Much has been said in recent years about the value and benefit of provincial harmony in regulation. We recently posted about the possibility of national public registers and the potential benefits of storing information in a unified register. Centralized registers aside, provincial governments and regulators have taken other meaningful steps to harmonize, streamline and, in many ways, unify registration and licensure between provinces and territories.
Some examples include:
- In Atlantic Canada, the Atlantic Registry was created as a product of collaboration between physician regulators in the Atlantic provinces. It permits physicians registered in one Atlantic province to obtain streamlined registration and practise in other Atlantic provinces. The Atlantic Registry operates through an “opt in” system where applicants submit a single form to their home regulator and, if approved, the home regulator recommends full licensure to each of the other Atlantic physician regulators.
- The Ontario government has recently implemented “As of Right” legislation for several regulators, which allows eligible practitioners registered in other Canadian provinces or territories to practise in Ontario for six months while their applications for registration are processed.
- Earlier this year, Ontario’s physician and nursing regulators announced their implementation of automatic recognition regimes that allow practitioners holding equivalent licences in another Canadian jurisdiction to have their licences “automatically” recognized in Ontario. Under these new recognition regimes, eligible physicians and nurses from other Canadian provinces and territories will have their applications assessed in two business days.
- In common law provinces, including Ontario, lawyers licensed in their home jurisdiction are permitted to practise law in other provinces for up to 100 days per year, without the requirement to obtain separate licences in those other jurisdictions (and subject to certain rules and requirements).
These initiatives operate alongside other labour mobility mechanisms, such as the Canada Free Trade Agreement and the mobility rights provisions in section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms These initiatives aim to increase opportunities and reduce burdens associated with national mobility. Their purpose is to facilitate recognition of qualifications, competencies and experiences of professionals in Canada, regardless of where they obtained their initial registration or licensure. At their core, these initiatives assume and depend on some level of unity and harmony in registration and accreditation standards for similar professions across Canada.
Other countries have tackled these issues in different ways. For example, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, which operates a national registration and accreditation scheme (the “National Scheme”), has been in place and operational for nearly sixteen years. Numerous health professions in Australia are nationally regulated by the National Scheme. National Boards set unified, national registration standards.
The American Medical Association also recently published an article about considerations for soon-to-be physicians when applying to practise in multiple states. Different states’ registration requirements can vary depending on the laws of the specific state, and physicians must obtain separate licences for each state in which they intend to practise. To help facilitate this, several member states have entered into an Interstate Medical Licensure Compact (the “Compact”), which is an agreement between participating states to streamline the licensing process for physicians wishing to practise in multiple states or territories. For participating jurisdictions, physicians can now complete one centralized application with the Compact for licensure in multiple states and territories. While physicians must still receive licences from each state or territory individually, the process itself can be completed through a single application, and is more streamlined and faster as a result.
In Canada, it is too soon to tell if the above-noted measures will be a stepping-stone toward broader harmony between provincial regulators, or whether a reduction in barriers to registration will meaningfully increase public access to regulated professionals. However, these measures suggest that, at least to some extent, national harmonization in regulation is possible.
