Administering drugs to individuals is an activity that is regulated under several statutes. Ontario’s Court of Appeal has held that a person can be found to administer a drug even where the recipient personally consumes the drug (e.g., by swallowing it).
In Retirement Homes Regulatory Authority v. Moore, 2024 ONCA 585 (CanLII), a key aspect of the issue of operating a retirement home without a licence was whether the facility supplied the care service of providing “the administration of a drug”. Mr. Moore acknowledged that his facility assisted residents by: “receiving medication … storing medication, reminding or prompting (‘cuing’) some occupants to take their medication, bringing (or giving out or handing out) medication to occupants, returning unused medication to the pharmacy, having some ‘house medication’ available… and keeping a record of when occupants had ‘self-administered’ their medication.” However, he argued that the resident actually took the medication and thus the definition of administering a drug was not met
The Court disagreed, saying:
With respect to the interpretation of the “administration of a drug”, the application judge chose not to offer a comprehensive definition, but to determine whether the activities that Mr. Moore’s business was found to have engaged in would be included in any correct definition of that term. We can see no error in his decision that the administration of a drug encompasses the services the appellants have admitted to providing. The application judge’s conclusion that the “administration of a drug” occurs if an operator assumes “control over or responsibility for a person taking a drug, giving a drug to a person and directing them to ingest or apply it, and cueing a person to take a specific drug”, respects the grammatical and contextual meaning of the phrase and is in keeping with the purpose the legislation of ensuring that residents, who are often vulnerable, can live safely.
The Court rejected the technical interpretative argument that the legislation and regulations distinguished between “administering” and “assisting”. The term “assisting” was used for such activities as feeding, dressing and bathing. The Court refused to accept that this meant that the medication support services that had been provided amounted to assisting and not administering. The Court focussed on the purposes of the legislation when interpreting the phrase related to drugs.
Mr. Moore was prohibited from continuing to operate an unlicensed retirement home.
Similar approaches might also be taken under other statutes where restrictions on administering drugs are designed to protect the health and safety of individuals, but of course it will all depend on the context.