The big companies, known as consolidators, have bought hundreds of clinics from 2012 onwards, according to records and reports, across the country, because pets and vets are big money.
Sixty per cent of Canadians have a pet, according to a recent report from Mintel, a consumer research firm, and the country’s vet practices pull in around $9.3 billion a year according to a 2023 report prepared for the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association.
A 2023 report from the Ontario Veterinary Medical Association (OMVA) said corporate interests contol 20 per cent of veterinary hospitals in Canada, and estimates those chains employ about 40 per cent of the nation’s vets.
This actually just affected me this weekend. I was out of town about 12 hours from home. My son was watching new dog that I’ve had for a month. She was puppy mill breeder so didn’t have good medical care. Anyways she had a bought of hemmoraghic gastroenteritis and I told my son to take her to the ER (regular vet was closed). The one I had gone to for about 30 years was no longer on google (my last dog died in 2019). There happened to be a new one not to far. I wanted to make it easy on my son so I told him to go there. It was a chain (Blue Pearl) that had bought out the previous emergency vet that I used to go to. Their facility was very nice but it cost $2600 to have her there for 24 hours. None of the of fees were super expensive but they added up.
If they are corporate, that means they have an office somewhere with a lot of people to pay. Bigger overhead means they need greater income to meet their gross profit targets.