Good afternoon, everybody.
Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to speak to the committee on this important issue. I am currently the executive director and co-founder of National Service Dogs. We're based in Cambridge, Ontario. Over the past 25 years we've successfully deployed over 550 service dog teams across Canada.
National Service Dogs was the first program in Canada accredited by Assistance Dogs International to deploy dogs through a PTSD service dog program to veterans. We provide our dogs and our eight years of ongoing support services at no charge to our clients.
NSD values standards and has voluntarily availed itself of the Assistance Dogs International accreditation process, which you're going to be hearing a little bit more about from Sheila. The process in and of itself, though, just so the committee is aware, involves a very intensive, two-day, in-person audit of our programs. These in-person audits occur every five years. They include random reviews of our files, interviews and reviews of our staff, volunteers, clients and dog training processes, our governance model and our financials. We're also required to supply Assistance Dogs International with annual compliance reports.
NSD has also achieved and maintained accreditation with Imagine Canada standards. Not many people are aware, but Imagine Canada sets the standards for charities in Canada. We are one of only a few hundred charities to achieve accreditation with Imagine Canada—out of 85,000 Canadian charities. National Service Dogs along with the Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides are the only service dog producers in Canada to achieve accreditation with Imagine Canada.
As I am sitting here with you today, I am actively involved on the Assistance Dogs International standards committee, and have been for almost a decade. I also sit on the legislative and advocacy committee of ADI, North America. Previously I have co-chaired the CGSB technical committee, tasked with developing a service dog standard.
When the topic of standards for service dogs comes up within the community, pretty much everyone agrees that we need them. We need to ensure the dogs being deployed to Canadians are specifically trained to minimize the limitations of a person with a disability. We need to ensure that the dogs are healthy, temperamentally and physically fit for service, and safe for their handlers and the community at large. We need to ensure that service dog providers are ethical, safe, responsive and responsible, not only to their clients but to the dogs they are deploying out. We also need to ensure that the public can feel confident that when they see a dog in a service dog jacket or a guide dog harness, that dog will not interfere with them, their property or their business.
What I have found over the years in conversations on the topic of standards is that there is an assumption or a misconception that somewhere out there is a one-size-fits-all solution that will adequately meet everyone’s needs, and there just isn’t. Any discussion about standards for the service dog community must recognize the need for a multi-pronged approach, as Laura mentioned. Do we want an outcome standard that looks at the teams and the dogs, or a training standard that regulates programs?
Creating standards and regulations for organizations will help ensure that the training of the dogs is ethical and will help reduce fraud. The sad truth is, though, that organizations like National Service Dogs that are dedicated to providing service and guide dogs can't meet the demand within the greater community. We just can't. That leads people to train their own dogs. We cannot deny them the right to train their own service dog, nor do we want to. We want people to be able to benefit from dogs, whether they're ADI program dogs or dogs that are out there. What we concern ourselves with is whether the dogs are safe for the handler and the public, and whether the clients are being looked after.
Any governmental or non-governmental agency seeking a service dog standard must ask themselves if they want to qualify and regulate service providers and dog trainers, or qualify a service dog team in order to assess and verify that said service dog is medically prescribed, providing task-trained support that mitigates the handler's symptoms and needs, is temperamentally sound and safe for the handler and general public, and qualifies as a “legitimate service dog”?
By qualifying and/or regulating service dog providers, you can ensure that a portion of the Canadian service dog users are safe, well trained and supported by their service provider, but this in no way addresses the challenges of qualifying owner or privately trained dogs. They are a significant demographic within the service dog community and, in some cases, they are the victims of fraud, unfortunately.
Currently, processes already exist to assess, qualify, accredit and monitor service and guide dog producers. They exist externally through the International Guide Dog Federation and Assistance Dogs International, who you'll hear from when Sheila gets her mike up and going.
Within Canada, as evidenced by the Alberta Service Dogs Act, the Nova Scotia Service Dog Act—which Medric can speak to in great detail—and the B.C. Guide Dog and Service Dog Act, these are all great examples of legislation that is already working and that you as a ministry already have access to. When it comes to qualifying service dog providers, there's a lot of great work that's already been done.
Where there's really hard work to be done is in developing a fair, equitable and accessible process for qualifying owner or privately trained service dogs. What makes these conversations harder is that many people engaged in the discussion are under the impression that the standards automatically equate to a public policy or legislation. What often gets missed in the conversation is that the standards are a multiphased process. Standards are your backbone and upon that, regulations or public policy is developed, and then the enforcement pieces come on the tail end of that.
The reality is that the development of standards in and of themselves will not meet the needs I've outlined of the community at large. In order for any standards to have true value, there needs to be a regulatory process, a public policy developed that supports not only the standards but those engaging with them, whether it's the clients or the agencies providing the dogs. Then, of course, there's the enforcement mechanism that holds everyone accountable: the users, the producers, the businesses and the public.