Ideas and Interests Embedded in the Making of Ontario’s Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act, 2006

Abstract

This paper examines the ideas-interests nexus in the making of Ontario’s Fair Access to Regulated Professions Act, 2006, designed to level the playing field for internationally trained professionals. It conceives of the legislation as the outcome of a discursive contestation between two interest-based alignments. The access coalition led by organized immigrant professionals and settlement service providers communicated a discourse around the non-recognition of foreign credentials, questioning it on moral and economic grounds. Alternatively, regulatory bodies built their discourse around the skills and experience requirements of professions, emphasizing public protection, and, as a condition of that, professional autonomy. However, despite its weaker economic base, the access coalition carried the day with the passing of the fair access legislation because it framed its ideas more effectively and thus struck a better chord with the general and policy public.