Legislation aims to speed up disciplinary cases for orders

QUEBEC — The government is giving the province’s 44 professional orders a new tool to deal with and speed up disciplinary cases involving their members.

Justice Minister Bernard St-Arnaud tabled legislation Wednesday setting up an umbrella office inside the Office des professions to oversee the work of disciplinary committees operated by the various orders, such as engineers.

The office, the Bureau des présidents, will include a maximum of 15 disciplinary committee presidents. Together they have the job of watching over disciplinary cases to make sure they don’t drag on.

Right now, some cases last as long as five years before being settled because many members of disciplinary committees have other fulltime jobs and do the work in their off-hours.

Some were not necessarily the best candidates, either, he said, and were only there because they were friends of the old Liberal regime.

“The first objective i n these changes is to increase the swift- ness of the system,” St-Arnaud said at a news conference after tabling his bill.

“Enough of the unnecessary delays, enough of the unjustified delays.

“There’s no real framework for them (at the moment),” St-Arnaud said. “They don’t have a boss. Nobody is supervising their work.”

St-Arnaud said he has met with representatives of the order of engineers, who are happy with the new measures — first proposed by the Liberals before the government fell in 2012.

He noted the engineers themselves have done considerable work internally to improve ethical and professional standards in the wake of allegations emerging at the Charbonneau Commission.

The act also proposes to add a new line to the province’s professional code making it an offence to commit an act involving collusion, corruption, embezzlement influence-peddling and fraud.

The bill requires the support of the opposition to be passed before the end of the session this spring.