jesse Smith, the Pet Outreach Program Coordinator at Atira Women’s Resource Society in Vancouver. Jesse, thank you so much for joining us today.

To start off, I would love to hear a little bit about the history of the Pet Outreach program.

Was there a moment when you knew that this kind of support was needed in the community?

Jesse: Yeah, so that actually predates my involvement with Atira Women’s Resource Society.

Identifying the need in the community: Veterinary care

Jesse: There were two events that happened that really stuck out with leadership.

The first was that there was a resident who was living in one of the SROs (Single Room Occupancy housing) that we support whose pet had skin allergies and was having flareups all of the time, just chronic issues. He was getting really frustrated because he couldn’t afford vet care, he couldn’t afford to keep her on the prescription hypoallergenic diet and he really didn’t know what resources were available or what to do.

A person in community was just chatting with him one day and said, I happen to know your housing provider. I’m gonna chat and see if there’s something we can do.

He was able to get that care at that time, but then it just kind of was like, he’s not the only one that’s struggling with this and this is a chronic issue. This isn’t something that’s gonna be one time, and then we move on.

Identifying the need in the community: Safety precautions

Jesse: And the second was back when there was an encampment at Strathcona Park. For those of you that are not familiar with Vancouver, Strathcona is a very large central park near the downtown core that after COVID had a very large street encampment. There were many people that were living there with pets.

Unfortunately there was an incident where three dogs broke free from the camper that they had been tethered to, and they attacked a worker in the park.

And so needs for services on how to keep workers and community members safe really kind of came to the forefront.

Developing a pet outreach program: Helping people and animals together

Jesse: And so leadership realized that we have support workers for humans, so why not have support workers whose target is pets and who can kind of work on all of these issues

They interviewed and I saw the posting and was like, this sounds great.

The opportunity was to really create the program because they didn’t know what it should be. They just knew it should exist, and so they really wanted people to be involved that knew the animal world and could kind of bridge that gap between social services and pet services.

Addressing barriers to pet-friendly housing

Amy: That’s so awesome, Jesse.

Just to share another perspective on it, when I was first getting into policy studies, I worked on a paper that looked at the importance of lowering barriers to access to housing. There’s so many barriers people were facing at that time and continue to face for accessing housing.

And one of those is the lack of pet-friendly housing.

And so luckily, as a result of research that was done in the 2008 to 2011 time period, a lot of housing providers started to reduce barriers and make more housing available to pets, which is amazing.

And at the same time, like you’re saying, it comes with a whole host of additional challenges.

So in my mind, your role is the next logical step in terms of how we merge the work that we do and that you do. People and pets are always together.

I’m really excited about your role and I think there’s a lot of opportunity for other housing providers and social service providers to have programming like this.

Amy: The program certainly has a broad scope ranging from helping people access food and supplies, to directing folks to resources for support with veterinary care and pet boarding. If we were to spend a typical day shadowing you, what would that look like?

From basic needs to critical incidents

Jesse: Well, we’ll start to say that there is no typical. Every day is different, which I love.

The work shifts and flows with the community and what the needs are of that day. So you need to be versatile and you really need to kind of have the ability to triage, starting from getting your phone calls.

So I’ll come in, there’ll be messages. We run a mobile food bank. So a lot of calls are just like, Hey, I’ve run out of food, I’ve run out of litter. Can I come pick up or can you deliver?

So can be anything from really basic to, there might be a critical incident that happened that evening while our phones were off. There may be an injury or like severe illness that’s happened and something that requires immediate vet care.

Accompaniments to vet visits

Jesse: Some days we do have scheduled appointments. So we know where we’re going and what we’re doing, and kind of have to coordinate that time off.

We do a lot of accompaniments to vet visits.

When we first started, we would just kind of book the appointment, give a taxi voucher and say like, okay, good luck. We learned really quickly that that wasn’t what the community needed. And we had folks ask, can you accompany us to vet appointments? We would really love to have an advocate there.

So we drive them. We use that time in the car to kind of figure out what they need during that appointment if they want us to chat for them if they want to just chat and have us kind of as backup.

I’ve had people tell me, even if you don’t say a word, I just feel stronger with you there. I know someone’s not going to treat me different.

And you know, the clinics we work with are great. They know the community that we’re working with. They work with a trauma-informed approach, but that fear of being disrespected in other areas, still, it stays with you. There’s anxiety that comes up, and so we learned really quickly that that was an important piece of the work is to be a physical presence with folks when they’re doing appointments.

Behaviour advice

Jesse: We do behaviour advice. Sometimes we’ll do a basic dog training. A lot of people just wanna talk about their pets and make sure they’re doing the right thing.

We’ll take any call that’s animal related, whether it’s staff calling about, there’s a lot of dog reactivity because there’s a lot of intra-dog aggression that’s happening.

Working with staff in a building to create safety plans for residents. Maybe there’s been a bite incident in a building. Those are starting to be more rare now that we’ve come around. But when we started, there was just a lot of kind of general chaos in some of the buildings, and so having strong pet policies is huge.

Mobile pet food bank

Jesse: But I think the mobile pet food bank is something that’s unique.

We started with just kind of realizing that there were a lot of people in community that couldn’t leave their places, whether that was because of their mobility or due to maybe being entrenched in having heavier substance use days where they just couldn’t make it. There’s a range of reasons why people aren’t able to make food bank times, and so being able to get those supplies to them was huge.

The importance of advocacy and safety plans

Amy: Thank you so much for summarizing all of that and I can really get a picture of what your days look like. I’m really grateful for that work you’re doing accompanying folks to veterinarians.

Because in any case when you have a practitioner who has the knowledge and you have an individual who isn’t an expert, you have a power dynamic that exists automatically there, and then that power dynamic is further reinforced through marginalized identities. There’s often a language barrier.

When any guardian’s at the vet, they are in a heightened state of stress, including myself. I don’t remember half of what’s said, and then after I’m trying to figure it all out, and so I’m just so grateful that your program is offering that.

And as well, thinking about those interactions in buildings. I know any building, if you have an elevator, you’ve got an elevator door that opens and suddenly there’s two dogs face to face and everyone’s like, What do we do?

So just knowing that that’s the reality and building systems and communication can help so much in reducing conflicts and creating a language of animal behaviour that’s positive and connecting between guardians, which I think helps build community.

Jesse: I want credit one of the buildings that we work with. The residents there were the ones that taught me the best safety plan. It’s really cool that you get to go to all these different buildings and you get to learn from the community itself on what’s worked for them and bring that knowledge to another building that might not have it.

So while maybe I’m credited with sharing that knowledge, I didn’t create the system. There’s already these people in community that are doing similar work.

Avoiding dog conflict in shared stairwells

Jesse: A lot of these buildings, they’re a hundred year old rooming houses, right? They’re old. The stairwells are very narrow. So if, like you say, the elevator opens and you’re face-to-face with another dog, it’s the same in the stairwell except you’re kind of cornered.

So a lot of people like have learned to like holler when they’re coming, “DOG IN STAIRWELL” and just alert community that they’re coming and it kind of goes down the stairs if other people hear them.

These little things make a huge impact in those spaces.

Chantelle: What a wonderful resource to be able to share that information between buildings and between communities.

Chantelle: You do so much, and I’m wondering what resources it takes to run a program like this and how many animal guardians you support.

Partnerships with Vancouver organizations

Jesse: I mean, like all program, money is helpful for sure, but we started with $0 in our budget and managed to make that work for a little while.

We’re really lucky in Vancouver that there is a plethora of really cool external resources for us to pick from.

The Vancouver Humane Society with the McVitie program is huge. It benefits a wide population. We’ve reached out many times for clients.

There’s the BC SPCA, they have great food banks. Their vet clinic is awesome.

Community Vet Outreach. Does really cool clinics at least four times a year. They’ve also started doing a couple spay/neuter days.

Paws for Hope has a really great low barrier foster program.

Without all of these external resources, I wouldn’t be able to operate the way that we have been.

Pet Outreach team collaborates with community

Jesse: In terms of our internal resources, it definitely takes staff that are able to really meet the community where they’re at. Not having your own ideas of what people need or what should be done.

You’re not coming in with an attitude to save pets. These pets are fine! They’re doing great. They have loving homes. Their owners just may need a little bit of support in other areas.

And I think that’s been like kind of the biggest one for me. You know, when I talk to external folks that aren’t really in this sort of work, they say, it’s so great that you’re in there saving those animals. It’s not really what I’m doing.

We’re working with the people and they’re doing that work, and we’re just here to just be community mutual aid. We’re definitely not coming in rescuing animals.

Supporting pets in 30 buildings (and growing!)

Amy: That’s awesome. How many animals do you think you help out each year?

Jesse: That’s a hard one. With 30 buildings that we’re supporting, those buildings range from, I think our smallest has about 20 units, and then the largest has 120 units.

Not all folks have pets, but all of our buildings that we work with are pet-friendly, which means folks can have up to two dogs or two cats.

There’s some people that we assist maybe one time, and then there’s others that we work with on a weekly basis. So it’s really dependent.

Amy: That sounds like a big community that you’re working with.

Jesse: Yeah, Atira is going through some changes as well. And so we are hoping to expand our programming to go outside of our buildings.

The organization has let some buildings go and they’ve gone to other organizations like PHS or community buildings, and we are still working with clients that are in those buildings. So we’re not saying, Hey, you’re no longer with our organization as the housing provider. We’re not gonna offer you services anymore. We learned really quickly that that wasn’t fair to community.

And so we are still servicing those buildings and those residents.

Amy: Oh wow. And so how many people are on your team?

Jesse: Two, myself and Jill Morisset.

Amy: You spoke about some of the organizations that you partner with. Do you have any stories of animals that you’ve provided services to that stand out with that involved partnership?

Jesse: I think that a lot of the ones that stand out for me are sad. I really get kind of enmeshed in the end of life care.

We truly believe that there should be dignity in death and that animals and people deserve to have the space and time that they need to have those appointments go the way that they should.

A lot of our partnerships have really involved other organizations taking that time to allow us to have extra appointments to go through that.

How a spay surgery helped a dog and her guardian find better housing

Jesse: I do have another one, which is, there was this dog who used to live at Crab Park.

She lived there for a lot of years. She had a lot of puppies. So you’ll actually see a lot of dogs in community and you can tell, oh, that’s her baby. She has a long lineage. Her kids have had kids, that sort of thing.

Her guardian rehomed her to a friend who was living in one of our supportive housing buildings, and she came on our radar a bit stronger than she had been before. We had been providing food here and there, but nothing really major.

We got in touch with her there because she was pregnant, and so staff are really worried, Hey, there’s this new dog in the building. She’s pregnant, she’s about to have puppies any day. What do we do?

The guardian really did not want to connect with us at all. We would knock on her door, Hey, we have puppy food. Does your dog needs puppy food while she’s going through this? We’d just hand her stuff through the door. We didn’t make any connection. We didn’t push anything. We just handed her food through the door.

We were able to get supplies from the BC SPCA’s Charlie’s Food Bank. They really helped us out with getting a pen. They helped us out with getting pee pads when we needed them. Just kind of filled us up on puppy stuff.

A neighbour downstairs who is a good friend of hers vouched for us and helped us get our foot in the door and make a better connection with her.

And then it became more open door, and then we were able to meet the puppies. We were able to talk to her. Our relationship really grew from just being able to kind hand her things and back off and leave.

And then after the puppies were gone, we had talked to her about maybe getting the dog spayed. She wasn’t really interested. That’s okay.

But as they needed to move, some of the other buildings around had more rigid pet policies. So if you’re going in with the dog, they need to be spayed or neutered.

She was missing out on other opportunities for housing and said, I’m ready.

Community Vet Outreach had had her on a list for spay neuter clinic that she didn’t take previously. And then they said, if this will get her better housing, we can book it through our regular clinic, and took her outside of one of their clinic days and just got it done on a day that worked for her.

She was able to move into a really nice suite and unit.

And that wouldn’t have happened if there wasn’t these external organizations that we already had strong relationships with that we were able to just kind of call and say, I need help today or tomorrow. They can’t wait.

You have to build those relationships with those external partners and so I’m really, really grateful to everyone that we work with that I’m able to just pick up the phone and say like, Hey, I have someone. They need this thing tomorrow, can we do it?

And often the answer is yes and it blows my mind every time the answer’s yes.

Amy: Oh, I got goosebumps.

Chantelle: That’s so fantastic that you have those connections. I’m so glad that she was able to get housing that fit her needs.

Jesse: I would like to say that anytime a building is being closed, people are offered like housing that’s the same or better.

And so for her, she always had housing options, but to get that step up, to have her own bathroom in her unit is life changing So she got to do that and it was because of a dog spay.

Amy: Yeah. And from our side, we see so many pyometra issues or late stage mammary cancers and such. So from the dog’s perspective, she got a improvement on her life as well, knowing that she won’t run into those situations in the future.

Chantelle: What are some of the challenges that the people you serve who share their lives with pets can face?

Jesse: I would say the same as any of us that have struggled with not having income. I know when I was younger, I struggled myself with affording my vet bills.

When we started, it was important for me to not go into the work assuming what the issues of the community were. We really did a lot of just knocking on doors and saying hi, I’m here. What can we help you with? What are your challenges?

I was pretty amazed at how open the community was. I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone knock on your door, but I’m usually pretty closed off if someone knocks at my door. And so it was really cool that I was knocking on all these doors and having people be like, yeah, come on in, come meet Charlie. I wanna talk to you about my pet.

The top needs that we found that people were having challenges with were:

• food insecurity,
• access to spay and neuter,
• health concerns.

We did see a lot of UTIs, ear infections, skin infections, chronic allergies.

We saw some behaviour concerns, cats peeing outside of the litter box. You know, the behaviours that come from being an intact male or female cat.

We saw some safety concerns. People were worried about how to go through the hallways if their dog was reactive or if other dogs were reactive to them.

And then we also had a lot of people that brought up the concerns of who would look after their pet if they needed to go to the hospital, or if they were in arrested, or if they wanted to go to detox.

You know, people found that was a huge barrier in their lives: either daycare, short-term foster, long-term foster.

Amy: I’m curious how the program work that you’re doing strengthens the rest of the work Atira does and the communities you serve.

Jesse: I think pets open the door for a lot of people. If you want to talk to someone and you ask them about their pet, people are really open about chatting with you about their pet.

And once you have that connection, you’re more likely to share other things and other aspects of your life that maybe you’re struggling with or challenges you have.

I am really lucky Atira is a big organization. I have so many colleagues who are experts in their fields. So if someone is struggling with their mental health, I can pull in someone from somewhere else and say meet my friend, they’re great. If they need help with housing, I have a person for that.

I find that pets just open those doors, and then I don’t take that place of social work. You know, I’ll listen to someone when they talk to me, but I will tell them, I’m not a social worker, I’m not a nurse. I don’t have that expertise. But I can help you find the right person and I won’t just forget about you.

Like I will find them. I’ll bring them, I’ll come with you. We’ll do an intro together. But I’m really lucky in that we’re able to provide this wraparound care for folks.

Amy: I love that term, wraparound care.

Chantelle: That’s wonderful to hear people care so much about their pets. It’s a wonderful first step to reach out to somebody.

Chantelle: Could you tell us more about the bonds between the people you serve and the animals that they have in their care, and what role those animals play in their guardian’s lives and wellbeing?

Jesse: I think anyone that’s shared their life with a pet can relate. You know, what does your pet mean to you?

I know for me, my dog is everything. She’s the first being that I interact with in the day, and she’s the last one that I interact with at night. She comes bed with me. It’s just such a comfort.

It’s the same for the folks that I’m connected with. We all have that bond with our pets.

I will say I don’t ever wanna speak for the community that I’m working with, and I will say every relationship is different.

Recently one of my clients that I’ve been working with quite closely lost her dog, who was her best friend, and this dog had been her best friend’s dog.

And then her best friend died and she took in her dog, and then her dog had cancer. And it was a really long process for us to kind of go through these appointments together, coming to terms with, when are we going to make this appointment?

She said to me, her dog is the only one that’s never done anything wrong to her. That really stuck with me.

I was like, that’s how I feel about my dog. My dog has never done anything to wrong me. Ever. And that’s such an important relationship.

Amy: Oh yeah. I really appreciate you saying that you don’t wanna speak on behalf of the folks that you’re serving. And I know I personally have struggled with mental health challenges and I can speak on behalf of myself too, to say my dog is the one who gets me out of bed, she’s the one who gets me outside.

And certainly I think that is echoed very much across the span of people who are marginalized, people who aren’t marginalized, all income levels. There is this like mental health benefit and connection. Thank you so much for speaking to that.

