The provincial government enacted the Professional Governance Act (PGA) on February 5th, 2021. One of the significant additional duties that have been placed upon BCIA registrants is known as the "Duty to Report." That duty has two related aspects of which BCIA registrants need to be aware now. This summary is taken from the current BCIA Ethics for Professionals course, which is a requirement for all articling registrants as part of their respective articling period in addition to those accepted under the Expedited Admission Program and LLAg registrants .
PGA Section 57 (2) requires codes of ethics for resource professionals to include the duty to,
- "report to the regulatory body and, if applicable, any other appropriate authority if the Registrant, on reasonable and probable grounds, believes that the continued practice of a regulated practice by another Registrant or other person, including firms and employers, might pose a risk of significant harm to the environment or the health or safety of the public or a group of people." Please note that the current BCIA Code of Ethics adopted as of March 1st, 2020, includes this aspect.
PGA Section 58 goes beyond the ethical responsibility of Section 57 as it prescribes a duty to report,
- 58(2) "If a Registrant has reasonable and probable grounds to believe that an identified Registrant (which means a Registrant of any regulatory body subject to the PGA) is engaged in the regulated practice that may pose a risk of significant harm to the environment or the health or safety of the public or a group of people" then, they must report this to the registrar even if the information on which the belief is based is confidential.
Comments
- This wording sets a high standard for reporting. It is meant to increase the number of serious concerns about competence or unprofessional or unethical conduct being brought to the attention of regulatory bodies while not requiring reporting for lower-level misconduct.
- A significant caveat to this standard is that Registrants should be able to reasonably identify unethical behaviour of another Registrant, regardless of profession or area of expertise but may only be able to identify incompetent behaviour of a Registrant with similar areas of practice and expertise.
- The Registrant should take reasonable steps to make that identification, but failure to do so is not a breach of the duty, and the reporting duty is not triggered.
- This duty is NOT meant to require Registrants to raise concerns about the risk of significant harm arising from government policies or authorization decisions a Registrant may be operating under. Registrants, however, may bring their concerns respecting a certain policy or practice (rather than the work of a Registrant) to the regulatory body, which may forward the concern to the government.
- This duty is NOT triggered by non–Registrants engaging in the regulated practice, as agrology does not yet have practice rights. Once practice rights have been confirmed, there will be a new duty added to the Code of Ethics requiring the reporting of non-registered practice.
- The test or standard for "reasonable and probable grounds" considers what a reasonable person would conclude based on objective and credible information. "Reasonable" is a subjective assessment which means fair, just, moderate, suitable under the circumstances, rational, governed by reason, and not immoderate or excessive. "Probable" means supported evidence strong enough to establish presumption but not proof.
- A Registrant must believe the identified Registrant's practice may pose a "significant harm to the environment or the health and safety of a group of people." Applied contextually, "Significant" means a noticeably or measurably large amount; "Harm to the environment" means damage or detriment to external conditions affecting the growth of plants or animals.
- Failure to meet the statutory duty to report could result in many different sanctions, including but not limited to deregistration of a Registrant, imprisonment, or a fine of up to $200,000.