A campaign is underway to increase federal financial support for Canada's hard-pressed veterinary colleges before the country faces a full-blown crisis affecting health or international trade, brought on because the schools could no longer produce internationally accredited graduates.
In an unusual move, concerned administrators want Ottawa to consider special funding, arguing that there are circumstances in the national interest that could allow for this when there's a real possibility that several institutions could lose their accreditation. At least three of the country's four veterinary schools need to improve their labs, equipment, buildings and some courses to meet international standards, as well as attract faculty and keep students from leaving Canada.
As it stands now, students at Canadian veterinary schools are licensed to practise when they graduate. But if they were to graduate from a school that has lost its accreditation, they would have to tack on another year of study at an accredited college or take a written exam with a hands-on practicum for which there is a long waiting list.
“It's shocking that this [threat to accreditation] happened,” said Gordon Dittberner of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. The association has written the federal government, stressing the seriousness of the funding situation and asking cabinet to approve special funding. “If Canadian veterinary schools lose their academic standing the economic repercussions for Canada could be staggering,” he said.
Canada's international livestock trade, for example, depends on accredited veterinarians monitoring meat plants and acting as border inspectors. Licensed veterinarians are also at the forefront of protecting the security and safety of the national food supply, especially important when the threat to human health from animal-borne diseases has never been higher.
The wake-up call began when the international accrediting body, the American Veterinary Medical Association, found serious problems at two of Canada's veterinary schools. In 1998, the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan was given just a three-year accreditation instead of the normal seven years because improvements were needed to the facilities. “We've patched up the worst of the repair problems,” said Alexander Livingston, dean of the college, as he waited in November to hear whether the facility would be further downgraded. “But it was a duct tape and string job when what we really needed was complete renovation.”
In 1999, the accrediting agency put the Université de Montréal's French-language veterinary college in Sainte-Hyacinthe on a two-year downgraded accreditation. The Quebec school has estimated that its vital repairs and upgrades, including a new sewer system demanded by the accreditors, would run to at least $100-million.
Some observers fear that a third school — the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph — could be put on notice too when it undergoes its accreditation review in February. “I'm worried about our infrastructure,” said Alan Meek, dean of the college. “We have space that needs to be renovated as well as having to get core bread-and-butter equipment.” He noted that parts of an 80-year-old building have never been renovated and the small-animal hospital caseload has increased 10-fold over the years.
Tim Ogilvie, dean of the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, acknowledged that he doesn't have the same problems with outdated facilities simply because it's the newest veterinary college on the continent. “But there's no money for expansion of lab facilities needed to attract research or for capital refurbishment.”
Estimates vary but the ongoing failure to put money into the buildings, labs and hospitals that make up the veterinary colleges means that it could take up to half a billion dollars from a mix of sources to ensure Canada's veterinary schools maintain their accreditation in the future. That's a relative bargain for four schools, compared with the $300-million US that American authorities are investing in the University of California's veterinary school at Davis to make sure it keeps its accreditation. “In the U.S.,” said Dr. Ogilvie, “there's tremendous growth right now in infrastructure and the support needed for food safety issues involving animals and animal welfare.”
The problems at the Canadian veterinary colleges are complex and some situations have developed because they've fallen between jurisdictional cracks, especially for the Saskatoon school and the Atlantic college in Charlottetown. Unlike the Ontario and Quebec schools which are mostly funded by their respective provinces, the Western and Atlantic colleges were set up to take students from neighbouring provinces. Those neighbouring provinces pay for their students' education and some operating costs but cannot by law contribute to the bricks and mortar items.
Both the Atlantic and Western colleges have had problems with planning because of delays in negotiating funding agreements with the provinces — agreements that must then wend their slow way through provincial legislatures. The Atlantic college is still waiting for its 2001–06 agreement to be approved. The western college's last agreement was negotiated in 1994 and expired in 1999. A new agreement could pass the legislatures in time for the next fiscal year.
Dr. Dittberner of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association said Ottawa has been “shortsighted”, partly because of the “diffused mandates” of various federal departments, with none of them solely responsible for clinical animal health. As well, said Dr. Dittberner, there should be a national veterinary research granting agency operating like the three other granting councils, because at the moment there's “no mechanism for sustainable animal research”. Research is one of the key areas that accreditors judge when deciding whether to renew a school's accreditation.
Dr./Dr Gordon Dittberner
Dr./Dr Alan Meek
Dr./Dr Alexander Livingston
Dr./Dr Tim Ogilvie
Dr./Dr Raymond Roy
Footnotes
Reprinted with permission from University Affairs, a magazine about higher education in Canada, published by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.