Amy: You spoke to this a bit, but if you have any other thoughts on it, how does this program improve the lives of the pets that you help?

Jesse: Going back to the challenges that folks are having, we aim to break down those barriers and have folks be able to access support for any sort of need that they might have.

Disaster response for pet guardians

Jesse: Another piece on top of that is we’ve created a disaster response, is kind of the best way to put it. It started with the Winters Hotel in Gastown. We realized that there was a need for emergency response on a large scale.

We had a fire back in June on Granville Street that was a building that has about 120 units in it, and we were able to have staff on site within a couple hours with supplies.

People had evacuated with cats without carriers; people had evacuated with their dogs without them being on leash. And we were able to be at the scene and be at the triage center with carriers, with leashes, with pet food, with litter, with temporary things.

Chantelle: We’ve got a lot of listeners at home who are very keen on helping animals. So is there anything that our listeners could do to help people who are in these vulnerable situations stay with their animal family members?

Become a foster for emergency care

Jesse: Absolutely. Be a foster.

I don’t know if that’s something that you’ve ever considered. Maybe folks are apprehensive about being a foster for a shelter animal because they’re worried about behavioural challenges.

But when you’re a foster for an animal that already has a home, they’re a lot easier. They’re generally a lot more used to being in a home. And so you might not see as many challenges as you would with the shelter dog.

I know Paws For Hope is always looking for fosters; Safekeepers Program through the BC SPCA; as well as For the Homies, which is a new one that’s working out of the Downtown Eastside.

Being a foster home for an already owned animal that has a loving home can save that human’s life.

Maybe they are not going into detox because they’re worried about what’s going to happen to their pet. We see a lot of people with really bad infections that need to go to the hospital for IV treatments. They need to stay in the hospital for a week and they don’t have anyone to take care of their pet. They don’t go or they go when they are absolutely needing to, and then they leave immediately after.

If they have a foster that can look after their dog or cat while they are getting that treatment, they’re more likely to stay and get the care that they need that can save their life.

So if you’ve been contemplating being a foster, if you’re even like considering it, I urge you to be a foster for one of those three programs or if there’s one in your city that’s not Vancouver.

Donate to help animals

Jesse: Donating finances is always helpful. You can donate directly to our program through our website at atira.bc.ca. You just need to specify that it’s for the Pet Outreach program.

I would also urge you to donate to the McVitie program through the Vancouver Humane Society. We have used their resources and their funding so many times. Anyone can access it that is low income in B.C. and needing life-saving veterinary care.

I know that it’s really helped us, especially when we were starting out and we didn’t have any finances of our own to help pets. The Vancouver Humane Society really stepped up and helped us with some of the animals that needed care.

Volunteer to support seniors’ pets in their homes

Amy: Thank you for listing those. One more that I would add is ElderDog. It’s an organization that you can volunteer with and you can walk dogs for people, things like that.

So you don’t actually have to take them into your home. But that makes a huge difference when guardians have to go into hospital or things like that. Their program particularly is helping folks that are elderly.

There’s so many different ways that you can get involved in different levels of commitment.

Please check out next month’s episode on veterinary social work!

How do bills become law in Canada?

Have you ever seen an action advocating for a new law in Canada and thought, “Didn’t that bill already pass?” The process for introducing a new bill and voting to make it law is long and complex; but knowing how this process works gives us power to make our voices heard.

This episode will break down in simple steps the types of bills in Canada, how a bill becomes law, examples of bills that have passed to improve life for animals, what happens when a bill doesn’t pass, and how you can make a difference at each stage of the process.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Chantelle: Right now, we’re in the middle of our series looking at a macro view of animal protection: How does advocacy make change and where does Canada stand on the world stage when it comes to animal protection?

This month we’ll be zooming in a little bit on a topic that I think causes a lot of confusion, which is the process of how federal laws in Canada actually come to be.

If you’ve ever seen a headline like: “The Bill to ban live horse exports for slaughter from Canada passes at the House of Commons”, and then later heard about that bill dying before becoming law, and thought to yourself, “Didn’t that bill already pass?” This episode is going to break down the different steps of the process in a way we hope will be engaging and understandable.

We’ll also look at some examples of bills that have passed to improve animal protection and what happens when a bill doesn’t pass in time or is voted down, as well as how you can advocate at each step of the process.

Amy: I’m excited about this one. I think it can be really confusing about what is going on with these bills, and we send out action alerts at many different stages, and I imagine people are like, “What is going on? I’ve already spoken to somebody about this.”

Hopefully this will clarify why it’s so important to advocate at a number of different stages, because the audiences change of who we’re advocating to and who we need to give the thumbs up.

Amy: I’ll get us started with the types of bills that we have.

A few types of bills in Canada can be broken down kind of into like a tree diagram.

If you’re following the updates of a bill as it becomes a law, you’ll notice that there’s a code associated with each bill. For instance, the bill to ban captivity of cetaceans like whales and dolphins was commonly called the Free Willy Bill, but the official name was S-203.

If you know the breakdown of the different types of bills, you can actually tell what type of bill it was based on the code.

Public bills vs. private bills

Amy: Overall, there are two main categories of bills in Canada that tell us what type of matter the bill is dealing with. There are public bills (numbered 1 through 1000 in the bill’s code) and private bills (numbered 1001 and beyond)

Private bills have a very specific purpose of granting special powers, benefits, or exemptions to a person or group.

Anything involving animal protection is going to fall into the category of public bills, which is the type of bills that deal with matters of national interests, like budget, industry or social issues.

Public bills: government vs. private members’ bills

Amy: And then you take this category of public bills and you further break that down into a bill that comes out from the government or private member.

That tells us who is introducing the bill and their level of involvement with the government.

Government bills are introduced by a key decision maker in the government; when we say that, that means the party in power. They are bills that are considered a matter of public interest, and they represent the direction the elected party is prioritizing.

The people who can submit a government bill are a parliamentary secretary, the government representative in the Senate, or a cabinet minister. These are all key decision-makers for a government.

A cabinet minister is an elected MP selected by the Prime Minister to be part of the country’s key decision makers. The cabinet is almost always made up of members of the same party of the Prime Minister. I would say in recorded history, that’s the case. And so for instance, our current Prime Minister, Prime Minister Mark Carney is Liberal and the cabinet that he has chosen is all made up of elected MPs from the Liberal party.

An example of a government bill would be a decision to implement budget changes in the country like Bill C-47, a budget change bill from 2023.

Government bills are numbered between 1 and 200.

Private members’ bills (House of Commons) /non-government bills (Senate) are simply public bills that are introduced by a member of Parliament or Senate who is not one of the key decision-makers that we just listed.

This means that this type of bill can be introduced by someone from any party as long as they have a seat on Parliament or in the Senate. Private members’ bills can deal with issues of public concern, but they can’t change taxes or how government funds are spent. They’re numbered from 201 to 1000.

Bills introduced in the House of Commons vs. Senate

Amy: We can have bills that are introduced in the Senate, and those are bills starting with an S, and they have bills that are introduced in the House of Commons, starting with a C.

Even though where they’re introduced is how the bill is labeled, they all need to pass through both the Senate and the House of Commons to become law.

And, and just a reminder, Senate is appointed in Canada and the House of Commons is elected by voters.

Chantelle: Thank you so much for that overview, Amy. Every bill does go through both the Senate and the House of Commons, and they all go through several readings at both of those houses. I’ll break down what each of those readings means. When you get updates from us, usually it’s after each stage of the readings at the Senate and the House of Commons.

First reading of a bill in Canada

Chantelle: The first reading just means the bill is being introduced in either the Senat or the House of Commons. It is named and it’s made available to the public.

There’s no debate at this stage and there’s no vote. It’s just being introduced.

Second reading of a bill

Chantelle: At the second reading, now that the rest of the MPs or Senators have been introduced to the bill and they have had a chance to read it, they also now have a chance to debate it.

Even though it’s called a second reading stage, this can happen over multiple sessions if there’s no decision made.

There can be a vote to reject the bill at this stage or at any stage after this, or a vote to move the bill to the next stage. So it can technically move right to a third reading, but it’s usually first moved to a committee to study it and make amendments.

Committee stage of a bill

Chantelle: At the committee stage, a smaller group from the House of Commons or Senate will take a closer look at the bill.

It’s usually referred to a standing committee that has a specific focus in the bill’s subject matter. So for example, if it’s a bill about farmed animals, it would go through the Committee of Agriculture and AgriFood at the House of Commons and the Committee of Agriculture and Forestry at Senate. But some bills can go to a legislative committee instead, which is just a group created to consider a specific law.

The committee goes through the whole text of the bill and they propose amendments to specific clauses of the bill if they choose to.

After they decide what changes to make to the bill, if any, they vote on the bill as a whole. The committee cannot reject the bill outright, but if they don’t like it and they don’t want it to move forward, they can choose to recommend that the bill be dropped at the next stage during the reporting stage.

Reporting stage

Chantelle: The reporting stage is when the committee reports back to the larger group on their recommendations.

If it’s in the House of Commons, the other MPs can suggest additional changes here. The Senate can suggest additional changes at the third reading.

After the report, the house votes on the changes if there are any, and finalizes the bill for the third reading, which is the last step in the house.

Third reading of a bill

Chantelle: The third reading is the final debate on the finalized text of the bill. The House of Commons or the Senate decides if they want the bill to be adopted. If they choose to have the bill adopted and they vote yes, the bill moves on to the next house to go through this whole process again.

Or, if it’s already been through both houses, then it moves on to the the final stage of royal ascent. The houses have to talk to each other if they have made amendments to the bill; they can’t just make amendments and not speak to each other afterwards. If a bill was introduced at the House of Commons and it passed by our elected officials, and then the Senate wants to make more amendments, they have to reach back out to the House of Commons until they can agree between the two on what the final text of the bill is that they want to use.

How a bill becomes law in Canada: Royal Assent

Once both houses pass the bill, it moves on to receive Royal Assent. Canada is a Commonwealth nation, so the bill is signed by the Governor General or one of their deputies who represent the King of the UK in Canada.

In theory, the law could get stopped at this stage, but it won’t in practice, because that would violate constitutional conventions by interfering with the decisions of elected officials.

It’s really just a formality, but it is necessary for a bill to become law.

That was a lot of information and it was kind of abstract, but we’d love to share a few examples of what this has looked like in practice for different animal protection bills.

Amy: Yeah, it’s so interesting. I mean, even the reality that if changes get made in one place, then the other team has to approve those changes. I imagine there can be a lot of back and forth that happens even in that. So it’s amazing anything gets passed.

Certainly it has to do with how many people are in favour of a certain way of thinking.

We could call it a party, but it’s even beyond that. When we think about the Senate being appointed, what is the general sort of attitude of the Senate? Even if a party is elected into the House, if the Senate has a different leaning of how they think things should be done, they could consistently hold up bills from being passed.

I don’t think they necessarily do, but it’s interesting to think about how our political system kind of like chugs along.

Chantelle: Yeah. And it does kind of explain why it takes so long to make progress in this country when we look at how long the process actually is.

Amy: Yeah, absolutely.

Amy: I briefly mentioned earlier about Bill S-203, also known as the Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act, or more commonly as the “Free Willy” bill.

This one is a really interesting one for me because I got to sit on a Senate committee hearing and I was in the room with all of the Senators talking about it. I even witnessed one of the Senators getting text messages from folks who maybe were on the opposing side of the bill and reading out those text messages, which is kind of questionable activity.

And so this one’s personal for me. So you can tell by the code that this was a non-government bill and that was introduced by the Senate because it started with an S.

Like a lot of non-government bills, it was introduced because of pressure from the public. Many individuals across Canada had been speaking out about how whales and dolphins were suffering in captivity. The knowledge of the sentience of cetaceans was irrefutable.

It could no longer be justified to keep these animals for entertainment, so organizations including the Vancouver Humane Society, Humane Canada, Animal Justice and World Animal Protection ran advocacy campaigns on this both locally in individual jurisdictions like Vancouver and Toronto, and also at a national level.

Humane Canada worked with Senator Wilfred P. Moore in 2015, just an incredible Senator. I recommend looking into that individual and some of their quotes.

It took three years from 2015 to 2018 for the bill to move through all the stages at Senate. Then luckily it did move fairly quickly through the House of Commons between October 2018 and June 2019, and received Royal Assent just 11 days later.

It’s quite a bit easier to advocate for a bill to pass at the House of Commons, especially for something like that, having widespread public support because the MPs are accountable to their constituents who voted them in, and they’re generally hoping to be reelected.

The reason that this bill did move through was really consistent internal advocacy between Wilfred P. Moore and other Senators, and really recognizing the value of these beautiful animals. It can’t be understated how important the internal advocacy is in these stages of the processes.

And certainly, although Senators are appointed, they can still be contacted by members of the public, and so advocacy makes such an impact to keep these things moving, especially with politicians or Senators who are on the fence. Hearing from people makes it less intellectual and more of demonstrating the public demand.

The final text of the bill that we’re talking about makes it illegal to capture or keep whales, dolphins, and porpoises in captivity, except those that were already in captivity when the law came into effect, and a few other exceptions, like research with a license from the province and rehabilitation.

This is one we were really grateful for.

Chantelle: Yeah, absolutely. This was a huge victory that really shows that when we come together and keep pushing for change, we can really motivate a government to make it happen.

Of course, there are still many other animals being kept in captivity at zoos and aquariums who, like cetaceans, aren’t suited to have a good full life in human care, and we keep advocating for better protections across all wild and exotic species.

But this was a huge win for cetaceans.

Amy: Absolutely.

Amy: Another example of a win for animals that used a completely different approach is the ban on cosmetic testing on animals, which passed as part of a big omnibus bill, which was C-47.

And for a bit of history of this, the ban on cosmetic animal testing was a private bill at one point that essentially died and then it got revived again.

Once it was revived, it became a government bill. There were enough lobbying efforts that recognized that this bill shouldn’t have died, that it should have gone through. And so the government was willing to take it on, which is amazing.

It was introduced in the House of Commons as they were implementing changes to the budget, so it did represent a major part of the government’s plan and priorities.

Something to note of why the government took this on is that there were people from the cosmetic industry that wanted this bill to pass, so there wasn’t opposition to it the way that there can be with some bills because the cosmetics industries were saying, “Yes, please pass this bill.” There was no one really opposed to it.

Some of the changes that were looped into the bill were amendments to the Food and Drug Act, and one of those was essentially a ban on animal testing.

A mix of things went into this strong advocacy from organizations across Canada to include a ban on animal testing in this bill.

As I shared, it’s a relatively uncontroversial issue. Stakeholders from the beauty industry were on board as well as the public and animal protection groups. And the Liberal party even made a campaign promise to end cosmetic testing on animals as soon as 2023. So it made sense to include it as part of one of their government bills.

That ban went through the same process as many bills do, and took effect in December, 2023 once it was passed by both the House and the Senate.

Chantelle: It’s so interesting to see the different paths that we can take to improve federal policies because those are two successful bills that did become law that took such different paths.

I am really grateful that they did end up both passing. But not all bills make it that far.

Chantelle: Unfortunately, if a bill is voted down at any stage, or if it doesn’t make it all the way through the process and receive Royal Assent before an election is called, and Parliament is dissolved for the session, then that bill dies and it stops moving through the process.

If people want to reintroduce it, it needs to start again from the beginning.

Chantelle: One example of this that we’ve spoken a lot about is Bill C-355, which was the bill to ban the export of live horses from Canada for slaughter overseas.

Banning this industry was a campaign promise from the Liberal government in 2021, and it was also included in a mandate letter from former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the Minister of Agriculture at the time, Marie-Claude Bibeau.

So, in theory, it could have been included as part of a government bill. It was an election promise, just as ending cosmetic animal testing was. But instead it was brought forward as a private members’ bill, which can pass, but they have a relatively lower rate of success.

Amy: One of the reasons for that is the way time is allocated in the House is that government bills always get the first order of business, and then essentially the private members’ bills get the last little bit of time, and there’s lots of them, and they get selected at random.

So there’s just like basically drawing a number out of a hat: Okay, you get to do your bill today. But with so many of them, it often takes months for a bill to even get first reading, second reading, et cetera. And so that limits significantly the funnel of private members’ bills ever being passed.

Chantelle: That’s a great point. Any private members’ bill passing is a huge feat and this one simply didn’t.

Why is Canada still exporting horses for slaughter?

Chantelle: Bill C-355 was introduced by Liberal MP Tim Lewis. And it did actually end up passing through all the stages at the House of Commons. So our elected officials said, “Yes, we agree with Canadians. This is an industry that is cruel and should end.”

But when it got to the second reading at the Senate, when it’s put to a vote, it kept getting stalled. It was debated in May 2024, and then it was not picked up again until November.

