Regulation,deregulation, self-regulation: The case of engineers in Ontario

Against a wider background of rationales for deregulation within a modern economy, and as an exercise of subjecting a theory to the hard discipline of a particular case, a detailed analysis is given of a recent proposal for a form of deregulation (the industrial exemption) for engineering in Ontario. The proposal of the Staff Study of the Professional Organizations Committee set up by the Ontario Government is analyzed in terms of its Posnerian foundations, and is critized theoretically, empirically and normatively. Attention is drawn to two wider issues: the protection by self-regulating professionals of third parties against negative externalities, and the adverse effects of the proletarianization of professionals in large organizations. J. T. Stevenson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto where he teaches Ethics and Engineering and he is co-chairman of the Occupational Ethics Group. An important publication is Standards and Support Stystems for Whistle-Blowers, Engineering Dimensions, 1982.An earlier version of this paper was presented to a conference, Economics, Philosophy and Justice, at University of Waterloo, May 1983. I am indebted to Lawrence Haworth, University of Waterloo, for helpful criticisms. A shorter version was presented to a conference sponsored by the Society for Business Ethics at de Paul University, Chicago, July 1983. I thank Conrad Brunk, Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo for further helpful comments. The paper draws primarily on two documents: (a) Micheal J. Treblicock, Carolyn J. Tuohy and Alan D. Wolfson, Professional Regulation: A Staff Study of Accountancy, Architecture, Engineering and Law, prepared for The Professional Organizations Committee, Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario, 1979. (Hereafter referred to as POC Staff); (b) H. Allen Leal, J. Alex Corry, J. Stefan Dupré, The Report of the Professional Organizations Committee, Ministry of the Attorney General of Ontario, 1980. (Hereafter referred to as POC Report). The first work brings together material form sixteen staff working papers, to which I have had access through the courtesy of Professor John Swan, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. I have also made use of The Professions and Public Policy ed. by Philip Slayton and Michael J. Treblicock, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978 and, for American perspectives, Regulating the Professions, ed. by Roger D. Blair and Stephen Rubin, Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company, 1980.