Pursuant to section 26 of the Veterinarians Act, eligible registrants are invited to vote on whether to approve the revised CVBC Bylaws Schedule “C” – Prescribed Fees and Assessments available at https://www.cvbc.ca/for-veterinarians/2025-proposed-bylaws-schedule-c/.
For ease of reference, the CVBC Bylaws Schedule “C” currently in effect can be found here.
The voting period is July 28 to August 29, 2025. Registrants will receive an electronic ballot by email directly from Simply Voting, a secure third-party voting platform, by end of day July 28, 2025. Voting will remain open until 11:59 pm on August 29, 2025.
Registrants are encouraged to carefully review and consider the information provided on this page prior to casting their vote.
If you do not receive a ballot from Simply Voting by end of day July 28, 2025 to the email registered on your profile with the College or you encounter any other difficulties voting, please email feedback@cvbc.ca.
Annual registration fees account for the majority of the College’s revenue. In fiscal year 2024, annual registration fees accounted for 85% of the College’s revenue (see the audited consolidated financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2024).
The current annual private practice registration fee of $1,395 was voted in by registrants in 2011.
In the intervening 14 years, registrants have been asked three times to vote on increasing the annual registration fees – in 2012, 2019, and 2023 – and have declined each time.
On the basis of inflation, $1,395 in 2011 is the equivalent of $1,914 in 2025 (see the Bank of Canada inflation calculator).
As set out in the College’s published audited financial statements for 2023 and 2024, the College sustained a deficit in each of those fiscal years, amounting to a cumulative deficit of almost $1.2M as at the end of FY 2024.
The College is projected to become insolvent in May 2026, at which time veterinary medicine in British Columbia will necessarily cease to be a regulated profession under the College.
Only the provincial government has the authority to regulate professions or delegate the regulation of a profession. It is unknown to the College what, if any, action the provincial government will take upon the insolvency of the College or in anticipation thereof.
The proposed revised fees reflect in most cases an increase pegged to inflation. In some cases, such as fees related to practice facility accreditation, the increases reflect cost recovery so that registrants are not, for example, subsidizing a practice facility’s cost of business.
On July 14, 2025, the Society of BC Veterinarians communicated to its members that it had advised the Minister of Agriculture and Food that the College “suffers from … poor financial management” (see July 14, 2025 newsletter to members). The Society did not disclose a basis for its allegation.
While it is difficult for the College to respond to this serious allegation in the absence of particulars, registrants are invited to consider the following:
Between 2011 and the present, inflation alone has accounted for a greater than 37% increase in the cost of goods and services and therefore the cost of operating the College (see the Bank of Canada inflation calculator). It is predictable that an organization will become financially untenable when its revenue is anchored to fees that were established 14 years prior.
The fact that the College has remained solvent while its spending power has functionally decreased by more than 37% over the course of 14 years is evidence of rigorous and responsible financial management.
The College’s financial management has included deploying prudent investment strategies to offset as much as possible its decreasing spending power. The College’s investments have brought in almost $1M in revenue between 2011 and 2024 (see the College’s audited financial statements for FYs 2011-2024).
The College has also demonstrably aggressively minimized its costs since 2011:
In 2011 when registrants voted to increase the annual private practice registration fee to $1,395, the College had 1,450 registrants, received 114 complaints about registrants, and incurred expenses of $2,942,322 (see the audited financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2011). Adjusted for inflation to 2024, those expenses amounted to $3,964,030 (see the Bank of Canada inflation calculator). Accordingly, also adjusted for inflation to 2024, the College spent $2,734 per registrant.
In 2024 the annual private practice registration fee was still $1,395, the College had 2,594 registrants, received 237 complaints about registrants, and incurred expenses of $4,244,577 (see the audited financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2024). Accordingly, the College spent $1,636 per registrant.
