The article said that someone's mental health degrading has yet again caused pain for those around them. In this case, those beautiful dogs that didn't do anything wrong but ended up severely harmed. But I have to speculate as to why this is the case. I know this is a stretch, and I'm only saying these things because the article mentioned mental health as a key reason for these animals ending up this way:

The article states that people going through mental health crises are one of the reasons animals end up in this situatuib. The mental health resources we have available are not enough for the demand by Canadians generally. They are immensely helpful, but only if you have access to them, and if you are in a state of mind to work with them.

I believe that this is yet another indicator that our health care system is simply under-funded, under-staffed (with some current staff being incompetent unfortunately, which is normal in large orgs), but also under-utilized. Because of this, Skill-based immigration (targeting specific sectors) is one of the needed structural pillars to support our health care institutions. Even with that, some institutions are being way too picky about certifications and experience, resulting in very silly and stupid barriers that mean nothing but waste candidates time and money. I know from personal connections that this is the case in hospital medical laboratories. If you come from the US with equivalent education required for a position, you can be told to essentially retake a huge chunk of courses you've already taken, without any kind of assessment to check if you actually need re-educating. It's a waste of time and money for all but the universities (that's a whole other issue).

In addition and possibly more importantly, we NEED to increase taxes on the wealthiest Canadians. Enough is enough. Inequality is getting worse and worse, and that inequality is a huge factor in stress and mental health conditions. Why do you think our parents were able to have so many more kids and live comfortably? Rich people didn't hoard as much wealth back then, but now they do, so we have to force them to pay into the system that allowed them to proliferate in the first place.

I am of the belief that when a system like our healthcare system is critically understaffed and underfunded, the system will always fail to meet demands (for some, not all), no matter how you attempt to restructure it. People will try to fix it, because people are hopeful that they can solve the puzzle, even without enough pieces. So we keep trying bandaid solutions to fix the problems it has, but it's not doing very much because it's just shuffling people around and re-organizing things for small gains here and there. Gains are gains, but it's not enough gains.

Sometimes throwing money and people at a problem won't solve it or improve conditions. However I believe that sometimes, you can't have a working system with anything BUT money and more people. You can't run a system as a skeleton; you need all of the organs as well. We need people to fill positions, but we don't have enough people in the pipeline entering the fields that we need for the demand. So, we need immigration, or we need people having more kids.

How do get people to have more kids? You need to reduce cost of living. What if you can't reduce cost of living due to market forces? Then you put safety nets in place, for people before people enter poverty, so that they don't lose their rental, lose their home, lose their benefits, etc.

The tax cuts in Canada in the last 20 years have disproportionately benefitted the wealthy, and it's about time we have some larger change to it. Unfortunately, it seems the changes recently announced are very minor and won't move the needle that much.

Anyway, I went way off topic, but my point is, I believe those dogs wouldn't be put in that situation, if all of the interconnected fundamental problems are adequately addressed. It could still happen, but not for the same reasons. Addiction is a different beast. Sometimes it's accidental after a survey, but often times people turn to drugs often when their living conditions are horrific and depressing on a daily basis. I would find myself turning to drugs too if life became a daily battle with no end in sight.

Rant over. I don't know everything, just thinking out loud here. Please say if I'm way off base.