CCHPBC Discipline: Legal Counsel for BC Complementary Health Professionals

The regulatory landscape for complementary health professionals in BC has seen significant changes over the last few years, and it is expected to see further changes in the near future.

If you are facing an impending or ongoing regulatory action by the College of Complementary Health Professionals of BC (the “CCHPBC” or the “College”), you are likely filled with questions about the potential consequences, the procedures involved, as well as how to defend your rights, career and reputation.

This article can be the starting point for you to acquire some of the most essential information when under the College’s disciplinary scrutiny. However, as you read on, bear in mind that you should act promptly to obtain legal advice, which can be essential for navigating regulatory challenges.

If you have any concerns about an impending or ongoing regulatory action, you can contact Taylor Janis Workplace Law at our Vancouver or Kamloops office for legal support.

The CCHPBC Is a Statutory Regulator

Who Does the CCHPBC Regulate

Complementary health practices in British Columbia are tightly regulated and subject to stringent standards of licensing, ethics, professionalism and competence. The College of Complementary Health Professionals of BC, established in 2024 through the amalgamation of four legacy regulatory colleges, is the regulatory college for BC chiropractors, registered massage therapists, naturopathic doctors, as well as traditional Chinese medicine practitioners and acupuncturists.

The College is responsible for enforcing professional standards and practices, managing the registration and professional development of the complementary health professionals, as well as processing complaints and disciplinary matters.

The CCHPBC’s Regulatory and Disciplinary Authorities

Under the current Health Professions Act (the “HPA”), the CCHPBC has broad statutory disciplinary powers and discretion over its registrants.

The Health Professions and Occupations Act (the “HPOA”), which is expected to come into full force on April 1, 2026, was introduced to reform some aspects of the regulatory framework governing health professions in BC. The HPOA, even when it is in full force, will not take away the CCHPBC’s standing as a regulatory college.

Both the HPA and the HPOA confer broad bylaw-making powers to the CCHPBC to govern its regulated professions and internal procedures. Under the HPOA, the College will retain and continue to exercise much of its current regulatory powers in licensing, processing complaints and investigating disciplinary matters.

To conclude, the College is an administrative and regulatory body whose decisions have legally binding effects on its registrants.

*The information provided in the article is descriptive and applicable to the current regulatory regime under the HPA and the parts of HPOA already in force, except where it is otherwise specified.

What Are the Consequences of Being Disciplined?

Under the current framework, if the CCHPBC makes an adverse disciplinary decision, it might do one or a few of the following to the disciplined registrant:

• Reprimand the disciplined registrant;
• Impose limits or conditions on the registrant’s practice;
• Suspend the registrant’s registration;
  • The College may impose limits or conditions on their eligibility to apply for reinstatement or on the management of their practice during a suspension.
• Cancel the registrant’s registration;
• Issue a fine up to $100,000; and
• Recover certain costs associated with the disciplinary process from the disciplined registrant.

Hence, being disciplined by the CCHPBC can have severe financial and career consequences. A suspension or cancellation of your registration can be career-threatening, and even a seemingly “lesser” discipline measure, such as a condition placed on your practice, can be highly disruptive to your complementary health practice.

Furthermore, being disciplined can result in widespread and irrecoverable reputational damage, as final and adverse disciplinary orders must be put on public notice under the HPA, and a disciplinary record may affect your ability to register with other professional regulators.

Act Promptly to Minimize Risks

When you have attracted the CCHPBC’s regulatory scrutiny, you should act promptly to protect your reputation and professional future. The legal rules governing complementary health professions are complex, and perspectives often diverge when it comes to a disciplinary matter. Even when the allegation against you is seemingly unfounded or trivial, you should obtain legal advice to assess and minimize the risk of receiving legally binding and career-altering disciplinary sanctions.

Our strong recommendation is that you choose a lawyer skilled in regulatory actions, such as an experienced lawyer at Taylor Janis Workplace Law. This matters because each regulatory body has its unique procedures, and both legal and practical acumen are required to effectively assist you in navigating the procedural complexity.

Please read on if you would like to know more about the CCHPBC’s disciplinary process.

The Disciplinary Process of the CCHPBC

Complaints and Quality Assurance Programs

Under the HPA, any person can file a complaint with the CCHPBC against its registrants. The college’s registrants also have a positive duty to report their peers for sexual misconduct or conduct endangering the public. Moreover, the Inquiry Committee of the College can initiate an investigation on its own motion for a variety of concerns regarding a registrant’s conduct.

The significance of the above-mentioned is that CCHPBC disciplinary actions can arise without a complaint, and complaints do not necessarily need to come from a patient.

Once the College’s Registrar receives a complaint, they must refer it to the Inquiry Committee of the College, unless they have determined that the complaint is trivial, frivolous, vexatious or made in bad faith, or the matter lacks the gravity to trigger an investigation.

