Self-regulation is no regulation

Posted on July 22, 2016 in Equality Policy Context

TheStar.com – Opinion/Readers’ letters – Re. “Don’t cover up this report”, Editorial July 18
July 21, 2016.   Daphne Lavers

This entire years-long cover-up hiding a provincially appointed Task Force, which completed its report on Sexual Assault by the Medical Profession, is truly and viciously unbelievable.

So, in order to entirely avoid being charged with and tried for Criminal Code crimes, all one has to do is ensure that one belongs to a “professional association” or have friends in high places whose attitudes are primarily, “Don’t worry, move along, look away, we will take care of our own criminals.”

Doctors who sexually assault their own patients not only entirely, unbelievably, escape criminal charges, which would normally apply for any other citizen committing such crimes should a sex assault or rape occur anywhere except in a private office. And they are actually allowed to continue on as usual in their medical professions with a very few and limited restrictions.

Seriously? They get to keep working? In the same field? With no police involvement?

Is this how the Reed Paper company and its successors are allowed to simply turn their backs on the devastation of poisoning people in Grassy Narrows for decades with that most deadly of toxins, mercury, and just walk away?

“Self-regulation,” the ugly step-child of globalization, is no regulation. If a crime is a crime on the street, then a crime within any profession or industry is a crime under the law. This is the rule of law.

Who decided that certain privileged sectors of our society are immune to the law and the Criminal Code? And when are governments going to take back the responsibility we specifically charge them with upholding, to protect us from criminals with handy, self-serving professional connections?

Daphne Lavers, Toronto

< https://www.thestar.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editors/2016/07/21/self-regulation-is-no-regulation.html >

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