Northern Ontario towns struggling to recruit veterinarians in face of province-wide shortage

While there's long been a shortage of doctors in northern Ontario, animals are also having trouble getting medical care across the region.

Hearst recently announced the wait for a veterinarian in their community of 5,000 will soon end after three years without one. Just down the highway, Kapuskasing has two vets but both announced in 2023 that they are ready to retire. 

Natalie D'Amours, a veterinary technician who sits on Kapuskasing's veterinary recruitment and retention committee,  said the past two years attempting to recruit a new vet has been challenging with a  province-wide shortage. 

"It's been a lot of learning and right now we are in a place of figuring out what we can do if we don't have a vet because until we can find a vet that is open to coming here we are kind of at a standstill," she said.

D'amours worries that not having a vet could hurt other recruiting efforts, like bringing family doctors to the town of 8,000 people. 

"It gets stressful, difficult too because I know if we lose our vet what other service providers are going to leave our town too, right?" D'amours said.

She said even with the two current vets in Kapuskasing, they are often so busy, that she refers patients to Timmins, a two-hour drive away.

'It's been tough'

Neil Lawrence, a veterinarian in Callander and the president of the Northern Ontario Veterinary Association, says there are a few reasons behind this shortage. 

"During COVID, some of the systems we took for granted got stretched and veterinary professionals was one of those professions that got stretched quite a bit. We saw quite a few older veterinarians retire or just burn out," he said, adding that a number of vets sold their clinics to corporations during the pandemic. 

"There are big companies today that run vet clinics like a funeral home or dentist office." 

Lawrence also believes the shortage is also a sign of a shift in the industry, where younger vets are wanting a better work-life balance.

"It was not uncommon for vets to work 50 to 60 hour weeks no problem. To replace those hours of caring for pets, it would probably take 1.5 new veterinarians." Lawrence said. 

"When we're on call, we're on call for often a couple of days in a row over a weekend and not every veterinarian, especially new grads, are interested in signing up for something like that. It takes a special class of people, often actually someone who is from the north, that is willing to come back here and work in their community."

Lawrence himself said he experienced burnout a few years ago. 

"It's very challenging and it's nice to be on the other side of that personally but I know a lot of veterinarian teams are stretched," he said. 

But Lawrence said there is optimism in the air.

Lakehead University  in Thunder Bay announced in April this year it would be recruiting for a new  veterinary medicine program in partnership with the University of Guelph, with construction on a new school set to begin this summer. 

"They are going to be drawing specifically from candidates in the north. So, if we have more veterinary students coming from northern communities when they graduate they are much more likely to come back because it's what they know and love," Lawrence said