The Investigation by Inquiry Committee

The Inquiry Committee must investigate a matter referred to it as soon as possible under the HPA.

An investigation can be highly disruptive to your practice or even personal life, during which the you have a legal obligation to cooperate. The Inquiry Committee has broad investigatory powers and can direct an inspector to:

• Require and retain information, records and/or certain physical evidence from the investigated registrant;
• Require the investigated registrant to answer questions and/or to be interviewed; and
• Inspect the investigated registrant’s premises for practice.

Under certain circumstances, the Inquiry Committee may also:

• Authorize a person to apply for a court order, thus to expand the investigatory power to search other premises and/or to seize other evidence; or
• Place restrictions on /suspend the investigated registrant’s practice during an investigation for the protection of the public.
  • A restriction, condition or suspension imposed on a registrant’s practice will be put on public notice, thus resulting in severe reputational damage even before a final disciplinary decision is reached.

When undergoing an investigation, you have to cooperate without inadvertently jeopardizing your case. It is highly recommended that you engage legal representation early so as to avoid legal pitfalls.

Discipline Committee Hearings

After an investigation, an unresolved complaint will be referred to the Discipline Committee for a hearing. A hearing is a quasi-judicial process that can be highly challenging and intimidating to navigate. This is for a few reasons:

• A hearing is quasi-judicial, and the contentions can be intense:
  • The parties (the College vs. the respondent registrant) both have a statutory right to legal representation, and a complainant may be represented by counsel if they are also presenting evidence.
  • A hearing is a highly adversarial procedure, meaning that decisions are made on the relative strength of the parties’ legal and factual submissions. Given that both the facts and legal issues are often intensely contentious, successfully defending against an allegation often requires extensive preparation and strategic planning.
• The timeline for preparation is limited and demanding:
  • Under the HPA, a hearing citation may be delivered to the respondent registrant as late as 30 days before the date of the hearing, and the date, time and place of the hearing may be provided with as little as 14 days’ notice.
  • The pre-hearing procedures introduce further complexity and strict deadlines. You have to disclose your evidence timely before a hearing for it to be admissible, and you might also be directed to attend pre-hearing conferences whilst you are dealing with the stress of hearing preparation.
• At the hearing, you may be compelled to testify under oath or disclose records:
  • If you are compelled (ordered) to testify, you may be subjected to examination (being scrutinized with questions). Preparedness and awareness of common pitfalls are essential to avoid prejudicing yourself.
  • Failure to cooperate may result in severe legal consequences.
• The procedures have profound reputational implications:
  • Hearing citations may be published, and hearings are presumptively open to the public. Therefore, severe reputational harm may occur even before a decision is made, especially if you are underprepared for the hearing or act in ways that prejudice yourself.

A hearing is a highly consequential and challenging procedure. If a disciplinary matter escalates to a hearing, the benefit of exercising your statutory right to counsel is eminently clear.

Alternative Resolution Processes

There are alternative ways to resolve a disciplinary matter without going through an entire hearing process:

• During an investigation, the Inquiry Committee may facilitate voluntary resolution between the complainant and the investigated registrant, and it may also request the registrant to consent to a reprimand or to undertake certain actions (known as a reprimand or remedial action by consent).
• An investigated registrant can also propose to the Inquiry Committee for a consent order by admitting to certain alleged facts and proposing discipline orders against them. Such proposals may or may not be accepted.

However, these alternatives should be approached carefully and strategically under legal advice. This is because:

• A settlement or resolution by consent is normally legally binding. Hence, you should only agree to what is fair and reasonable, considering all the relevant legal and factual factors.
• A consent order requires admission to at least some of the alleged facts, which will substantially foreclose an appeal on grounds of erroneous fact-finding.
• An alternative resolution can result in severe reputational damage:
  • A consent order must be published, as it is considered to be equivalent to a discipline order.
  • A remedial action by consent related to a serious matter will be published. (A serious matter includes any matter that would normally attract sanctions more than just a reprimand or fine. )

Therefore, although alternative resolutions can be advantageous in the right circumstances, you should not make a hasty decision. Instead, you should retain a lawyer to comprehensively review your case and then make legally informed and strategically sound decisions.

Early Legal Representation Is Key

When undergoing a CCHPBC disciplinary process, you should take a proactive approach and engage legal representation early. This is to ensure that you have adequate legal assistance to navigate the highly complex, consequential, and stressful procedures.

Taylor Janis Workplace Law offers legal services to all professionals facing regulatory challenges in all areas of BC. If you have any concerns about an impending or ongoing disciplinary procedure, contact us at our Vancouver or Kamloops office to schedule a consultation.

Legal representation is also instrumental when it comes to preparing an effective defence, which is the topic of the next section of this article.

