Special Fee 2025-2026

As detailed in the College’s most recent Annual Report and at the Annual General Meeting in November 2024, registrants have since 2011 declined to raise fees. In the period between 2011 and the present, inflation alone has accounted for a more than 38% increase in the cost of goods and services.  

While the capital influx from the College’s sale of real property in 2017 and the College’s limited operations during the COVID-19 pandemic masked to some extent the consequences of over a decade of fee stagnation, the inevitable result has been the accumulation of deficits. The College ended the 2024 fiscal year with a cumulative deficit of almost $1.2M across the previous two years. Without the special fee, the College would have faced a liquidity crisis within the next three months and insolvency shortly thereafter.  

Pursuant to the Veterinarians Act, the College of Veterinarians of British Columbia is a single-purpose professional regulator, meaning that its singular purpose is to regulate veterinarians and the delivery of veterinary medicine in the public interest. Its responsibilities in service of protecting the public are not discretionary; they are unconditionally prescribed in the Veterinarians Act. Accordingly, the College’s obligation to discharge its regulatory duties is not subject to its current or anticipated financial capacity. The College is required by law to discharge its duties to their full extent until its financial resources are depleted and it becomes functionally impossible for the College to continue operating.     

While the stagnation of fees for 14 years against a 38% increase in costs due to inflation is a complete explanation for the College’s untenable financial position, compounding the College’s situation is that the cost of regulating veterinarians is particularly high in British Columbia. In the 2024 fiscal year the College received from the public 237 complaints about 128 registrants. Per capita of registrant and per capita of provincial population, that is more than double and quintuple, respectively, the number of complaints received by the provincial veterinary regulators that received the second and third highest number of complaints in Canada. It is the College’s legislated obligation to address each and every one of the complaints it receives.  

Complaints that are not dismissed by the College’s independent Investigation Committee or where the registrant declines to resolve the matter by consent proceed to a discipline hearing conducted by a panel of the College’s independent Discipline Committee. The cost of a discipline hearing is significant, particularly where a party’s conduct leading up to or during the hearing necessitates protracted proceedings. Recent matters have cost the College well over $200K each. Disciplinary decisions – pre-hearing and final – are available on the College’s website here. These decisions provide insight into the resources the College is required to expend to perform its legislated duties.  

What can registrants expect going forward? The special fee will likely allow the College to remain solvent through fiscal year 2026, but of course it does not address the systemic shortcomings in the legislative scheme that governs the College. Specifically, the Veterinarians Act reflects an antiquated model of professional regulation, one in which registrants control through majority voting much of how they are regulated and whether the regulator has the financial resources to discharge its regulatory duties. This is a model that no longer governs any other professional regulator in British Columbia. A further exploration of this issue is beyond the scope of this notice, but registrants who are interested in understanding the standards of modern professional regulation and the work the government has undertaken to modernize other professional regulators in the province are invited to read the publications that are provided below.  

Over the course of the past 15 months the College has diligently informed the Ministry of Agriculture and Food of the dysfunctional and outdated nature of the legislative framework that governs the regulation of veterinarians in British Columbia. The College will persist in those efforts. It is the College’s view that veterinary medicine is no less worthy of a modern and credible regulatory framework, one in which there can be public confidence, than any other profession in this province.