Who can do what to whom under Bill 21

http://psychotherapy-opq.blogspot.ca/2014/07/titles-licenses-and-who-can-do-what-to.html
A psychologist teaching at a major Canadian University who prefers to remain anonymous wrote
to me because she was concerned that I was claiming that psychologists were unlicensed and
untrained.
As I explained to her, nobody is disputing that psychologists are licensed and trained as
psychologists. What I am claiming is that psychologists do not always have specialized training
or licenses in the specialized areas searched for by the public.
Most psychologists offering couple or family interventions, for example, are not licensed couple
and family therapists. So, when a person searches for a couple or family therapist using the
Order of Psychologists' search engine and navely chooses "psychologist" as the first search
criterion, this filters out all non-psychologist licensed couple and family therapists while leaving
in psychologists without a license in couple/family therapy.
I explained to her that, when I said that psychologists were unlicensed in the specialties searched
under, this was what I meant. In the case of couple and family therapy, sex therapy,
psychoanalysis, occupational therapy, art therapy and other specialized forms of therapy,
professionals earn at least a masters degree or have another equivalently high level of
specialized training, and in many cases also a specialized license in these disciplines, which most
psychologists lack.
She made the interesting comment that, for psychologists, there was no "value added" by getting
a couple and family therapy license since it was covered by their psychology license.
I reminded her that, although it may be legal for a psychologist to see couples, a psychologist
needs to have a couple and family therapy license if she intends to treat them as a "couple and
family therapist" or leads her clients in other ways to believe that she is a couple and family
therapist when she is not. So at least the title has some value under the law:
36. No person shall in any way whatsoever:
(d) use the title Marriage and Family Therapist, Marriage Therapist, Family Therapist, or a
title or abbreviation which may lead to the belief that he is such a therapist, or use the initials
M.F.T., T.C.F., M.T., T.C., F.T. or T.F., unless he holds a valid permit for that
purpose and is entered on the roll of the Ordre professionnel des travailleurs sociaux et des
thrapeutes conjugaux et familiaux du Qubec
[my bold, Professional Code of Quebec; article 36]
Interestingly, my correspondent is not herself licensed to use the title of marital/family therapist
but is currently training students to become licensed marital and family therapists in Quebec.
Whether that makes sense, whether it is even legal, is a question I ask myself. It would be
interesting to know how many couple and family therapists are training students to become
licensed psychologists.
Finally, I said to my correspondent that, if she meant by "no value added" she meant no
economic value, then I completely agreed: there is now *zero* economic value to being a
licensed marital/family therapist. That has been my main point from the beginning: those who
have been trained and licensed as couple/family therapists (it used to take three years of post-
graduate training and supervision of real clinical value to obtain this license), and who now pay
their fees as psychotherapists to the Order of Psychologists and who also pay a fee to be included
in the Order of Psychologists' referral system, can yet be excluded by the Order of Psychologists'
search engine when the public is searching for a couple/family therapist.
Likewise insurance companies do not cover couple and family therapy offered by licensed
couple and family therapists unless they are psychologists, while psychologists (and doctors!)
who have no training, expertise or license as a marital/family therapist will be reimbursed for
sessions of couple and family therapy. This is not to say that all those who are reimbursed as
psychologists or doctors have no training in this field... But I never claimed that.
My main point has always been that none of this protects the public from those not qualified to
practice, whereas public protection was the very raison d'tre of Bill 21, and is now the Order of
Psychologists' mandate.

I will end with a quote from my correspondent who said it better than I could:
for many of us, we have spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars in training,
supervision and supervised practice and the thought of getting yet one more license to do
something we are already doing seems torturous.
This is exactly how all non-psychologist psychotherapists feel now that Bill 21 has been put into
effect.
Bill 21 could have forced psychologists who are qualified to practice couple and family therapy
to go to the Order of Social Workers and Couple and Family Therapists to apply for a permit, the
way it is now forcing psychotherapists qualified to practice psychotherapy to go to the Order of
Psychologists for a permit. But it didn't.
Please sign my petition.