September 26, 2012

News and Events – Professional Regulation Webinar 2013: Human Rights and the Charter [updated Jan 8, 2013]

News and Events

Come join Angela Westmacott and Lisa Fong on January 16, 2013 for a 2-hour webinar on professional regulation and its interface with human rights and the Charter. How professional regulatory organizations should respond to human rights and Charter issues, which repeatedly arise in their administration of regulatory processes, has come to the forefront of professional regulatory case law in the last few years.

Human rights tribunals across the country have decided on a variety of challenges to registration processes, registration decisions, investigations, and disciplinary decisions. Courts, including a number of appellate courts, have reviewed human rights tribunal decisions, and spoken to the obligation of professional regulatory hearing panels to address alleged discrimination, unless such issues are expressly excluded from their scope by enabling legislation. Also, the Supreme Court of Canada has given guidance on a modified “Oakes” test that professional regulatory hearing panels must use when deliberating on challenges based on Charter rights and freedoms.

In our webinar, we will focus on the junctures at which regulatory processes may engage human rights and Charter issues. We will discuss options on how to deal with these issues when they arise, and use the developing case law to examine ways in which to deal (or not deal) with these issues.

The goal of the webinar is to raise awareness of how these issues may arise, options on how to deal with them before they become adversarial, and the legal questions to be deliberated and decided upon when these issues must go to a hearing.

We chose the webinar format for this topic to allow for group learning. Human rights and Charter issues occur throughout the regulatory processes. As such, they are issues that staff, boards and committees will encounter.

  • Where: your computer, iPad, or iPhone (or other smartphones)
  • When: 9 am-11 am (Pacific time), January 16, 2013 (Wednesday)
  • For the agenda/brochure, click here
  • For  the registration form, click here

We are pleased to announce that our webinar currently has 115 attendees registered, representing over twenty different regulatory bodies from four provinces and one territory. If you haven’t registered already, we will allow for further attendees to continue to sign up until this Monday, January 14.

For attendees, you will receive webinar materials, your log-on id, and log on instructions via email on Monday, January 14. Please contact us at lisa@ngariss.com or osiris@ngariss.com if you have any questions.

Attendees who are B.C. lawyers may claim two (2) hours of LSBC-approved Continuing Professional Development credits.