This text is part of the special booklet Trades, professions and careers
The Conseil interprofessionnel du Québec (CIQ) is calling for a major project to modernize our professional laws and the system that governs them. The current framework would prevent many professional orders from meeting the challenges of our time.
The Professional Code celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and the laws governing certain professions go back even further. This limits, according to the CIQ, the ability of professional orders to effectively face challenges such as the digital shift and the labor shortage.
“Professions have evolved a lot since 1973 and they have also become more numerous, recalls the president of the CIQ, Danielle Boué. But the management structure has remained the same for 50 years. There haven’t been the necessary changes to ensure the system retains its early agility. »
Quebec currently has 46 professional orders, which bring together more than 415,000 members practicing 55 professions. This sector still represents 10% of the labor force and generates approximately 6% of Quebec’s GDP, roughly the equivalent of the construction and retail trade sectors.
Youth cure
“We want both a modernization of the professions and an update of the professional system itself”, specifies Danielle Boué. Some laws are indeed very old. The one governing chiropractors dates from 1973 and the one governing professional chemists has not been updated since 1964, to name but two examples.
The obsolescence of these laws would complicate the ability of professionals to meet the challenges posed by the evolution of technologies—marked in particular by the rise of artificial intelligence—climate change, the shortage of manpower or even the Aging of the population.
Certainly, the government has revised some laws over time, but always in a very limited way. For example, in 2002, it modernized certain laws governing 11 health professions, before doing it again 10 years later with a law targeting ten mental health and human relations professions. Several other professional orders are still waiting their turn.
The CIQ also wants an overhaul of the professional system itself. He calls for a reform of the Office des professions du Québec, whose role is to ensure that each order properly protects the public. It is in particular the Office that advises the government on the orientations aimed at improving the professional system and adapting its legal framework. However, the CIQ deems it paralyzed by overly cumbersome structures and processes, which hinder the innovation efforts of the orders.
According to the Council, the Office should therefore be transformed into a ministry for the professional system and the government should appoint a minister delegate responsible for the modernization of professional laws. The Council considers that a minister would be more accountable than the Office and would have more influence on the government, since he would sit on the Council of Ministers. It could thus carry out the modernization project more effectively.
The CIQ also proposes the creation of a secretariat for the modernization of professional laws, which would provide a simple, structured, predictable and independent legislative trajectory, and which would have the expertise to suggest legislative and regulatory changes.
Advance in stages
The CIQ spoke in January with Minister Sonia LeBel, who is responsible for applying the Professional Code and the laws constituting the professional orders. A “very nice meeting”, according to Danielle Boué, who admits that the CIQ does not expect the whole system to be transformed in record time.
“We must first determine the most important elements, which must be modernized as quickly as possible, focusing on the professions that need it most,” she says. Recent CIQ consultations indicate that nearly two-thirds of professional orders want changes to their law or to their field of practice (or both).
At the very least, the Conseil expects a reform process to be set in motion, so that all the stakeholders (professional orders, government, CIQ, in particular) can begin the work. Danielle Boué says she is aware that it will be long and that there is no miracle cure. But she points out that the orders are always present when the State asks for it.
“This was particularly the case in the vaccination campaign against COVID-19, to which several professionals of various orders contributed, she recalls. We want to continue this momentum of collaboration between the orders and with the government to make this major modernization project a success. »
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.