Letter to the Honourable John Duncan, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs

October 21, 2012

Kayla Collins, AVC 2013, travelled to Hopedale as one of the student participants on the Chinook Project. As part of the experience, the students craft various pieces of writing. Kayla wrote a formal letter to the Minister
of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada

Kayla Collins

9 G Brown’s Court

Charlottetown, PE

C1A 9M8

October 21, 2012

Honourable John Duncan

Minister
Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada


EXECUTIVE OFFICES

10 Wellington Street Gatineau, Quebec  

K1A 0H4 


Honourable John Duncan,

My name is Kayla Collins and I am a fourth year veterinary student studying at the Atlantic Veterinary College in Prince Edward Island. Recently I partook in the Chinook project, which is a group affiliated with the college that provides complimentary veterinary care to communities in the North.  This care includes spay/neuter clinics, vaccinations and dewormings as well as general health care.  This program has been to Kimmirut, Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Natuashish, Nain and Makkovik.  According to statistics done by the group, usually approximately 60-70% of the dogs in the various communities mentioned are seen during the visit. In total approximately 500 dogs have been provided veterinary care during the six years that this project has been in place. This summer both Nain and Hopedale were visited and approximately 100 dogs were spayed and neutered and over 200 were seen.  My group in particular visited Hopedale, Labrador.  It was the first time that this community was visited by our project, and was very well received by the community itself. 

Hopedale is a very small community on the northern coast of Labrador and has a population of approximately 500 people. Even though the population of people is quite small, the population of animals is relatively large and continues to grow.  Population control is very important for these communities due to the presence of rabies in the wild fox population.  In fact, the number of dogs that can result from a pairing of an intact male and female is outstanding.  In one year a single pairing can result in a total of 16 dogs, which increases to 128 in year two, 512 in year three and an unbelievable 67, 000 by year six.

Like many northern communities, the only way to reach other communities in the summer is via a plane.  In the winter travel by the use of dog sled as well as snow mobile is an option.  As you can imagine from this picture of isolation, there is no access for this community to veterinary care.  I believe that our presence did make a great difference, but this difference was still not enough and it is for this reason that I am writing this letter.

Although each trip is quite important, there were many ways in which this project could be improved with some help from the government.  This project involves taking two veterinarians, four students, and a coordinator to a northern community that requests the service.  Whereas usually only a single trip is made, this summer two trips took place and it would be great to continue having at least this many trips a year.  Current funding is provided by a grant from the Sir James Dunn Animal Welfare centre in Prince Edward Island, as well as various other donors. Even though this project is currently receiving funding, it would be of great benefit to receive support from the Federal government in order to be able to provide both additional as well as longer trips in order to increase the number of communities assisted each year.   In addition, the trip to Hopedale had only one anesthetic machine, such that we found ourselves idle while another group was finishing up surgery.  The addition of a second anesthetic machine that could travel with the group would further increase the number of animals that we could spay/neuter thus allowing us to more efficiently continue with our mission.

Even though the aforementioned points would make a difference, what I believe would be fundamental in helping these communities would be hiring a person whose job it is to monitor the population of northern dogs.  This way we would be capable of determining just how much of a difference our trips are making.  For instance, we were spaying many female dogs that had litters of pups at home.  When we considered the number of pups that were female that were too young to spay, we began to wonder for how long our presence really was making a difference, and if the population would again get out of control once these pups became old enough to breed.  This shows where increasing the number of trips to each community to twice a year would be vastly beneficial.  Having these types of statistics would also help in acquiring more financial donors for the project, as data would help prove to people and groups that this project is financially worth their contribution. 

This is a topic that I feel passionate about and hope to continue helping with in the future.  It is only through help that we can keep this project going.  I hope you consider my proposition and I hope to hear from you regarding this matter in the future.

Sincerely,

Kayla Collins