Separated no more: keeping pets and people together in Ontario’s time of strain
By Charmaine Brett, President & CEO, Ontario SPCA & Humane Society
Across Ontario, families are quietly making impossible choices: pay rent or buy groceries, fill a prescription or take a sick pet to the vet. Behind each decision is a ripple effect that touches both people and animals because when financial pressure rises, the ability to care for every member of the household becomes fragile.
Two new reports make that reality impossible to ignore. The United Way Centraide Financial Anxiety Survey found that 42 per cent of Canadians could only cover their basic expenses for less than a month if their income was lost. The Ontario Nonprofit Network’s 2025 State of the Sector report reveals that Ontario’s non-profit community, one of the province’s largest employers, is under intense strain with higher demand, shrinking resources and rising exhaustion among those holding our social safety net together.
Together these findings paint a picture of a province under pressure, where both people and the organizations that support them are struggling to stay afloat.
Together these findings paint a picture of a province under pressure, where both people and the organizations that support them are struggling to stay afloat.
Pets and people: one story, one system
When families face crisis such as job loss, eviction, illness or displacement, pets too often fall through the cracks. Yet pets are not luxuries. They are family. They bring comfort, structure and emotional stability, especially for children, seniors and those living alone.
At our animal centres, we see this reality every day. Our team recently assisted a family at risk of eviction due to their unneutered cat spraying in the apartment. The Ontario SPCA and Humane Society team was contacted by a local social service agency seeking resources to help keep the family together. We were able to provide the family with access to our neuter scooter services, which transported the cat to a local veterinarian where it was neutered. As a result, the cat stopped spraying, and the family was able to stay in their apartment.
We also see the heartbreak when financial or housing stress forces someone to surrender a beloved companion. I am reminded of a not uncommon story of a dog named Luna. On disability with limited income, Luna’s person had cared for her faithfully for years. He managed to keep up with vaccinations, preventative care, and all her needs. But her newly developed urinary condition required care, possible surgery and prescription diet food he simply couldn’t afford.
Luna’s person had an undeniable love for her, but the financial burden of her care proved too great. With deep compassion, he turned to us, hoping we could provide the medical support she needed and find a family able to take on her ongoing expenses. Luna’s person felt that the kindest choice was to ask us to take Luna in and find her a new home. Our role in heartbreaking moments like this is to respect that decision and step in to make sure the animal gets the medical care and the second chance they deserve.
Keeping pets and people together is not a side issue. It is a public-health, mental-health and community-resilience issue.
A sector at a crossroads
Ontario’s non-profit sector is the connective tissue between compassion and community. Yet, as the Ontario Nonprofit Network’ s report warns, that tissue is thinning. Organizations are doing more with less, managing rising costs, workforce shortages and donor fatigue. According to the Ontario Nonprofit Network, 68 per cent of Ontario non-profits report demand for their services has risen faster than their capacity to respond, while nearly half have frozen or reduced programs due to funding shortfalls.
This pattern echoes what we see in humanitarian systems around the world. When crises multiply, coordination and sustained investment become as vital as compassion. The lesson for Ontario is clear: goodwill alone is not enough. Governments, foundations and corporate partners must help stabilize the sector that so often stabilizes everyone else.
Our shelters, food banks, clinics and outreach programs are frontline infrastructure. They are as vital to community well-being as hospitals and schools.
The demand for support is also being felt at the Ontario SPCA and Humane Society, which has seen a 17% increase in pet surrender requests from 2024 to 2025. More families can no longer care for their animals. Over 85% of the requests to rehome a pet are because their families can’t care for them anymore.
Three priorities for a more humane Ontario
1. Integrate pet supports into human services.
Many Ontario food banks already include pet food, often with Ontario SPCA support. The next step is ensuring people at risk of homelessness or fleeing crisis have emergency housing options that welcome pets, and that pets are included in municipal and provincial emergency response plans. When we plan for both people and their animals, we prevent family separation before it happens.
2. Invest in access to veterinary care.
Preventive care is often the first casualty when money is tight. Expanding low-cost clinics, mobile outreach and Northern spay-and-neuter programs prevents crisis before it starts. This keeps families together and reduces strain on municipal shelters. We are scaling up these operations across Ontario in 2026 to meet this growing need.
3. Measure retention, not just rescue.
We must redefine success. The goal is not only how many animals we rehome but how many families we help stay together. In 2025 alone, the Ontario SPCA has helped keep over 31,000 animals with their families through our access to care programs, Pawsitive Packs initiatives for unhoused pet parents, and food distribution for families impacted by the northern wildfires or struggling to feed their pets.
A call for leadership and partnership
Ontario’s non-profit and charitable sector faces a slow-moving emergency that demands the same kind of coordinated response the humanitarian community models worldwide: collective action, flexible funding and recognition that early investment prevents deeper harm later.
Governments and foundations can play a decisive role by providing bridge funding, stabilizing grants and policy tools that allow organizations like ours to plan beyond the next fiscal year. This is not about charity; it is about continuity of care. The cost of inaction will be measured in surrendered pets, fractured families and lost trust in community systems.
Around the world, governments are beginning to recognize that the bond between people and animals is structural, not sentimental. Just recently, Spain formally recognized pets as members of the family, granting them legal protection in housing, separation and emergency response. It is a powerful signal that animal welfare and human well-being are inseparable, and a reminder that Ontario too can lead by embedding pets into our definitions of family care and community resilience.
At the Ontario SPCA, we are working to be part of that bridge by providing access to clinics offering basic veterinary care, community pet food support programs and pilot initiatives that board pets during times of crisis. By building cross-sector partnerships and expanding community-based resources, we’re strengthening the safety net that keeps families whole. Our program focuses on getting pet food where it is most accessible. In partnership with local food banks, in 2025 alone, we have distributed over 595,000 meals to pet families. But we cannot do it alone.
Hope shared
Ontario’s next chapter must be built on compassion that includes every member of the family; two-legged and four-legged alike.
If we strengthen the non-profit system that holds people and their pets together, we build communities that are stronger, healthier and more humane.
In this moment of strain, let us act with the same urgency and coordination the humanitarian world models so well. Keeping pets and people together is not only kind, it is smart, preventative and essential to the future of a compassionate Ontario.
Join us at ontariospca.ca to help keep pets and people together.
