An petition has been started asking for massage therapists to become GST and, where applicable, PST and HST, exempt in Canada, with the goal being greater accessibility for the public.
Gordon MacDonald is the executive director of the Registered Massage Therapists Association of BC (RMTBC), a member association of the Canadian Massage Therapy Association (CMTA), which is the umbrella group leading this initiative.
MacDonald explained that the RMTBC, which has 4,100 members throughout the province and over 6,500 registered massage therapists (RMTs), is the provincial voice for the profession in B.C. There are seven schools that are a mix of private or public, with the public schools being Continuing Ed. programs and therefore are not base-funded.
“Basically this is an initiative that started many, many years ago,” MacDonald said. “It started with the fact that massage therapy, under the Excise Tax Act, is not exempt from GST. So one of the criteria in order to even make application to the department of finance to get exemption is that you have to have at least five regulated provinces in the country to make that application.”
MacDonald has spent his career in healthcare working for a variety of different agencies within the Ministry of Health, including Health Match recruiting and recruiting physicians, nurses and allied health professionals. He was also the registrar at the College of Licensed Practical Nurses before he began working with the RMTBC.
He said that in 2019 when Prince Edward Island became a regulated province for massage therapy, it created an opportunity for the CMTA and its member associations to make applications to the federal government to seek GST exemption.
“Currently, GST exemption is chiropractors, physiotherapists, acupuncturists — they all have exemption from GST,” MacDonald explained. “And what’s kind of interesting is that in many cases, massage therapists work in a multi-disciplinary clinic alongside some of those same people.
“So what you have is a situation where patients come in, they see the physiotherapist: GST exempt. They see the acupuncturist: GST exempt. They see the massage therapist — ‘I have to pay GST.’ So the rationale behind this petition is to try and make accessibility for the public easier by basically getting rid of the GST.”
He continued saying that often times the fees charged by RMTs have GST included. If they are charging $100 for a 60-minute treatment, they’d need to charge $105 for the GST, with that extra $5 going to the federal government.
“In essence, the hope is that by getting GST exemption, that the patient will have better accessibility and have some savings,” MacDonald said.
“In B.C. it’s probably not as a priority as it is to my colleagues in provinces such as Nova Scotia, where they’re playing 15 per cent HST but from a collegial approach, which is what the CMTA is all about, is to try and say ‘okay well even though one’s brothers and sister in the Maritimes are paying that 15 per cent, if we all group together and have the public speak on our behalf through a petition that we’ve got running, that hopefully those folks in charge of the excise tax will see fit to add massage therapy to the exemption.”
Back in December 2023, the petition got sponsorship from Brad Vis, Member of Parliament for Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon, a necessary step for the initiative. MacDonald said that they currently have around 14,000 signatures with the petition ending on April 9, 2024.
You can sign the petition by visiting ourcommons.ca/petititons and searching for e-4662. Additionally, RMTs around the country have been provided with a QR code that will link their patients directly to the petition.