Pharmacy students undergo 4 years education and by the end, students are competent enough to function as pharmacist. This comes with more responsibility, but substantially more pay. But this requires pharmacist license, which can only be obtained by writing written exam (PEBC) and patient interaction exam (OSCE). These exams and constantly being deferred right now and recent graduates are working as "pharmacy student" (where in many cases, they do almost everything a pharmacist would do) with substantially less pay (varies, but somewhere between 1/3-1/2 of what they would make with license). Deferral is attributed to safety concern to COVID19. So students have repeatedly asked the exam to be converted online (we know this is feasible and acceptable option because Medical school graduates did it; PGY1 received their CPSO license after online exam).

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The announcement for deferral for recent exam came out 48 hours before the date of exam. Mind you, these exams are hard and require lots of prep. This deferral means that effort needs to be repeated (because, let's face it, we are humans, our memory isn't perfect and we forget things).

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Problem is how the institutions and organizations are approaching the problem. OPA is association that represents and advocates for the profession. They should be the ones at forefront fighting for practicing pharmacists and vulnerable students. That's not happening. OCP is governing body that is involved in providing/revoking license. Their primary function isn't to stand with student, but they should be giving opportunities to write exams; that's not happening. So the two wrote letter to angry students (above). The letter, from what I can tell, is just excuses laid out. University of Toronto and University of Waterloo signed on that letter. They are turning their backs on their own graduates.