The system isn’t working for service animal users

Image by No-longer-here via Pixabay

“A senior woman that we knew who adopted a cat from us [died by] suicide because she was losing her housing. We had to go get her traumatized cat out of her relatives’ place.” 

This story, recounted by animal shelter founder Jessica Rendell, still haunts me. Rendell founded Heavenly Creatures in St. John’s, Newfoundland after becoming concerned about the number of animals euthanized in shelters year after year. As her time with the shelter progressed, the animal lover began to realize that human mortality was of growing concern in animal welfare too. 

Right now only the governments of Ontario and Quebec have dedicated benefit or reimbursement programs for service animals, totalling $84 monthly and $2,240 yearly respectively. Other provinces, such as Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, have reimbursement programs (for up to $150 per year in the latter’s case) available through social assistance funds.  

As Rendell explains, she has clients – mostly elderly and disabled – who are victimized by government inaction in the face of a cost-of-living crisis. These clients are forced to choose between housing themselves and feeding their animals, who are often their only companions. 

Offering emotional support and service animals up on a sacrificial platter in order to feed and house ourselves is not unique to Newfoundland, or to Atlantic Canada. This neglect of disabled people and their pets is an epidemic across so-called Canada. At the centre of this web is our broken social assistance system. 

Right now only the governments of Ontario and Quebec have dedicated benefit or reimbursement programs for service animals, totalling $84 monthly and $2,240 yearly respectively. Other provinces, such as Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, have reimbursement programs (for up to $150 per year in the latter’s case) available through social assistance funds.  

And it is puzzling. While almost every provincial government – except Nova Scotia – will compensate disabled people for mobility aids and the labour of human helpers, service animals are excluded from this status. 

Meanwhile, a single bag of mass-produced, bottom-of-the-line dog chow can retail for $50. Additionally, Canada is currently in the midst of a veterinary care affordability crisis, a fact that the federal government knows. An opinion piece published in the Globe & Mail this year entitled “In this economy, can we even afford dogs and cats any more?” presses the government to regulate vet costs. 

The ideation in that headline, though, misses its own privileged position. For disabled people who own service animals, there is no giving up their dogs and cats. These animals are their lifelines, be that at a traditional nine-to-five job or in the exhausting task of caring for themselves and their communities. 

Charities like the ones run by Rendell and Melissa David of Parachutes for Pets in Calgary, Alberta are vanguards in trying to provide support to service animals in need. Neither of them receive any funding from their provincial governments, though. In David’s case, the provincial government frequently undermines her mission. 

“The provincial government announced one day that they were not going to be providing their portion of the transit pass anymore so the city would either have to absorb it or they would have to cancel the passes and I knew right away this was bad,” said David of Premier Danielle Smith’s failed attempt to defund a transit program meant to benefit low-income disabled and elderly people. 

What ensued was a slew of phone calls to Parachutes for Pets from concerned clients, the vast majority of whom David says falls into those two categories. Austerity measures such as these directly affect the type of supports available to disabled people and in turn, their service animals. 

Disabled people in Canada are almost twice as likely as their non-disabled counterparts to live in poverty. I can’t help but cynically view our status as monetary wards of the state as a successor to institutionalization in government psychiatric hospitals – just another means of controlling a marginalized populace. 

In this situation a lack of care turns into active neglect wherein disabled people in need of service animals are forced to shell out thousands of dollars amid multiple affordability crises. This isn’t good for us and it isn’t good for the animals that we care for and who provide us with care.

The relegation of many disabled people into joblessness exists under a system that only values someone for their usefulness to the capitalist class. This means that as many disabled people struggle to care for existing service animals, plenty more can’t afford them at all. 

Chelsey Langelier of Brockville, Ontario experienced an accident that left her with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and debilitating anxiety. Because of her disability she is no longer able to work. She is now going through the process of training her German shepherd, Roo, to become a registered service animal and footing the training bills herself – a cost which she anticipates will total $8,000.

Langelier is not on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), a program that could grant her an absolute maximum of $1,408 per month for all of her and Roo’s living expenses. She has, however, begun crowdfunding Roo’s training, which could complicate her earnings if she ever applied for benefits. 

Time and time again our governments fail to care for us. In this situation a lack of care turns into active neglect wherein disabled people in need of service animals are forced to shell out thousands of dollars amid multiple affordability crises. This isn’t good for us and it isn’t good for the animals that we care for and who provide us with care.

In the words of disability activist and author Andrew Gurza, “It is easier in Canada to get medical assistance in dying than it is to get government support to live.” And still, we live on.