The Minister of Health has appointed the first Board of the College of Health and Care Professionals of BC (CHCPBC). The Board members will be:
Public members
- Nathan Reginald Doidge
- Joyce Wynnifred Kenoras
- Sarah Ann Lalonde
- John David Meneghello
- Mary Elizabeth O’Callaghan
- Allan Paul Seckel (designated Board Chair)
Registrant members
- Jennifer Ann Agnew (physical therapist)
- Russell Ebata (optometrist)
- Jamie Lee Hack (speech-language pathologist)
- Sue Randhawa (optician)
- Deborah Jean Ruggiero (occupational therapist)
- Oliver Yergeau (dietitian)
The first Board has 12 members: six members who are regulated health professionals and six public members. The Board size was determined to be 12 to align with the upcoming requirement in the Health Professions and Occupations Act. It is important to keep the new college’s Board small to support effective decision-making at a strategic level, while also ensuring the Board includes diverse public and Indigenous perspectives.
In accordance with a Board composition matrix developed for the new college, Board members bring diverse practice, lived experience, provincial geography, and professional skills to the table.
CHCPBC will be regulating nine professions on June 28, therefore not every profession will have a seat on the Board. Professions that do not have a seat on the first Board are: audiologists, hearing instrument practitioners and psychologists.
However, the mandate of Board members of regulatory health colleges is not to represent the interests of health professionals: that is the role of professional associations. Instead, Board members of regulatory health colleges have a fiduciary duty to the college and the public.
Maintaining a deep, profession-specific understanding and capacity within the overall governance of the new college remains vital. For this reason, the new college’s governance framework also ensures profession-specific capacity at the Committee and staff levels. With the new college being a larger organization, consultation with the professions and the public is also expected to increase.
Each regulatory Committee (Registration, Quality Assurance, Inquiry and Discipline) will be made up of a number of members from each profession, as well as members of the public. Small groups of Committee members will be selected from this pool of members to form “panels” that will undertake specific Committee work. If the work or decision relates to a registrant/applicant or to a profession-specific matter, then at least one panel member will be from the same profession.
The Board will also be able to rely on the new Professional Practice and Standards Advisory Committee to inform profession-specific decisions