| THE LOCAL | February 6, 2026 Feature by Kunal Chaudhary |
“We are compromising on our professional integrity for sales.”
At corporate pharmacies like Shoppers Drug Mart, pharmacists say they face overwhelming pressure from their parent companies to perform medically unnecessary tasks in the interest of profit.
The first thing you need to understand, says Michael, is that “there’s not actually a lot of money to be made from selling medications.”
Every time a pharmacist dispenses a particular medication, they earn a nominal dispensing fee. At the Shoppers Drug Mart in Alberta where Michael worked as a pharmacist until 2020, this fee was around $12. (The Local has granted Michael a pseudonym due to concerns of professional reprisal.)
The remainder of a pharmacy’s revenue comes from a combination of retail sales and services like medication reviews, minor ailment assessments, and administering vaccinations. This revenue is what pays for a pharmacy’s salaries and business assets. And like other corporate pharmacies, Shoppers has faced allegations of setting sizable performance targets for its pharmacy teams in the interest of generating more revenue.
At the Shoppers Drug Mart pharmacy where Michael worked, he says his team would get “constant reminders about how we’re doing this week, what we have to do to hit a certain target within our pharmacy districts.”
In reporting on the sector by the CBC, and in a subsequent survey by the Ontario College of Pharmacists (the provincial regulator for the profession), workers at corporate pharmacies including Shoppers have described being instructed to provide a certain number of services, regardless of their value or medical necessity to patients.
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