Bill 23 amends New Brunswick’s Prescription Monitoring Act to widen the program’s reach, tighten reporting obligations and add stronger enforcement tools. It replaces regulation-based lists of monitored drugs with classes established by an advisory committee, brings additional health professionals and non-pharmacist dispensers into the program, and expands the types of information submitted to the province’s information network.
The bill also requires prescribers to consult the network before prescribing, mandates electronic prescriptions except in regulated exceptions, authorizes interjurisdictional data sharing, creates inspector powers and new administrative penalties, and sets a statutory schedule for periodic reviews of the law. For anyone responsible for clinical workflows, pharmacy operations, supply-chain reporting or regulatory compliance, the measure changes what data must flow into the provincial system and who enforces the rules.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Act shifts authority to an advisory committee to define classes of monitored drugs and trigger network alerts, requires participants to register and use the information network, and prescribes expanded submission requirements for dispensing, purchasing and selling monitored drugs. It allows the Minister to set who can access network data and to enter reciprocal data-sharing agreements with external prescription monitoring programs.
Who It Affects
New classes of participants: nurses, midwives, optometrists and podiatrists are explicitly added, and the definition of “dispenser” extends reporting beyond licensed pharmacists to other authorized dispensers and certain suppliers. Manufacturers, wholesale distributors, veterinarians and pharmacies will face new data-submission obligations. The Minister’s office and the Director will take on new operational and enforcement duties.
Why It Matters
The statutory shift from regulation-defined drugs to advisory-committee classes centralizes clinical judgment over what the network tracks and when alerts fire. Combining mandatory pre-prescription checks, electronic prescribing and broader reporting increases program utility for patient-safety and law-enforcement purposes, but also amplifies compliance burdens, privacy exposure and IT requirements across the supply chain.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill changes the fundamental governance of New Brunswick’s prescription-monitoring regime. An advisory committee — whose composition is adjusted and whose mandate now includes establishing classes of monitored drugs and determining when the information network must alert participants — replaces the prior model that relied on regulatory schedules.
The committee must publish those drug classes online; it also decides alerting rules (thresholds or events) that the network will use to notify participants.
On the operational side, anyone who prescribes or dispenses monitored drugs must apply to the Director, create an account on the information network and use it as part of practice. Prescribers are required to consult an individual’s medication profile in the network before prescribing a monitored drug and to deliver prescriptions electronically into the network, except where the regulations allow a written prescription.
The Act permits paramedics authorized under provincial law to access the network in emergency situations.The data flows the network must ingest expand substantially. Dispensers must now submit more granular details — including the indication for use, payment type chosen by the patient, dosing and quantity, compounding ingredient lists and drug identification numbers when applicable, and specific fields for animal prescriptions (owner details, animal species and veterinarian identifiers).
Manufacturers, outsourcing/repacking operators and wholesale distributors that sell to participants must also report sales transactions and quantities. The Minister can also permit two-way exchange with prescription-monitoring programs outside the province under written reciprocal agreements.Enforcement shifts from sparse criminal-like offences to a mixed regime: the Act adds new Provincial Offences categories for failures to register or for supplying false information, creates an administrative-penalty regime the Minister may use (with payment deemed a contravention but generally barring a duplicative prosecution for the same incident), and requires the Director to report participant offences to licensing authorities.
The Act introduces inspectors whose powers will be set by regulation and mandates that licensing bodies update the Director within specific timelines about member deaths and other events. Finally, the Minister must conduct a statutory review of the Act, with a first review due by December 31, 2030 and subsequent reviews every five years.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The advisory committee — not the regulations — now determines classes of monitored drugs and publishes them on the government website, and it also defines the circumstances that trigger automated alerts to participants.
Prescribers must check an individual’s medication profile in the information network before prescribing a monitored drug and must submit prescriptions electronically unless the regulations specify an exception.
Dispensers must report expanded data elements: indication for use, payment type, compounding active-ingredient lists and drug identification numbers, and specific owner and animal information when the drug was prescribed for an animal.
The Minister may impose administrative penalties under a regulatory framework; paying an administrative penalty is treated as a contravention and generally prevents charging the same incident criminally, but non-payment opens the door to prosecution.
The Minister must begin a statutory review of the Act with the first review completed by December 31, 2030, and the law requires reviews every five years thereafter.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Broadened participant definitions and advisory control over monitored drugs
The bill replaces the earlier ‘monitored drugs designated by regulation’ phrase with a model where the advisory committee establishes drug classes. It adds a new, broader definition of “dispenser” to capture individuals authorized by statute to dispense drugs (excluding veterinarians unless prescribed by regulation) and introduces an explicit definition of electronic prescriptions. Practically, this expands who must interact with the network and shifts policy-making from cabinet regulation to a specialized advisory body with publication obligations.
Mandatory registration and account creation for participants
Anyone who prescribes or dispenses drugs must apply to the Director, be registered in the program and create an account to use the information network. This provision operationalizes the program as an active part of clinical workflow rather than an optional registry, and it places an affirmative administrative duty on participants to enroll and maintain access credentials.
Controlled access, automated alerts and interjurisdictional data exchange
The Minister will determine who may access the network; participants can authorize others to have limited-access accounts and must ensure those delegates meet provincial privacy protection obligations. The advisory committee decides the alerting circumstances that will trigger automated notifications to participants. The Act also authorizes reciprocal written agreements for data exchange with prescription-monitoring programs outside New Brunswick, enabling cross-border queries under negotiated terms and conditions.
