Evolution of College Governance

From 2018 to 2020, the Board of Directors engaged in a review of the governance structure of the College, ultimately leading to the implementation of changes through the adoption of a new By-Law, which was ratified in March 2020.

The Board’s governance work was aimed at strengthening public confidence in the College, acting proactively to reflect emerging best practices nationally and internationally, aligning with ongoing work at other health regulators, and taking a leadership role in supporting change in the field of health professional regulation.

There were four main changes:

1. Enable parity between public members and elected professional members by reducing the total number of Board members from 28 to 20.

  • The makeup of the Board is now: nine elected members (two pharmacy technicians), nine public members (appointed by the Lieutenant Governor in Council of Ontario) and the two deans of the Universities (University of Toronto and University of Waterloo).
  • Elected Board members are limited to a maximum of two consecutive three-year terms.


2. Adopt a competency-based Board model instead of a regionally based one to reinforce that registrants elected to the Board are there to ensure that the public interested is served, not to represent voting constituents.

  • As part of the nomination process for election, the Board established key competencies and experiences for qualification and instituted a more robust screening process.
  • Board and committee members have begun to receive a taxable honorarium for time spent on College work.

3. Create more separation between the Board and statutory committees, where possible, to recognize that the roles of Board member and committee member are different and require different competencies.

  • Elected professional Board members are only appointed to the Discipline Committee, as required by legislation.
  • Only two public members are appointed to the other statutory committees, the minimum required by legislation.
  • A competency-based process is used to recruit lay (public) and professional committee appointees to participate on committees as needed.

4. Update terminology to better reflect the Board and College’s roles.

  • Change to Board of Directors from Council, with individual members referred to as Directors. Chair and Vice Chair are now used in place of President and Vice-President.
  • Members of the College (pharmacy professionals) are now referred to as registrants.