An Effective Defence: Rules, Facts and Advocacy

When facing a CCHPBC regulatory action, your response can shape the outcome. Not only is an effective defence crucial at the hearing stage, but a robust early response may also lead to an expedited resolution.

It is not simple to formulate a robust defence or response, however, as this often requires legal knowledge, strong evidence and skillful advocacy.

The Legal Know-how

The legislative and regulatory framework for complementary health professions is complex and necessarily so. The rules applicable to a CCHPBC registrant are multi-sourced, complex and often nuanced. When preparing a legal argument, it is necessary to bear in mind that:

• There is a broad range of disciplineable conduct, and there are multiple sources of rules specifically applicable to CCHPBC registrants.
  • Under the HPA, disciplinable conduct includes non-compliance with the HPA, its accompanying regulations, the Bylaws and the standards established by the College, including the Code of Ethics of your respective profession. Thus, legal acumen in interpreting and applying all these sources of rules can be essential for an effective defence.
  • Disciplinable conduct also includes incompetent practice, professional misconduct and unprofessional conduct. Moreover, significant impairments to the ability to practice can also affect a registrant’s professional standing. Issues related to these can be highly nuanced, and correctly interpreting applicable standards often requires broader legal understandings. For example, whether a therapeutic procedure is done competently has to be assessed by taking into account the entire factual circumstances and what is widely accepted as the applicable standard, and a robust understanding of common law standards on competence can be instrumental.
• A complimentary health professional, like anyone else, has to act lawfully in general at all times.
  • This requires a complementary health professional to observe all laws, not just the ones specifically applicable to them. When legal rules interact with each other, things can get nuanced and intricated.
  • Correspondingly, when adjudicating a matter, the College might have to rely on other legal authorities, such as common law cases or prior regulatory decisions.
  • For example, in this hearing decision against a registered massage therapist, multiple regulatory and common law decisions were referenced to determine the correct standard of proof and whether the respondent had committed disciplinable conduct failed to cooperate.

Hence, having legal representation can be an indispensable asset when it comes to formulating a robust legal argument. A lawyer can leverage their legal knowledge to identify and apply a wealth of appropriate legal authorities and conduct in-depth analysis—tasks that can be highly challenging to navigate on your own.

The Evidence

A disciplinary decision can only be based on facts substantiated with evidence. During a disciplinary procedure, the perspectives of the parties involved often diverge, and facts are often intensely disputed. When preparing a factual argument, it is important to know that:

• The strength of your evidence is assessed relative to the competing evidence, especially at a hearing. This means that evidence needs to be well-organized and presented, and its factual relevance and legal materiality highlighted.
• Evidence has to conform to certain requirements to be admissible, and pieces of evidence are not equal in their strength and relevance. Having your lawyer emphasize the strength of your evidence and the weaknesses of problematic opposing evidence can be instrumental to your case.

We Advocate for You

Skilled lawyers at Taylor Janis can not only assist you in preparing strong legal and factual arguments but also advocate for you and assist the adjudicator in making fair decisions. This can be crucial for safeguarding your legal rights when facing a regulatory challenge.

Contact us today for an initial consultation, which is the first step in securing a tailored legal plan and defence strategy.

If you have concerns or questions about your rights when undergoing regulatory actions, you will find the next section informative.

Your Have Important Rights

When undergoing a CCHPBC disciplinary process, your administrative law rights are constantly engaged. Such rights have roots in common law and even the Constitution, and safeguarding your rights is essential to ensuring a fair outcome.

Knowing Your Rights

Your rights are ultimately about fairness, and they can be put into three broad but distinct categories. Below is a short summary of these rights.

• The right to substantive fairness:
  • This means the decision must meet certain standards in its legal and factual reasoning.
  • Under the HPA, a registrant can appeal a CCHPBC discipline order to the BC Supreme Court, where an impugned decision is assessed by the appellate standards as if it were made by a lower court.
  • Hence, the standards of substantive fairness are that a decision must not contain “palpable and overriding error” in fact-finding, and its legal reasoning must be correct. These standards are outlined in the Supreme Court of Canada decision Housen.
• The right to procedural fairness:
  • Broadly speaking, you have a right to “know the case against you and make full answer and defence”.
  • This right is infringed if there is a lack of due process or when due process is conducted unfairly. Thus, procedural fairness issues must be assessed through a detailed analysis of how a procedure was conducted, together with an understanding of the due process requirements under the HPA and the CCHPBC Bylaws.
• The right to an unbiased decision maker:
  • This right is infringed if a decision or decision-making process raises a reasonable apprehension of bias to an informed third person observing the entire circumstance.
  • Alleged bias must be substantiated with evidence to meet the high legal and factual thresholds: remember, reasonable apprehension of bias is not “any apprehension of bias”.

The preferred approach to safeguard your rights is to have legal counsel engaged with the entire disciplinary process, so that they can spot, flag and object to potential infringements as they emerge. This is because a valid claim of infringement is subject to stringent legal thresholds, and it is highly challenging to have an unfair decision overturned.