Advisory committee authority and pre-prescription review requirement
The advisory committee’s membership is adjusted and its powers enlarged: it will set drug classes and alert parameters and may receive remuneration set by order-in-council. Separately, the Act requires prescribers to include prescribed information on prescriptions as determined by regulation and to consult the network’s medication profile before prescribing a monitored drug, embedding the program in clinical decision-making.
Significant expansion of reporting obligations for dispensers, pharmacies and supply-chain actors
The Act rewrites data-reporting rules: dispensers must submit in the Director’s required form detailed transaction data, including indication for use, payment type, compounding ingredients and dates for prescribing, dispensing and collection. Separate rules cover animal prescriptions with owner and animal identifiers. Licensed pharmacists working at pharmacies must record prescribed fields and pharmacies must submit the required information, while manufacturers and distributors must report sales to participants, adding upstream visibility into supply movements.
Inspector appointments and forthcoming regulatory powers
The Minister may appoint inspectors and must issue certificates; the actual powers and duties of inspectors are saved for regulation. This creates an on-the-ground compliance role but leaves scope, search powers, inspection procedures and sanctions to later rule-making, which will shape enforcement practice.
New offence categories, mandatory reporting to licensing bodies and an administrative-penalty regime
The bill recasts offences to align with the Provincial Offences Procedures Act: failures to comply with registration and false submissions attract category F offences; licensed pharmacists or pharmacies and supply-chain sellers/purchasers face category C offences in defined circumstances. The Minister can impose administrative penalties under regulation; paying a penalty is deemed a contravention and generally bars charging for the same incident, though non-payment may still lead to criminal charges. The Director must report participant offences to their licensing authorities.
Scheduled statutory review and housekeeping adjustments to existing regulations
The Minister must conduct periodic reviews of the Act, with a mandated first completion date of December 31, 2030 and five-year intervals thereafter. The regulation changes remove some prior headings and sections, adjust advisory-committee terms and appointment processes, and expand regulatory powers to prescribe information fields, inspector duties and the administrative-penalty regime; several provisions come into force by proclamation, enabling phased implementation.
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Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Patients and clinicians seeking safer prescribing: Clinicians get a richer medication-profile tool (indications, compounding data, payment and collection dates) to detect risky combinations or diversion before prescribing or dispensing.
- Public health and regulatory bodies: The advisory-committee model and mandatory data flows improve surveillance capacity for controlled-substance trends, supply-chain monitoring and programmatic alerts that can guide interventions.
- Law enforcement (with limits): The Minister may disclose information to law enforcement on reasonable grounds of suspected offences and can share data with out-of-province monitoring programs under reciprocal agreements, aiding cross-jurisdiction investigations.
- Emergency responders: Paramedics authorized under the Paramedic Act gain emergency access to patient medication profiles, potentially improving acute-care decision-making and patient safety.
- Veterinary care and animal health oversight: The Act creates structured reporting for animal prescriptions (owner and animal identifiers), improving traceability when drugs are prescribed for animals.
Who Bears the Cost
- Dispensers other than pharmacists: Expanded reporting fields, mandatory account maintenance and new submission duties increase IT integration costs, workflow changes and training needs for non-pharmacist dispensers.
- Pharmacies and licensed pharmacists: Pharmacies must collect, format and transmit more granular data and licensed pharmacists face category C offences for non-compliance; internal record-keeping and audit functions will need upgrading.
- Manufacturers and distributors: Upstream reporting of sales and quantities to the network creates additional transactional reporting obligations and potential system-integration costs.
- Minister’s office/Director and IT providers: Implementing expanded data collection, alerting logic, access controls and reciprocal agreements requires budget, procurement and ongoing operations capacity.
- Privacy/compliance officers and licensing authorities: Expanded data elements (indication, payment type, animal owner details) elevate privacy risk and create new oversight burdens — licensing authorities will also receive offence reports and may need to allocate resources for follow-up.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is simple but sharp: improve patient safety and reduce diversion by mandating broader data collection, mandatory checks and alerts, or protect clinician workflow, patient privacy and smaller providers from heavy reporting burdens — the Act does both, but shifts many protective details into regulation, forcing implementers to choose between operational feasibility and the law’s safety objectives.
Two practical tensions stand out. First, the bill increases clinical and regulatory value by expanding data collection and mandating pre-prescription checks, but those same changes magnify privacy and accuracy risks: collecting indications, payment types and detailed compounding ingredient lists ties sensitive health and transactional data together in a single repository, and errors or mismatches (wrong patient, mis-entered indication) can have clinical and legal consequences.
The Act relies on delegated accounts and ministerial rules to protect data, but many protection details are deferred to regulation and operational policy.
Second, enforcement design mixes administrative penalties with provincial-offence categories in ways that will matter for compliance strategy. Paying an administrative penalty is treated as a contravention and normally precludes a duplicate prosecution, but non-payment can trigger a criminal charge for the same incident.
That creates a practical risk calculus for regulated parties and could incentivize settlements over contesting enforcement. At the same time, inspectors’ powers and the scope of reciprocal data sharing with external programs are left to regulation and agreements, which raises transparency and cross-jurisdictional privacy governance issues.
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