Every year in Canada, one of the country’s largest animal-welfare charities receives the equivalent of a major lottery prize. Not figuratively. Its annual budget, roughly fifty million donated dollars, functions as a renewable jackpot for animal services. Most of us imagine that if we ever won that kind of windfall, we’d use it to tackle the problems we care about most: ensuring safety for children, supporting families, or creating real change for animals. Yet despite this en

Canada’s animal-health gap in Indigenous communities isn’t an “animal issue” — it’s a public-health inequity created by federal policy. Mobile vet care, community-designed bylaws, and Indigenous-led infrastructure are not charity; they’re essential services. To close this gap, philanthropy must shift from funding symptoms to supporting systems Indigenous communities are building.

Animal health is a public-health issue, and remote Indigenous communities face the greatest risks because they have the least access to veterinary care. For more than 150 years, systems were built for settler towns while Indigenous Nations were denied the tools to build their own. Communities are now leading new solutions, and partners across sectors are working together to create lasting, equitable change.

“...FOR MANY REMOTE COMMUNITIES, THE EXPERIENCE OF INEQUITABLE ACCESS IS ROOTED IN AND COMPOUNDED BY A HISTORICAL LEGACY THAT THE VETERINARY INDUSTRY AND ANIMAL WELFARE SECTOR MUST ADDRESS.”

@crittersandcultures podcast interviews some of the @increasedaccess team about their work to make communities safer for everyone.

We know how.

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