• Five developments in professional regulation:
  • Proposals to restrict the scope of professional regulators.
  • Purpose-driven disciplinary sanctions replacing criminal sentencing concepts.
  • Getting ready for more internal and external whistleblowing.
• Five leading court cases including those on:
  • Preparing for enhanced review of the validity of regulations, by-laws, and rules.
  • Questions you are not allowed to ask applicants for registration.
  • Accommodating illness in discipline matters.
  • Use of social media by adjudicators.
  • Impact of delays on investigations.

The consolidation of health regulators in British Columbia involved merging multiple regulatory colleges into fewer entities to improve oversight, reduce duplication, and enhance public protection. This session will look at the challenges faced, and the lessons learned emphasizing the need for robust planning, stakeholder engagement, and flexibility.

• What were the challenges?
• What were the lessons learned?
• Evaluation to date?

• Clarification of abuse of process.
• Importance of preventing unnecessary or vexatious litigation.
• Safeguarding the rights of litigants from being subjected to unwarranted legal harassment or duplicative proceedings.
• Promotion of finality in litigation.
• Why abuse of process must be evaluated in the context of the specific facts of a cas.

Do your members reach out regularly with questions about communicating with clients online? Are professional boundaries any different now? Have you had concerns about Council or Board members’ use of social media? When and how should regulators step in when social media use brings the profession into disrepute or creates risk? This session will explore:

• Pressure points – how members and Council members can get into trouble using social media and communicating online.
• Protecting privacy – how regulators can respond to members breaching clients’ privacy and confidentiality online.
• Practice Resources and Policies – how practice resources and governance policies can support the maintenance of clear and appropriate professional boundaries.

• Critical insights into the ongoing mental health challenges in the legal profession.
• The distressing prevalence of mental health issues.
• What to tell members of a professional college about the Importance of members conducting self-assessment.
• The need for clear, transparent policies for assessing fitness to practice.
• The need for confidential, supportive and compassionate processes with public protection as a priority.
• Use of objective, evidence-based assessments to evaluate cognitive abilities and capacity to perform professional duties.

• Avoiding court challenges to regulatory action.
  • Statutory immunity provisions: what do they cover?
  • Civil lawsuits not covered by immunity provisions.
    • Thmbran v The British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM), 2024 BCSC 441 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/k3jm9
• Judicial Review.
  • When is judicial review available: Yatar v. TD Insurance Meloche Monnex, 2024 SCC 8.
  • Jurisdictional challenges to regulatory action.
  • Procedural fairness in the investigative stage.
  • Reasonableness review of regulatory action where there are no written reasons.

Regulatory bodies in Canada have been working hard to address systemic inequality discrimination and inequities within their fields. Legal professionals, accountants, and healthcare workers are expected to align their practices with these values, ensuring inclusive service delivery and organizational governance. With the growing rejection of DEI initiatives in the U.S. what is the status of DEI in Canada?

• Working toward diversity in membership and on boards and committees.
• Initial thinking on Inclusion of Indigenous ways of knowing and practices.
• Ensuring regulatory frameworks consider the unique needs of equity-deserving communities, including racialized, Indigenous, and gender-diverse groups.
• Managing the push-back & impact of developments in the U.S.A.