Appealing a Decision Is Challenging

If a registrant has concerns about the fairness of a CCHPBC disciplinary order, they can appeal that decision to the Supreme Court of British Columbia within 30 days of receiving it. However, an appeal is monumentally challenging because:

• An appeal procedure is complex and likely lengthy, and the appellate standards for an appeal to be successful are very high (as discussed above).
  • Adding to the difficulty, courts are, at common law, required to pay deference to regulatory decision makers out of respect for legislators’ intent following the Supreme Court of Canada decision Vavilov.
• An appeal is normally not a “rehearing” of the alleged conduct.
  • This means normally only rights-related issues will be considered, and you cannot submit additional evidence regarding the alleged conduct. Hence, appellate actions are highly technical and can be a formidable challenge for you to handle on your own.
• An appeal does not automatically pause the enforcement of a discipline order.
  • Even if an appeal is successful, the matter may be sent back to the College to be re-determined, rather than being quashed outright.
  • Hence, the damaging effects of a disciplinary order may continue to take place during the likely lengthy appeal procedure.

Hence, although you have a statutory right to appeal a CCHPBC disciplinary order, an appeal should be seen as a last resort attempt to seek judicial remedy after the damage has already been done.

Safeguarding Your Rights with Early and Ongoing Legal Representation

Our strong recommendation is that you engage legal representation early and throughout the entire disciplinary process, so that your rights are protected every step of the way. However, if an appeal becomes necessary, you can rely on Taylor Janis to provide you with skilled legal guidance.

Seeking Legal Guidance

Taylor Janis Workplace Law understands the complexities and nuances of regulatory actions. We also appreciate that every case is different, and so are the needs of each client. This is why we always provide transparent legal advice and tailored legal plans.

Whether you are facing disciplinary actions or appealing an unfair decision, reach out to one of our BC offices in Vancouver or Kamloops to schedule a consultation, as this is the first step to securing a tailored legal plan.

Taylor Janis offers legal services to professionals facing regulatory actions in all areas of BC, and we are looking forward to assisting you through any regulatory challenges.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Does a CCHPBC Disciplinary Process Typically Take?

This can vary greatly depending on various factors, such as the factual and legal merit of the allegation, as well as how you respond in a given situation. A vexatious or frivolous matter is likely dismissed fairly quickly, but if a matter progresses into a full investigation or hearing, the process can take a few months, if not over a year, to conclude. Your response can critically affect how fast a matter is resolved, as a robust response early on can discourage meritless matters from being processed further, thus leading to an expedited resolution. You should discuss your concerns about the disruptive effects of the disciplinary process with a lawyer.

Can I Continue Practicing while Being Investigated by the CCHPBC?

If your registration is not suspended or has conditions or restrictions placed thereon, you can continue working while undergoing a CCHPBC disciplinary process. However, if any of these have been imposed on your license, you should strictly follow the College’s directions, as non-compliance can attract severe disciplinary or legal consequences. Consult a lawyer if you have any concerns or questions about your ability to work during a disciplinary process.

I Am no Longer Registered with the CCHPBC. Should I Still Be Concerned About an Impending Disciplinary Action?

For disciplinary purposes, the HPA‘s definition of registrants includes former registrants. Hence, you can be disciplined by the CCHPBC long after the cessation of your registration. Moreover, a disciplinary record may affect your future career as you might be required to disclose it when registering with other regulators. Consider consulting a lawyer if you have attracted the regulatory scrutiny of the College, even if you are no longer its registrant.

Conclusion

The regulatory landscape for complementary health professionals in BC has seen significant changes in the recent past and will remain in flux for the near future. The CCHPBC is a newly formed regulatory college that has legally binding disciplinary powers. Being disciplined by the College can have a severe reputational impact and career-altering consequences. The disciplinary process of the CCHPBC involves highly intrusive and complex procedures that are not only consequential but also engage your administrative rights to fairness. Moreover, an effective defence is not easy to formulate without legal knowledge and advocacy skills. Hence, Taylor Janis strongly recommends that you obtain legal assistance early when facing CCHPBC regulatory challenges.

References:

• Health Professions Act [RSBC 1996] CHAPTER 183
• Health Professions and Occupations Act [SBC 2022] CHAPTER 43
• Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 (CanLII), [2019] 4 SCR 653
• Housen v. Nikolaisen, 2002 SCC 33 (CanLII), [2002] 2 SCR 235
• CCHPBC Bylaws
• “Gaudet” Decision by the former College of Massage Therapists of BC
• Bill 36 – 2022 Health Professions and Occupations Act

Resources for Readers:

• Standards of Practice and Code of Conduct/Ethics published by the CCHPBC
• Past CCHPBC disciplinary orders

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