The actual capital cost of the dog, depending on the organization from which you're acquiring a dog, is somewhere between $15,000 and $30,000. However, to put the ongoing operating and maintenance budget into purely budgetary terms, when you take a $3,000 sum and multiply it by the 15% medical tax credit, you arrive at $450, which, when divided by 365, brings us down to about $1.23 per day.
It doesn't seem like a huge amount of money, but you have to realize that there are significant financial implications for all those people who are dealing with serious mental health issues. With the demographics, the drop in earnings capacity, the increased expense, the lost time from work, there are a lot of implications. I attempted to point out that what may look like a ridiculous number is in fact not that at all. It does matter to a lot of disabled Canadians.