CRNM Health Professions Legislation Review

The Manitoba Government is moving forward with plans to develop umbrella legislation that would encompass all current self-regulated health professions in the province. Simply put the new legislation would create a single Act replacing the 20 existing pieces of legislation governing Manitoba's self-regulating health professions, and each profession would then have a regulation specific to their practice. The rationale for this is two-fold. Not only has it become a bureaucratic nightmare to try and maintain 20 separate Acts, all of which require full legislative process (reading of bills in the Legislature as well as debate and committee time) any time an amendment is needed, but public expectation for health professions has changed dramatically since much of the current legislation was implemented, making it necessary to review many of the current practices associated with professional regulation.

I had an opportunity yesterday to sit in on an information session delivered by the Registrar for the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba to nursing staff and senior RHA administration in Steinbach. I thought it would be an opportunity not only to ensure that I understood the review process currently underway, but also to gauge the mood of current regulators as the process continues to unfold.

According to the CRNM presentation, we do have a fairly good understanding of what to expect when new umbrella legislation is introduced. We anticipated that the framework for this legislation would be very similar to that of the BC model adopted within the past couple of years, and it appears that is the case. Legislation from other Canadian and international jurisdictions will also be considered during the review as outlined on the Health Professions Review web site, as well as taking into consideration current best practices from within existing Manitoba laws. The umbrella legislation will outline common administrative practices, including board structures, reporting requirements and investigation and disciplinary processes. It will also clearly define the requirements and process to be followed when a "new" health profession requests self-regulatory status. Regulations will then be approved by Government to define the specifics associated with each professional College. The benefit here is that regulations can be added or amended much more easily that an Act that requires full legislative process.

During the course of this presentation there was brief reference to anticipated time-lines for new legislation, although CRNM does expect these may be somewhat optimistic as a result of the spring election. Originally Government had indicated they hoped to bring this legislation forward in the Spring of 2008 and begin to roll it out late fall of that same year. Once umbrella legislation is in place the larger Colleges (Nurses, Physicians, Pharmacists) will be the first to have revised regulations in place. Other health professions will follow throughout 2009.

When we were first advised of Government plans to consolidate all health professions under umbrella legislation I wondered how existing Colleges would react. It would appear, based on the presentation I saw yesterday, that all health professions have embraced the opportunity to participate in the review process and will work collaboratively to make this work. In my view that's good news for our profession...the sooner the review process is completed the sooner the moratorium on applying for self-regulation will be lifted and we'll be able to move forward in that regard.