There was a lot of public pressure in between those two debates. And there were certain Senators essentially dragging their feet on this bill, questioning the integrity of advocates and muddying the waters with unrelated issues.

A few things came up in debates, and you can actually read the debates if you look up Bill C-355. It’s all public information. If you look through the process, you can see the transcripts of what was said in Senate.

The first time it went to debate, one Senator brought up how the bill might affect lobster fishing in Atlantic Canada.

Then over the summer and early fall, two exposes came out from Animal Justice and advocates from Japan who revealed what happens on the receiving end of horse exports. They found most horse shipments actually exceed the legal limit of 28 hours without food, water, or rest that our regulators allow by the time they make it to their final destination; because we really only track until they make it onto the tarmac on the other side. But by the time they actually make it to where they’re going to be staying and they receive that food, water, rest, it’s usually over 28 hours.

And they also found that horse deaths on these flights were being vastly under-reported by Canadian regulators.

In the follow-up debates, there was a Senator who kept questioning if those reports could be trusted. Senator Don Plett was very vocal about this, and after Parliament was prorogued, he even wrote an op-ed that made a lot of misleading claims about horse exports.

So again, this is a small number of Senators who were appointed, not elected, who were holding up a bill that would save thousands of lives, and that about two thirds of Canadians agree with.

How “getting in the weeds” distracts from the big picture

Amy: One of the other things that’s really interesting about this is it gets into so much of the weeds to say, “Are those reports that it’s beyond 28 hours accurate,” when what we’re talking about are animals that are being subjected to a really horrifying series of steps.

Of being transported, put in tiny crates, flown on a plane still in tiny crates, brought to a slaughterhouse, and then slaughtered. The amount of stress that they go through is enormous. Whether that’s 27 or 28 or 29 or 40 hours, the horses are still suffering significantly. That was the main point.

So what ends up happening is you have these sort of industry-supported senators, like Senator Don Plett, who take the opportunity to break an argument down into tiny distracting steps that then take away from the overall concerns.

And to be fair, in what I mentioned earlier from S-203, Don Plett was the same senator who was receiving texts from Marineland during the Senate committee hearings.

So there’s also a pattern that was with this individual of supporting industry, whatever it is, in causing harm to animals. And I’ve learned recently that this senator is retired, so that’s good news and hopefully we see more kind of animal-aware and thoughtful senators taking leadership in the Senate as we move forward.

Chantelle: You’ll see this both in Senate and anywhere you’re talking about important issues.

One of the really common methods that people will use to try and counter your argument is breaking it down into a lot of minute counter-arguments. They’ll say them all back to back and they’ll make a lot of claims. Some of them may be true, some of them not true.

That’s called a “Gish gallop”, and it has been used historically by people who are debating in bad faith. It ensures that if you were to, one by one, accurately and thoughtfully address each one of those claims, you would run out of time.

So you can’t address all of their claims and all of the falsehoods that they’ve brought forward and say what is misleading and what is not. And then a lot of people will then come back and say, “Well you didn’t address this part of my argument.” That is why it’s a bad faith kind of argument.

Delays mean ban on horse exports for slaughter will need to start from the beginning

Chantelle: The bill went through four debates in its second reading, and then Parliament was dissolved before the election, which means that it will need to be reintroduced and it will need to start the process from the beginning.

Another way to advocate: Work with the ministries

Amy: And certainly, there are a lot of different ways to go about making change with government.

Working with the elected officials and appointed officials is one step.

Another way of making change is working directly with the ministries. The ministries are putting research and information together that works its way up into the government as recommendations to the ministers, who then can put them forward as government bills.

And so when you do that, you’re essentially avoiding all the plagues that come with a private members’ bill.

That’s the strategy that Humane Canada, who represents animal protection organizations across the country, will be focusing on with this new cycle, is how do we get information into the ministries themselves so that the ministries then put that forward into government bills and it’s much more likely to pass. So that’s something to stay tuned.

We as citizens can also contact the ministries. We’re not limited to contacting elected officials, and so that’s also something to consider when doing advocacy is what is the best avenue for getting change across.

Step 1 of engaging with the law process: Get to know your MP

Amy: And just to share a little bit more ways that any individual citizen can engage with this whole process. The first one is just get to know your MP, because no matter where they lie on the political spectrum, they are tasked with representing you once they’re elected.

You can give them a call or send them an email and share the issues that are important to you that you’ve learned about.

And that can be a number of issues. That doesn’t have to be all animal related. It’s just a way of saying, “Here’s what I care about and I’m one of your constituents.”

Introduce a parliamentary petition

Amy: If you want to get a bill forward on the agenda, you can work with an MP to introduce a parliamentary petition, and so you can create one or you can sign one on the Parliament of Canada website.

If an online petition gets at least 500 valid signatures, the government has to respond to it within 45 days. They do a written response, which is pretty ideal in that it becomes an issue that the government now considers something that is important.

It’s a great way to get an issue on a decision makers’ radar. Petitions that get a lot of support from Canadians are more likely to lead to policy proposals.

When a bill is introduced: Contact your MP or Senators from your province

Amy: Once a bill is introduced, if it’s in the House of Commons, you can contact your MP to share why you do or don’t agree with bill, and ask them to vote in alignment with their constituents’ values.

If it’s in the Senate, you can also contact the Senators from your province.

See how your MP voted at each stage and follow up

Amy: You can also follow along with the progress of a bill if you’re on the Vancouver Humane Society’s mailing list. We often share updates on relevant animal welfare bills. Anything that’s happening nationally, we want to make sure you’re aware of in addition to all the local work that we’re doing.

And then after each stage of the bill, you can see how your MP voted and you can even reach out to them and thank them or share why you feel they should change their position for the next voting opportunity.

Chantelle: Yes, absolutely. And you can look up any bill name, as I said before, on the Parliament of Canada website.

And in the details of the bill, you can see the results of the recorded votes, so you can see what your MP voted on the bill. You can sort those results by province or by political affiliation and see all the people that voted yay or nay. The MPs usually vote along party lines, and I certainly look at that data for important issues to me to see which parties are voting in alignment with my values.

See how your MP has voted on past issues

Amy: You can look up your specific MP to see how they voted on past issues to inform how you engage with them, recognizing that some issues they may be more willing to engage with than others.

Follow along with Humane Canada

Amy: It’s good to stay involved with Humane Canada’s messaging because they are that national body doing national work, and there’s a number of bills that didn’t make it through in the last session. They’ll be working on getting policy change on those.

Certainly one of them is related to housing of exotic animals. That one’s called the Jane Goodall bill. A lot of work was done on that one before an election was called, and so they’ll be coming up with a new strategy for how to get that through.

Honestly, the most important part is having individuals write in and show that they care If it’s just organizations that are representing individuals, the response from elected officials is far less engaged than if they’re hearing from many different supporters.

Chantelle: To sum up today’s conversation, I think it’s safe to say policy change is a long game, but change is certainly possible and we are making progress.

We are most effective when we’re strategic about:

• What change is possible right now?
• How do we bring people together to put public pressure on decision makers?
• The timing of making those changes: What commitments have been made by the government in power or what is happening in the world to bring attention to these issues?

Please join us again next month as we talk about about the ways animal advocacy intersects with social justice and community care, and how those sectors can work together to make a kinder world for both people and animals.

How does Canada stack up against other countries’ animal protection policies?

This month’s episode of the Informed Animal Ally welcomes Melissa Matlow of World Animal Protection to discuss the Animal Protection Index (API). The API ranks 50 countries around the globe based on their animal protection policies, giving them a letter grade from A to G.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Chantelle: This month we’re so excited to introduce Melissa Matlow, the campaign Director of World Animal Protection, to talk about her organization’s Animal Protection Index. Melissa, thank you so much for joining us.

To start off, I would love to hear more about your role at World Animal Protection and what led you to get involved in animal advocacy and your history in this work.

Melissa: Sure. So I’m the Campaign Director. I oversee our wildlife and farming campaigns in Canada. We’re an international organization, so our Canadian campaigns align with our international strategy.

What led me to animal advocacy was that I grew up in the Niagara region not far from a place called Marineland, and that was my first place that I picked up a placard and protested.

I met a local grassroots organization called Niagara Action for Animals. And I started volunteering with them. I invited them into my classroom in high school to start talking about animal welfare issues, and I thought they were gonna talk about circuses and zoos and all the issues I understood as a young, compassionate animal lover. They talked about farming and that transformed me. Everything that I did with them really led to where I am today.

Amy: I was expecting you to say they talked about like, cats and dogs or shelters. That’s pretty amazing that they did talk about farming and you got to learn about those issues at that time.

Melissa: It was quite interesting. I was not expecting it. I thought we’d talk about cosmetic testing. I remember not eating my lunch that day at school. I remember feeling very uncomfortable about what I was learning as well.

I should add that my parents came from farming backgrounds, so it was difficult in our home to talk about this. I think that’s how I started learning how to advocate and lobby is through my family, because it was a very uncomfortable conversation for all of us and I had to figure out how not to offend them, but to see it the way I did and they of course shared how they saw it.

And, you know, farming was very different when they were on the farm than it is today.

Amy: That resonates with me as well. My family’s not in farming, but the experience of learning to be an advocate at a young age through conversations and still loving your family. Thank you for sharing that.

Amy: So today we’re going to talk about the Animal Protection Index. I understand it to be an ambitious project that evaluates the laws and policy commitments of 50 different countries. Can you tell us more about this initiative and why it’s so important?

Melissa: Yeah, it ranked 50 countries, as you said, from A to G: A being the highest score to G being the weakest. It was on government policy and legislation that protects animals and improves their welfare.

There were a number of categories covered: farm animals, wildlife, companion animals, animals used for work and recreation, and scientific research.

The first ranking was done in 2014. We produced a second edition in 2020 with the methodology refined slightly. And it was really meant to be a tool to inspire conversations and influence countries to improve their animal protection legislation.

It is an ambitious project. It took a while just to do the report and to ensure that there was enough in-depth information about each country, but also consistent and fair for the ranking.

And we also sent the reports before we launched them to the Chief Veterinary Officers for all the countries to invite their feedback as well, which did help us tweak the methodology in the second edition. So it was meant as well to start a conversation with them about how we should be measuring progress on animal welfare.

Amy: That’s amazing. I’m curious how many different people ended up reviewing the laws.

Melissa: For the 50 countries, I do know that we actually had great legal support pro bono from DLA Piper. And then the country campaign teams would review and provide feedback and other information that they wouldn’t necessarily know. Because sometimes you don’t know about policy commitments from reading legislation as well, or the intention behind it. And there’s other things we wanted to raise.

I know there was one project manager for all 50 and then DLA Piper and then all our offices in 12 countries. And probably some consultants in other countries where we don’t have staff.

Amy: That’s an amazing undertaking.

Melissa: It was, and I should say while World Animal Protection led on this, there was a steering group of other animal protection organizations that helped. IFAW and HSI, which is now Humane World for Animals, Compassion in World Farming, and RSPCA were part of this advisory group that helped us with the methodology to begin with in 2014, and then we took it forward.

Chantelle: What an amazing project. I was going through this report and there’s so much incredible data to sift through and explore. I was thinking we could just go over some important highlights for people today.

Which countries scored the highest in terms of animal welfare?

Top countries for animal welfare: UK, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, and Denmark

Melissa: No country received an A, but the UK, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, and Denmark, all received a B. So they did the best.

I think A was given in 2014 to New Zealand. I’m not sure why their ranking dropped. But that might have been a refinement of the strategy as well.

And it just shows how difficult and complex it is. It is really a benchmark. There might be things that some countries find unfair. But I think that the increase in number of countries at the B level probably is a good sign of progress.

Animal protection laws aren’t always enforced

Amy: It’s so interesting that you bring up New Zealand because I went to New Zealand in 2016. I went there on purpose because I knew that their laws were quite good and I wanted to see firsthand what it looked like on the farms.

So I ended up doing kind of like workaway or WWOOFing type things, where you work in exchange for room and food.

I was on a number of different farms that were smaller scale. Some of them more commercial than others. And I witnessed harms to animals. Some more than others and varying in type and scale.

And it was really interesting and it stuck with me. I asked one farmer, are you aware of these codes of practice that exist? And, he was like, no, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

So it’s interesting because we have scale of laws, and then there’s also the whole side of implementation, which is a difficult to evaluate.

Melissa: Yeah, enforcement wasn’t ranked in terms of capabilities and implementation. We are ranking the legislation for how they look on paper and how they consider animal sentience, but there’s a whole other level of changing attitudes and enforcement that needs to go along with it.

Amy: What are the key lessons we can learn from the countries that do get high ratings in terms of their policies and best practices?

Canada doesn’t have national animal welfare legislation

Melissa: Well, Sweden I think ranked highly because they have a national animal welfare law, for instance. And I think many listeners might be shocked to know that Canada doesn’t have national animal welfare legislation. We have animal cruelty provisions under the Criminal Code to react to animal cruelty, but no proactive legislation to raise the standards for animal welfare for all animals nationally in a broad sense.

The UK has banned fur farming and has legislation that goes beyond EU requirements for banning sow stalls. And there has been progress a year after we launched the report in 2020, the UK passed legislation formally recognizing sentient beings in domestic law and an action plan for animal welfare.

So these are all types of legal progress that we wanted the Animal Protection Index (API) to inspire.

And then I would say Netherlands is a great example for wildlife because they take a very precautionary approach to mitigating the risk of keeping certain animals, particularly wild animals, as pets through the positive list approach versus a negative list.

So in different categories, different countries really are leading the way. I would say Netherlands and Belgium are leading on the positive list approach to try to phase out the exotic pet trade.

Amy: And for those who are listening who aren’t sure of what Canada has, we certainly do not have a national law declaring the sentience of animals.

And in fact, animals are not protected under our Constitution. They’re protected under other laws, but really there’s this sense that they’re only protected because they fall under the dominion of people and not protected in of their own rights.

And then when it comes to this positive list that the Netherlands has, this is something that we talk about all the time at VHS and we’re advocating at the provincial level because the animal laws are broken up into provinces and so it’s difficult to get this national approach, but it’s even more difficult to even get a provincial approach.

We haven’t made a lot of progress with it, but we keep at it.

Melissa: That’s right. There’s this patchwork of different legislations across municipal bylaws, provincial laws, and we really need the federal leadership to really harmonize and raise the bar.

Chantelle: Absolutely. So as you said, Melissa, there aren’t any countries that have an A score, but I was curious what a country would need to do if we were to work ambitiously to receive an A score on the index.

Melissa: A country would need to:

• Formally recognize animal sentience in national legislation;
• Have one sufficiently resourced, accountable government body leading on animal welfare;
• Have strong laws to prohibit animal suffering, including through neglect and abandonment;
• Have specific laws in animal welfare standards for the various ways animals are used—because those require different standards, whether animals are on farms or in captivity;
• Phase out inhumane and unnecessary industries;
• And be supportive of international animal welfare standards through the World Organization for Animal Health.

So to check off all those boxes would get a country an A. So it’s ambitious, but not impossible. As we see some countries are leading in some areas, showing that it can be done.

Amy: Also very reasonable. We’re not asking for the moon here. I think we’re asking for something that, with all of our technology and knowledge, could be put into place within one season of a political power essentially.

Chantelle: And there’s also organizations working towards all of these things in Canada.

Melissa: Absolutely. It’s a no-brainer that animals should be protected because they think and feel in love and are sentient, and it is a longstanding campaign of many animal organizations to get there.

I think the hardest part has been to get one ministry to lead on this.

And you know, we talked about it in the National Animal Protection debate that we co-hosted with Vancouver Humane Society and other organizations: how do we reconcile the conflict of interest where animal welfare is primarily under the Ministry of Agriculture’s domain federally? Getting that decision and having a different ministry lead on it is probably the hardest thing. And then once we have that, to me that’s a very important incremental step for Canada.

Amy: Absolutely, and I think that feeds into the next question; how does Canada compare to the other countries analyzed?

Melissa: This probably doesn’t surprise you both, but Canada received a D. We sit on the lower half of the ranking. We ranked below India, the Philippines, Brazil, Australia and most of Europe. And we ranked alongside countries like Kenya, South Africa, Columbia, Peru, countries with much lower GDPs. So it means there’s substantial room for improvement.

I think that might have been a surprise for many people who don’t follow animal welfare legislation. People tend to think of Canada as being more progressive on that, maybe because we have been progressive on other issues, but not necessarily on animal welfare.

Amy: And just for context, what does the scale go down to? What’s the lowest grade you can receive?

Melissa: The lowest grade was a G.

Amy: Thank you for sharing that. I certainly we’re lucky we’re not at a G, but that’s still good enough.

