The Province of British Columbia is investing nearly $10.7 million to double its WCVM provincial seat quota from 20 to 40 in the college’s Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) program for the 2022-23 academic year.  The press release from the government of BC can be found here.

The College of Veterinarians of British Columbia is pleased to hear the exciting news of the increase in seats for BC veterinary students at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM) from 20 to 40 starting in the fall of 2022.  This will help to alleviate the heavy workloads and veterinary shortages that have been identified as a critical issue in BC.  We appreciate the efforts of the Ministry of Advanced Education, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food,  the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, the Society of British Columbia Veterinarians, and veterinarians and veterinary students who have all advocated to increase the number of BC veterinary student seats at the WCVM.  Veterinarians are essential to ensuring animal health, protecting public health, ensuring food safety, performing veterinary diagnostics, and advancing research and innovation and these additional seats will help to ensure the veterinary needs of BC continue to be met.  It is important to recognize that we need to continue to explore opportunities to support veterinarians in BC recognizing that the impacts of these new seats on the veterinary work force will not be realized for 4 years. 

As a reminder, Tramadol becomes a Schedule 1 drug on March 31, 2022. In practice, this will mean that Tramadol in inventory will need to be managed in compliance with the CVBC’s Controlled Drug Management and Disposal standards, and that any prescriptions to pharmacies will need to be made using your Duplicate Prescription Pads.

The following three registrants have been elected to Council for a 3-year term, effective March 11, 2022:

The Chief Veterinarian and the Animal Health Centre in Abbotsford would like to notify you that they will be discontinuing the import and distribution service for Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease (RHD) virus vaccine and will NO longer be placing orders to import the vaccine into Canada.  Please note that this vaccine was brought into the Province as an emergency response to the first detection of this emerging disease in British Columbia. Once reopened, The Animal Health Centre will continue to provide testing services for RHD.

If you wish to arrange your own future imports, here are the links to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency sites to apply for an import permit.

Main page link:

https://inspection.canada.ca/animal-health/veterinary-biologics/guidelines-forms/4-12e/eng/1328639619579/1328640363370

Guidelines, forms, applications for importing unlicensed veterinary biologics:

https://inspection.canada.ca/animal-health/veterinary-biologics/guidelines-forms/3-21e/eng/1328632718469/1328632819190

Veterinary Drugs Directorate contacts:

https://inspection.canada.ca/animal-health/veterinary-biologics/contacts/eng/1299162041191/1320704114965

Please check your email for voting information which was distributed on December 6, 2021.  If you did not receive an email generated from the domain vote@simplyvoting.com, please contact feedback@cvbc.ca.  When you log in to vote, please click on the “view details” link next to each candidate’s name in order to review the biographical information provided by each candidate.  Please note that you can review these details and return to vote at a later date as long as you do not click the “submit” button. 

Alternately, we have also posted the candidate information on the CVBC registrant page at https://www.cvbc.ca/my-account/for-registrant/ under the heading 2021/2022 Council Election Candidate Bios. 

Voting will close on February 7, 2022 and the results of the election process will be announced by February 15, 2022.  The CVBC strongly encourages all registrants who are eligible to vote, to take the opportunity to exercise your right!