CAUT has released the report from a committee working over the last year and a half investigating allegations of major problems at the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College.

Concluding that the problems are serious, and recognizing that the administration has started taking steps to address the concerns, the ad hoc investigatory committee report offers 21 recommendations for moving forward.

The report noted a “community malaise … related to several lines of causation” but “it is possible to trace most if not all of them back to changes made to the operational model for OVC and to the manner of its deployment and implementation in recent years.”

The investigator’s report also found “the framing context for the changes in OVC’s management model is the apparent budgetary shortfall,” and the business model approach adopted by management obfuscated the origins, timing and size of the claimed deficit.

“It is plain to us that the OVC community needs and deserves thorough and credible explanations regarding the fundamentals of the budgetary problems purportedly faced by OVC and by the university at large,” the investigation noted.

The report is recommending an independent general audit of OVC and all of its components should be undertaken as a necessary step in restoring trust and in planning how to move forward; that the auditors chosen must be acceptable to all parties; and that the results of the audit should be released to the OVC community, the faculty association and the university’s senior administration.

Members of the committee were Claire Card, a professor of therio­genology in the large animal clinical sciences office at the University of Saskatchewan’s Western Veterinary College and Paul Hanford, professor emeritus of biology at Western University.