Chantelle: Canada has a great reputation for being polite and a kind country, but our laws are really not that kind to animals.

Chantelle: Among the categories the index evaluates, where does Canada perform well? Where do we perform the best?

Melissa: This might surprise you, but in the provincial laws against animal suffering—and I know that’s not good enough and there’s so much room for improvement there—we have seen steady progress with provinces improving their animal cruelty laws.

And I suppose when you think of the public response to an egregious animal cruelty case, it’s understandable that governments would be persuaded to address that better with stronger enforcement and stronger tools to convict people. Again, we lack that forward thinking and raising the bar for animal welfare in the ways that society still finds it acceptable to use animals.

Progress in Canada on animal captivity

Melissa: We have made a lot of progress with the ban on keeping whales in captivity. So, we receive some good marks for that, but it’s only for whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Canada would need to extend that protection to other wildlife species to have a higher grade.

And fortunately we have seen progress in the last Parliament with the Jane Goodall Bill to increase protection for more species. That bill, of course, died when the parliament prorogued and then the election was called.

But we have seen a commitment under Prime Minister Carney and the Liberals to build on that progress, which is great.

Canada bans cosmetic animal testing

Melissa: While we received a failing grade of E in our 2020 report for not protecting animals in scientific research, I have to add that we’re going to have a better mark in the next edition (if there is one, and I hope there is) for banning cosmetic testing.

So a lot of progress actually came after our 2020 report was launched. That ban took effect December, 2023, so we probably will go from worst to first in that category. It just shows how quickly things can evolve.

I would say the strongest area was the animal cruelty laws in provinces. So we did look at provincial jurisdiction where provincial jurisdiction made sense. It wasn’t just federal laws, but of course we wanna see the federal government play a leadership role and strengthening laws where provinces are still falling behind.

Chantelle: Absolutely. That’s so important. And then we can have some consistency.

Amy: So on the flip side of all of that, where would you say Canada has the most room for improvement?

Melissa: I would say farm animal welfare. There’s still not enough legal protections for farm animals on the farm. There are the codes of practice that are voluntary.

There’s been some progress on strengthening transport regulations, but still not enough. Particularly for such a large country like Canada, our regulations still allow animals to be transported long distances before they are required to be fed and given water and rest.

I think there’s still so much more to do for animals caught up in the wildlife trade for exotic pets and zoos.

Canada did show leadership through the whale and dolphin ban through Bill S203, and so that’s a great opportunity for us to expand on that for other species.

Canada should have a Ministry of Animal Welfare

Melissa: Lastly, we need overarching national animal welfare legislation and one ministry to take the leadership role. Whether we can get that Minister of Animal Welfare, or at least make this under a ministry where there is no conflict of interest with objectives for growing the industry, like a Ministry of Agriculture has. And of course there’s so many other species to look at besides farm animals. So it doesn’t really make sense under agriculture either for that reason.

So those would be the biggest areas of improvement, I would say. But there’s plenty of room everywhere.

Amy: I appreciate you bringing that up—the idea that agriculture can’t police itself.

That’s something I’ve noticed at the provincial level. There are a number of bodies that do the work and then there are secondary bodies that observe the work that is done.

And that happens in child welfare; that happens in privacy. And there’s essentially this like intentional role of an ombuds person or ombuds ministry that is making sure that the ministry is accountable.

When I found that out that that was possible, I thought, what a lovely thing to have is checks and balances within a government. Because so often government is this end all be all. And the idea of having accountability built in builds so much more public trust.

Melissa: It’s so important. And also I think the beauty of animal welfare is it’s so intersectional. It’s a solution to so many other issues, whether it’s public health, disease spread, climate change, biodiversity loss, antimicrobial resistance. It deserves its own place because it can support other goals and other ministries related to those issues as well.

And you know, it’s for a long time been neglected in agriculture and really no home elsewhere. Even with the whale bill with that falling under the Ministry of Environment, there was a discomfort with staff because they didn’t see it as an environmental issue and they didn’t see animal welfare as part of their expertise or mandate.

It needs its own place really.

Chantelle: That’s a great point. We’re bringing up animal agriculture so much because that’s one of our main areas of focus as an organization and on this show. It’s got such massive suffering associated with it on an enormous, unimaginable scale of animal lives.

But I do know that now that Canada is moving away from the United States as a trade partner, we have trade opportunities with other countries and we do have trade of products that come from animal bodies. So there might be a natural evolution towards the standards that these other countries have.

Melissa: Yes, that would be a good thing out of all the tension and challenges we have in our country today. We see that from the political parties encouraging this shift towards finding new trading partners, and that could help us raise the bar for animal welfare in order to trade with them to get these markets.

Amy: It’s certainly how New Zealand has put as much attention as they have, is because their ministry related to animals falls within what’s called their Department of Primary Industries. There’s only a few things that fit within that department, and they’re essentially the things that have the most export and bring the country the most money. And then as a result they see the public risk.

They had a few high profile incidences of animals being transported to other countries and it not going well. And so that led to quite a few changes within their ministry.

Chantelle: Melissa, what changes would you like to see in Canada’s animal protection policies?

Reintroduce the Jane Goodall Bill on captivity

Melissa: So many changes, but if I were to think of where we are right now and where we could go next, I would like to see Canada reintroduce the Jane Goodall Bill and really work to end captive wildlife entertainment. There was strong support among animal protection organizations including the top zoos in Canada.

There is an opportunity to really phase out those roadside zoos and raise the bar for zoos to have a purpose.

We have collaborated with the Toronto Zoo. Some people might be surprised by that, because we don’t agree with captivity unless it’s a last resort that serves the animal’s best interest.

And we have to remind people, sanctuaries are still captivity. It’s not the best thing we can hope for for those animals, because they can’t be released in the wild. We support it if you’re rehabilitating and releasing an animal into the wild and it serves a conservation benefit.

That’s what the Jane Goodall Bill is meant to do, it’s meant to raise that bar and really restrict the breeding of these animals unless there is that purpose. And I think that’s really important and it’s really exciting to see Canada actually lead in this area.

If we could ban elephant and great ape captivity, we’d be the first country to do so.

Restrict the wildlife trade

Melissa: And I think we can also build on restrictions to the wildlife trade. We saw that in the Liberal platform that there is a commitment to address the illegal wildlife trade through modernizing our system at the border.

I think we can build on the data we collect at the border through a better system to show where the risks are because the legal trade is massive. It’s not sustainable and we just need to show where all these animals are coming from, what the purpose is.

Another benefit risk analysis, like whose livelihoods are benefiting from this? Where are these animals coming from? Are they at risk of becoming endangered?

We know their animal welfare would be poor in these systems, and there’s a lot of disease risk. So I think that’s another area I’d like to move on. Given the platform commitment, it’s a great opportunity.

Introduce minimum welfare standards in legislation

Melissa: And then definitely it’d be great to have minimal animal welfare standards in legislation. The codes of practice have moved the needle a bit on farm animal welfare, but we need legislation to protect these animals too.

Amy: Absolutely, and I think many of our listeners know, right now the way the codes of practice are incorporated into law actually serve as a protection for the farmers rather than a protection for the animals.

So even though we have these standards that are being developed collaboratively—and I would say they’re minimum standards—they still aren’t serving a purpose of protection at this point in time.

Amy: We like to leave our listeners with an action that they take. What can people do to help improve animal protection policies?

Melissa: You know, I think one of the most important things to do is to develop a relationship with your local MLA or Member of Parliament, your provincial or federal representative. Build a relationship, listen to them and their interests, share your interests, but really work together on where you can make a difference.

That is one of the most powerful places of influence we have, is through voting for our MP. And a lot of people don’t know that they’re open to these ideas.

Look at how big the Animal Protection Index is. It covers a range of issues. I would hope that any MP would find something in there they agree with, that they could work towards.

A member of Parliament can introduce a private member’s bill. They can introduce petitions in the House of Commons.That is not only a free PSA in the House of Commons to all MPs when they read it, but the highest performing petitions do stand out to the Ministers responsible and they can act on it.

So I would say that’s number one.

There’s many things you could do, but you really want to use your influence. And so if listeners have other areas of influence; maybe they’re involved in financial investments, they can work that way to change policy. But I think working with local elected officials is a great way to do it.

Chantelle: Absolutely. That’s vadvice. Thank you so for coming here and sharing all of your expertise on this topic. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience with regard to this or any of your other work?

Melissa: No, I think we covered so much. Thank you for all the questions that pulled out what I would want to share. Do you have anything that stood out in the Animal Protection Index?

Chantelle: I think it’s just very telling to see how far down on the list Canada really is. I think a lot of people see the laws as protections for animals that are strong enough. And they think, for instance, purchasing animal products doesn’t really make that big of an impact because there are protections in place for the animals that are farms or in slaughterhouses. And really what we end up seeing is that those protections are not really there for animals. One of the biggest impacts we can make is shifting away from purchasing those animal products and consuming them.

Melissa: Definitely.

Amy: I think the other thing is taking this guide and sharing it with your MLA or MP. I think many MLAs and MPs don’t know anything about animal protection laws. And so it can be an eye-opening experience to say, Hey, look, this guide exists and this is how we are ranked. To show that that is a little bit embarrassing for the country.

And I think shame can be a not great tool, but in this case, when you’re not directing it at a person, but you’re directing it at a country, it can be a motivator for politicians to go, we could do better.

I would just really recommend sharing this guide as much as possible with people that you want to influence.

Melissa: That’s a great idea. We’ve seen the Animal Protection Index referenced by MPs when they’ve introduced their own private members’ bills in Parliament. So that’s another thing to raise in your meeting with your MP and inspire them to consider doing a bill.

Even if it doesn’t pass, it still gets on the agenda and facilitates a debate, which is really important.

And the more these issues are discussed in Parliament, the more likely the ministers, the government of the day are likely to move on it with their own bill or regulations.

I am encouraged by how much Canada has done since we launched the Animal Protection Index:

• Banned whale and dolphin captivity;
• Banned the elephant ivory and rhino horn trade;
• Banned cosmetic testing.

I know sometimes we take a few steps forward and then there’s a few steps backward with the ag gag bills and certain provinces. So it’s always a shift forward and a shift backward.

But we are inching forward and I think we can do so much more. I think that comment you made, Chantelle, about farm animals and how many there are and how it’s a focus for Vancouver Humane Society. What if the next Animal Protection Index was ranked according to laws based on the number of animals impacted?

Because where we have seen progress, let’s face it, it is smaller number of animals impacted. And it’s been very hard to move the needle in the industries where massive number of animals are impacted. It’s really systemic cruelty to animals, isn’t it?

Or, you know, it goes under the radar because it’s just seen as generally accepted practices. Business as usual.

Chantelle: Absolutely. Yeah. the hardest places to make changes are where the most people are impacted and the most people, and that is also where the most animal lives are affected.

Please join us again next month as we break down the legislative process in Canada and how you can advocate at each stage.

Animals dying in transport, bred without oversight, and sold in deli containers. What is happening in Canada’s exotic pet trade?

In this month’s episode of the Informed Animal Ally, the Vancouver Humane Society’s Chantelle Archambault and Amy Morris discuss Canada’s exotic pet trade, from breeding or capture to selling and keeping, as well as the laws and loopholes failing to protect animals.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Chantelle: Today we’re going to continue looking at Canada’s place on the world stage of animal protection by delving into a topic that impacts animals, both at home in Canada and around the world: the wildlife trade.

While this term “wildlife trade” can be used to discuss the buying and selling of both live animals and products made from their body parts like elephant ivory, rhino horn, and animal skins, in this episode, we’ll specifically look at the transport, keeping, and breeding of live non-domestic animals for uses like the exotic pet trade and display in events like mobile petting zoos.

Captive non-domestic animals have complex needs like wild animals

Amy: Before we get into what the wildlife trade looks like in Canada, I’d like to give some brief context about why this is such an important topic.

The wildlife trade or exotic pet trade involves animals that are not native to Canada. They’ve not been domesticated, which means they have their wild instincts, including a fear of humans.

They have really big behavioural needs. Those include:

• exploring large spaces,
• climbing,
• accessing the right temperature environments,
• being able to stretch their bodies out in such a way that feels good for them.

That happens even if they’ve been bred in captivity.

Exotic pets are not “beginner pets”

Amy: A lot of exotic animals like turtles and lizards and snakes are often marketed as beginner pets; and so people aren’t really being told how difficult it is to provide care for these animals.

More than two in five people with exotic pets say that they bought them on impulse, and almost half are saying that they did less than a few hours of research on how to care for the animal that they’re buying (Stratcom, 2018, Exotic Pet Ownership Qualitative Research).

So what that means is they’re essentially being sold to families with young children and people with limited time and resources who don’t really know that these animals have complex needs and typically need much more space than people are providing them.

In reality, animal care ranking systems that actually look at what an animal needs to thrive (we use something called the Emode Pet Score), rate the most commonly kept reptiles like crested geckos, corn snakes, ball pythons, and bearded dragons as difficult or extreme to care for. That means it’s unrealistic or almost impossible to provide appropriate care that meets their needs in captivity. And yet these animals are being kept as pets.

Animals suffer when their complex needs aren’t met

Amy: So because so many animals are being sold to people who can’t adequately care for them, we now have hundreds of thousands of wild animals who are suffering as pets.

According to World Animal Protection, there were about 1.4 million exotic pets being kept in Canada in 2019.

75% of pet snakes, lizards, and tortoises die within their first year in a new home. We know they experience a lot of suffering before they actually die.

Releasing unwanted exotic animals is a welfare and conservation issue

Amy: Some people who can’t care for their exotic pets even release them into the wild, which is harmful for that individual animal’s wellbeing.

And also, released animals become invasive species that are dangerous for our local wildlife populations and for our environment, such as red eared slider turtles.

So it’s really important that people learn about what exotic animals really need so that we can stop the flow of wildlife into homes where their needs can’t be met; move away from breeding exotic animals; and make sure we’re keeping wild animals in the wild.

Chantelle: Now that we have an idea of why this issue is so important, I’d like to share an overview of what this industry actually looks like in Canada.

When we’re looking at exotic pets, there are two ways that animals are being brought into the market to be sold:

1. The first is they are captured from the wild and imported.
2. The second is that they’re bred in captivity.

About half of reptiles in the wildlife trade are wild caught according to World Animal Protection. Those figures may be higher for certain species of other types of animals that are difficult to breed in captivity

There are welfare issues for both of these methods.

Problems with capturing animals for the exotic pet trade

Chantelle: More than half of captured wild animals don’t survive transport. They’re being kept in these very small cages to be brought over and it’s really difficult to check on them during transport. Two thirds of African grey parrots that have been poached from the wild die in transit

Taking animals from their homes also threatens wild populations of those species. As many as 21% of endangered wild African grey parrots are taken from the wild each year for the pet trade. Those are already an endangered species in the wild.

Problems with breeding exotic pets in captivity

Chantelle: Meanwhile, animals that are bred in captivity are often housed in small, basic enclosures because people who are really engaging in captive breeding to make a profit are breeding a lot of animals at once. That simple kind of housing makes it a lot easier to feed the animals, clean their cages, and monitor how they are doing.

Breeders will often keep animals in their home without a storefront, so the public has no way of really seeing what’s happening with those animals.

In B.C., as long as a species of animal isn’t prohibited under the Controlled Alien Species list and is under a certain size (snakes under three metres or lizards under two metres), basically anyone can breed those animals without a permit.

Two major problems with that model are:

1. A lack of transparency. The public has very little way of knowing what’s going on and what the conditions are for the animals.
2. A lack of regulation. Breeders aren’t being monitored, and there’s not really enforcement happening because someone would need to make a complaint; and who is there to see what’s going on to make a complaint?

Some breeders will also selectively breed for certain traits, like more unique colours and patterns, and that selective breeding can lead to neurological disorders that can have an impact on the animal’s wellbeing.

One example is ball pythons. Ball pythons with the spider gene, which is a genetic mutation that causes a spider web or a splatter pattern on the back of the snake, which some people consider a desirable trait, have the same mutation that causes a condition called wobble head syndrome.

That can make it hard for the snakes to move or feed properly. So depending on the severity of the condition, a snake might have a slight head tilt or they might flip their head upside down and not really realize and just kind of leave it there. They might not be able to move in a straight line. They might not be able to do things that they need to do to hunt and feed on their own, like strike and constrict.

Amy: And you know, this is a very specific thing that happens, but when we think of it on a broad scale, we’re also just facing breeders who breed animals just for volume and they’re not keeping animals in the space that they deserve.

So while we may have some of these cases that are problematic of these kind of genetic abnormalities, when exotic animals are being bred, they generally do not have housing that meets their needs.

