Westman vet applauds efforts to improve rural care

SOURIS — A Westman veterinarian is commending the province for efforts to improve Manitoba’s model of veterinarian care in rural areas.

A few problems with the current subsidized model make it hard to recruit veterinarians, invest in equipment, and create a good work-life balance, said veterinarian Haley Adams, who provides vet care in Souris and Boissevain. Adam’s comments to the Sun came during a meeting where she and other locals gathered in Souris to brainstorm solutions that will be reported to the provincial government.

The agriculture minister for Manitoba, Ron Kostyshyn, has asked for meetings to be held in rural Manitoba discussing the current veterinary care model. He has also asked that the feedback from Manitobans be built into an options report on how to improve the Veterinarian Services District and Veterinarian Services Commission model.

“Mainly, what I’m taking away from today, is that I am glad that the rural municipalities and the province are acknowledging that something does need to change,” Adams said. “I think this meeting was well timed, in that we really need to look at the structure of this model.”

The Veterinarian Services District model was established in the 1970s. The model subsidizes veterinary clinics in rural Manitoba by having the Province of Manitoba and local municipalities pay costs such as equipment purchases, building repairs, and taxes. The goal is to sweeten the deal so that veterinarians practice in rural Manitoba, where the agriculture sector requires timely care of large animals.

Due to its age, along with persisting shortages of veterinary staff in rural Manitoba, the model is being reviewed for potential updates. Adams was one of roughly three dozen locals to attend the meeting in Souris.

The community raised a few great points of discussion, Adams told the Sun. She said that she liked to hear about possibilities for veterinarians to gain partial ownership of their subsidized practice, receive help recruiting new staff, and consider hubbing their practices in centralized areas.

“I thought those were some really good ideas that were discussed today.”

Attendees at the meeting included veterinarians, provincial staff, livestock farmers, producer group representatives and council members. Roughly an hour and a half of open discussion took place with provincial staff taking notes that will be distilled into a report for Kostyshyn this fall.

The meeting in Souris was one of five scheduled in March and April at the behest of Kostyshyn, who created a working group in December to collect feedback.

“We needed to have the task force get out and talk to the rightful people directly involved,” Kostyshyn told the Sun in a recent interview. “The veterinarian services are very key in the rural components, and given where we are in the beef sector, large animal practices, there’s a need for maintaining those numbers in the rural landscape.”

Veterinary care has come up as an ongoing concern at the Association of Manitoba Municipalities, Kathy Valentino, AMM president, told the Sun. She said the association welcomes the review this year.

The AMM has been tasked by communities in Manitoba to lobby the province to relax immigration requirements so that immigrants can more easily practice as veterinarians; to lobby the province so that veterinarians are required to return to Manitoba for a three-year period including large animal practices; to lobby the province to create a veterinarian college within Manitoba; and to lobby the province to increase funding to Veterinarian Service Districts.

According to The Manitoba Veterinary Medical Association, shortages were at a crisis level in 2024. It wrote that there veterinarians and support staff were at troubling vacancy levels.

“The MVMA asserts that the shortage of veterinary professionals is at crisis levels and that immediate action is required.”

At least 68.2 full-time equivalent veterinarian positions and 79.75 full-time equivalent technologist positions were unfilled and were needed to meet demand in the private clinic sector alone at the time.

Shortages are still top of mind this year as the working group consults with rural Manitobans, said working group member and RM of Sifton councillor Scott Phillips in a recent interview with the Sun. He added financial costs are a large concern.

“It comes down to more vets,” Phillips said. “How are we going to get more vets, and how are we going to turn dimes to dollars?”

Awareness is also important, he said.

“We gotta get the youth understanding that there is a demand for large animals, and there is a practice for it.”

Group member Merv Starzyk agreed, saying that many students and recent graduates have no idea the level of support they would receive in the subsidized model should they practice in rural Manitoba.

“When I hit them with the question, ‘Would you consider taking over a clinic?’ They say, ‘Well, no, we couldn’t afford to buy it and all that stuff,” Starzyk said. “You got to tell these students how it works.”

More effort should go into educating young veterinraians that their bills will be subsidized, such as hydro, heat, taxes, and phone lines, he said.

While the subsidized model has benefits, it also has downsides, Adams said. Practical challenges exist that prevent veterinarians from investing into their clinics, and prevent new recruits from taking interest, she said.

It’s difficult to recruit graduates to a small rural clinic where they may be the only veterinarian, and on-call a large amount of time, she said — graduates are looking for more support out of school.

Because vet clinics are funded by boards in rural communities, she said, the vet needs permission as well as funding to repair equipment, and to purchase new machinery that is needed. This can prevent vets from investing in the clinic — and she believes there could be tweaks to allow partial ownership, or buyout options for vets so that they are incentivized to invest in their clinic.

“It’s not necessarily meeting the needs of today,” Adams said. “A lot of things have changed since all these practices were built.”

Several councillors from Westman told the Sun that the cost of supporting subsidized vet clinics is unsustainable, especially as aging infrastructure prompts the need for repairs. Many rural vet practices were built in Manitoba using a similar blueprint in the 20th century, and many structures are approaching old age today, with repair bills looming on the horizon.

Mike Everett, reeve of the RM of Argyle, said at the Souris meeting that he is not a big fan of the current model. He said his area funds three different clinics, which can be expensive. It might make more sense, he said, to switch to a more custom option, where municipalities help rural veterinarians with the costs of start-up, allowing the vet to build the practice to suit their needs, such as a truck for a mobile veterinarian.

Wayne Lees, chairperson of the working group, said his takeaway from the Souris meeting was that flexibility is needed. A one-size-fits-all model for subsidized clinics seemed to be disapproved of by the room of stakeholders, he said.

The working group’s schedule included a meeting in Fisher Branch, Souris, Dauphin, Morden and Neepawa between March and April.

»cmcdowell@brandonsun.com