Corporations are buying local vet clinics — raising questions about price, choice and quality of care

Dr. Ryan Redgrave isn't a dying breed, but his kind aren't as common as they once were. 

You see, Redgrave is an independent vet. 

"It's a busy job in and of itself," he said, "and the running of a small business is challenging."

Redgrave owns Weste Animal Hospital in Lawrencetown, N.S., near Halifax.  

After working there as an associate for four years, he bought the practice from his mentor in 2019.  

He's lucky he could take it over because, for more than a decade, large and often international companies have been snapping up local clinics here and around the world, a trend that intensified in Canada a few years before the pandemic. 

As those corporate chains keep expanding, questions come about who's in control of animal care, costs and the future of the independent vet.

The chains say they offer vets a healthy work-life balance and, to pets, the best care in modern facilities.

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 around pull in $9.3 billion a year according to a 2023 report prepared for the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association.

In Canada, vet consolidation has gone largely unnoticed amid a vet shortage and stories of vet burnout.  

But the profession has been following the shift closely.  

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. 

In the Halifax area, for example, where Redgrave practises, CBC News checked out the 55 local clinics, finding 23 of them (42 per cent) are corporate-owned.