B.C. Minister of Health Josie Osborne spoke with members on May 2, 2025 in Victoria at the BC Pharmacy Association Annual Conference. The message on this page is reproduced from her speech at the conference.
I am B.C.’s Minister of Health, and it is a real privilege to receive this appointment from Premier David Eby. No small task, and not easy times. I know we are all experiencing a lot of strain in our health-care system here in British Columbia.
First, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the BC Pharmacy Association for the incredible job that you do in being the voice of community pharmacy. As Geraldine said, we’ve had the opportunity to meet a few times, and we’ve been able to sit down and talk about the interests and values of community pharmacy and some of the advocacy work that the Association is doing. Our government is incredibly committed to supporting pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in taking on expanded roles in the health-care system.
I hope we can all agree that this is an effort that has already shown some great success.
Back in 2022 under the leadership of Adrian Dix, who was the Minister of Health for the last two terms of our government, we expanded the authority so that pharmacists can adapt and renew prescriptions for many different medications, administer a wider range of drugs to people, and since 2023 have been able to assess and prescribe medication for 21 different minor ailments and for contraceptive prescribing.
And since last year, pharmacists are now able to refer people to select lab tests. By expanding this work, we’ve made it easier and faster for people to be able to access the critical health-care services that they need. And it is working well. From June 2023 to March 2025, pharmacists treated almost half a million people for 21 minor ailments, and 97,000 people were assessed to get prescriptions for birth control. It’s been a phenomenal response.
B.C. pharmacists also dispensed over 103 million drugs and medical devices and supplies and administered over 1.3 million COVID-19 vaccines, and nearly 1.2 million flu vaccines in that period. And as of Jan. 27 2025, over 500 pharmacists have received an MSP practitioner number. There are more than 140 who are registered at LifeLabs, and it’s resulting in numerous tests that have been ordered by pharmacists.
And we can’t let the work stop there, so we won’t.
We’re going to continue to explore new opportunities to leverage your skills and expertise as pharmacy professionals and really do that work to enhance patient care and improve efficiency in the health-care system. We’ve been actively engaging with frontline practitioners on the efforts and innovations that pharmacy professionals are taking to better serve people, and one of these key initiatives is the soon-to-be established Pharmacy Council. The Pharmacy Council will serve as an advisory body that’s comprised of frontline pharmacy professionals and really help to provide that very timely input that we need on pharmaceutical policies, on practice related issues, on patient and provider experiences, and that will help inform and support the decisions that are being made at the Ministry.
I am very happy to report that the interest in joining the Council has been very strong. The inaugural meeting of the Council will take place this month (May 2025). And thank you so much to those people who are going to be involved in the council. I know it’s going to be an absolutely invaluable tool to really increase that access to that frontline knowledge that you have.
From left to right: BC Pharmacy Association Board Chair Colleen Hogg, Minister of Health Josie Osborne, and Association CEO Geraldine Vance.
I have the pleasure of having a friend who is a pharmacist, and also had the opportunity to meet a lot of pharmacists over the past several years. As MLAs, we all go out into our communities, and we meet different pharmacists and have the opportunity to talk to them and really hear about what their lives are like, and what they’re doing and how important of a role they play in their communities.
One thing I think we can all say is that pharmacists are always there for people, and whether it’s through the fall immunization campaign or responding to public health emergencies, be it the COVID-19 pandemic, the toxic drug crisis that we are facing, and just helping people manage their medications, pharmacy professionals play an absolutely essential role in our health-care system.
So I want to say thank you to each and every one of you for the work that you do, and assure you about the commitment that I have and that our government has to supporting pharmacies, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians in continuing to take on expanded roles within our health-care system, and really helping people get the health care that they need in the communities where they live.
Thank you very much for having me here today.