Bill 47 amends the Education Act and the Act respecting private education to impose new duties on school service centres and private educational institutions aimed at reducing risks of sexual and other harmful behaviour toward minor students. It requires those bodies to adopt and publish codes of ethics for personnel and any adult who must work with or regularly contact minors, to verify past conduct before hiring, and to share relevant records with other institutions when a risk is identified.
The bill also creates employee reporting duties to the Minister of Education when there are reasonable grounds to suspect a teacher has committed a serious fault involving behaviour that could threaten students, enables the Minister to forward such situations to an inquiry committee, and permits institutions to factor prior disciplinary measures into new sanctions despite labour‑relation provisions. These changes tighten hiring, record‑sharing and disciplinary mechanics; they shift investigatory and reporting responsibilities toward centralized oversight and increase compliance tasks for education operators and contractors.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires every school service centre and private institution to adopt a code of ethics for personnel and adults who regularly deal with minors, attach that code to key contracts, and require candidates to declare past positions and consent to verification. Institutions must provide records when requested, notify other institutions when they conclude a person exhibited behaviour that could threaten students, and may consider prior discipline when imposing sanctions.
Who It Affects
School service centres, private educational institutions, teachers, other staff and any adult working regularly with minors (including bus drivers and external contractors). The Minister’s office gains a formal reporting stream and discretion to refer cases to an inquiry committee. Employee unions and labour‑relations actors are directly implicated by the rule allowing prior discipline to be considered.
Why It Matters
The bill changes how pre‑employment vetting, intra‑sector information‑sharing, and disciplinary decisions interact with labour provisions, while creating a centralized reporting channel to the Minister. Compliance officers, HR teams and legal counsel will need new processes for declarations, record keeping, inter‑institutional requests and privacy safeguards.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
Bill 47 compels school service centres and private educational institutions to adopt a written code of ethics that describes expected practices and conduct for staff and any adult who must work with or regularly contact minor students. Those codes must include an obligation to report breaches that could reasonably threaten students’ physical or psychological safety and must be made available on request.
The legislation also requires that the code accompany certain agreements and contracts (for example, school service centre agreements and transportation contracts), making compliance a contractual obligation for third‑party providers and individual workers.
For hiring, the bill requires candidates who would work with minors to declare the positions they hold or held in other centres or institutions and to provide written consent to verification of information and documents needed to assess whether they have exhibited behaviour that could reasonably pose a threat to students. Where an employer concludes such behaviour occurred, it must request a declaration about the person’s other positions and notify every other school service centre or private institution where the person holds a post.
The law also obliges centres and institutions to supply the records and documents they hold that are necessary to establish the presence or absence of concerning behaviour, with retention and disclosure guided by a ministerial guide.The bill introduces a reporting duty on any employee of a school service centre or private institution who, in the exercise of their duties, has reasonable grounds to believe a teacher committed a serious fault or an act derogatory to the profession involving behaviour that could threaten students: that employee must report the situation without delay to the Minister of Education. The Minister may designate a person to verify whether the Minister’s information could demonstrate such a serious fault and, where the Minister considers the information raises such an issue, may submit the situation to the inquiry committee so the matter is processed as a complaint under the Act’s disciplinary procedures.Finally, the legislation makes a specific carve‑out regarding labour provisions: when a centre or institution disciplines an employee for behaviour that could threaten students, it may take into account prior disciplinary measures previously imposed for similar behaviour even if collective agreements or certain regulations would otherwise restrict consideration of that past discipline.
The government will set the coming‑into‑force dates by order.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Section 28.1 gives the Minister of Education authority to forward any situation brought to their attention to the inquiry committee if the Minister believes the information could demonstrate a serious fault or derogatory act by a teacher.
Sections 258.0.1 and 54.0.1 require school service centres and private institutions to adopt a published code of ethics covering conduct and mandatory internal reporting for anyone required to work with or regularly contact minors.
Sections 261.1.1 and 54.11.1 force pre‑hire declarations: candidates must list prior positions in centres or institutions and give written consent to verification and, where applicable, to forwarding records so prospective employers can assess past behaviour.
Sections 261.1.3 and 54.11.3 mandate that when an employer concludes a person has exhibited behaviour that could pose a threat to students, it must inform every other school service centre or private institution in which the person holds a position.
Sections 263 and 54.11.5 permit centres and institutions to consider prior disciplinary measures for behaviour that could threaten students when imposing new discipline, notwithstanding provisions of labour standards agreements or certain regulations.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Minister can refer cases to the inquiry committee
This provision lets the Minister submit any situation that has been reported to them to the teaching‑profession inquiry committee if the Minister believes the available information could show a serious fault or an act that undermines the profession’s honour or dignity. Practically, it creates a direct pipeline from employer reports and employee complaints to formal professional discipline, shortening the path to inquiry committee review once the Minister is engaged.
Attach the code of ethics to key contracts and agreements
The bill requires that the code of ethics accompany school service centre agreements and certain contracts (including transportation contracts), and that persons bound by those agreements undertake to comply with the code. This turns the code into a contractual compliance obligation for providers and individual workers whose roles bring them into regular contact with minors, extending employer accountability to third parties.
