‘This is a big thing’: Victim angry that massage therapist moved provinces and fell through cracks

Last November, Claire booked an appointment with registered massage therapist Conan Valyear. She didn’t know at that time that he had recently resigned his licence in BC and moved to Ontario and registered there.

He had a clean record when Ontario reinstated his massage therapist licence, but weeks later, a former patient in BC reported Valyear to the provincial regulator for sexual misconduct.

It’s unknown how long the BC regulator took to take action, but on Nov. 20, 2025, the College of Complementary Health Professionals of BC issued a public notification saying Valyear was facing allegations of sexual misconduct and if he hadn’t resigned it would have suspended his licence.

“Valyear engaged in sexual misconduct by stroking the complainant’s groin and breasts for nontherapeutic purposes without consent, and by pressing his body against the complainant’s right hand,” the allegation states.

The BC College also added Valyear had admitted to professional misconduct in another previous case in the form of “non-therapeutic interactions with a patient,” although it gives no details about what took place.

The BC regulator reported that Valyear had moved to another province, but refused to say where.

The lack of transparency from the BC regulator is something Claire finds extremely frustrating.

“They’re supposed to protect the public, not the registrant, that’s what (a) union is for, not the College,” she said.

Claire had her appointment with Valyear a couple of days before the BC College released its public warning, so she and the Ontario regulator were unaware of any misconduct at that time.

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However, she questions why, after the BC regulator made the allegation public, the Ontario regulator failed to act.

Anyone looking up Valyear’s record on the College of Massage Therapists of Ontario website – which comes under a ‘Look before you book’ heading – would have seen Valyear with a clean record.

The issue is a matter of jurisdiction.

College of Massage Therapists of Ontario spokesperson Sam Harris said that a public notification from another regulator wasn’t itself sufficient grounds for it to suspend an Ontario-registered massage therapist.

“After College of Complementary Health Professionals of BC informed us they had posted a public notification on Nov. 20, we immediately acted to investigate its implications for Mr. Valyear’s Ontario registration,” Harris said in an email. “This circumstance is unprecedented and involved gathering facts and understanding the appropriate legal process to follow.”

A couple of weeks after Claire’s appointment with Valyear, she decided she needed to do something.

“If I don’t put this complaint forward, how many other people are going to be his victims?” she said.

She made an official complaint to the Ontario College and within two days, he was suspended.

When reached for comment, Valyear denied the allegations of sexual misconduct and said he was fully cooperating with the college.

While the Ontario College suspended Valyear within 48 hours of Claire’s complaint, she still questions why he was allowed to practice in Ontario for 21 days when the allegations against him were public in BC?

“This poor girl in BC who (had) the courage to report him, and then the case is just dropped and done, and he gets to move provinces and act like it didn’t even happen,” she said. “And then he still behaved that way, just shows he literally has no control and he can’t help himself.”

It’s unknown whether Valyear purposely resigned his licence to avoid losing it or whether the timing just worked for him, but the case highlights the gaps in the system and the lack of policies and communication between provincial regulatory bodies.

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Terri Rowan is a registered massage therapist in Guelph, Ontario, and wrote to the Ontario Ministry of Health calling for change.

“When practitioners can resign ahead of an investigation, obtain registration in another province, and have neither regulator in a position to act when serious allegations emerge, public safety is compromised,” her letter reads.

Rowan said moving provinces shouldn’t leave a regulator hamstrung.

“There should be some kind of recourse there, even though they’re no longer your member,” she told iNFOnews.ca.

Rowan, who has been a registered massage therapist for 15 years, said the behaviour of other massage therapists reflects on the profession as a whole, which is why she wants better oversight and for safeguards to be stringent.

While Valyear fell through the cracks of the system, the BC regulator also chose not to say which province he moved to and began practicing in.

“(It’s) an issue of transparency,” Rowan said. 

“That lack of communication, combined with the regulator’s stated concern that he was likely to re-offend, created a dangerous gap that left massage therapy patients in Ontario vulnerable to potential sexual abuse,” Rowan’s letter to the Ministry says.

iNFOnews.ca asked the College of Complementary Health Professionals of BC why it didn’t tell the public that Valyear had since registered in Ontario but it didn’t answer the question. When asked a second time, it still didn’t answer the question.

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It also wouldn’t share what “non-therapeutic interactions with a patient” Valyear had with the first complainant, claiming the Health Professions Act does not authorize that disclosure.

This incident would have been on his BC file, but it didn’t stop him from registering in Ontario.

BC lawyer Luisa Hlus has represented numerous provincial quasi-judicial bodies and their members over the last 25 years. She said the BC College had no reason not to disclose that Valyear had moved to Ontario.

“BC could have done a better job with its publication, and it might have protected the Canadian public better,” Hlus said. “(It’s) a falling down on (its) public protection duty… the Health Professions Act of BC… mandates that the colleges protect the public… It does not limit that protection to the BC public… it just mentions the public.”

She’s unequivocal that the BC College should have said that Valyear had moved to Ontario.

“There is no limitation in (the Health Professions Act) to publishing the next province to which a registrant or a former registrant moves,” she said.

Hlus also said the BC regulator should have informed its Ontario counterpart informally as soon as it knew it was taking action. That way, the Ontario regulator would have had a head start in dealing with the issue.

After 25 years of working for different regulatory colleges, Hlus said there are ways the system could be made better. 

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Resignations could be seen as a red flag, because, as fees have been paid for the entire year in advance and are not refundable, people don’t normally have a reason to resign. Resigning could be seen as avoiding being sanctioned.

The lawyer said there will always be a way for registrants to fall through the cracks if the system in Canada is different province-to-province.

“I think there needs to be a national register,” Hlus said. “It has to be a Federal Government initiative to build a national health professions register.”

Whether it is a federal registry or not, Rowan believes the system needs to change.

Her letter calls for interprovincial coordination, mandatory information-sharing and standardized reporting among massage therapy regulators across Canada.

She also wants patients to be able to bring complaints about massage therapists to the province where they’re registered, regardless of where the alleged misconduct occurred. 

For Claire, she finds the whole system very frustrating.

“It’s like you’re re-traumatizing yourself by having to go over it over and over again, and then still nothing’s coming of it,” she said.

Conan Valyear did respond to requests for comment and appears to have blocked any further messages.