We Need Your Feedback
Council approved circulating proposed Bylaw changes for you to review. The proposed changes are to Bylaws 11, 12 and 13. You can see our current Bylaws here.
Email your feedback to us at contact@abrda.ca by February 21, 2022.
We will consider your feedback and, as appropriate, will make recommendations to Council about adjustments to the proposed changes.
Why are we making these changes?
Bylaws 11 & 12
We’re continuing to work toward complying with the requirements of Bill 46 – the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2020. This work involves reviewing our functions to ensure they’re consistent with our role as a regulatory college. Bill 46 is clear that a regulatory college may only carry out functions that are consistent with its role.
Our Bylaws allow for our College to hold Annual General Meetings and Special Meetings, and for our regulated members to vote at these meetings. However, holding these meetings as described in our Bylaws, where resolutions may be considered and regulated members may vote, is not consistent with our role.
Annual and special meetings are more in line with the function of a membership association, where its members have a say in the association’s activities. As required by the Health Professions Act, our Council has the authority to make decisions for our College. Our registrants do not have the authority to direct our College. By removing annual and special meetings from our Bylaws, we are clarifying that our Council is the decision-maker.
We will continue to seek feedback from our stakeholders, including registrants, on things like proposed changes to our Bylaws. Council will consider all feedback before making the final decision.
We will also continue to provide information about our activities through our Annual Report.
Bylaw 13.05 Renewal of Practice Permit
Our annual renewal deadline is currently October 31st, which is a month ahead of when dental assistants’ Practice Permits expire on November 30th. In the days of paper forms and mail, this approach gave us time to process the large amounts of paper renewals we would receive close to the October renewal deadline, then print and mail updated Practice Permits, all before the November expiry date. This processing time helped us do two things. First, confirm that dental assistants met the requirements to continue to practice. Second, ensure they had their new Practice Permits in place before their old ones expired.
Now, dental assistants are successfully using our online, automated renewal system. As a result, we no longer experience a backlog of renewals to process. Dental assistants can also access and print their own Practice Permits in real-time, which means we don’t need to rely on mail.
We have demonstrated that our online tools are effective, and they have made our annual renewal processes much more efficient. By using these tools, we eliminate the need for the processing time our October 31st deadline provides. We can move our renewal deadline to November 30th and still ensure that dental assistants are eligible to continue to practice before their Practice Permits expire.
Your Opinion Matters
Any changes to the Bylaws may impact the governance and operations of our College. Your input on these proposed changes is important to us. We want to understand the full implications of our proposed changes.
Once the Bylaw amendments are finalized and approved by Council, we will post them on our website and let all dental assistants know by email.