Chantelle: After animals are either bred or imported, they’re sold through a variety of methods.

Selling exotic animals in pet stores

Chantelle: First there are pet stores. If you’ve been into a pet store that sells exotic pets, you’ve likely seen them stacked in a section in quite small cages. They may have spaces to hide, but they’re generally in full view of humans and other animals, which can be very stressful for them, especially for solitary species.

The stores are typically fairly bright during the day when they’re open, and a lot of these animals are nocturnal so their sleeping patterns can be disrupted.

There might be someone on staff who has knowledge about the needs of different exotic animals, but when a store sells such a wide variety of species, it’s unlikely that they have someone on shift who’s knowledgeable about every species all of the time.

Exotic pet fairs and expos

Chantelle: There are also exotic pet expos. These are generally people selling animals with more specialized knowledge, but there are still pets that are difficult to care for being sold as beginner pets with misleading information.

For instance, one of our colleagues was told by a seller at a pet show that a snake could be kept in an opaque container, when we know that they need specialized terrariums with temperature control, they need space to fully stretch out. They need enrichment items and substrate.

Also at these shows, pets are transported around during the day. They’re sold in very small containers, even takeout containers.

Even though there are rules that are supposed to limit how many people can handle the animals, it doesn’t appear those rules are strictly enforced. There have been children handling reptiles in these crowded rooms.

Imagine if a child were to drop, say, a small lizard at an expo when there’s a bunch of people walking around; that could very quickly become a dangerous situation for the animal.

Selling exotic animals online

Chantelle: There’s also animals that are sold online. That involves shipping the animals from a seller’s location, usually also in small containers with temperature packs.

It’s more difficult to tell how an animal is being kept and transported this way. Not all sellers have the same level of care in keeping animals safe during transport. Even though even the best ways of transporting them are not ideal conditions for the animal, there are ones that are significantly worse.

Amy: We think about transport and the animals who die in transport, and these are animals that have been purchased that have kind of like a value assigned to them; they’re still not being transported in ways that are good for the animal.

And we think about the animals that are at a breeder’s house that have not been purchased yet and don’t have the same kind of value attributed to them, you kind of wonder like how many animals are dying in care. We just don’t have any data or numbers on that.

There’s no requirements on registering. For the majority of these animals, there’s no reason for a breeder to disclose anything that’s happening in their home.

We’ve heard from breeders about some of their housing situations and they do not sound like a situation I would want to be in as an animal, that’s for sure.

Chantelle: And regardless of the level of care that the breeder takes, the animals are still typically shipped in a way that it would be either difficult or impossible to monitor how they’re doing while they’re in transit.

They’re put in a box and they’re shipped, and you see how they’re doing when they’re at their original locationand you see how they’re doing at the end destination, but you can’t see how they’re doing in transit.

Animals surviving doesn’t mean they are thriving

There are about 1.4 million exotic pets being kept in Canada as of the most recent count we could find, and again, it’s very difficult to meet the needs of these animals in captivity. Most of them do sadly die far before the end of their natural lifespan.

Even if their basic needs to survive are being met, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re getting what they need to thrive.

Rescues struggling to keep up

Amy: We have rescues in Canada and one rescue shares on their website that they have 350 animals in their care. You think about cat or dog rescues, and if you heard the number 350, you would not think that someone could adequately care for all of those cats and dogs.

And when we’re thinking about exotic species, each individual species needs different care and different food and different housing and warmth. And so even thinking about any kind of operation that’s housing this volume of animals is likely going to be challenged to be able to do that.

I personally just feel really frustrated when I’m hearing about these things because it’s hard to imagine a rescue is trying to do their best because these are unwanted animals. They’re sort of like the disposal of an exotic pet industry.

But meanwhile, some organizations are bringing them into classrooms and having people handle them and inviting kids in to handle them as well. And in a way that’s sort of instilling an interest in keeping these animals as pets, even if unintentionally.

And realistically, a rescue does not want to house so many animals. They do want individuals caring for them. And so you end up in this really weird place where just by the exotic pet industry existing, there’s a whole series of ethical dilemmas that come out of it, and in every case, the animals lose.

Amy: The next thing I’m hoping to cover is the laws around keeping, breeding, and importing exotic animals.

We’ve spoken in depth about captivity laws in Canada. You can find a longer discussion about this topic if you go back to our episode called Animal captivity laws with Rob Laidlaw, the founder of the organization Zoocheck.

To give a brief overview, the laws in this area are a lot like the other laws we’ve talked about on our show. There’s a patchwork of federal and province-specific laws that differ across the country, and then municipal bylaws that branch out even further.

Federal laws around the wildlife trade

Amy: The main thing we look at when we’re talking about federal laws around exotic animals is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

That’s an international agreement that Canada is a signatory to.

CITES is designed to protect endangered species by banning or limiting the international trade of plants and animals and their parts that are endangered. There’s different levels of protection depending on how at risk the species is. That’s fairly limited.

Canada delivers on our commitments to the CITES agreement through something called the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act (WAPPRIITA).

That act controls the import of CITES listed species, plus other species whose trade is banned under other laws like the country of origin or provincial laws.

And really there’s so many exemptions to that, that it’s not a super helpful law when it comes to people keeping wild animals as pets. It really is more around protecting animals in other countries and their parts.

Provincial laws around exotic animals in captivity

Amy: Most of the responsibility for captive wildlife is dedicated to the provinces, and the laws really vary from province to province.

Here in B.C., the keeping breeding transport and release of exotic animals are regulated under the Controlled Alien Species regulation (CAS), and that’s part of the Wildlife Act.

More broadly, under this regulation, we have a list of specific animals that are considered not native to the province, and that pose a risk to the health or safety of people, property, wildlife, or wildlife habitat.

However, once again, this is a short list. And it’s mostly focused on risk to the public and native ecosystems, and it’s not really thinking about the exotic animals and the risks they face.

The CAS tries to list all of the animals that are not allowed. We have so many species in the world, and new species that are being discovered all the time, so this kind of list leaves many gaps.

For instance, kangaroos aren’t listed even though they’re not native to B.C. and they’re considered an invasive species in other places such as New Zealand.

What we know is more effective and what VHS and other organizations have been advocating for is a positive list approach, where only the animals that are allowed to be kept are listed based on knowledge about what species are suitable and can actually thrive under human care in B.C.

Unfortunately, while we know that this would be really effective in improving animal welfare, it’s been very difficult to get the ear of the government to have any kind of weight put towards this policy option.

It’s one of those situations where best practice and good policy is kind of put aside because it involves bureaucracy and it impacts people. And if something impacts people, they have to do an assessment. And so sometimes it’s easier to just leave things as they are.

Municipal laws around exotic animals

Amy: There’s so many gaps and inconsistencies at the federal and provincial level, so municipal or regional bylaws try to fill the gaps with their own rules.

While this is nice on a small scale and we really support and encourage those municipalities, there are also some big challenges because it’s such a small scale.

Some of those challenges is that city or town councils don’t have as many resources to find and hire people with expertise to develop these laws.

There’s 161 municipalities in B.C. That’s 161 local governments trying to find experts who understand what reptiles need and putting their limited time and budget toward developing bylaws that meet those needs.

Whereas at the provincial or federal government level, they have much more resources and experts who could develop a comprehensive legislation that would just cover a large land area.

Also, when the bylaws cover a small area, individuals will just move a couple towns over and continue what they’re doing. We’ve seen that happen with breeders quite often, where they’ll just move to an unincorporated area.

So as much as we can appreciate bylaws, things really do need to be done at the provincial and federal level.

Chantelle: Because the legislation around transporting exotic animals is so complicated, there are a lot of problems with enforcement, even when there are laws.

You have these laws with long lists of species that aren’t allowed into the country or into the province, and they’re coming through border checkpoints where the staff at these checkpoints are not animal experts. It’s almost an impossible ask to have these enforcement agents be able to identify each species that’s coming in and whether or not they’re allowed.

Gaps in documents around animals imported to Canada

Chantelle: World Animal Protection looked at 1.8 million wild animals that were imported into Canada from 2014 to 2020. About half of those animals were imported for the pet trade.

They found that the records around the animals that were coming in had huge data gaps. 84% of animals didn’t have their species named. Rhere was no information available about the animal’s background if they were caught in the wild or bred in captivity.

It’s very difficult to even know if these laws were being followed at the time.

Their organization also noted that since there’s such a convoluted list of which department is responsible for which animals, that almost all species imported for the pet trade aren’t really being looked at.

Amy: The first step to solving a problem is to know what the problem is and to have all the information on it, and then we can start to take action.

Make exotic animals a part of your conversations

Amy: The most important thing that you can do as an individual is really encourage the people around you not to buy exotic animals from sellers or breeders.

That’s easy to say, but hard to do because you don’t even know someone’s considering buying an exotic animal until they get one, and then you’re surprised by it.

So it’s also just finding opportunities in conversation to highlight some of these challenges and have it be a whole mindset where animals are not being brought or traded in private operations.

Encourage adopting, not shopping

Amy: Also, if you know someone who has the time, resources, capacity, and desire to take in an exotic animal, encourage them to adopt a rescue animal.

As I was mentioning earlier, one impact of so many animals being sold to people who don’t have the resources is that when people go to surrender their animals, there’s just so little capacity at legitimate rescue organizations to take those animals in.

And when we’re saying legitimate rescues, we mean organizations that are making decisions based on what’s in the best interest of the animals in their care.

Share information about the exotic pet trade

Amy: You can also share information about this on social media and in local community groups. The VHS has been working on an educational campaign on social media the past few months that you can share the realities of keeping exotic pets, what their needs are, the welfare concerns, and what the impacts are on conservation, the animals’ health, and public health risks.

You can find a carousel of posts to share on Instagram and Facebook, and a link to our Blue Sky account.

Speak with pet store managers

Amy: One other way that you can kind of think about taking action is talking to pet stores.

One thing I did when I moved to a new town: I was checking out different pets stores where I would trying to find a place to buy food for my dog.

One of the pet stores was selling betta fishes. And I shared some concerns around that and they shared with me that there’s demand in the town for it. They felt that it was an appropriate animal to keep in captivity.

We kind of went back and forth on it and I said, I would love to buy pet food from here, but I am not comfortable doing so with you selling betta fishes.

I gave them my info and said like, get in touch if you ever decide to stop selling exotic animals and I’d be happy to make your store my primary pet store.

So this is something you can definitely do with smaller scale stores. It is harder with stores that are chains because they may not have as much decision making power.

But you can always ask to speak to a manager and understand what their discretion is and what their choices are.

Approach with curiosity and compassion

Amy: Most of all, you can have some grace when you do encounter people who have exotic animals as pets. Shame and guilt are never the way to change someone’s mind or change someone’s behaviour. They just don’t work and they kind of do the opposite. People dig in their heels and say, no, I’m not changing, I’m not doing anything different. I’m right.

When having conversations about exotic pets or with people who have different thoughts than you on it, it’s so important to genuinely be curious, to be kind, to ask questions, to share your own gaps in knowledge and to really share from a place of care and love and concern.

And I think you can go a long way in the long term of shifting someone’s mindset if you come from that perspective. And also gently say, you know, “I’d love to research this more together. I don’t know a lot about this animal. You seem to know a lot, but I’m really keen to get a sense of what they need and what their environment is like.”

And if you do the research together, maybe there’s a chance that they’ll appreciate your interest and curiosity. And if they find out information about like, oh, they should have a much bigger tank or something like that, then they’ll be more likely to adopt that practice.

Certainly, I would say you can always have a bigger tank than what you have and always have more spaces to hide. Always have, more ability to stretch out, move around.

Work toward a common goal

Chantelle: Especially for something like this, the people who are interested in taking animals into their home are generally people who have like an interest and a love for animals. So we all are coming at this from the same place where we want what’s best for animals. And some people just don’t have the knowledge and the resources to know what is best.

We had a quote on our social media recently, which is from an exotic animal vet named Dr. Alix Wilson, who had said, “Every day I see birds whose owners love them dearly, but aren’t taking proper care of them. They simply don’t know what they’re taking on.” And that was regarding treating grey parrots.

There’s so many people who are taking these animals into their homes and they don’t know what they’re getting into. The length of the life that the animal has naturally, it’s a enormous commitment of time, of resources, of money to be able to take these animals.

Especially buying them from a breeder or a seller. These animals don’t need to be taken out of the wild or bred in captivity.

Please join us again next month as World Animal Protection joins us to discuss their Animal Protection Index and how Canada’s federal animal laws and regulations stack up against other countries on the world stage..

Photo: Jo-Anne McArthur/We Animals Media

Who is holding the Canadian food industry accountable for the welfare of farmed animals?

This month’s episode of the Informed Animal Ally welcomes Maha Bazzi to discuss the Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard from Mercy for Animals. The Scorecard is the leading annual report ranking major food companies operating in Canada on their animal welfare progress, aiming to improve transparency and accountability for Canada’s food system.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Chantelle: In this season of the show, we’ve been looking at a wider view of animal advocacy and where Canada stands on the world stage when it comes to animal protection.

This month, I am excited to continue this discussion with a look at Mercy for Animals’ Animal Welfare Scorecard.

So before we jump into that, Maha, I would love to hear about your role at Mercy for Animals and how you got involved in animal advocacy work.

Path to animal advocacy

Maha: Absolutely. So as you mentioned, I’m the Director of Animal Welfare Initiatives here at Mercy for Animals and I’m based in New York City.

Mercy for Animals is one of the world’s largest international farmed animal advocacy organizations. Our mission is to end industrial animal agriculture by constructing a just and sustainable food system.

In my role, I oversee our animal welfare efforts across corporate engagement and campaigns in the US and Canada in order to move companies across the food industry to adopt and implement policies that reduce the suffering of farmed animals in their operations.

How I got into the field; I actually went to school for graphic design and I worked in the marketing and design fields for a few years here in New York.

Four years into my career, I wanted to pursue a role that had a more tangible impact on people’s lives. So I became a teacher of English as a second language.

I loved the education field. I loved connecting with people from all over the world.

But as an animal lover and someone who’s followed a plant-based diet for a very long time, I realized my career shift needed to be dedicated to helping animals. So I went back to school and pursued a degree in animals and public policy, and after working on international policy initiatives, I found my way to Mercy for Animals’ campaigns team in 2025.

Years later, that was the best decision I ever made. My role allows me to merge my passion for helping animals, crafting compelling public narratives, and educating people to make a meaningful difference for farmed animals.

Amy: That’s so awesome.

I love the work that Mercy for Animals does, and I’m super grateful for it. The scorecard, I think, has always been really interesting and my understanding is this scorecard focuses on industry practices and corporate responsibility to incentivize businesses to do better. Can you tell us more about the scorecard?

Scorecard measures three key areas of welfare

Maha: Absolutely. So for the past four years, Mercy for Animals has published the Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard, the only report of its kind focused on ranking major food companies operating in Canada on their animal welfare performance as it relates to three key issue areas.

The first is laying hens confined in cages and companies moving toward cage-free systems that do not use any type of cage, allowing birds space, mobility, and the ability to express their natural behaviors.

The second issue is pigs confined in crates and companies moving toward crate free systems, which are referred to as group housing systems for mother pigs during their gestation periods that do not involve individually confining these mother pigs to any tight enclosures that would prevent them from turning around or lying down with their limbs fully extended.

The third issue is the breeding environment and slaughter method of chickens raised for meat and companies’ adoption and move toward a leading set of global standards called the Better Chicken Commitment (BCC).

That includes improved management practices such as lowering stocking densities, providing better litter, lighting, and enrichments for the birds, and very importantly, eliminating fast growing breeds of birds, as well as replacing live shackle slaughter (which is the predominant slaughter method for chickens raised for meat) with controlled atmosphere stunning (which is a less cruel slaughter method).

So these three policy areas for farmed animal welfare are key to reducing animal suffering and company supply chains.

Mercy for Animals’ benchmarking tool through the scorecard ranks companies based on:

• whether they’ve adopted these meaningful animal welfare commitments,
• if they’re being transparent about the progress they’ve made toward their policies, and
• if they’ve published clear plans for fully implementing their commitments.

The initiative provides transparency on welfare commitments

Maha: To give you some background, from 2012 to 2018, Mercy for Animals released 12 animal cruelty investigations in Canada, after which many major food companies in Canada started adopting commitments to sourcing only cage-free eggs, crate-free pork, and chicken aligned with the Better Chicken Commitment.

So when the companies announced these public pledges, they signaled to the industry that they were ready to reform their supply chain practices and meet consumer demand for higher welfare products.

Mercy for Animals’ Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard is an important public accountability mechanism that tracks company and industry progress and transparency on these issues and helps keep the public informed about various brands’ performance. Our report provides transparency and accountability in an environment where some companies and industries simply refuse to do so.

