Peterborough Animal Care Centre Receives Grant of Over $1.5 Million From Provincial Government

The Peterborough Animal Care Centre (PACC) has received a grant of $1,560,500 from the Minister of Infrastructure of the Province of Ontario to continue its building development and expansions announced by MPP Dave Smith and the Peterborough Humane Society (PHS) on Friday morning.

A stray kitten with Sarah Graham, PACC animal care attendant. The kitten and her siblings were found in an abandoned house with their mother Ursula. Photo by Samantha Bianco.

The funding will aid in several programs and project completions such as an off-leash public access dog park, trail system, memorial patio and garden space according to Shawn Morey, PHS executive director.

"It's directly supporting our programming, we're doing a lot of kids camps, we're going to be doing some programming around responsible pet ownership and facilitation of adoption,” he said.

Kassie Graham, PACC Marketing & Communications Coordinator (left) with Moose (middle) and Sarah Graham (right). Moose is up for adoption at the PACC and is behign showcased at the future site of the centre’s off-leash public access dog park. Photo by Samantha Bianco.

The PACC had known about the funding for roughly over a year but was finalized around Christmas according to MPP Dave Smith. He says the work PACC does in conjunction with the Solicitor General’s office was obviously to lobby for the facility to receive government funding.

“The Humane Society, they are the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals locally. They do a lot of that work for us and work with the Solicitor General's office,” explained Smith. “We recognize what's happening in the greater Peterborough area and I'll even go beyond Peterborough County. The facilities they had previously weren't big enough to do a lot of things they needed to do.”

To that point, the PACC had been community-funded however Morey says that they are still seeking $3 million to finish it. There could be more requests down the road for building expansion within the next few years.

“This center has been built by the community, for the community. That's one of our big statements with making this come to fruition,” said Morey. “It's been 10 years in the making since we initially had this concept of building this state-of-the-art facility completion. Plus we have additional phases that we're going to look at over the next few years to help advance the building.”

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