Dear Editor,
I read with fond interest the excellent piece on the evolution of disease surveillance in Canada by my good friend and colleague Dr. Wayne Lees (Can Vet J 2017;58:459–465). In my view, this clearly laid bare why we do not have an overarching “Animal Health Canada” type of system like the international examples Dr. Lees cites. After working in this area for over 35 years, I consider the reasons to be twofold.
First, all of the current and previous incarnations of Canadian animal health/surveillance systems that Dr. Lees lists have been assembled by dedicated, keen provincial and federal veterinary staff and stakeholders. However, these efforts lacked the most difficult and necessary element — expert public policy development in government — the people who know how to develop public policy and lead the work through to a cabinet decision. Among all the other priorities of government, when the time is right, real animal health policy development would lead to a cabinet decision on a partial funding model to hopefully sustain a new body such as “Animal Health Canada.”
Secondly, it may just be that our current vast network of well-trained veterinarians, world-class laboratories like the Animal Health Laboratory in Ontario, government veterinarians, and engaged stakeholders may already be providing a model that succeeds for a diverse Canada. And our current network is already pretty much sustainable on existing dollars. It works and it may be the most efficient expert system we can afford.
When one takes a broad risk-based view, the disease examples Dr. Lees cites are actually some of the disease mitigation success stories in Canada (e.g., West Nile virus, porcine epidemic diarrhea, avian influenza, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), etc.). The existing intelligent “net” created by hard working practitioners, the diagnosticians in our laboratories, government staff, and new stakeholder groups such as Swine Health Ontario or the diverse National Farmed Animal Health and Welfare Council — is truly coming of age as a robust network in my view. I am hard-pressed to envision a significant “fish” that would get through this current “net” undetected for very long. And we have a good track record of dealing with isolated outbreaks.
Sure there is always more preparedness, research and animal health work to do and a better understanding of animal health policy work would help. However, in the meantime let’s not beat ourselves up too much — our current networks are world-class and work to serve us well.
Sincerely,
Footnotes
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