By Stéphane Sérafin, February 23, 2024
Members of restricted professions – doctors, lawyers, accountants and psychologists, among others – are subject to the disciplinary authority of their respective professional regulators. This arrangement is intended to ensure a minimum level of professional competence and to protect those relying on these professional services.
This has obvious advantages over purely market mechanisms, at least in theory, owing to the fact that professional regulators can set standards for members that apply before a member has engaged in serious professional misconduct. However, professional regulators have attracted significant controversy in Canada over the past few years as attempts to police members’ off-duty speech and conduct have become a recurring news item.
The problem is that professional regulators are losing sight of the purpose their disciplinary authority is supposed to serve – to protect society by preserving professional competence – and are policing members values for the sake of perceived reputational interests.
While it is tempting to conclude that the difficulties in these controversial cases arise from straightforward regulatory overreach, the problem is more complex. The fact is that regulators have always had the ability to police off-duty conduct, and for good reason, since such conduct may bear directly upon member competence. It is not that regulators are suddenly policing off-duty conduct which used to fall entirely outside their purview, but that the kinds of expression they are trying to censor are no longer focused on protecting society from an incompetent professional but on protecting themselves and their colleagues from association with political views which they find distasteful.
Professional regulators should reverse course, return to their mandates, and focus on ensuring professional competence, not political alignment, among their members.
Consider the best-known Canadian controversy concerning former University of Toronto professor-turned-social-media-influencer Jordan Peterson. As a member of the College of Psychologists of Ontario, Peterson was ordered to undergo social media training following complaints that his social media posts were discriminatory and unprofessional. The College felt that it could make such an order against Peterson without subjecting him to a full disciplinary procedure. It also felt that it could do so solely on the basis of complaints that did not originate with his clients, but arose out of positions that he had publicly staked out on controversial political and cultural issues.
When Peterson challenged the decision through a judicial process, the Ontario Divisional Court found that the College’s decision was reasonable. The Court was of the view that professional regulators had always held the requisite jurisdiction to police member expression, even when that expression did not arise in the context of a member’s strict professional activities. This included the capacity to police expression considered “discriminatory”. Moreover, it was thought to be enough that the expression might adversely impact the reputation of the psychology profession.
The principles invoked by the Divisional Court in this case are difficult to contest in the abstract. To recognize the authority of a professional regulator over a given profession, rather than relying on market mechanisms to ensure basic competence, means that the professional regulator must take a broad view of the kind of conduct that could fall within its ambit.
It would be difficult to claim that the off-duty conduct of a member is entirely without interest for professional regulators, since such conduct can be relevant to determining whether a particular person is fit to remain a member in good standing. An individual who commits a sexual assault outside of work hours, for example, is probably not fit to act as a clinical psychologist, just as someone who embezzles funds in a context divorced from his or her work should probably not be allowed to operate a trust account as a lawyer. No doubt, certain forms of expression that are not directly connected to the member’s professional activities – defaming others, threatening violence, or airing confidential information other than client information – raise similar concerns.
Criminal and civil court processes are not designed to address these concerns, since their purpose is to establish a criminal infringement of community norms and civil liability towards another person, respectively. Not all criminal acts or civil wrongs necessarily impugn a member’s professional competence, and conversely, there may be grounds to sanction a member where the threshold for criminal or civil liability has not been met.
But to say that professional regulators ought to have jurisdiction over the off-duty conduct of their members is one thing; to determine what type of off-duty conduct, specifically, properly attracts their disciplinary jurisdiction is another. The trouble with the Peterson case, as with many of the other recent Canadian controversies, is that the justification offered for the exercise of professional regulatory jurisdiction does not fit the paradigm offered by the examples just referenced, in which the off-duty conduct, including off-duty expression, can be taken to cast doubt on the member’s ability to carry out his or her profession. Instead, these cases present the regulation of off-duty expression by regulators in a manner analogous to the employment context, where the concern is not with the protection of the public interest, but in allowing employers to preserve their own reputation and to avoid vicarious liability for the acts of subordinates.
The view suggested by the Divisional Court in the Peterson case – that professional regulators are simply doing what they have always done – misses the widening focus of regulators beyond professional competence. This widening focus has been precipitated by at least two factors.
