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.