Victoria Clinic to Offer Publicly-Funded Vasectomies Despite Financial Losses

A Greater Victoria clinic is stepping in to make vasectomies more accessible—though it expects to lose money doing so.

The Vancouver Island Choice Clinic in View Royal, best known for providing abortions, IUDs, and miscarriage care, will now begin offering publicly funded vasectomies. The move comes after the busiest vasectomy clinic on Vancouver Island switched to private-only billing in January, leaving patients facing waits of months for a free procedure—or paying up to $2,000 at a private clinic.

“We just saw a need in the South Island for publicly funded care,” said clinic manager Sean Birdsell. “In the short term, we’re going to lose money.”

At the heart of the problem is B.C.’s reimbursement rate. Doctors receive about $104 per vasectomy through the Medical Services Plan, only $5 more than a decade ago. In Alberta, the rate is nearly double, at around $190. Advocates say the stagnant fee makes it harder to recruit and retain doctors willing to provide the procedure.

“This is about equity in contraceptive access,” said Dr. Renée Fernandez, chief medical officer of B.C. Family Doctors. “We’ve seen great progress with free birth control for women, but for men the options remain vasectomies or condoms. If we don’t make vasectomies more accessible, the burden stays on one group.”

B.C. Health Minister Josie Osborne acknowledged the issue this week but would not commit to raising the fee. “Making sure those choices and options are available is incredibly important,” she said.

Beyond funding, Birdsell said staffing and training are also challenges, with few doctors available to teach the procedure. The clinic hopes to start with about a dozen clients per month, eventually scaling up to 1,000 vasectomies a year to meet local demand.

Fernandez argues that boosting pay for providers would cost the province little compared to the broader health system—and could help build a sustainable network of trained physicians. “It would say to other doctors that this is a viable part of your practice,” she said.

For now, the clinic is moving forward, betting that expanded access will help shift the responsibility for contraception to something closer to balance.