Vancouver Island University is looking at cancelling 10 graduate and three undergraduate programs over the next two years in an attempt to control a financial crisis that has been compared with the one that preceded the collapse of Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.
One of the programs on the chopping block is the Dental Assisting Certificate Program, which is slated to end in fall 2026 if a recommendation to the VIU Senate is approved in a special senate meeting on May 31 and at the VIU Board of Governors meeting on June 3.
But dental organizations say cancelling the program would have negative impacts on the quality of dental care on Vancouver Island, especially when B.C. is facing a shortage of dental care professionals and as the federal government launches its Canadian Dental Care Plan.
Dr. Dan-Linh Ha, president of the Victoria and District Dental Society, told The Discourse that having fewer trained dental assistants is going to mean people will have to wait longer to access dental care.
“There’s going to be massive delays in treatment and being seen,” she told The Discourse. “I don’t know if you’re going to have an increase in people in the hospital, because the wait is going to be greater to have dental care and then patients are more susceptible to having abscesses and tooth infections that can compromise their health.”
Certified dental assistants needed for X-Rays and other critical procedures
Certified dental assistants have responsibilities that include making sure the equipment a dentist uses is sterilized, monitoring the comfort of a patient and preparing syringes for freezing the gums.
B.C. allows both certified and uncertified dental assistants to work in dental offices, with the latter being trained on-the-job by clinic staff. However, licensed assistants can do additional tasks such as take X-Rays and polish teeth.
“I personally cannot work without a dental assistant in terms of exposing X-rays,” said Ha, who is a working dentist specializing in root canals in Victoria. “I need everybody to come in for a consultation and that requires a lot of imaging. You can not have anybody just press the button.”
Dental assistants also have to complete continuing education and work a minimum number of hours to maintain their licence.
“The important thing about being licensed is the training that you get so that you know how to keep that patient safe,” said Arlene Cearns, who graduated from the program at Malaspina College in 1975 and worked as a dental assistant for 48 years. She is now a board member of the Certified Dental Assistants of British Columbia.
Duelling VIU Senate briefing notes dispute rationale for cancellation
In a briefing note to the VIU Senate recommending the cancellation of the program, the Dean for Health Sciences and Human Services writes that the program was selected because it only brought in $120,000 of tuition revenue, with program expenses of $495,000. That resulted in $375,000 in expenses that had to be covered by an operating grant from the provincial government.
The final cohort of 36 students would be able to start this fall and finish the 10-month program before it is cancelled, if the recommendation to cancel it goes through.
Two-full time and two part-time faculty positions, as well as two part-time program assistant positions, would also be eliminated.
While the briefing note acknowledges that workforce data means the cancellation of the program would be a “loss of a short-term, high demand program” where enrollment is “consistently high,” it also says the cost of program delivery exceeds tuition or other funding.
The briefing note said that Camosun College and Vancouver Community College also offer the program.
However, Ha, who works closely with Camosun College, said those programs already have a waitlist for students.
“There’s not enough room there,” she said, noting that if VIU cancels the program the one at Camosun will be the only program on Vancouver Island.
Another briefing note in the senate agenda by Marianne Roden, chair of the Dental Assistant program, said “the decision has been made without input and opportunity for engagement from the program and stakeholders to seek other solutions.”
Roden’s briefing note also says the program operates a clinic for four weeks that helps treat 75 students from local schools and 80 additional patients with support from local dentists. It says that despite the higher tuition of the dental hygiene program, that program operates at a loss of $571,000, almost $200,000 more than the deficit of the assistant program.
Roden’s note argues that eliminating the program will contribute to the shortage of certified dental assistants on Vancouver Island who “play a critical role in prevention of oral diseases.”
The briefing note also states that private career colleges charge “significantly higher tuition” for the program than VIU and that a model with higher tuition could help the program become sustainable financially while maintaining strong enrolment.
The VIU Senate agenda notes that there have been 143 emails related to the cancellation of the program as of May 13, compared to three emails about the cancellation of the Master of Community Planning program and eight for the cancellation of the Philosophy program.
Dental associations say certified dental assistants are in high demand
The president of the B.C. Dental Association (BCDA), which represents dentists in the province, said programs like VIU’s are “vital” to providing British Columbians with oral care.
“Any loss of educational seats will lead to fewer dental professionals available to provide oral healthcare for people who need it,” said BCDA president Dr. Anita Gartner. “The province is already facing a significant shortage of dental care professionals, particularly certified dental assistants. This is a deficit that is projected to worsen with population growth and with the full implementation of the Canadian Dental Care Plan.”
Kourtnee Thomas, a CDA Alliance steering committee member and operations manager for Blue Ocean Dental Group said she is working with the BCDA and local dentists to propose viable solutions to save the program and “ensure the continued availability of high-quality dental education and support the workforce needed to provide essential care to communities across the province.”
She said the news about the proposed cancellation “came as a shock” and that the loss of the program would “have a significant impact on the region, which is already facing a serious shortage of qualified dental assistants.”
The Certified Dental Assistants of British Columbia is also hoping that the university will reconsider the proposal to cancel the program.
Cearns said if VIU cancels the program, which has been running for more than 50 years, it will mean that students who want to be dental assistants will go to school elsewhere and that will exacerbate the dental assistant shortage in the mid-Island.
“If we lose that school, you go to school in Victoria or Vancouver and you’re not going to want to leave the bigger cities to come to a smaller community,” she said. “To let that slip away is extremely short sighted.”
Ha said VIU seems to be making the decision to cancel the program based on finances and would like to see the province provide more funding for it.
“When you read the briefing note, I don’t see anything else but finances being an issue,” she said. “I think that they need to prioritize this program and just have it continue to run.”
A request for an interview was declined by Vancouver Island University, which said, “at this stage, no final decisions have been made. As such, we will not be commenting further until the full governance process has concluded on June 3, 2025.a
