Canada is a small player in the veterinary products market.Ottawa-Canada needs to better align its regulatory requirements for veterinary medicines with those of the U.S. and the European Union to ensure it gets the products it requires, says Catherine Filejski, President and CEO of the Canadian Animal Health Institute (CAHI).Effective veterinary medicines and vaccines play a key role in dealing with animal diseases that have an impact on production, Filejski told the Commons agriculture committee.“Biosecurity preparedness is essential for the well-being of animals and Canadians alike,” she said. “The growing challenges of climate change, increased international trade and the emergence of new diseases are putting pressure on the Canadian animal health industry to safeguard the health of our flocks and herds, while still continuing to innovate and adapt to remain competitive in the global market.”The Canadian veterinary medicine market is about 10 per cent of U.S. animal health sales and only 2.5 per cent of the global market. “Given the substantially smaller size of our national flocks and herds, Canada is a lower-tier commercial market for veterinary medicines offering a lower return on investment than other jurisdictions.“As well, the Canadian regulatory environment is not adequately aligned with major animal health markets like the U.S. and the EU and that makes veterinary product development, introduction and maintenance in Canada increasingly difficult.”In addition, Canada imposes steep fees for the licensing of veterinary pharmaceuticals that discourage imports of existing and new innovative products, she said. “We are already seeing the effects of this with a dramatic 40 per cent decrease in the availability of licensed veterinary drugs on the Canadian market during the past five years.”While the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of drug and vaccine availability in Canada, it disrupted international veterinary supply chains. “Canada is a market that depends pretty much exclusively on the development of vaccines in the larger markets, and their production in those larger markets is similar to what we found with COVID vaccines during the pandemic, whereby we don't have a lot of domestic production facilities.”Canada is “highly dependent on the import of the vast majority of veterinary vaccines that we use,” she said. “As a result, the Canadian voice at the table in terms of determining what vaccines are developed is usually subordinate to those of the larger markets.“I think anything we can do in terms of bringing government attention to the priority that needs to be given to veterinary drugs and vaccines as a way of ensuring that we are protecting the health of our livestock in this county and, therefore, our trade interest is always beneficial.” As well, it takes longer to get approval in Canada so products “will either hit the market in the United States first, or they just won't come to Canada at all because there are additional time and resources that are just not worth the return on investment in terms of the market size.”