British Columbia · College of Pharmacists of BC

How to respond to a CPBC complaint

The ground shifted under you on 1 April 2026. The Health Professions Act was repealed and replaced by the Health Professions and Occupations Act, and the College of Pharmacists of BC has already moved to the new framework — it now issues you a licence, and you are a licensee, not a registered member. The Inquiry Committee still investigates your complaint, but how serious matters are escalated has changed. If you are reading older guidance, it is describing a system that has been superseded.

What changed on 1 April 2026

Almost every article you will find about CPBC complaints was written under the old law. On 1 April 2026 the Health Professions Act was repealed and replaced by the Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA). CPBC now operates under the HPOA together with the Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Act (PODSA), both with revised bylaws.

The language has changed in a way that matters for you. CPBC now issues licences and no longer grants registration as a member of the College — in the College’s own words, professional licensees are not members. So you are a licensee. And most significantly, the power to escalate a matter to a hearing no longer sits entirely inside the College: a citation can now be issued only by the Director of Discipline, on the College’s request.

Who can complain, and how a matter starts

Any person can raise a concern about a pharmacist or pharmacy technician — a patient, a co-worker, an employer, or another health professional. You also carry a positive duty to report your peers where there is sexual misconduct or conduct endangering the public. And the Inquiry Committee can investigate on its own motion, including for impairment or a failure to authorise a criminal record check — so a complaint is not the only trigger.

The mechanics are specific. A written complaint goes to the Registrar, who refers it to the Inquiry Committee for a ‘direction to investigate’ unless it is trivial, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith. The complaint is then put to you, and you are given the opportunity to respond in writing.

Why not responding is its own offence

This is the pharmacy-specific trap, and CPBC’s public record is full of it. Failing to respond to the College — ignoring correspondence, missing requests for information — is treated as professional misconduct in its own right, entirely separate from whatever prompted the complaint. In published matters, unresponsiveness and “disregard for the College” have been charged alongside the underlying issue and have driven serious outcomes.

So the instinct to go quiet and hope it passes is exactly wrong. You must engage — promptly, substantively, and through counsel. An effective, measured response can also lead to an early and favourable resolution, which is the opposite outcome from silence.

What your response has to show

Your written response goes to the Inquiry Committee, and it is assessing one thing above all: risk to the public. It should answer the specific concerns, be grounded in the records as they stand — the dispensing record, PharmaNet, narcotic counts, the clinical notes — and be measured in tone.

The gravest error a pharmacist can make here is to “improve” a record after the fact. In CPBC’s published cases, altering a PharmaNet record or a prescription to support a response has turned a manageable concern into a finding of serious professional misconduct. The records are auditable; the alteration is the offence. What the Committee wants to see instead is genuine insight — that you understand the concern and have acted on it.

How the Inquiry Committee can resolve your complaint

Most complaints are resolved at the Inquiry Committee stage without ever reaching a hearing. The Committee can take no further action where the matter is trivial or your conduct is satisfactory; assist a voluntary resolution between you and the complainant; ask you to consent to a reprimand or remedial action; or reach a consent agreement. You can also propose your own resolution — admitting certain facts and proposing the orders that should follow — which the Committee may accept or reject.

Only where a matter is serious, a consent agreement cannot be reached, or you have not responded, does it move toward a hearing — and even then, the College must now request the Director of Discipline to issue a citation. Where a complaint involves sexual abuse, the College cannot dispose of it without a citation unless the Director of Discipline approves.

What becomes public, and when

Under the HPOA, all disciplinary orders must be published. Less serious outcomes are not required to be published, but where the College asks the Director of Discipline to issue a citation, the reasons for that request are also published, and the citation itself appears on the College’s website two to four weeks before the hearing.

There is an earlier exposure too. If the Inquiry Committee imposes limits, conditions or a suspension on your practice during the investigation to protect the public, that interim action is put on public notice — reputational impact before any final decision has been made. This is precisely why the quality of your early response matters so much.

What to do this week

Contact your professional liability insurer and instruct a regulatory lawyer before you write anything. Diarise the deadline in the College’s letter. Preserve every record exactly as it is — PharmaNet, the hard-copy log, narcotic reconciliations — and never amend one, because a documentation or honesty problem layered on top of a clinical one is far harder to defend. Say nothing to the complainant.

Then do the work that changes the Committee’s risk assessment: an honest account of what happened and targeted learning in the area of concern. CPBC consent agreements very frequently require exactly this — an ethics course for healthcare professionals, and its own jurisprudence requirements — so a licensee who has already started is one the Committee has an obvious route to resolve with.

This guide is general information for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in British Columbia and is not legal advice. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the College of Pharmacists of BC. It describes the position under the Health Professions and Occupations Act, which replaced the Health Professions Act on 1 April 2026; transitional arrangements apply to matters already under way. Regulatory processes change and every case turns on its own facts — contact your professional liability insurer and a regulatory lawyer about your own matter, and confirm current requirements with CPBC. No course or programme can guarantee the outcome of a regulatory process. Last updated July 14, 2026.