Nikki Robbins at home with her late son Brayden's Lego builds in Qualicum Beach, B.C., on Friday. Brayden died after two misdiagnoses during ER visits to the Comox Valley Hospital two years ago.Chad Hipolito/The Globe and Mail
A registered nurse whose 11-year-old son died at a Vancouver Island hospital worries B.C.’s new health care regulation laws may perpetuate the systemic problems she says contributed to her son’s death rather than solve them.
In November, 2024, Nikki Robbins’s husband brought their son Brayden to the hospital in Comox, B.C., when he had an excruciating headache. Staff, she said, believed he had torticollis – a common neck spasm – and sent him home with ibuprofen.
Ms. Robbins said he was not given a CT scan, hospital staff couldn’t access his extensive neurological treatment files, and there was no pediatrician available to see him.
Six days later, Brayden’s symptoms returned, but only worse. He screamed in pain when the family returned to the ER. After five hours he was given a CT scan, but transportation to a larger hospital was by then not available. He died the next morning of complications from a brain bleed.
Ms. Robbins doesn’t blame individual practitioners who treated her son, saying they were doing the best they could in a flawed and overloaded system. But, she said, the new act’s focus on individual discipline over systemic change misses the point.
Ms. Robbins holds a picture of Brayden.Chad Hipolito/The Globe and Mail
Where she sees a lack of accountability is from the Vancouver Island Health Authority and a health-care system that is bursting at the seams. While the health authority conducted an incident review after Brayden died, Ms. Robbins was unable to get copies of its findings.
Ms. Robbins worries the new act’s focus on individual discipline, rather than systemic change, will force practitioners to be self-protective and to avoid clear communication with patients about the limits of the care they can provide.
“The act actually perpetuates the toxic cultures that we’re trying to lessen in our system,” she said, noting she still doesn’t know what contributed to her son’s death.
Island Health said in a statement that Brayden’s death was “heartbreaking,” and that it has shared as much information with the family as it can through multiple meetings. The findings of the review itself are protected by law.
“We recognize the impact this has had on Brayden’s family as it does not meet the level of transparency they desire,” the statement said.
What is B.C.’s new health care law, Bill 36?
The B.C. government said the new Health Professions and Occupations Act that took effect on Wednesday will bring more transparency to the system and better protect patients and their loved ones.
The changes will ensure, among other things, that professional disciplinary boards do a better job of protecting patient interests, the government maintains.
Experts say the new law marks a sea change for how health professionals are regulated in Canada and reflects a move from self-regulation toward more government oversight.
Health Minister Josie Osborne described it as the most significant restructuring of oversight to B.C. regulatory colleges in three decades. The law includes replacing elected board members at the regulatory colleges with provincial appointees, eliminating an appeals process for complaints against professionals, and making it a punishable offence to knowingly provide false or misleading information to patients, among other changes.
The law has sparked concerns from health-care professionals across B.C. Critics, including legal experts and opposition politicians, say it constitutes government overreach.
B.C.’s overhaul of health care professional regulation may continue to evolve, minister says
But Jason Sutherland, a professor at UBC’s school of population and public health, said the “very significant shift” in how health-care workers are regulated was likely spurred by increased public pressure.
“Over the last decade, I think that the colleges were viewed as very opaque, for their members and also for people that want to register serious and substantial complaints,” Prof. Sutherland said.
He expects other provinces to watch its implementation closely.
Peter Saad, a lawyer at Loopstra Nixon LLP in Toronto who specializes in corporate health-care law, said it will take time to see if accountability changes.
“Are these centralized accountability procedures going to lead to more stringent outcomes or what people think are better outcomes?”
Mr. Saad said there is an “inherent tension” in the question of whether regulated colleges are inclined to protect their members or to act in the public interest.
“Ontario has actually still retained the autonomy of most regulated professions,” he said. “They have shown a lot of deference to them. B.C. has gone the other way.”
Providers, opposition criticize coming B.C. law that changes how health professionals are regulated
Last November, Alberta also made reforms to how health professionals are regulated. It introduced a law to ban regulatory bodies from sanctioning professionals for personal expression outside of work, as well as to limit training imposed by colleges.
The move was widely praised by free-speech supporters.
Kaitlin Stockton, an emergency physician in B.C., worries the new law places an even greater focus on practitioner accountability when the health care system must be more transparent.
Dr. Stockton said she has watched emergency rooms across the province become overcrowded and, in some instances, operate beyond their capacity. She said she has seen frail, elderly patients wait hours in noisy, brightly-lit hallways to wait to be seen.
“It’s really undignified, inhumane care,” she said.
For her, the situation came to a head in 2024 when she and colleagues at a hospital in Port Moody posted a notice on the ER room doors without approval from the leadership of their health authority. It told patients that wait times were unacceptably long.
Dr. Stockton said she was singled out and she sued the Fraser Health Authority for constructive dismissal. The lawsuit was resolved in December, 2025, with consent of both parties.
She now works for a different health authority, but said problems she and her colleagues highlighted in Port Moody are not contained to one region alone. Rather, they represent a trend across Canada.
She and Ms. Robbins agree that overloaded health care systems are the greatest threat to patient safety.
“Our system right now does not appear to be people-focused,” Ms. Robbins said. “It defends itself.”