Notification of fee changes for cremation, places of interment and funeral services (2022-2024)

Consumer Protection BC is an independent, self-funded, not-for-profit organization. Government has tasked us with regulating and licensing your sector. We have legal authority to set your licensing fees and other charges. In doing so, we are required by law to recover our costs, to consult with you and to provide at least ninety (90) days’ notice prior to changing or introducing new fees. 

What is happening?                                                                                   

We are notifying you that the licensing fees and other charges for 2022-2024 are changing. Our Board of Directors has approved the following fee changes that will take effect on January 1, 2022. 

• Annual 4% increase for all licence fees and other charges for 2022-2024. 
• No increases for the funeral administrative fees for 2022 through to 2024. This fee was increased from $30 to $40 in 2021 and we are committed to leaving this fee unchanged for a minimum of three years. 
• Creation of a licensing fee waiver for operators of a family or Indigenous-run place of interment. 

Funeral services

Places of interment

Crematorium

Why are fees changing?

Your licensing fees pay for the direct costs of regulating your sector, such as licensing, compliance inspections, complaint handling and enforcement activities as well as indirect costs like IT, finance and accounting, and office rent. Every year these costs increase. In some cases, cost increases are consistent with inflation, in other cases increases are based on specific and unique factors related to a sector (for example, changes to the law that result in new regulatory requirements). 

Our costs for regulating funeral services, place of interment and crematorium sector have remained relatively consistent. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have made every effort to reduce costs while maintaining our ability to operate. However, due to a 0% increase in fees for 2021 and increased inflationary pressures we are implementing a 4% annual increase for the next three years while maintaining the funeral administrative fee at $40 to cover our costs for regulating your sector. 

What did we hear from you?

We heard from 13% of the licensees from your sector on our email list. Our goals for the consultation were to make licensees aware of pending licence fee changes and to solicit feedback on those changes and our process. Of those who responded to our survey from your sector, 86% indicated they understood that we were proposing to change licensing fees and other charges. Further, 76% of respondents indicated they understand how we use their fees to regulate your sector. 

The emergent themes from the feedback we received can be summarized as follows:  

1. Objection to raising fees and/or the size of fee increase. 
2. The fee increase is reasonable or not a significant increase. 
3. Request for a deferral of fee increases due to COVID-19.  

With respect to these feedback themes, we would like to provide the following context and clarification: 

We recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted your sector. However, it is important that we maintain our ability to regulate this sector and we are mandated to recover our costs to ensure that we have the resources required to do so.