Is Canada ready for a new veterinary college?

Canada currently has 5 veterinary colleges: 1 in Quebec to serve the francophone population and 4 to serve the English-speaking population. Canada’s first veterinary college, the Ontario Veterinary College, was established in 1862. The Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM) opened nearly 100 y later, in the mid-1960s, at the University of Saskatchewan. The Atlantic Veterinary College was started at the University of Prince Edward Island in 1985, to serve the Atlantic provinces; and the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (UCVM) took shape in 2006, to serve the needs of Albertans.

Given that it has been nearly 2 decades since the opening of the UCVM and there is a historical pattern of opening a veterinary college every 20 y, Canada is not only due to open a new veterinary college but is in dire need of one.

There is an ongoing and serious shortage of veterinarians across Canada and the United States. Twenty years ago, it was believed that the opening of veterinary colleges in St. Kitts and Grenada and their subsequent accreditation by the Council on Education of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) would lead to an abundance of veterinary graduates, bordering on an oversupply and potentially saturating the market. That dire prediction has not been realized. Today, the opposite problem exists, and we now need to increase the capacity to train more veterinarians.

The United States has continued to open veterinary colleges to address this problem, with the latest established by Rowan University in New Jersey and the Arkansas State University. Canada has not taken any steps in this direction.

One of the strategies in Canada has been to rely on immigration to meet the demand for veterinarians. However, in contrast to their United States counterparts and likely because of their deep-seated cultural biases, Canadian veterinary colleges have largely failed to support immigrant veterinarians who are graduates of colleges not accredited by the AVMA/CVMA Council on Education. Despite CVMA’s National Examining Board creating a mechanism for graduates of nonaccredited veterinary colleges to gain credentials by completing 1 y of clinical training, none of the Canadian veterinary colleges has taken any steps to support this initiative; and considering that colleges such as the Ontario Veterinary College even refuse to conduct the Clinical Proficiency Examination for these graduates, let us not hold our breath that they will have a change of heart any time soon.

We can meet the demand for veterinarians by increasing capacity in Canadian veterinary colleges. Canadian colleges continue to ask provincial governments to increase funding to create more permanent student seats at existing veterinary colleges. Recently, the Government of Saskatchewan added approximately 5 or 6 additional seats to the WCVM’s incoming veterinary classes. This decision was based on the advocacy of both the Saskatchewan Veterinary Medical Association and the WCVM. Similarly, following coordinated advocacy by the UCVM and the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association, the Government of Alberta is adding 50 additional seats at the UCVM, bringing the class size to 100 starting in 2025. Only time will tell if these additional veterinarians graduating 5 to 6 y from now will alleviate the shortage that has persisted for years.

A new college would create a steady supply of veterinarians. Besides adding several permanent seats funded through a provincial government, the college could potentially also make a real difference to the shortage of veterinarians in Canada by concurrently serving, through federal funding, as a Canadian centre for credentialing hundreds of Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are graduates of veterinary colleges not accredited by the AVMA/CVMA Council on Education. Therefore, the college could have a unique dual partnership in both provincial and federal funding.

The new college could have an innovative focus on Canada’s North. This unique area of Canada has become increasingly populated and has increased its economic activity in various industries, including mining and trade. Further, the college could have a genuine One Health/Planetary Health focus, integrating human, animal, and ecosystem health to create academic programming where students from human, animal, and environmental health backgrounds come together to learn ways of addressing issues of climate change in northern communities.

One could argue that we should simply add more students to one or more of the existing veterinary colleges in Canada. That can be done, but it will not address the limitations of the current physical infrastructure and the number of academic veterinary medical teachers and researchers, as would be done through the creation of a new veterinary college.

The creation of new laboratories, potentially 70 to 100 new academic positions, and expanded graduate training opportunities in One Health are all valid reasons to consider putting our efforts, time, and funding toward a new veterinary college.

If we are going to sustain a growing economy, population, and demands, there needs to be a new veterinary college in Canada. The question now is which province will take the initiative and establish the next exceptional veterinary college for Canada.