Grey Areas

SML’s Grey Areas newsletter has been in publication since July 1992 and discusses the latest developments in professional regulation. New issues are published monthly – subscribe below to learn more about recent studies, case law and legislative updates in the regulatory world. Explore our catalogue below.

Issues published before 2020 can be found on CanLII.

In May of 2019 we predicted that Harry Cayton’s report on the regulation of health professions in British Columbia would be transformative: The Cayton Report: The Wolf Finally Arrives. That prediction is coming true.
Characterizing certain behaviour as “serious” professional misconduct has significant consequences. It may affect whether a complaint or investigation report will be referred to a discipline hearing. It can also determine the gravity of a sanction imposed upon a registrant if a finding is made. Earlier this year the regulators for the dental, nursing and midwifery professions in the UK released
While there is a lot of talk about governance principles and governance reform, there are precious few resources on how governance principles should be applied to a specific regulator. Last spring two experienced regulatory experts, Harry Cayton from the UK and Deanna Williams from Ontario, conducted a review of the governance approach taken at the Ontario College of Social Workers
The Supreme Court of Canada has just released its most significant decision for professional regulators since Green v. Law Society of Manitoba, 2017 SCC 20 (CanLII), [2017] 1 SCR 360, https://canlii.ca/t/h2wx1. The issue of when inordinate delay constitutes an abuse of process in the professional disciplinary context has been uncertain since some very restrictive rules were imposed in criminal proceedings.
The Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) renders a lot of decisions. Many, of course, have similar issues and reviewing them can become repetitive. Few people have the luxury of reading all of the decisions. As an experiment, we reviewed 100 recent registration decisions of HPARB decided over the past three years. Our goal was to see if we
The Health Professions Appeal and Review Board (HPARB) renders a lot of decisions. Many, of course, have similar issues and reviewing them can become repetitive. Few people have the luxury of reading all of the decisions. As an experiment, we reviewed 100 recent registration decisions of HPARB decided over the past three years. Our goal was to see if we