Veterans Affairs Committee on June 14th, 2021

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, sir.

Now we go to our final witness for today.

Joining us from The Canadian Foundation for Animal-Assisted Support Services is Ms. Joanne Moss, chief executive officer. Please go ahead.

[Joanne Moss, Chief Executive Officer, The Canadian Foundation for Animal-Assisted Support Services]

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to meet with all of you here this afternoon.

The Canadian Foundation for Animal-Assisted Support Services, or CFAS for short, is an impartial national registered charity that promotes Canada's burgeoning animal-assisted services sector. We are dedicated to consumers, end-users, the welfare of the animals, and collaboration with animal-assisted services, practitioners and service providers to promote quality and service excellence. We build bridges between communities, disciplines and sectors to benefit people, pets, and partners.

The easiest way to describe what the foundation does is to say that it aims to fill gaps and connect the dots within Canada's highly fragmented, unregulated, multi-million-dollar sector. The service dog industry is one segment within the sector.

While we appreciate the cited contributions concerning Assistance Dogs International, or ADI, please understand that ADI is not the service dog industry but rather one business model within the industry. For this reason, ADI's private standards and peer review accreditation program are applicable only to their respective member organizations for brand recognition and performance. However, this is characteristic not just of ADI but of all service dog organizations. This is one reason that private company standards could not and cannot be adopted as national standards of Canada, or NSCs.

The withdrawal of the Canadian General Standards Board's service dogs standards project had a lot to do with breaking new ground in uncharted territories within a self-regulated landscape. Suffice it to say that all new and established industries experience growing pains, and Canada's service dog industry is no exception. The reason is that national standards of Canada use international standard development best practices to safeguard the interests of Canadians. The Standards Council of Canada is a member of the International Organization for Standardization, ISO, and it is affiliated with 165 countries worldwide. It's important to note that an NSC is not a policy, a guideline, a procedure, or an accreditation or certification program. The user of the NSC can adapt its procedures to align with the population served—in this case, veterans.

For Canada's service dog industry to survive and even thrive, isn't it time to put aside brand and market share stumbling blocks to focus on what matters most—honouring and supporting Canada's veterans and their families? This initiative is about challenging the status quo—not consumers, end-users, practitioners or service providers—to enhance current practices to ensure quality, public safety and animal welfare. Diversity is the fuel that informs and ignites the development of highly effective national standards of Canada. Therefore, differences can be the catalyst for new innovations.

What happens next? The foundation is partnering with the Human Research Standards Organization, a Standards Council of Canada-accredited standards development organization, to develop four cutting-edge national standards of Canada. These NSCs are now proceeding to development.

With this in mind, I would ask all of you to please consider the following key points to formulate your conclusions and decisions.

NSCs are expressed through requirements based on current normative references, such as regulations, policies, and guidelines; informative references, such as publications, articles, journals; and seed documents, such as private company standards. NSCs emphasize the need to respect the interests of consumers as well as their human rights and dignity. NSCs must ensure that interests are balanced to prevent conflicts of interest.

The Standards Council of Canada's governing legislation, the Standards Council of Canada Act, outlines its mandate to promote efficient and effective voluntary standardization in Canada when standardization is not expressly provided in law.

The Competition Act contains criminal and civil provisions to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and practices that impede competition, drive up pricing and limit supply.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms proclaims that when a law conflicts with human rights, the charter prevails, as does human rights legislation.

We are at a crossroads. The broad road leads to endless debates, adversity, and division. However, the narrow road leads to hope, harmony, consensus decision-making and a promising future.

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all, so let's make our veterans and their families as proud of us as we are of them.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bryan May]

Thank you very much, Ms. Moss. That's a great way to end your comments today. It's a fantastic sentiment.

As an update, unless there are any objections from any of the committee members, we will extend today so that we get the full time, but we do have a hard stop at 6:00 p.m.

Starting us off in round one in the six-minute round, we have MP Wagantall. Please go ahead.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Thank you all for being here. I appreciate nothing more than hearing directly from our veterans about their experiences, because that ultimately tells the story of what we need to deal with.

I want to be as clear and concise as I can so that you can be clear and concise and we can get lots of questions answered.

First of all, Ms. Moss, basically what I'm hearing today is that there is a conflict of interest here, a huge conflict of interest that has been taking place that has created roadblocks towards developing the CGSB NSC for service dogs, but this, I would assume, would be a common challenge when developing any NSCs when bringing together a marketplace of competitors. Would that be correct, just very briefly?

[Joanne Moss]

Yes, most definitely. In any marketplace, this is pretty normal behaviour, and some of the larger organizations can sometimes have a louder voice, if you will. Yes, it is very characteristic, for sure.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Okay, then we need to keep our ultimate goal in sight here and do everything we can to mitigate that problem as much as possible.

[Joanne Moss]

Yes.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

I understand that you were asked to set up a group to develop a service dog standard. Who asked you to do that?

[Joanne Moss]

Are you referring to the CGSB situation?

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Right.

[Joanne Moss]

Okay. Actually I'll try to make that as brief as I can.

We held two national military service dog summits because of all the requests we were getting from veterans and their families to help them, and after the end of the second conference, the group decided that they wanted to vote to see if I could go forward as a representative to ask the CGSB if it would be possible to do an assessment as—

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That came from a group of concerned users?

[Joanne Moss]

Yes. It came from veterans and from other people who attended the conferences as well, but it was actually the veterans who wanted to—

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Who sponsored the conference?

[Joanne Moss]

Our foundation did, in both cases.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Okay, that clarifies it for me. Thank you.

[Joanne Moss]

They had the floor, and I was asked to go forward and present that request and work it into a proposal to CGSB. CGSB took it a step further, and instead of looking at the feasibility study, they decided to go directly to developing a standard.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

From what I'm hearing, this CGSB board jumped ahead. They had a committee of over 35 organizations involved—providers, Wounded Warriors Canada, Transport Canada, breeders, users—so there was a huge breadth of organizations involved. I know that there was some concern, because usually in that circumstance there shouldn't be an overlap, because it creates a conflict of interest among all of those organizations. Only three associated organizations should have been allowed. Are you aware that there was significantly more overlap than that?

[Joanne Moss]

Yes, there was.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

What would you like to do? Would you like to be part of developing the standard?

[Joanne Moss]

We are actually the organization that is partnering with the HRSO to develop the standard. These standards are being initiated now by the foundation in order to move forward, and they're not just specifically for service dogs; they're for all types of animal-assisted services.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Our focus here, obviously, is the service dogs. I'm trying to understand how we keep things from getting messed up. If you're involved in that process, then accrediting it in an accrediting organization should not be reflected in your organization after that point.

[Joanne Moss]

There are a couple of things. The standards themselves would be the generalization of anybody working with an animal, any type of animal, in animal-assisted services. Standards focus on the requirements involved, regardless. There might be some variations related to the different types of animals, but for the most part the focus is on the basic requirements—the non-negotiables, if you will—for working and volunteering in this sector. They don't get into the procedures.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

That's helpful. Thank you.

I just have so many questions. Do you yourself have personal training to be a service dog trainer or handler?

[Joanne Moss]

We don't do service dog training. We're the only impartial organization. We don't train the animals. The sole reason for our organization's existence is to bring order.