PRACTISING A PROFESSION:
Summer 2018
Vol. 34 No. 2
ISSN 2370-5965
RIGHT, PRIVILEGE, RESPONSIBILITY?
By Erica Richler
Steinecke Maciura LeBlanc profession. For example, in the human health
context, the Divisional Court has stated:
Spiderman is often credited with saying, “With
great power comes great responsibility”.
But the Ontario courts have used a variation
of that adage when describing regulated
professionals: “With additional privileges
come additional responsibilities” 1 . What the
courts have emphasized over the years is that
regulated professionals – including licensed
veterinarians – hold positions of great trust in
our society. With that position come a number
of responsibilities that are owed to the public,
to clients and to the regulator. “the practice of medicine in Ontario is a
privilege, not a right. Physicians by the very
nature of their work hold a position of high
public trust to society at large and to the
individual patients whom they treat. They
carry out intimate work and are authorized
under the Medicine Act to perform a number
of intimate and potentially dangerous acts,
including prescribing drugs. The application
process serves the role of ensuring that
there is a reasonable basis that those who
are granted this privilege do so with honesty,
integrity, and in accordance with the law, so as
to not violate that essential position of trust” 2
With Additional Privileges…
Society places an enormous amount of trust
in regulated professionals. When clients
see a veterinarian, they expect their animal
to receive safe, quality care from a highly-
qualified individual. Licensed veterinarians
have extensive training, skills and knowledge
to be able to provide care to animals in
Ontario. Veterinarians prescribe drugs,
perform surgeries, and manage illnesses,
among many other important functions.
Because of this role, courts have noted the
importance of ensuring that only qualified
and competent individuals are admitted to a
…Come Additional
Responsibilities
Being a professional means more than simply
providing high-quality and competent care
to clients. It also means conducting oneself
ethically and complying with regulatory
obligations.
In a recent Supreme Court of Canada case, a
lawyer challenged the regulator’s mandatory
continuing education requirements. Part of
the lawyer’s argument was that his “common
law right” to practise law could not be taken
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away without clear language in the statute.
The Court disagreed with the premise of this
argument and held that there is no inherent
right to practise a profession. The Court wrote:
“The right to practise law is not a common law
right or a property right, but a statutory right
that depends on the principles set out in the
Act and the rules made by the Law Society.
As this Court has stated, “the Law Society has
total control over who can practise law in the
province, over the conditions or requirements
placed upon those who practise and, perhaps
most importantly, over the means of enforcing
respect for those conditions or requirements”
[citations omitted.] The Law Society has not
interfered with Mr. Green’s rights. It is merely
doing what the statute requires it to do:
regulate the education of lawyers in the public
interest.” 3
continued on next page
CONTENTS
Regulatory changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Discipline Summaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Learning in Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Defining professionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 AMR resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Practice Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Instilling public confidence in veterinary regulation.
www.cvo.org