First, technological shifts have significantly altered the balance of power between professional regulators and individual members of the public. In an era of social media, an opinion that would have once been expressed to a small audience now finds itself exposed in some cases to an audience of millions. The possibility that someone, somewhere, will find offense, or decide to find offence, with the expression of opinions grows with the scope of the audience. Moreover, the nature of social media is such that any member of that audience can react, in real time, individually or in concert with others, to the opinion being expressed. This means that potentially every public utterance, whether reasonable or not, creates a reputational risk not just for the individual member, but also for the broader profession. Professional regulators are unsurprisingly concerned by this possibility, which affects their own vested interests.
Second, and perhaps more importantly still, broader cultural shifts have also significantly altered the kinds of expressive content that regulators are likely to treat as “unprofessional” or otherwise raising reputational concerns.
Consider another decision, Simone v. Law Society of Ontario, which was narrowly decided by the Law Society of Ontario Tribunal (the body charged with adjudicating complaints against Ontario lawyers and paralegals). In that case, Lisa Simone, an individual seeking membership in the Law Society of Ontario as a paralegal, was subject to “good character review” because of social media posts that she had made which were, among other things, critical of vaccine mandates, the Black Lives Matter organization, and “pride” events. While the Tribunal ultimately decided in favour of the candidate’s good character, and thus her admission as a paralegal, a majority did so apparently on the sole basis that the candidate had expressed remorse for the social media posts in question.
As with the Peterson case, the comments that landed Simone into trouble were associated with positions on the “right” of the political spectrum. They were also brought to the attention of the Law Society through complaints by members of the general public, and were used against her outside of a formal disciplinary proceeding. In other words, this was also not a classic case involving a disciplinary proceeding brought for off-duty conduct that undermined confidence in Simone’s ability to work as a paralegal. Rather, the concern was that the social media posts themselves reflected poorly upon the profession, not just because of their tone (though this was the formal argument made against Ms. Simone’s accreditation) but also, ostensibly, because of their content. This appears to be why the majority in that case repeatedly reaffirmed Ms. Simon’s obligation to comply with human rights laws, as though the mere expression of views critical of vaccine mandates, the Black Lives Matter organization, and “pride” events might infringe those obligations.
To say that professional regulators appear increasingly concerned with the reputational interest of their profession is, in this context, to say that professional regulators appear increasingly concerned with the appearance of complying with narrow cultural and political orthodoxies. These are “orthodoxies”, since they are views that are now largely taken for granted among much of the professional class, or at least among those individuals who are most likely to staff professional regulators and make decisions concerning member conduct.
Where a member of a restricted profession expresses personal viewpoints at odds with these admissible perspectives, the concern is not that the member lacks the requisite competence to exercise their role. Rather, the concern is that the mere expression of these views is “unprofessional”, in the sense that they are potentially damaging, or at least embarrassing, to the profession. That is, the expression of this views is “unprofessional”, owing to the fact that the member’s personal opinions are at odds with the values that the regulator thinks the profession should embrace.
That said, while the opinions that have run afoul of professional regulators have typically been associated with the “right” of the political spectrum – as in the Peterson and Simone cases – there have also been cases in which the authority of professional regulators has been invoked to punish those expressing views more typically associated with the “left”. In one particularly notable incident after the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas, students enrolled at the Faculty of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) circulated a letter that purported to express solidarity with Palestinians, but also included language referencing a right of “resistance”. Many in the legal profession interpreted the letter as condoning the October 7 terrorist attacks. This prompted calls to deny the students articling positions (a requirement of lawyer licensing in Ontario) and potentially to deny them accreditation altogether.
This and similar cases that have arisen since October 7 may well suggest that the phenomenon that has until recently targeted mostly “right”-coded political opinions may now be weaponized by either side of the political spectrum.
What each of these cases undoubtedly serve to highlight, in any event, is a need to recover the importance of professional competence as the aim of regulators. Ensuring professional competence is the very reason for which professional regulation exists, and why determinations as to who can exercise these particular professions are not left solely to the market.
Canadians need professional regulators to return to their mandate: ensuring a minimum level of professional competence and protecting those relying on professional services. Regulators should not concern themselves with whether the opinions expressed by members are potentially embarrassing because they happen to fall outside the “values” that regulators believe professionals should embrace.
Stéphane Sérafin is an assistant professor in the French Common Law Program at the University of Ottawa.