In summary:
the College’s expenses in absolute terms have in effect risen by only 7% since 2011,
all during a period of time in which the number of registrants regulated by the College more than doubled, complaints brought against registrants also more than doubled, and the College implemented significant modernization measures to comply with legal requirements around labour mobility, international credential recognition, accessibility, and procedural fairness and to meet the expectations of registrants and the public in areas such as online access and resources.
It is also helpful to compare the College’s spending to that of other professional regulators. Compared to three other professional regulators in British Columbia and the two most closely comparable veterinary regulators in Canada, the data shows that the College:
has by far the lowest spend as a factor of complaints received.
Regulator | FY | Expenses | # Registrants | # Complaints Rec’d | Complaints / Registrant | Expenses Per Registrant | Expenses Relative to Complaints Received |
College of Veterinarians of BC | 24 | 0.0914 | $1,636 | $17,910 | |||
College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC | 24 | 0.0760 | $2,565 | $33,730 | |||
Law Society of BC | 23 | 0.0763 | $2,163 | $28,345 | |||
College of Pharmacists of BC | 24 | 0.0062 | $1,282 | $207,368 | |||
College of Veterinarians of Ontario | 24 | 0.0308 | $1,338 | $43,478 | |||
Alberta Veterinary Medical Association | 24 | 0.0123 | $1,395 | $113,777 |
In summary, the data does not support an allegation of poor financial management. On the contrary, the data supports a conclusion that the College has rigorously and prudently managed its finances in the face of significant operational challenges and inflationary pressures. The College’s approach to financial management allowed the College to remain viable for as long as possible, but its impending insolvency in 2026 is the inevitable result of revenue that is anchored to amounts established 14 years ago while operational demands on the College have more than doubled in the intervening period.
The Society of BC Veterinarians’ July 14, 2025 newsletter also informed its members that the Society had opined to the Minister of Agriculture and Food that the College “suffers from ineffective governance”. While likely for different reasons than those held by the Society, the College agrees entirely and has been advising the Ministry of Agriculture and Food to that effect since at least January 2024.
In sum, the Veterinarians Act is an outlier amongst enabling statutes of professional regulators in a variety of fundamental ways, including in its contemplation that registrants control by majority vote the enactment or revision of most of the College’s bylaws, including the bylaw for registrant fees and assessments.
The College’s singular purpose as set out in section 3 of the Veterinarians Act is to regulate the veterinary profession in the public interest. Yet, the governance model entrenched in the Act, which allows registrants to require the College to act in accordance with the registrants’ self-interest, is starkly inconsistent with the College’s public interest mandate and with the governance model under which all other professional regulators in British Columbia operate.
In his report Memorandum on Best Practice in Professional Regulation and the Challenges Facing the College of Veterinarians of British Columbia, prepared in June 2025, Harry Cayton describes the Act as “not fit for purpose”. The memorandum was delivered to the Minister of Agriculture and Food on June 25, 2025 (letter to The Honourable Lana Popham, M.L.A.). The unfit nature of the Act and the resulting inability of the College to discharge its regulatory responsibilities in a manner consistent with expected practices in professional regulation engages a wide array of government and public interests, including: public safety and public health concerns such as drug diversion and the opioid overdose crisis, antimicrobial stewardship, and zoonoses; labour mobility; international credential recognition; constitutionality; and reconciliation and the implementation of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. Due to these far-reaching implications, the memorandum was further circulated on July 2, 2025 to the Premier’s Office, the Attorney General, the Minister of Health, and the Minister of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills.
Registrants are encouraged to read the memorandum to further appreciate the context in which this vote on fees is being held. Harry Cayton is the former chief executive of the United Kingdom’s Professional Standards Authority. In addition to his earlier report in 2022 on the College’s complaints process, he has been retained in recent years by or on behalf of other professional regulators in British Columbia, including by the Minister of Health to advise on the modernization of the regulatory framework for health professions and by the Law Society of British Columbia to undertake a governance review.