Chantelle: It’s such an important project and I’m really glad it’s available.

As you mentioned, there’s so little transparency in the animal agriculture industry. I would love to know more about what role different parts of the food industry have in protecting animal welfare.

Canadian animal agriculture industry is self-regulated

Maha: So in Canada there are no federal laws to protect farmed animals; industrial animal agriculture is actually self-regulated.

The National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC) is a body composed of industry stakeholders and associations. And NFACC develops codes of practice for each farmed animal industry by species.

But 49 out of 56 members, or 88% of NFACC members actually represent industry. They include trade groups like the Canadian Pork Council and big food companies like egg producers and grocery stores.

So most industries in Canada rely on the voluntary recommendations laid out in NFACC codes. These codes are unlegislated. They’re unenforceable in most provinces, and compliance with the codes is not evaluated.

Very importantly, standards on all critical animal welfare issues do not go nearly far enough to establish meaningful standards to protect farmed animals. These are bare minimum recommended standards and they fall short of leading global animal welfare standards.

Agriculture industry guidelines recommend keeping hens in cages

Maha: I’ll give you an example on cage-free. NFACC standards have failed to ban caged confinement for laying hens, and they allow conventional battery cage systems until 2036. Instead of recommending a ban on cages, the council encourages farmers to invest in a move toward “enriched cages”, which are cages that are only slightly larger, despite scientific evidence that all cages harm animal welfare.

In enriched cages, hens still spend their entire lives on wire flooring. They have space per bird that’s no larger than a standard sheet of printer paper. This move toward enriched cages has unfortunately become more entrenched in the Canadian industry year after year.

So basically, NFACC is mostly the industry creating its own guidelines.

Consumer demand and corporate commitments drive change

Maha: This is very different from corporate commitments, which are mostly driven by consumer and investor concern.

With no federal legislation protecting animals in Canadian farms, and these inadequate industry guidelines acting as a benchmark, the private sector is really instrumental in advancing animal welfare.

In Canada, restaurants, grocers, food service providers and other food companies play a critical role in moving the food industry toward more responsible sourcing standards.

Mercy for Animal emphasizes the importance of follow through and transparency from companies on their animal welfare commitments. Because without accountability, consumers will be left in the dark about company’s supply chain practices, and animals will continue to suffer from the worst factory farming conditions.

Amy: Oh, there was so much good in everything you said there in terms of just like how lacking the system is in Canada and how lacking the standards are. It’s certainly something that needs a lot more attention and time and something that pushes the industry to make better commitments because it’s not happening through legislation. So having some other incentives is necessary.

Given that, what are some of the areas that you’ve seen progress on in this latest scorecard?

Increase in companies reporting progress

Maha: Since 2021, the first year of Mercy for Animals launched the Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard, the number of companies that have begun reporting progress each year has remained steady. So in 2024, for example, 10 companies reported for the first time on their policies.

This year’s report reported 15 policies as fulfilled, including cage-free policies from McDonald’s and Boston Pizza. 15% of companies featured in the report reported regional progress on all three animal welfare issues that I mentioned that we evaluate, which is a 5% increase from 2023.

We’ve also seen multiple companies this year report progress on their move toward controlled atmosphere stunning, which is the Better Chicken Commitment’s approved slaughter method for chickens raised for meat.

We saw more companies reporting progress as well toward transitioning to group housing for mother pigs.

So Mercy for Animals’ annual benchmarking shows a trend toward regional reporting on animal welfare in Canada, which is promising.

We’re seeing an increase in both the number of companies reporting progress and the number of policies companies are reporting on each year, which is a good indication that animal welfare is being integrated into food companies’ corporate responsibility programs.

For example, the number of companies reporting regionally has increased from 11 to 28 over the past four years. And the number of policies evaluated with reported progress has increased more dramatically from 13 to 48.

So we’re seeing that companies that integrate animal welfare into their sustainability work are developing more comprehensive policies and transparency practices over time, which is really encouraging.

Chantelle: That’s really good to see that progress. I think it’s really a testament to how this advocacy and how consumer pressure can push companies to do better over time.

But as we all know, there’s a long way to go still. So could you speak to any ways that companies are not meeting their commitments?

Are Canadian eggs cage-free?

Maha: I think when it comes to companies not meeting their commitments, it’s really important to highlight the lack of cage-free progress in the retail sector in Canada.

This sector is the largest purchaser of eggs and could carry the greatest impact on laying hens if retailers were to transition to fully cage-free sourcing.

But retailers are failing to publish plans toward transitioning to fully cage-free systems. And most retailers, including Walmart, Loblaws, Sobeys, Longos, have even walked back their commitments by removing or postponing their commitment deadlines, which were meant to be 2025 this year.

To make things worse, the country’s major egg producers, Burnbrae Farms and Gray Ridge Eggs, are not being transparent about their use of cages or their plans to eliminate them.

Retailers’ lack of firm deadlines and measurable goals makes it harder to track progress, and it also undermines consumer trust. Without these specific deadlines in place, retailers are showing no urgency in addressing this key animal welfare concern. They’re weakening accountability and they’re slowing industry-wide change.

It’s really important for these companies to set clear goals with annual targets to drive real progress. Because this continued delay is keeping hens in cages, which is completely unacceptable.

Amy: Absolutely. We’ve heard a lot about public trust from the government, from industry.

There’s sort of this idea that if the public is trusting then everything’s fine. And I’m curious if you can speak more to that, how industry practices stack up against their public messaging and consumer expectations.

Canadians want more transparency in animal farming

Maha: Yeah, absolutely. This is a very important topic because studies consistently show that actually Canadians want farmed animals to have higher welfare conditions, and they want companies to share information about how animals are treated in their operations.

In fact:

• More than 8 out of 10 Canadians say that stores and restaurants should be transparent about the types of eggs they source.
• More than 7 out of 10 Canadians support a national ban on caged confinement.

Humane washing organizations invest in marketing over living conditions

Maha: But industry marketing associations are growing in size, and they’re receiving millions of taxpayer dollars to support advertising under the appearance of building “public trust”.

In Canada’s food system, these organizations are humane washing outdated and harmful practices. Groups like Chicken Farmers of Canada, the Egg Farmers of Canada are investing millions to influence public opinion about animal welfare rather than improving how animals are actually treated.

Does Canada have factory farms?

Maha: For example, one common myth is that Canada does not have factory farms, which is only bolstered by industry advertising. Chicken Farmers of of Canada runs paid advertisements that claim that the country does not have factory farms because Canadian chicken farms are family farms.

Meanwhile, an average chicken farm in Canada houses a staggering 36,000 chickens, which rivals any other industrialized farming production model. A family farm designation has no connection whatsoever to farm size or production method. It simply means a farm that is not corporate owned.

Another association, the Egg Farmers of Canada conveniently omits the term cages in most of their public messaging. Instead, they refer to enriched cages as “enriched colony housing” or “alternative housing”, which helps create this public framing that these types of systems are acceptable when in reality they’re still systems where birds are caged.

Another example is Canada’s largest egg producer Burnbrae farms. Their labeling on cartons of eggs misleads the public into believing that they’re purchasing cage-free eggs when they’re actually purchasing eggs from hens who spend their lives in cages. One survey showed that nearly half of Loblaws customers said they believed that Burnbrae’s “Nestlaid” label means that hens live in open barns with no cages.

This isn’t surprising given Burnbrae’s Naturegg Nestlaid labels have images of green open pastures and happy cartoon eggs. But in reality, eggs in those cartons come from caged birds kept “enriched cages”.

In reality, Canada is falling behind on welfare

So the industry self-regulates and in its communications positions itself as a leader. While in reality, Canada is falling behind other countries and is failing to deliver on consumer expectations for higher welfare products.

Polls show that Canadians care about animal welfare and they want companies to do the right thing and the industry should deliver. But the lack of legislation and this rise in humane washing shows the importance of bringing greater transparency to animal agriculture in Canada, which is what Mercy for Animals is trying to do through our public reporting and campaigning.

Chantelle: A lot of what we have talked about as well on the show is how these terms like family farms and free run are not regulated terms, so they can be really misleading for the public. And of course there’s the imagery of happy cows on packaging and smiling eggs and smiling chickens and green pastures.

And it’s really disappointing to hear that companies are often misleading consumers and not providing the conditions that people in the general public expect and want. So given that, what are ways that consumers could help push for better animal welfare practices?

Show companies you care

Maha: That’s a great question. You know, one impactful way consumers can push for better animal welfare is to demand better from companies and industry and really show them that they actually care about animal welfare.

The more people we have putting pressure on companies, the better it will be. The louder our message will be.

The Canadian industry is increasingly resistant to change and it justifies its lack of progress by touting a lack of consumer demand for higher welfare products. The truth is Canadians want animals to be treated better, and companies and industry are just failing to make the necessary investment and plans to reduce animal suffering.

Consumers have the power to change that by raising their voices against companies’ inaction.

One tangible step is consumers can visit CanadaScorecard.ca to sign up to learn more about how to take action and make a difference for animals in Canada, which includes joining a community of change makers, organizing local on the ground efforts, taking impactful online action and driving this vital mission forward.

Amy: It’s so important to have things that we can do at a grassroots level because it’s easy to feel hopeless. Making change is a process and it takes time. One of those things that we can do is kind of choose what companies to support or not support.

And I think even as a person who, myself, I eat plant-based, there are some parent companies that own plant-based and meat or plant-based and egg, and so it’s helpful to kind of have a sense of what are the companies that are doing their best and what are the ones that are just not putting effort in.

What have you learned in terms of welfare practices and transparency?

Companies performing well on cage-free egg commitments

Maha: It’s important to note that while some companies may be doing well on certain issue areas, they’re not always performing as well across all animal welfare issues, but I can give you some examples.

When it comes to cage-free policies. In our most recent report, we celebrated McDonald’s Canada, Boston Pizza and Eggsmart for fulfilling their cage-free egg policies one year ahead of their deadlines.

And then Aramark, which is a major food service provider, more than doubled their cage-free egg progress in Canada, which is amazing.

Companies performing poorly on cage-free egg commitments

Maha: Meanwhile, Walmart is now the only top five retailer in Canada not publishing progress toward fulfilling their cage-free policy, which originally had a 2025 deadline before they retracted it. Walmart’s low ranking hasn’t changed in the scorecard for four consecutive years.

Sobeys is another retailer and they’re owned by Empire, which is the second largest retail conglomerate in Canada. And Sobeys is reporting cage-free broad progress, but has failed to publish any targets outlining how they intend to fulfill their cage-free commitment. And the company has stagnated at about 17% progress for the third year in a row.

Another one is MTY group. They own brands like Mr. Sub, Thai Express, Papa Murphy’s. And they reported in 2023 that only 2% of the eggs they sourced were cage-free, despite having adopted their cage-free policy seven years before and being just two years away from their fulfillment deadline of 2025. MTY Group also diminished their commitments and misrepresented the welfare implication of cage systems in their recent sustainability report.

Which companies are adopting the Better Chicken Commitment?

Maha: When it comes to the welfare of chickens raised for meat, food service providers were some of the first adopters of the Better Chicken Commitment, which as I mentioned, are a set of standards stressing of the treatment of chickens raised for meat.

However, two of the largest food service providers, Compass Group and Sodexo have time bound plans for implementing their policies in the United States, but they haven’t extended these roadmaps to their Canadian operations.

Which companies are falling behind for chickens raised for meat?

In contrast, Aramark has published clear milestones and plans that include Canada making them the first multinational company to do so in Canada.

This year we also saw progress on the transition to controlled atmosphere stunning from the industry, which is the slaughter method aligned with the Better Chicken Commitment.

So we saw Maple Leaf Foods and restaurant chain A&W announced having completed their transition to controlled atmosphere stunning.

More companies reported progress toward transitioning their chicken supply to controlled atmosphere stunning for the first time: big retailers like Loblaws, Save On Foods, the pizza chain Boston Pizza, and fast food giant Restaurant Brands International. If you’re not familiar, they own Tim Horton’s, Burger King and Popeye’s.

Which companies are making progress for pigs?

Maha: When it comes to crate free policies, we’ve seen a lot of progress where companies have fulfilled their crate free policies likeA&W, Campbell’s, Chipotle, Costco, Wendy’s.

Starbucks Canada tripled their progress in North America toward transitioning to group housing for mother pigs; and Costco Wholesale Canada reported transitioning to group housing for most of their private label pork retailers. Save On Foods reported progress on their transition to group housing for the first time.

Which companies have not made progress for pigs?

Maha: There are also companies that still either have no crate-free policies or have reported no progress toward them. And these include Aramark—which as I mentioned before, had made progress for chickens raised for meat—and also Calgary Co-op; Chairman’s Brands, which owns 241 Pizza, Coffee Time, and Eggsmart; Compass Group; Foodtastic; Sodexo Canada; and Subway.

So as you can see, some companies may be progressing on one issue, not on the other. There are some promising developments that we’ve seen over the years.

Chantelle: It’s really good to see those developments, and I really appreciate how in-depth the scorecard is when it comes to looking at those companies.

Looking at a Canadian context, I know a lot of people right now are shopping Canadian companies specifically, so it’s really important that Canadian companies are living up to those animal welfare commitments so that people can shop in a way that’s aligned with all their values.

So looking at that, how do Canadian companies stack up compared to other countries?

Canadian egg-laying hens stuck in cages

Maha: Canada is making almost no progress on eliminating cages and has fallen far behind the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union on cage-free egg production.

Many European countries and US states have enacted laws banning cages for laying hens.

And to put this into perspective, 82% of hens in Canada’s egg farms still spend nearly their entire lives in confinement. Meanwhile, the numbers in the UK are 23%, 39% in the European Union, and 61% in the United States.

The Canadian egg industry has no public plan to end the confinement of laying hens, and is simply replacing conventional cages with enriched cages.

Since 2019, cage-free egg production in Canada has increased by a mere two percentage points, while production in enriched cage systems has nearly doubled, accounting for about 34% of all egg production in Canada.

The Canadian egg industry continues to fall further behind each year, which puts companies at risk of defaulting on their public commitments.

And this is reflected in seeing multinational companies like Costco and Kraft Heinz that have fulfilled or almost fulfilled their cage-free policies in other countries and regions. But they’ve progressed very little on cage cage-free sourcing in Canada, which really shows that companies are underperforming in Canada and failing to use their resources and power to help catalyze a cage-free transition in the country.

Canadian companies lack comprehensive policies on the Better Chicken Commitment

Maha: I could also speak about broiler welfare. The industry refers chickens raised for meat as broilers.

Many large retailers in the US and Europe have policies aligned with the Better Chicken Commitment and are even reporting progress toward fulfilling these commitments. But not one major retailer in Canada has a comprehensive public policy aligned with the BCC.

NFACC codes, which are used as industry guidelines in Canada, as I previously mentioned, are pretty weak when it comes to chickens raised for meat.

When we’re evaluating companies on chicken welfare, we’re looking at how well they’re advancing towards these leading standards. NFACC guidelines fall way short of aligning with these more stringent standards. They have no provisions for transitioning from fast-growing breeds or the typical slaughter method.

It’s encouraging to see that in Canada, some producers are, however, helping move the industry forward on chicken welfare. Canada’s largest chicken producers, Maple Leaf and Cargill, have reported progress on reduced stocking density and the use of enrichments, and they have fully transitioned to controlled atmosphere stunning, the BCC-aligned processing method.

But these producers are still failing to address the serious welfare concerns of ultra fast-growing breeds, which remain the norm in the Canadian chicken industry. And these breeds are one of the root causes of suffering for chickens raised for meat.

Amy: I really appreciate you highlighting some of these.

For a while I was working on farms, both in New Zealand and in Canada. Sort of not just working, but also doing tours, checking them out for different reasons.

And one of the farms that I was on was an egg-laying hens farm. It was interesting talking to the farmer, because he sort of felt that the enriched cages were better for the welfare of the hens, and he couldn’t himself figure out how to do the free range in a way that he felt good about.

And so it was sort of this like, well, from my observations, this one system works better than this other one. So rather than working towards making the free range system better, there is this sense of like, there’s more control with the enriched cages, so it’s “easier” to go to that.

I found that really disappointing that rather than innovating in ways that would give hens the chance to scratch in the dirt and dust bathe, there was this sense that, enriched cages are “good enough”.

I’m curious to hear what you think are changes that you’re hoping to see in the food and animal agriculture industry.

Maha: Absolutely, and that’s such a good point. At the end of the day, enriched cages may give a farmer more control or a sense of control, but it doesn’t give a bird more control over their freedom to move, their freedom to flap their wings, their freedom to forage, their freedom to roam within a larger space.

