Veterans Affairs Committee on May 12th, 2021

[Nathan Svenson]

Three years.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Ms. Heber.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, this hectoring of witnesses on how long they have worked at VAC is entirely inappropriate.

Please, Mr. Doherty.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Fillmore, it isn't, and it's my time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Doherty....

Go ahead, Dr. Heber.

[Dr. Alexandra Heber]

You were asking how many years. It is four and a half years.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

I'm going to appeal to your compassionate side. I hope there is some there.

Every day—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Mr. Doherty, I'm sorry. Let's get to the questions. I don't think the personal attacks are going to be helpful moving forward.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

What is unique about service dogs that led the Canadian General Standards Board to withdraw its project to establish a national standard for service dogs, and why couldn't VAC pick it up?

[Crystal Garrett-Baird]

I'm going to ask Nathan to speak to some of the areas of challenge that occurred with coming to a consensus by the board.

[Nathan Svenson]

Really, this is the question that's at the heart of the issue and at the heart of your concerns. In the department, we feel the same way. We have the same frustrated conversations about it.

In large part, it's due to the fact that delivering a service dog to a person who is willing and able and in a position to use it requires such a patchwork of partnerships through the process, from the supply of the dogs themselves to the schools that are going to train them, to the jurisdiction in which they are being trained, to the mental health service provider, from whichever jurisdiction, who needs to provide a prescription or a recommendation for the use. That's all before it would even come to the department for consideration, even if we had a policy.

All those pieces coming together, all those voices, were at the Canadian General Standards Board conversation. It's a very large group to work with, and they all need to come to an agreement.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you, Mr. Svenson.

I'm afraid that's time.

Up next we have MP Amos, please, for five minutes.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses.

I'm new to this subject area. Some of our other participants have been around this issue for some time, so you'll pardon me if my questions are more on the basic side.

First off, Ms. Garrett-Baird made the distinction between the service dog and the emotional support dog, so I presume it's a different kind of training or a different type of service that is being delivered by the dog. Could you please clarify that for me?

Afterwards, I want to ask questions of Mr. Svenson on the research that underpins the services provided by both types of dogs.

[Crystal Garrett-Baird]

Certainly, and thank you for the question.

I'm going to ask Nathan to respond to it. He has a lot of the context around the service dogs versus emotional support dogs. This was actually the key comparison group that was used in the recently completed United States Department of Veterans Affairs study that we referenced earlier.

Nathan.

[Nathan Svenson]

Thank you.

Service dogs are working animals. They're not pets. Service dogs are trained to perform tasks for people with disabilities. Guide dogs assist with navigation for people with diminished vision. Hearing dogs alert people with hearing impairments to sounds like a doorbell. Mobility dogs retrieve objects or pull wheelchairs. Mental health service dogs calm individuals, generally speaking, to avoid or defuse a triggered episode.

In contrast, emotional support dogs can be considered pets. They are typically not trained to perform tasks that directly relate to a disability but are considered to provide therapeutic benefit through companionship and affection.

There's a third category of dogs there, too: therapy dogs. I'll just bring this in for completeness. Those dogs are not owned by patients but are present during the delivery of treatment. They are not service dogs and are distinct from emotional support dogs, which are primarily for the benefit of their owner.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Thanks for that precision.

To follow up on that, what is the nature of the debate within the research community as between these three different types of service-providing dogs that makes this issue complex to deal with at Veterans Affairs?

[Nathan Svenson]

Right. That's an excellent question.

Really, it comes down to a comparison of the impact of service dogs—psychiatric service dogs, in this case—versus emotional support dogs. The therapy dogs can be present during treatment, but they're not something that the veteran would have with him at all times. It comes down to those two categories, service dogs and emotional support dogs.

That was the main focus of the United States Veterans Affairs study. They paired 88 veterans with a service dog, and 65 veterans with an emotional support dog. That's the number of people who completed the study. It was a two-year study. What they found was that emotional support dogs showed similar impacts when compared to service dogs when measuring sleep quality, depression levels and mental aspects of the quality of life. However, they found specifically that psychiatric service dogs had a much greater impact in terms of improvement in PTSD symptoms and anger reaction, and to some extent in suicidality, compared to those with emotional support dogs.

Those are the findings of the study that were just released in the past couple of months.

[William Amos, Liberal, Pontiac, QC]

Okay.

Just to conclude, then, on that last aspect around the challenges that it poses to Veterans Affairs Canada.... You have the U.S. research and research done here in Canada and elsewhere. You mentioned a patchwork issue, which I understand is a separate matter, but what is it about the research that makes this challenging for VAC?

[Nathan Svenson]

At the conclusion of our pilot study in Canada, we were left with this question: There were some benefits that were shown, but were those due to having a companion animal and having constant companionship and association, or were they due to the fact that these were psychiatric service dogs that were trained for that purpose? Generally, the training for a psychiatric service dog is much more expensive, so that's one consideration, and the supply is very limited.

It's important for us, or any provider, to know which benefits can be derived from which type of service animal or support animal.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you. I'm afraid that's time.

MP Desilets, you have two and a half minutes, please.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I'd like to come back to the possibility of using a company like Wonder Warriors. From what I understand, Veterans Affairs Canada doesn't have standards for training, for example. This concerns me a great deal because in the past year, we've dealt with private companies, including WE Charity and Switch Health, that did not provide any services in French, which was very problematic.

So I understand, but I need some reassurance because the standards should not come from the private sector. It seems to me that the government should be setting those standards in the first place.

This question is for you, Mrs. Garrett-Baird. Please reassure me.

[Crystal Garrett-Baird]

Thank you for the question.

As we went through the work on service dogs, we looked at what the different provinces are doing and their levels of maturity. As I mentioned, we have British Columbia with a very advanced legislative framework, which is not necessarily the case in other situations.

Given the inquiries we were receiving about service dogs for veterans, that is the reason why, in 2015, we contracted with the Canadian General Standards Board to establish that national set of standards so that there would be consistency in the training and the quality of the service dogs being used to assist veterans with mental health issues. It was largely because we were aware and saw the growing interest in service dogs in the veteran community and wanted to advance the issue in support of those veterans. Unfortunately, as noted, the board notified committee members in April 2018 that it withdrew its intent to produce a standard, because there was no consensus and the standard would not be able to be achieved with a positive impact, so it was discontinued.

However, we continued forward with the research, and then through the veteran and family well-being fund in 2019 we funded Wounded Warriors Canada to expand their post-traumatic stress disorder service dog program. They really are doing amazing work in this area, both in developing prescriber guidelines and criteria—

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I don't doubt it, but I still stand by my point.

I'd like to point out to all of you that in Australia, the accreditation programs—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Luc, I'm afraid that's your time. Do you have a final comment, or are you going into another question?

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Yes.

I would like to see us take a look at other countries, such as Australia, where the states and territories set the standards, which seems to be working very well.

Are you looking at that a bit?