Regulation of massage therapists still years away: minister

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This article was published 16/08/2018 (2072 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s health minister says massage therapists are three to five years away from being provincially regulated or disciplined — and an industry veteran says that’s too long to wait.

George Fraser, the executive director of Remedial Massage Therapists Society of Manitoba, was in court this week when Kenneth Wall of Blumenort was convicted on four counts of sexual assault.

Wall claimed to offer therapeutic massages in which he rubbed women’s breasts and vaginas without their consent in 2014, court found.

Seven women reported him to police, saying he didn’t ask their consent or explain why he was rubbing intimate parts of their bodies.

Fraser said the Wall case underscores the pressing need for massage therapy to be brought under the provincial Regulated Health Professions Act as soon as possible.

“Massage therapy sits out there doing over one million treatments (in Manitoba) per year with no public protection, no ability to give oversight and no ability to formalize a complaint and discipline process when things like this arise,” he said.

“It’s disappointing to (approximately 1,400) registered massage therapists, and it should be disappointing to everyone who receives massage therapy treatments.”

Health Minister Cameron Friesen said there are 19 health professions that are self-regulating and waiting to be brought under the provincial regulation umbrella.

The law was proclaimed in 2014 in hopes of providing consistent rules, governance, discipline and complaint mechanisms for all health-care professions.

So far, only audiologists, speech language pathologists and registered nurses have made the transition, while paramedics have started the process.

The health department has the capacity to transition two to three professions per year to the law, meaning it could take more than a decade for all 19 in the queue — plus massage therapy, which isn’t already regulated — to fall under provincial jurisdiction.

“The department’s focus is on transitioning governance for medicine under the (law), following recently completed public consultations,” Friesen said in a prepared statement. “After that is complete, we plan to move on to other professions, including psychology, paramedicine and registered psychiatric nursing.”

Referring to massage therapy, Friesen said, “The next steps for the profession are to work towards developing a policy draft of its regulations, with the government’s goal to bring massage therapy under the act in the next few years.”

A government spokesperson clarified that “the next few years” means “three to five years.”

Fraser isn’t convinced of that timeline, since he’s been urging the province to confirm a date for years.

“It could be that massage therapy waits until the very end of the process, which could translate into 10 to 15 years based on the formula of two per year. The department will not answer this question,” Fraser said in an email on Friday, discussing his correspondence with Manitoba Health. Fraser said he has asked for a meeting with Friesen, who was appointed in August, to get clarification.

Jennifer Billeck, deputy registrar for the College of Physiotherapists of Manitoba, said their group is also waiting patiently to be included in the law.

“We’ve been given some indication that we’ll be in the next grouping, so we are working on it. We’re hoping within the next couple of years we’ll be done the work that’s required,” she said.

“I think what the (law) allows us is consistency between all the colleges in some of the processes that we have. It will allow us to work collaboratively in health-care teams very easily… For Manitobans as a whole, we’re hoping that’s exactly what it will do — be beneficial to all of us.”

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @_jessbu