John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.Alberta is the first province in Canada to introduce badly needed legislation to protect free speech for doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, and other regulated professionals who must, in order to earn a living, report to a licencing authority. Across Canada, regulated professionals have faced disciplinary proceedings, with the threat of losing their professional licence and their livelihood, just for expressing their opinions on social media.Examples include nurses Amy Hamm in BC and Leah McInnes in Saskatchewan, BC teacher Jim McMurtry, Ontario teacher Amy McKay, and Dr. Jordan Peterson. Lawyers have received threatening letters from their Law Society over public commentary that offended woke ideologues. Highly competent doctors, who prior to 2020 were lauded and celebrated for their professional achievements, have been prosecuted by their Colleges for disagreeing with lockdowns and vaccine mandates..OLDCORN: Accountability, not politics — $34 million ‘questionable’ spending at Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations.Worse yet, Canada’s Law Societies, Teachers Colleges, and Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons have proudly and publicly pursued political objectives that have nothing to do with practicing a profession competently and ethically. BC lawyer Michael Higgins is suing his Law Society over its rabid determination to subject BC lawyers to the unproven and probably false claim that 215 children are buried at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.Alberta’s Bill 13, the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act, is an important step forward in addressing these serious problems. The Regulated Professions Neutrality Act amends existing provincial legislation, seeking to ensure that a regulatory body exists solely to enforce standards of competence and ethics. Professional Codes of Conduct and mandatory training on standards of professional competence should never be used as vehicles for promoting neo-Marxist ideals like “equity, diversity, inclusion” and so-called “anti-racism” and “cultural competence” indoctrination..The Regulated Professions Neutrality Act will apply to over 40 regulatory bodies in Alberta. Bill 13 seeks to prevent regulatory bodies from using “equity, diversity, and inclusion” as the pretext for giving people adverse or preferential treatment because of a personal characteristic like skin colour and sexual orientation.Bill 13 appears to be a direct response to the court action launched against Alberta’s Law Society by the very courageous lawyer Roger Song. As an immigrant from communist China, he saw firsthand the corruption of law by ideology. He wants to defend Alberta lawyers from suffering the same fate..MACLEOD: A Seat at the table — rise of the independence movement within the UCP.Bill 13 is currently being debated in Alberta’s Legislative Assembly. I recommend three ways to improve it.First, Bill 13 still fails to protect professionals from having their outside-of-work speech monitored and punished by their regulatory authority. Curiously, section 5(1)(c) of this Regulated Professions Neutrality Act still allows the regulator to impose an “administrative penalty” or “a penalty imposed in relation to an offence under the applicable enactment,” which defeats the purpose of other protections provided by this Act. This problem can be easily fixed by deleting the clause from Bill 13 that says, “but does not include the imposition of (i) an administrative penalty, or (ii) a penalty imposed in relation to an offence under the applicable enactment.”.Second, Section 6 of the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act seeks to prohibit regulatory authorities from promoting, affirming, applying, and enforcing woke, neo-Marxist principles. Professional regulators can no longer impose on their members the principle that personal characteristics (e.g. skin colour, sexual orientation, religion) can form the basis of moral superiority or inferiority, or that a person is necessarily biased, privileged, oppressive, or victimized just because of a personal characteristic.This laudable goal of Section 6 would be greatly strengthened by adding “political objective” to the word “principle.” In the Song case, the Law Society of Alberta actually claimed (at paragraphs 99-102 of their brief) that its education requirements for lawyers “involve moral, strategic, ideological, historical, and policy considerations” and that no court should be entitled to review these requirements. Therefore, an improved section 6(2) would say that a regulatory body cannot promote or affirm a “political objective or principle” rather than only “principle.” This might sound like hair-splitting and nit-picking to some, but if restoring integrity to professions in Alberta is worth doing, it’s worth doing well. .DUR: Inside Alberta’s abortion blackout — the law that makes truth a crime .Last but not least, Bill 13 can be improved by making it abundantly clear that the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act applies to the Benchers, who are the Board of Directors that runs the Alberta Law Society. For MLAs who are reading this column: this can be achieved by amending clause (iv) of Schedule 2(t) concerning the Legal Profession Act.Premier Smith and her government should be applauded for introducing Bill 13. Let’s hope they make the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act even better.John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which for many years has advocated for laws like the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act, and which has funded legal counsel for Roger Song, Amy Hamm, Leah McInnes, and Amy McKay.
