Governing Ourselves informs members of legal and regulatory matters affecting the profession. This section provides updates on licensing and qualification requirements, notification of Council resolutions and reports from various Council committees, including reports on accreditation and discipline matters.

Council Meetings

At its meeting on September 29–30, 2016, College Council:

• appointed and welcomed new Council members Jacqueline Karsemeyer, OCT, and Pier-Olivier Arsenault, OCT, to fill vacancies in the Central Region Part-time/Fulltime positon and Southeast Region Full-time position respectively;
• recommended that the Minister of Education amend Bill 200, the Protecting Students Act, to:
  • delete an exemption for spouses related to professional misconduct;
  • ensure that a copy of all discipline decisions from hearings held in public be available to the public;
  • ensure that notations on the public register of withdrawn allegations or not-guilty findings of professional misconduct and incompetence not be linked to the College’s decision database on its website;
  • give the College discretion to post explicit terms, conditions and limitations from sensitive Fitness to Practise Committee decisions on the public register;
  • enable the Investigation and Discipline committees to consider prior decisions about members at the conflict resolution stage, unless the outcome was a refusal to consider and investigate a complaint;
  • add “matter not be referred” to the Investigation Committee’s options to dispose of matters in the complaints resolution process;
  • enable Discipline Committee decisions to take immediate effect after a Certificate of Qualification and Registration is revoked; and
  • recognize the College Registrar as the official complainant in professional misconduct matters rather than directors of education.
• received an oral report from the Public Interest Committee, including its opinion on the College’s response to CBC’s news program Marketplace, how the committee consults with Council, and the adjudication of sexual abuse matters among regulated professions;
• rejected the Provincial Coroner’s recommendation to consider having members attest to having read the College’s professional advisory on the duty to report;
• agreed to provide full-text Discipline Committee decisions to the free legal database CanLII;
• approved publishing summaries of Discipline Committee decisions involving matters of incompetence in Professionally Speaking;
• approved amendments to the professional advisory Additional Qualifications: Extending Professional Knowledge;
• recommended to the Minister of Education that the Teachers Qualification Regulation (176/10) be amended to include two First Nations Schools Leaders Additional Qualification courses to Schedule C;
• recommended “Teaching Students who are Blind/Low Vision” as a name change to an Additional Qualification course in Schedule D in the Teachers’ Qualification Regulation (176/10);
• asked the Minister of Education to amend the Election Regulation (293/00) to recognize all provincial school authorities as eligible employers;
• asked the Minister of Education to amend the Election Regulation process for filling positions vacant during an election to occur at the first business meeting of Council after the inaugural meeting;
• requested that the Minister of Education amend the Election Regulation (293/00) so that an appointment to fill a vacant Council position as the result of the election process be approved by both elected and appointed Council members so that it’s consistent with the current appointment process;
• asked the Minister of Education to amend the Ontario College of Teachers Act to:
  • limit a Council member’s term to six consecutive years, except as permitted by regulation in exceptional circumstances;
  • prohibit individuals who have reached their term limitation from running for election for a full three-year term of Council prior to being eligible to serve again.
• asked the Minister of Education to amend the Election Regulation to permit eligible College members to vote only for the system position(s) in which they are employed; and
• amended College bylaws to enable Council to appoint a committee chair from remaining committee members if the position becomes vacant.