Mandatory code of ethics for centres and private institutions
Both public school service centres and private institutions must adopt codes that spell out expected conduct, reporting duties for breaches that could threaten students, and make the codes available on request. The mechanics obligate institutions to codify behavioural standards and create an internal reporting architecture that staff, contractors and others must follow when they identify risky conduct.
Verification guide expanded to cover behaviours and time periods
The ministerial guide that previously covered judicial record checks is expanded to address the verification of behaviours that could reasonably pose a threat and the period those verifications should cover. The guide is the operational backbone: it will shape what records centres retain, which behaviours count for vetting, and how far back institutions should look when checking a candidate’s history.
Pre‑hire declarations and consent to verify or forward records
Prospective hires who will work with minors must declare prior positions held in centres or institutions and provide written consent for verification. Crucially, consent can cover the forwarding of records from a previous employer to a prospective employer, allowing institutions to pass on documents necessary to assess prior behaviour rather than relying solely on summary statements.
Duty to provide and retain records for vetting
Every centre and institution must supply the information and documents it holds that are necessary to establish the presence or absence of threatening behaviour and keep those records in accordance with the ministerial guide. The provision imposes a record‑keeping and disclosure duty on employers that will require consistent internal processes and likely new file‑retention practices.
Obligation to notify other employers when risk is found
Where an employer concludes an individual exhibited behaviour that could threaten students, the employer must obtain declarations about the person’s other posts and inform any other centre or institution where the person holds a position. This creates an inter‑institutional warning system intended to prevent lateral movement of individuals identified as risky.
Mandatory reporting to the Minister and verification by Minister’s designate
Any employee with reasonable grounds to believe a teacher committed a serious fault involving behaviour that could threaten students must report immediately to the Minister. The Minister may designate a person to verify whether the information could demonstrate a serious fault. Together, these provisions centralize escalation to the provincial level and authorize ministerial fact‑checking prior to inquiry committee referral.
Permitted consideration of prior disciplinary measures despite labour rules
The bill specifies that a centre or institution may take prior disciplinary measures into account when disciplining an employee for behaviour that could threaten students, even where collective agreements or certain regulations would otherwise limit that practice. This is a targeted override designed to ensure past sanctions for similar conduct are not ignored during new disciplinary proceedings.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on this topic across all five countries.
Explore this topic in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Minor students and survivors — The measures create more structured vetting, reporting and information‑sharing that aim to reduce the chance that adults who have exhibited risky conduct will move between institutions undetected.
- Parents and guardians — They gain greater transparency through institutional codes of ethics and the prospect that problematic staff records will follow individuals between employers rather than being siloed.
- School service centres and private institutions that implement strong compliance systems — Those organizations obtain clearer legal tools to block or discipline staff who present safety risks and to justify employment decisions when prior misconduct is documented.
Who Bears the Cost
- School service centres and private institutions — They must develop codes of ethics, change hiring processes, implement record‑keeping and disclosure practices, and respond to inter‑institutional requests, increasing administrative and legal compliance costs.
- Teachers and other adult workers — Candidates must make declarations and consent to record checks and potential forwarding of records; employees face broader reporting mechanisms and the prospect that prior disciplinary records will be considered in new proceedings.
- Employee unions and labour relations actors — The carve‑out allowing employers to rely on prior disciplinary measures creates tension with negotiated protections and could fuel grievances or litigation over due process and retroactive application of discipline rules.
- Minister’s office and inquiry committee resources — Centralized reporting, verification and potential referral of more cases will require additional capacity for intake, fact‑checking and disciplinary processing.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill trades greater protection for minors through broader vetting, mandatory reporting and cross‑institutional information‑sharing against risks to procedural fairness, employee privacy and labour‑agreement protections — the central dilemma is how to make schools safer without institutionalizing a system that disproportionately penalizes workers on the basis of vague or inconsistently applied behavioural standards.
The bill’s key operational hinge is the undefined phrase “behaviour that could reasonably pose a threat for the physical or psychological safety of students.” That formulation intentionally casts a wide net to capture non‑criminal but risky conduct, but it leaves substantial room for interpretation about what behaviours trigger vetting, disclosure and notification duties. Without tight ministerial guidance and training, institutions will likely vary in how they characterize risk, producing inconsistent outcomes and potential over‑reporting that could unfairly stigmatize employees.
The statutory permission for employers to consider prior disciplinary measures despite labour‑standards provisions addresses a policy gap but creates predictable legal friction with collective agreements and procedural fairness norms. Unions may challenge the scope or application of that permission, and employers must navigate how to weigh prior findings that may have been contested or resolved through grievance procedures.
Practically, the bill also shifts significant administrative burdens onto institutions: creating standardized record formats, managing consented forwarding of documents, securing sensitive files in line with privacy obligations, and resourcing the Minister’s intake and verification function. Those operational requirements will determine whether the bill improves safety in practice or simply increases paperwork and legal risk.
There's more to this law than the bill.
Codify Laws traces every connection across the legislative lifecycle.