Quebec pharmacists facing same private agency problem as nurses: AQPP

A technician counts pills in a pharmacy laboratory, Wednesday February 5, 2025. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

The Quebec pharmacy owners’ association (AQPP) argues that pharmacists are in the same boat as nurses when it comes to private employment agencies.

The AQPP says it is speaking out before the situation gets completely out of hand.

“There are a lot of similarities with the problems of the independent workforce with nurses. It’s the same phenomenon,” said AQPP President Benoit Morin. “There are replacement agencies that recruit pharmacists from pharmacies, hire them, then afterwards offer them to pharmacist owners in exchange for replacements, but this creates gaps. Every time they recruit a pharmacist, there’s one less pharmacist in the network.”

The association has declared Tuesday a day without using replacement agencies.

In doing so, it says it is aiming to raise awareness among the government and its agencies about the crisis in the pharmaceutical network.

The Association des bannières et des chaînes de pharmacies du Québec, which includes major chains like Brunet, Familiprix, Jean Coutu and Uniprix, seconed the AQPP’s message.

“Pharmacists have always used replacement agencies to fill occasional needs,” said Morin.

However, over the past five years or so, the labour shortage has become “artificially accentuated,” he said, and more pharmacists are deciding to do replacement work rather than invest in themselves.

In 2024, one million hours of replacement work were carried out in Quebec’s pharmacies, and the AQPP says it fears the number will continue to rise exponentially if nothing is done.

The situation could jeopardize the development of front-line clinical care, warns the association.

The current vacancy rate in community pharmacy is 12 per cent, compared with three per cent in the rest of the province, all sectors combined.

The AQPP has calculated a shortfall of 1,150 full- and part-time pharmacists in Quebec.

Morin says the province’s Health Ministry is “very aware of the phenomenon.”

“At first, a few years ago, I said to myself: we’re private companies, we have to manage our workforce ourselves, we’re good at that, but I admit that right now, we’re a bit, at the association, at the end of our resources. I think it’s going to take outside help from the government or elsewhere to help us curb this phenomenon,” he said.

Morin says he is not opposed to the idea of legislation to regulate the use of replacement pharmacists.

“We’re not ruling anything out,” he said.

In 2023, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government passed a law to limit the use of independent labour agencies in the health and social services network.

This did not include pharmacies.

After criticism from establishments saying they were unable to continue offering optimal care without nurses from private agencies, Health Minister Christian Dubé said he would give them more time to get organized.

The regulations are currently being applied gradually, region by region, until October 2026.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 27, 2025.

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