There’s a lot at stake in a professional discipline hearing including, years of education and experience working in the field, reputation, licencing privileges and the ability to earn a livelihood. This is one area of law where jurisdictional issues, statutory interpretation and administrative law principles should be pushed to the absolute limit in defence of a client.

Reddy v. Association of Professional Engineers, 2001 BCCA 237, is one such case in which jurisdictional arguments were made concerning the intiation of the hearing procedure. In particular, the appellant in the proceeding argued that the Association Investigating Committee could not delegate the task of drafting or preparing the charges and that by having this step taken by counsel, the Discipline Committee that would hear the evidence on the matter lost jurisdiction to conduct the inquiry. The Court ultimately held that the Investigating Committee did not committ a jurisdictional breach by delegating the task of drafting the charges to counsel, based on intepretation of the underlying statutory language.

The Court of Appeal makes one very interesting and useful comment in their ruling in paragarph 14 of the decision:

[14] There is a thread throughout Mr. Reddy’s factum that the procedure used is unfair because the counsel prosecuting the case and making elections not to proceed on some charges is counsel for the Discipline Committee. With respect, counsel prosecuting, if I may use that term, the charges is not counsel for the Disciplinary Committee. Had he taken on such a role after preparing the charges and reviewing the files there would have been a valid complaint, but that is not the case here. I see nothing in the procedure which is contrary to the procedures set out in the Act or which clouds the necessary separation between the two committees.

Look at the comment about counsel’s role in regard to prosecuting the matter and the relationship to the Discipline Committee and the necessary separation between the two committees.