Canada’s Health Minister says a policy that was announced by the U.S. government came out of left field and caught him completely by surprise.

Mark Holland says he is quite concerned about measures being implemented for residents taking their dogs across the border to the U.S.

He points out that whether for pleasure or business roughly 400,000 Canadians go to the U.S. every day and roughly 20 per cent of them have dogs. Conversely around 3 million Americans come to Canada and approximately the same percentage bring dogs.

He understands that the U.S. wants to keep their country rabies free, but he says Canada is not a source country for rabies, we are a rabies-free country, and we have a policy environment that is very similar to the American policy environment.

He says there are a couple of important changes they have managed to extract but it’s not enough.  He says with August 1st just around the corner a grace period will be put in place.  Holland also says CDC has removed the requirement for CFIA to independently validate a veterinary certificate. They will also now accept any modern microchip that is universally readable versus a specific one. They are allowing for a Canadian-specific form as long as the rabies vaccination is validated by a veterinarian. However, there will be a CDC specific form that you have to use every time you cross the border to do a photo comparison.