BRAMPTON, Ontario — Loblaw Cos., Canada’s largest food and drug retailer, plans to invest more than $1.2 billion into its Canadian business this year.

Loblaw said Monday that the 2015 investment includes construction projects for dozens of new and current stores, e-commerce expansion, and continued investment in supply chain and IT infrastructure. The plan also is expected to create more than 20,000 jobs via store staffing and construction, the company added.

“While we continue to invest in the IT and infrastructure engines of our business, we’re increasingly making investments that Canadians will see with their own eyes — improving our offer, adding stores and creating jobs locally,” Loblaw executive chairman and president Galen Weston said in a statement. “True to our strategy, our investment will create better access to fresh food, wellness solutions closer to home, e-commerce convenience, and a family of stores that elevate grocery, pharmacy, apparel and banking experiences.”

One example of the wellness solutions being developed is the recently opened Patient Contact Centre of Shoppers Drug Mart, the drug chain that Loblaw acquired a year ago.

In a conference call late last month on Loblaw’s fiscal 2014 results, Weston called the medication compliance-focused facility “the first of its kind in Canada.” The center’s team of more than 50 pharmacists and 75 pharmacy assistants make follow-up calls on pharmacy patients who may not be taking their medications as prescribed. These include patients who are newly diagnosed and starting prescriptions, those on multiple medications and complex regime,s, and those who have missed a refill, he said.

“By contacting patients centrally, we’re able to free up the time of our local retail pharmacists — time which they can then spend with patients providing an expanding range of valuable and cost-effective services, such as flu shots and minor ailment prescribing in those provinces where it is permitted,” Weston explained.

He noted that medication nonadherence costs the Canadian health care system an estimated $8 billion annually. “The Patient Contact Centre is specifically designed to help overcome this significant issue,” he said.

With Shoppers Drug Mart, Loblaw aims to “deliver the best health and beauty proposition available to Canadians,” Weston said in the call. To that end, the company is focusing on convenience-driven growth in the front of the store, as well as continued innovation in the drug chain’s beauty departments. Also, more than 800 products from Loblaw’s President’s Choice private label have been rolled out across the Shoppers Drug Mart store network.

In the pharmacy, a key focus is expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice to improve patient outcomes and rein in provincial health care costs, Weston added.

“Due to the investments we are making in key projects as well as the ongoing pressure of health care reform, the underlying business at Shoppers Drug Mart remains strong,” he said in the call. “We are making strategic investments to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our pharmacies and patient care. Front-of-store, including beauty, is robust, and I’m enthusiastic about what we’ve seen to date in the enhanced convenience food pilots. We’ll be expanding this pilot through a new test market in the spring.”

Overall, Loblaw has more than 2,300 corporate, franchised and associate-owned stores, including over 1,050 supermarkets and more than 1,250 Shoppers Drug Mart and Pharmaprix drug stores, as well as more than 500 Loblaw in-store pharmacies.