2026: The Year We End Volunteerism

As 2026 approaches, the United Nations has designated it the International Year of the Volunteer.

Here is our prediction, and our intention. Not to end generosity or mutual aid, but to end the reliance on volunteerism to deliver essential public services.

Not all volunteerism. But the kind governments have quietly come to rely on to deliver services that are essential to community health and safety.

Some forms of volunteerism are relational and will always matter. Neighbours helping neighbours. Supporting a local animal rescue with laundry or repairs. Responding when an injured animal needs immediate care. These acts are part of community life.

What should not be left to goodwill is the delivery of core public services.

During COVID, governments were clear about what counted as essential. Public health, safety, and basic infrastructure were not optional. Veterinary care, bylaw enforcement, and emergency response were recognized as necessary to protect both human and community health and safety, and they were not expected to depend on who could donate time, expertise, or money.

And yet, as a result of long-standing federal underinvestment and policy failure, animal health and safety services in many chronically underserved Indigenous communities are delivered through stopgap volunteer labour by professionals, including veterinarians, and through charities stretching limited donations to compensate for missing public infrastructure.

This is not because volunteerism is preferred, but because communities are left to use whatever resources remain accessible to manage real and immediate risks. When there is no nearby veterinary care, no local animal health infrastructure, and no publicly funded enforcement, the options narrow to crisis responses, including charitable volunteer services or, in the most extreme cases, lethal measures. This generosity is a symptom of long-standing policy failure, not a solution to it.

Animal neglect and cruelty are often misframed as private “pet issues.” They are not. They are public health and community safety challenges often shaped by systemic absence, not individual failure alone. Individual acts of cruelty remain unacceptable and must be addressed, but when veterinary care, planning, and infrastructure are missing due to sustained underinvestment, animal populations go unmanaged and harm becomes visible, frequent, and normalized. Over time, witnessing that harm, especially by children, reshapes expectations about what levels of suffering are considered normal or acceptable, allowing these conditions to persist and repeat.

Charitable animal organizations, including SPCAs and some organizations that identify as “animal rescues,” should not be left to police animal cruelty and neglect without stable government funding. Investigating and preventing cruelty is a public safety function. Expecting donor-funded charities to manage the downstream effects of systemic failure is not good governance. It is a transfer of responsibility.

In many Indigenous communities, the absence of accessible veterinary care, animal infrastructure, and publicly funded enforcement is the direct result of generations of federal policies that disrupted First Nations governance and self-determination, undermined health systems, and eroded community wellbeing. The federal government has a fiduciary duty of care to First Nations that it has repeatedly failed to meet, including in matters of public health and community safety. Passing that duty off to a rotating door of volunteers is a failure of governance.

As the world celebrates the International Year of the Volunteer, we will say this clearly.

Communities should not have to rely on volunteer labour to receive the services they are owed.

Volunteers should never be the backbone of essential systems.

Functional public infrastructure is not charity. It is a responsibility.