A future without industrial animal agriculture, a present with less suffering

Maha: Ultimately, Mercy for Animals wants to see a massive transformation within the food system—one where industrialized animal agriculture no longer exists.

We recognize that this type of systemic change will take time, but in the meantime, we want to see a significant reduction in animal suffering within the current system.

We need animal protection legislation that’s enforceable, and also to turn what are current voluntary codes of practice for industry into mandated, enforcable regulations. This would mean raising animal welfare standards to ensure better living conditions and more ethical practices, which could stand to impact millions, if not billions of animals every year.

In the immediate future, we want to see corporations, which have immense power to influence their supply chains, take responsibility by adopting and implementing policies that genuinely improve animal welfare.

By doing so, these companies can lead the way in driving more humane and sustainable practices in the industry, making a tangible difference for animals and meeting consumer expectations for better animal welfare.

Chantelle: Thank you so much for sharing that. As you said, there’s billions of lives being affected by this, so it’s going to be really important for companies to be shifting from the thing that is easier to the thing that is right for these animals.

Before you go, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners?

Maha: I’d like to share that while Mercy for Animals’ Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard advocates for better animal welfare standards within the industry, one of the most powerful choices compassionate consumers can make to protect animals from horrific cruelty is to incorporate more plant-based foods into their diet and support companies that are prioritizing animal welfare.

Consumers hold tremendous power, and with that power, they can urge decision-makers, corporations, and producers to end their reliance on some of these horrific practices, such as extreme confinement and breeding for rapid growth, and help reduce the suffering of millions of animals in the process.

I encourage listeners to visit our website, mercyforanimals.org to learn more about our work and ways to get involved to drive meaningful change for animals in Canada.

Please join us again next month as we discuss the wildlife trade and exotic pets in Canada!

What happened in the world of animal protection last year?

Welcome to a new season of The Informed Animal Ally! Previous seasons have delved into the state of animal protection laws in Canada and B.C.; what a good life looks like for animals; specific areas that the Vancouver Humane Society works in; and foundational knowledge for animal advocates. This season will look at a macro view of the state of animal protection nationally and globally:

• What are trends across the animal protection sector?
• What is working?
• Where are we seeing challenges?
• Where does Canada stand on the international stage when it comes to animal well-being?

In this episode, the VHS’s Chantelle Archambault and Amy Morris discuss trends in the animal advocacy movement, as well as successes, opportunities, and challenges in Canada and around the world in 2024.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Chantelle: When it comes to public responses and policy change, we’re increasingly seeing a polarization of opinions. On one hand, people are more aware of animal sentience and care deeply about improving animal well-being, leading to progress and policies that protect animals.

But at the same time, this progress and shifting public opinion is leading to really strong pushback from people who benefit from the status quo. There are some areas where we’re seeing a step backwards. You can see that in things like strong marketing by the dairy industry against plant-based milk.

It seems the more progress we see, the more pushback there is. People feel very strongly about their convictions on both sides of any issue.

Everything from public discourse in the comment section of social media posts to the tailored search results people see when they look up an issue on Google tends to push people further toward confirming their own biases and existing beliefs.

Amy: It’s very frustrating and we see it across the board in all areas of ways people think about the world. At the same time, we can celebrate some wins.

B.C. family law recognizes pets as more than property in divorce and separation

Amy: We have wins in Canada worth talking about. The first is B.C. family law recognizing that companion animals are more than property when they’re doing divorce proceedings.

What’s really great about this is decisions are being made that take into account the nuances of what a family structure is and the relationships that happen between an animal and their caregivers.

Chantelle: It’s great that the courts are recognizing that animals are beings who have thoughts and preferences and bonds and not equivalent to divvying up something like family jewelry.

Canada bans import and export of elephant ivory, rhino horn, and hunting trophies

Amy: Absolutely. Another really great one is that it is now illegal to import or export elephant ivory, rhino horn, and hunting trophies.

We have an episode, Lessons from grassroots animal advocacy in May 2024, that talks about this.

This change demonstrates the impact of a large scale sustained campaign, and it is what keeps us campaigning on different animal topics knowing these changes are possible.

Companion animals included in coercive control legislation

Amy: The next one is having companion animals included in coercive control legislation in Canada. Coercive control often involves abusers threatening, manipulating, or harming companion animals to control their human victims.

The new bill would criminalize these behaviours, including:

• Attempted and threatened violence towards an intimate partner’s animal
• Controlling or attempting to control the manner in which an intimate partner cares for their companion animal

This is important because there are times where an animal is in distress and a person’s ability to get help for that animal is limited by transport or by financial means and when it is an abusive situation, it’s not that person’s fault that they don’t have the financial means or the transport.

It’s something that’s being impacted by another individual and they’re the ones that really need to be held responsible.

Chantelle: We’ve spoken before about the violence link, about how violence toward animals is linked very closely with violence towards humans. And people who are violent toward animals tend to also be violent towards humans.

It’s really important that Canadian legislation is recognizing this.

PUPS Act in Ontario prohibits puppy mills and introduces stronger protections for dogs

Amy: Ontario introduced the Preventing Unethical Puppy Sales Act to prohibit puppy mills and introduce stronger protections for dogs. A number of provinces have put something like this into place and Ontario is the most recent.

It shows that the provinces do have authority to make rules and laws that better protect animals, and that they have the responsibility to as well.

Farmed animal Codes of Practice came under review

Amy: We also have some opportunities in Canada. First, we have the Codes of Practices for farmed animals.

The Codes of Practices provide written recommendations and requirements for the care and handling of farmed animals in Canada. They’re adopted as generally accepted practices of animal management under most legislation, which means they can be used as a defense for farmers, rather than farmers having a proactive duty to comply with these codes of practice.

Even though that’s the case, they’re also used by veterinarians and by practitioners to really show what’s acceptable and what’s not. It’s a standardized document.

They have discussions about pain control, what kind of housing and bedding is appropriate, what’s important to know when moving and restraining animals, providing care, preparing animals for transport, and their euthanasia.

Written into these codes is a number of standards that tell you what’s truly not acceptable in the treatment of farmed animals.

Three codes of practice for care and handling recently came under revision and had their initial public feedback periods for 2024. Those are for horses on farms, cattle used for meat, and chickens and turkeys used for meat.

The organization that manages these processes is a non profit, but they’re funded fully by the government, and these serve as national standards.

Chantelle: The National Farm Animal Care Council, which manages these codes of practice, takes into consideration feedback from a variety of people, including animal advocates and the animal agriculture industry.

The VHS shared ways that people can provide feedback to advocate for better welfare in the codes last year. We’ve seen positive results from this in the past. It’s so important that people are advocating for the welfare of animals to be strongly considered when these codes are under review.

Official parliamentary petition asks that Canada legally recognize animal sentience

Amy: Absolutely. The final opportunity is a petition to recognize animal sentience on a national level.

Right now, the Canadian constitution doesn’t say anything about animals. It’s this general understanding that animals are under our care because we’ve domesticated them, without protection that really acknowledges their individual value and worth.

And so having animal sentience recognized at a national level would be a massive, massive impact.

It might take a while, but it’s on the discussion docket and a step forward.

Chantelle: I would be very excited to see this passed into legislation. There are lots of countries that already recognize animal sentience and it is a crucial part of having better policies passed for protecting animals.

Ban on horse exports for slaughter delayed, in limbo

Amy: Passing any federal legislation takes time and requires cooperation from multiple levels of government across parties. Bills need to be passed through three readings at both the House of Commons and the Senate, and then receive Royal Assent to become law.

One of the challenges that we’ve seen is with Bill C-355, which aimed to ban the export of live horses for slaughter.

This bill has been in discussion for quite a long time, and there was even a letter to the Minister of Agriculture from the Prime Minister to direct them to take action on this item. It was part of a campaign promise.

The bill to ban the export of horses for slaughter passed the House of Commons, but then it stalled for months at the Senate. It’s now in this sort of legislative limbo while Parliament is paused.

There were so many reasons to move forward with passing this bill. One is that it was a campaign promise and there was a mandate letter more than three years ago to put this into place.

Within the past year, new exposes showed horses suffer more than previously reported. Shipments are regularly exceeding the legal limit of 28 hours without food, water, and rest. More horses are dying in transit than reported by the government.

The majority of Canadians support banning horse exports for slaughter.

What it came down to was certain senators were dragging their feet and bringing up unrelated issues, rather than working together to prioritize the lives of horses and the values held by many Canadians.

If an election is called, which appears imminent, the bill will die and be forced to start the process again.

Right now, the best thing you can do is contact the Minister of Agriculture to stop the export of horses for slaughter and keep this moving through the next season of legislation.

Rolled back laws on inhumane hunting practices

Amy: Last year, Alberta lifted a ban on hunting grizzly bears that had been in place for almost two decades.

Similarly, Ontario had a ban on penned dog hunting, and that was also lifted the year prior.

Some of these laws have been in place for a long time for good reason, and those changes have to do with special interest groups having their voices heard, even when it isn’t necessarily in the public interest.

It’s unfortunate that special interest groups are being heard in a way that’s against animal welfare. We’re not seeing special interest groups that are pro animal welfare being heard in the same way.

Olympics remove show jumping from modern pentathlon event

Chantelle: Now that we’ve talked about some challenges in Canada, I would like to talk about some more wins that we’ve seen further out around the world.

We had the Summer Olympics in 2024. Following the Olympics, the modern pentathlon removed show jumping.

Horses are still used elsewhere in the Olympics, but the modern pentathlon has been a major area for concern. That sport involves the use of aversive tools like whips, bits, and spurs to control horses movements.

In this event, horses are randomly paired with riders who are participating. There have been concerns about riders not having a chance to develop a bond with the horse that they’re riding and to understand them on an individual level, which can lead to a lack of focus on the horse’s well-being and can lead to the horse experiencing stress, fear, and pain.

Advocates have also noted that riders and handlers have been seen directing their frustrations at horses during the competitions.

You may have heard the story of a coach punching a horse named Saint Boy in 2021 with her fist and encouraging the rider to use greater force on him.

The move away from show jumping for this sport and instead of replacing it with an obstacle course is a great example of how we can enjoy these showcases of human athlete skills and have our entertainment, but we don’t need to use animals to do that.

Amy: It’s great to see this, and this is so hard to overcome. Certainly there’s lots of sports using animals still. Big kudos to the Olympics for removing this use of horses.

UK bans farmed animal export for slaughter and fattening

Chantelle: In the UK in 2023, animal sentience was legally recognized at a federal level.

Last year it was decided that farmed animals would no longer be exported for slaughter or fattening abroad. That eliminates a really significant welfare concern for farmed animals. It’s similar to what we’re trying to achieve with the ban of horses for slaughter.

Transporting animals on long journeys is a big concern.

Farmed animals who are being transported go through a lot of suffering. They often endure extreme weather conditions like extreme heat and cold. They can go a very long time without food, water, and rest. They are shipped in overcrowded conditions to maximize how many animals can be sent to be killed at one time.

All of those conditions together can lead to animals becoming injured, sick, or even dying in transport. Depending on how they’re being shipped, it can be a really long time until there’s someone who even can reach them to attend to them.

The Animal Welfare Livestock Exports Act in the UK was met with cross party support, which shows that animal wellbeing is not a partisan issue and that reducing the suffering of our fellow beings that we share the planet with is something we really should all care about.

Amy: This is pretty amazing. I’m surprised they’re willing to make these kinds of changes, certainly, I think there’s a number of things at play. Them being an island helps as well as having that sentience law passed.

Pet Abduction Act protect pets and guardians in the UK

Chantelle: Another thing that came out of sentience law is the UK introduced the Pet Abduction Act in 2024. That made the abduction of companion animals like cats and dogs a specific criminal offense. Convictions can result in a fine or up to five years in prison, or both.

The theft of animals was previously covered by the Theft Act of 1968; these laws were put in place a very long time ago and they were due for an update. The former law considered pets to be property, like if someone stole a car.

This is another one of the great strides in protections for animals and their guardians since animal sentience was recognized.

We have consistently seen better protections for animals and the people who care for them when animal sentience legislation is introduced. But still, when we were sharing the federal petition to recognize animal sentience in Canada, there was a lot of misunderstanding around this.

We had people commenting with concerns that there wouldn’t be any protections for pet guardians if pets were no longer considered property, which we know based on the many countries that have passed this legislation is not true. I think there’s some anxiety around animal advocacy that people want to take your pets away.

But progress like this means pets are more part of the family. Greater care goes into keeping them safe because the law recognizes that they have an inherent value and an emotional value, not just a monetary value.

Amy: The challenge is convincing lawmakers that’s the case and that there’s public value in that.

New laws on wildlife killing contests, animal testing, and pet sales in the United States

Chantelle: New York’s ban on wildlife killing contests came into effect last year. New York is the 10th state to outlaw events like this, where the goal is to kill wild animals for cash and prizes.

There are also new laws around animal testing testing in Oregon, where there can no longer be the sale of cosmetics tested on animals; in California, where non animal alternatives are required for testing on certain products; and in Maryland, where animal research facilities are now required to pay into a fund that goes toward developing non animal methods and hopefully lead to less animal testing in the future.

New York pet stores can no longer sell cats, dogs, or rabbits, while pet stores in Pennsylvania must post health and breeder information for puppies as part of the state’s puppy mill law. The goal of these changes is to make people more aware of where animals are coming from and to encourage people to adopt animals who are in need of homes rather than buying from places like puppy mills, where the animal’s health and well being aren’t adequately considered.

Amy: Certainly this area, while these are some specific wins, there’s been states that have had laws around this for a long time. Some even have mandatory spay/neuter rules and things like that. It is a state by state reality, just like in Canada. That can be really frustrating, but it also helps us to model policies when the U.S. has similar requirements that laws be passed on a sort of state by state, province by province basis.

Chantelle: It’s very impactful when we see that there’s a precedent for things like this, where this is working to help animals elsewhere. It is slow going when it’s state by state and province by province, but we are seeing progress slowly, but surely.

South Korea outlaws the use of dogs for meat

Chantelle: I have so many more wins, but a couple more to highlight. South Korea passed a law banning the use of dogs for meat, and that will be in effect as of 2027. A lot of countries have already banned the slaughter or sale of dogs for meat. Surprisingly, Canada is not one of them, although meat that’s sold in Canada has to be inspected, and there’s no licensed slaughterhouses that kill dogs in Canada.

Mexico’s constitution includes animal protection as a fundamental value

Chantelle: Mexico’s constitution now includes animal protection as a fundamental value. Nine other countries include animals in their constitution, but this new inclusion in Mexico appears to be the most specific.

For instance, humane education is a mandatory guideline in all educational institutions nationwide.

Amy: Wow, that’s huge. Imagine if we had that around the world.

New Zealand bans greyhound racing

Chantelle: In New Zealand, the government announced that it will ban greyhound racing as of 2026.

That ban comes as a result of very high rates of injuries for dogs used in racing. In 2021, there were more than 200 greyhounds who died and 900 suffered injuries due to racing, according to local media reports.

The law recognizes this level of suffering for entertainment is not acceptable.

Research reinforces benefits of plant-based food

Chantelle: There are also some more opportunities around the world. There’s a lot of new research coming out around plant-based foods and the availability of nutrients in plant-based foods.

One example is a study funded by the beef industry, which found plant-based protein as effective as meat for building muscle.

That study didn’t receive a lot of media attention, presumably because the funders wanted it to prove meat is better than plant-based foods. But it didn’t, despite using less protein-dense sources like black beans and whole wheat.

Despite the study seeming to skew towards a bias for the result they wanted, it still found that if you’re getting enough protein throughout the day, plants are just as effective.

Amy: I love that. Eating lots of nuts, seeds, lentils and beans has given me so much protein. The nice thing is, there are diverse forms of protein to choose from if people struggle with some types that their bodies don’t accept.

I’m grateful there’s so many different types that we have access to, so if we need to cut one out, we can.

Chantelle: And you can get protein from plant-based foods in some ways that I wasn’t even considering. I just switched to a bread that has 10 grams of protein in two slices. You could be getting more protein than you’re even counting.

South African collaboration releases manifesto on animal protection framework

Chantelle: And in South Africa, the Animal Law Project (ALP), which is a collaboration of animal protection organizations, consulted with the sector and with experts to develop and release a manifesto that recommends an overhaul of the legal framework for animals.

In 2016, South African courts recognized animal sentience and decided animal welfare was included in the constitution, which was great.

But very few changes have been made to effectively protect animals since then. This is a great example of collaboration within and between sectors to develop recommendations for animal protection.

Amy: We need to develop useful and clear paths forward that can be applied around the globe.

