The College of Physiotherapists of Ontario regulates the more than 10,000 physiotherapists in Ontario. The College sets rules and develops programs to ensure that members of the physiotherapy profession practice in the best interest of the public. The College’s authority comes from the Physiotherapy Act, 1991 and the Regulated Health Professions Act, 1991.
As one of 26 self-regulated health professions in Ontario, physiotherapists are involved in determining the rules that govern the profession and are accountable for their own behaviour, with the College providing assistance and oversight.
The College is governed by a Council, similar to a board of directors. Council is made up of eight elected physiotherapists from regions across the province, two academic representatives and seven members of the public appointed by the government.
Council sets the College’s strategic direction and develops policies and standards to ensure the College is meeting its mandate to protect the public.
Council members are responsible for ensuring the protection of the public interest and improving the quality of physiotherapists' care in the province. Council members are involved in establishing policies to make certain that College operations reflect corporate goals and safeguard the organization’s assets.
In addition to attending four Council meetings each year, Council members also serve on at least one statutory Committee.
The College has statutory and non-statutory Committees as described in the legislation. Committees are made up of Council and Non-Council Committee members. The statutory Committees consider registrant-specific matters related to registration, quality assurance, complaints, professional misconduct and incapacity. The College also has a Finance Committee, which is a non-statutory Committee, who assists the Council in providing financial oversight of the College.
The College has several reasons for conducting a third-party governance review at this time.
First, through our reporting against the Ministry of Health’s College Performance Measurement Framework (CPMF), it would appear that some of the College’s current governance practices may not be consistent in all respects with expectations outlined in the CPMF.
Second, the College is aware of a number of efforts to modernize the governance model in the regulatory sector in recent years, both in Canada and in other jurisdictions. The College wishes assess those recent modernization efforts to determine if they include governance practices that our College may wish to consider adopting in order to improve our organizational performance.
Third, our Council just approved a new strategic plan, in which they identified that improving our governance practices is an underpinning to other strategic activities and supports the high-level strategic goals.
Finally, staff and Council have identified a number of challenges that stem from our governance model in recent years, and we are interested in making improvements to address those challenges.
The goal of the third-party governance review is to assess the College’s current governance practices and policies and benchmark against our regulatory peers and industry common practices, both within Canada and internationally. The scope of the review should include governance practices and policies for Council and Committees, and where appropriate, the role of staff.
The results of the third-party governance review will inform a plan for implementing governance changes that will help the College develop effective governance systems.
Without limiting the scope and nature of the review, the College is interested in considering the following elements as part of the review:
- Principles of risk-based regulation
- Effectiveness in fulfilling our public interest mandate
- The Council’s role in providing strategic direction and oversight of the organization
- Principles of transparency
- Principles of equity, diversity and inclusion