Intersectionality with other advocacy movements

Amy: This concept of One Health, One Welfare is sort of a modern name for connecting the environment, animals, and people. This has existed for so long within Indigenous cultures, where there’s this recognition that we’re all interrelated.

You can relate this to intersectionality, recognizing that we have environmental protections that interact with animal protections. Animal farming impacts the environment and habitat destruction harms wild animals.

There is also overlap with the labour sector, where vulnerable workers who are often marginalized are working in industries that exploit animals. because industries that exploit animals are the lowest paying.

There is overlap with income inequality. Having a lack of resources for low income pet guardians can lead to animals being surrendered to shelters or suffering and people being separated from their animals.

The more we recognize that interplay, we can work with different movements to advocate for people and animals, or advocate for the environment and animals, or all three, in a way that has more power than acting in silos.

Addressing an issue through a variety of methods

Amy: When it comes to farmed animals, advocates across the sector are taking a three pronged approach.

Advocacy to reduce harm to farmed animals through welfare regulations and government policy change that can be really slow and incremental, but it does have an impact. And at the very least, you have to stop it from going backwards, because what we’ll see is that things go backwards if you don’t stay with them.

And then there’s also plant-based advocacy to decrease the demand for animals being raised and killed for food. The more plant-based demand there is, the better likelihood that fewer animals are suffering.

Finally, there’s a push for corporations to adopt higher welfare standards. In the next we’re going to discuss the Canada Animal Welfare Scorecard from Mercy for Animals, tracking which companies are following through with welfare commitments, like sourcing cage-free eggs.

Making the movement more accessible and welcoming

Amy: Another trend that is so important around the globe is making the movement for animals more accessible and welcoming. Moving away from judgment and supporting people to make gradual changes, from talking about a meal you enjoyed to changes like people working within their institutions or their places of work to make change.

There’s also new ways all the time to share information through digital platforms, through one on one conversations, changing media landscapes.

Staying on top of that and reflecting on how we can continue effective advocacy despite a changing environment of how information gets disseminated.

Chantelle: Yeah, that’s so important to consider when we’re talking about how to make animal advocacy more accessible to more people and share these really important messages with as many people as possible.

Taking a community-centered approach

Amy: One final trend is taking a community centered approach. An example is supporting people in caring for their animals rather than pushing for strict regulations, such as bans on pet ownership in low income housing.

As well, working with farmers and workers to create more ethical food systems.

The more we collaborate, the more we can see that everybody does want to work towards some of the same goals, and we can feel connected to those we’re collaborating with and come up with better solutions.

Amy: Sharing about the legal changes with friends and family can make a big impact. The more people think about sentience and the constitution, these are abstract concepts, but they mean so much.

It does take this sort of flow from early adopters (people who care deeply about issues and take initiative to make changes) to the mushy middle (people who don’t have strong opinions about an issue but may be swayed to action). And then you get those forced with legislation to change as the final step.

All of you listening are early adopters. Take the time to think about what does it take to get those mushy middle folk a little bit closer to being early adopters, or considering changes in their lives that can influence legislation.

The more public opinion changes, the better odds we have at changing laws.

Please join us again next month as we’ll be speaking with Mercy for Animals about Canada’s Animal Welfare Scorecard.

What does a good life look like for animals?

In this month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally, we look back through the show’s second season, which delved into what good welfare looks like for animals and how we can all help improve animal well-being.

The first episode of this series, Is my pet happy?, was released in March 2023. This episode looked at companion animal behaviour, emotional “tells”, and the many facets that make up a good life for domestic cats and dogs.

The second episode in this series, How to train your dog or cat, was released in April 2023. The episode looks at the concept of training: How it is important to improve the well-being of animals cared for by humans, the science behind different training techniques, and how to create positive experiences for animals during training.

The third episode in this series is entitled Do pigs really like mud? And other farmed animal behaviours. The episode, released in May 2023, looks at how different species of farmed animals express their natural behaviours and how they build a good life for themselves when they are free to do so. It also touches on how the modern animal agriculture system prevents animals from expressing these behaviours.

The final episode in this series, How can you help wildlife?, came out in June 2023. This discussion looks at the many ways wild animals are impacted by human activities, both in their natural habitats and in captivity, and how we can each make a difference in wild animals’ lives by focussing on compassionate conservation and minimizing the harmful impacts of human behaviour and infrastructure on wildlife.

Next episode

Please join us next month as we discuss the last year of animal advocacy.

Research plays a crucial role in animal advocacy, helping to make decisions, measure impacts, and infludence policy-makers.

This month’s episode of The Informed Animal Ally discusses how research is used in animal advocacy, particularly polling, surveys, and reports. The episode expoles why collecting this kind of data is important, the ways we can use it in our advocacy work, and examples from the Vancouver Humane Society’s recent research.

Note: This written discussion has been edited for length.

Chantelle: First, Amy, I was wondering if you could share a little bit about what we’re talking about when we discuss surveys. What kinds of questions are asked and how are those answers useful when we’re talking about animal advocacy?

Amy: Yeah, there’s a lot of different data that can be gathered from surveys.

• You can learn about what people think. We kind of frame that as public opinion, but that can also take into account, for example, how people feel about the their pets.
• You can also measure public behaviour. So you can get a sense of what people are actually doing with their time and their money.
• And then you can gather demographic data. Demographic data gives more context to the polling data.

Public opinion questions

Amy: When you think about what people think, that helps you have a sense of how people are falling on a scale. And when you’re trying to shift attitude, when your goal is to change the way people think about things, then you can use that public opinion polling to get a gauge whether you’ve been successful.

You can do that on a micro scale with a small community if you’re targeting ads and trying to get a sense of what’s happening in Vancouver, or you can compare that to a national audience, you can see growth based on a campaign and measure that against an area that hasn’t had that campaign.

One example of this is a Research Co. survey that asked, would you say you’re in favor or opposed to each of the following: eating animals, using animals in rodeo, killing animals for their fur.

You can take that data to decision makers, politicians and business owners when advocating for change. And that shows what the public opinion is when it comes to a practice that harms animals.

It is the most useful data for the government because they care about what the people who vote for them think.

Public behaviour questions

Amy: Other polling data, such as public behaviours, can be useful for decision makers as well. However, it has a different effect.

An example is a survey about people’s eating habits and dietary choices, or a question about if you’ve been to the zoo in the past year.

If people are eating less meat on their own, we can bring that to a city to say, as they’re creating their food budget, they could make more accessible plant-based options available in their parks, because we have evidence that people are eating less meat and wanting more plant-based food available.

Demographic questions

Amy: When it comes to the demographic data, it really helps give context.

Particularly when you’re trying to decide what’s the most valuable audience to target, you can identify that with demographic data. You can say, okay, this is the audience that’s moving in this direction already. So there’s already some peer support.

Maybe let’s concentrate our efforts on this audience to create an overall societal shift.

Chantelle: Thank you so much for that great overview of the kinds of surveys that are helpful for animal advocacy work and how.

Chantelle: We at the Vancouver Humane Society have commissioned quite a few surveys over the past three years, and we’d like to share how they’ve been helpful for our work.

One example is the VHS commissioned a poll on plant-based eating habits and opinions in the Lower Mainland of B.C. in December, 2022.

You can hear more about this poll in depth in our episode from July, 2023, which is called Will plant-based become the norm?

A lot of things came out of this survey. First of all, it informed our advocacy work by telling us people’s biggest motivations for reducing their consumption of animal products.

The top motivator for eating less meat and animal products was personal health, and then the cost of foods and the environment were tied, and then animal well-being.

We also collected data about people’s eating habits. That told us how many servings of various animal products people are actually eating each month. For instance, most people are eating 7 to 17 servings of eggs, but they’re eating less than 4 servings of fish.

From that, we created an impact report that specifically looked at the impact an average person could make in the Lower Mainland.

We found that by switching 100 percent of their diet to plant-based foods for one year, one person could save the amount of emissions it takes to power a home for six months, and they could also save about $600 a year.

By switching just 25 percent of their diet, they could save the carbon that’s sequestered by a quarter acre of forested land, and they could also save about $156 a year.

How much can you save on your grocery bill eating plant-based? #shorts

A recent cost-benefit analysis was conducted to determine how much an individual could save if shifting all or part of their diet to plant-based. What were the results? More info: https://plantuniversity.ca/learn/plant-based-poll/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=shorts-7-cost2&utm_campaign=plantu_survey

So we were able to share the findings from that survey and the report in a plant-based advocacy campaign, which included billboards across Vancouver, a series of videos on social media, and a press release that was covered in 23 media outlets.

We also continue to use the results from that survey to inform our plant-based advocacy work and reach more people with accessible plant-based foods.

As we’ve mentioned, this area of advocacy has the potential to make a huge impact for animals.

In 2023, 859 million land animals were killed for food in Canada. If we can convince people who are eating animal products to switch even just one day a week to plant-based foods, we can save almost 123 million land animals every year, plus an estimate of more than 1.4 billion aquatic animals.

It would also make a huge difference in decreasing the demand for industrial animal agriculture, which forces more animals into a smaller space for greater output. It’s what many know as factory farming, where many of the greatest harms to animals happen on an almost unimaginable scale.

Amy: The nice thing about survey data is it takes big concepts and you can condense them to a simple phrase and assess where people are at. you can make that available to the public and they will likely have an opinion on it.

When you present that information, it gets people thinking about themselves and their habits.

Amy: The VHS commissioned three surveys on the Calgary Stampede in the past three years.

Removing rodeo and chuckwagons from the Calgary Stampede would have virtually no impact on attendance

Amy: The first survey in 2022 found that removing the rodeo and chuckwagons from the Calgary Stampede would have virtually no impact on attendance and would actually bring in some new crowds.

64 percent of Calgarians had attended or planned to attend that year, and 63 percent said they would attend without the rodeo.

24 percent of non-attendees from that year said said that they would attend if the animal events were dropped.

Bringing that forward to council helps them to see that there is a wider audience that could be reached by the Stampede.

That has effects on marketing. The Stampede is essentially a public event, and it’s a profit driven entity in that they are looking to bring in money into the city. People stay at hotels and go to the music shows.

If they can bring more people in and join the Stampede, they have incentive to do that for tourism purposes.

2024 polls show support for animal events dropped this year

Amy: In 2024, we conducted a poll gauging support in Calgary, Alberta, and across Canada.

We then monitored the Stampede and shared information with the media about animal deaths and incidents this year, which turned out to be the deadliest year of animal events since 2019 with four deaths.

That was really impactful, and we made sure to share that impact with the media.

We also ran a campaign to raise awareness about the harms caused by rodeo and chuckwagon races online.

The polling that we did after the Stampede showed a drop in support for all events amongst Canadians. A majority of the Calgarians opposed one of the five events listed in the survey in February, but that jumped to four out of five in July.

In both groups, opposition to government funding of rodeo events increased. And the increase was really sharp in Calgary, where opposition to funding rose from 51 percent to 67 percent.

So we got from half the population to two thirds opposed to government funding these rodeo events. That speaks to people making decisions based on what voters think.

These results were shared on social media in an op-ed published in the Daily Hive, as well as with city council in Calgary.

Without this data, we would not know if our campaigns were effective. The outcome has value, and not just an internal value; there’s that external value of sharing the information as well.

Amy: I’ll move on to talking about a captivity poll. In 2022, we did a poll on public opinion about animals in captivity in B.C.

The outcome was pretty remarkable. We found that 89 percent of British Columbians are opposed to the international trade of wild and exotic animals to be kept in permanent captivity in zoos and aquariums.

This was shared in media stories and a letter to the province of British Columbia calling for changes to the Controlled Alien Species Act, which allows exotic animals to be imported.

It’s amazing to think about all the animals kept in captivity solely for human entertainment, and the general population is not on board with that.

People were split fairly evenly on actually keeping animals and zoos and aquariums for entertainment and education: 49 percent in favour and 44 percent were opposed. And that really helped us inform our outreach campaign, realizing there is some thought to the education and entertainment value of animals in zoos.

While we understand the suffering animals experience doesn’t balance with the entertainment and education value, we need to shift public opinion.

We can do another poll to see if we’ve changed that once we’ve done another campaign. So it’s really nice to benchmark those things over time to see if we can shift public opinion and influence policy decisions to match the knowledge and science we have.

Chantelle: I’m really interested to see the future of public opinion on this because I think there’s a lot of messaging around zoos that they have a lot of educational value, but the evidence shows people don’t learn more from going to see animals at a zoo than they would just learning about animals from home or going for a walk through the forest.

So I think that there’s a lot of potential to help people learn about ways that they can become educated about animals and animal well-being without causing animals to suffer because they’re sitting in a cage in captivity.

Chantelle: I wanted to talk about a survey from this year, which was a poll of BC residents gauging people’s general knowledge and interests around animal topics.

This survey is really interesting because it’s going to be used to inform our work on a wider scale in the coming years to raise awareness on the care and well being of animals and also to advocate for changes that will prevent animal suffering in public policy.

Some key findings:

56.4 percent of British Columbians live with at least one companion animal.

Most British Columbians are interested in five of the topics that we asked about in our survey:

• Interacting with and protecting wildlife.
• Welfare concerns around farmed animals.
• How to care for pets, like grooming and food.
• Welfare concerns around animals in captivity in zoos and aquariums.
• How to train pets – that’s not necessarily just trick training, it’s really things that influence the well-being of companion animals on a day to day basis, like how can we desensitize an animal to the sound of fireworks that really stresses them out, or how can we make it easier for them to go through care items like grooming or to have a positive experience of a walk outside.

We found that 12 percent of people were flexitarian, 9 percent were vegetarian, and 2 percent were vegan.

We asked about what actions folks have taken for animals in the past six months, and we found that almost half of people who were surveyed had taken at least one of the actions that we listed.

The top ones were things like reading or watching news information about animals, donating to animal organizations, or signing petitions.

And we also asked about which resources people consider useful when they’re learning about a new topic. The top answers were websites, YouTube, and TV news stories.

That survey is going to help us understand current public behaviours around animal welfare and attitudes around animal well-being. It’ll determine the most popular topics surrounding animal well-being and advocacy so that we can share information about those. And it will also determine the most effective platforms where we can reach people regarding animal topics.

Amy: I wanted to share qualitative studies and non-public polling.

We’ve partnered with research institutions to do interviews with people who accessed care for their pets in a time of an emergency, post-COVID. We looked at financial impacts on low income individuals.

Another survey or study that we did was looking at people who work in the trauma-informed sector and getting a sense of how they operate in that sector and what their attitudes are towards burnout.

We interviewed people in the shelter sector, animal enforcement and leadership in those and looked at what the differences were and then put together a report.

Out of that research we created a training program on trauma-informed care in the animal service sector. The training program is free for anyone to take online to look at how to make the work that they do more trauma-informed.

We’re advocating for more trauma informed care of people, which we know will have a positive impact on the animals that people care for. So even though it’s not a quick study, it takes longer, the sort of depth of that allows for a much more thorough understanding of the sector and what was needed to create some pretty significant shifts in our own sector and community.

We also did a cost-benefit analysis using financial data and municipal purchasing to assess how we could improve the systems where municipalities are purchasing food.

So are there cheaper products that they could replace one for another, that could be as simple as replacing dairy milk with oat milk; replacing beef products with beans and lentils.

The financial benefit of that is huge. And so if we’re looking at a public body accountable to citizens for being financially responsible, we can demonstrate that plant-based products do make a significant impact when it comes to the waste stream, the impact on the environment and the financial choices.

So those types of studies, maybe it’s qualitative research, maybe it’s an economic analysis can also have a huge impact when it comes to changing policies.

Chantelle: Yeah, absolutely. One of the major themes I’m noticing as you’re speaking is there’s lots of different avenues to advocate for a better world for animals.

People are not always going to listen to concerns about animal well-being and their experiences. That doesn’t always make an impact with policy-makers. But talking about the financial impacts, the environmental impacts, can reach decision-makers.

We’ve also talked briefly on this show about the concept of One Health, One Welfare. That’s the interconnectedness of all these pieces; the well-being of humans, animals, the environment impact each other.

For instance, more trauma-informed services for people with companion animals has a really positive impact on the actual lives of those companion animals as well.

Amy: It’s so important to make sure with surveys we’re getting accurate data that’s as unbiased as possible in terms of how we’re asking the questions.

Obviously, we know people themselves are biased and that’s the whole point, but when we use this information to speak with decision-makers, we want those to be well-informed recommendations and make sure we’re also sharing accurate information with the public.

When we’re conducting surveys about public opinion or behaviour, we use reputable companies like Research Co. and Angus Reid Institute to help with that. And when we’re working with public institutions like universities, we’re making sure that the process is going through an entire evaluation within the university that meets their standards.