The Ben Mulroney Show - Why Ontario is dumbing down qualifications for Psychologists

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

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Thank you, Ben. Okay, so last week, we were having a conversation. Honestly, can you even remember what that was about because you dropped a bomb on me in the middle of the conversation that was so shocking that I've forgotten everything you said except for that. And I said, we've got to get them back on. And we're going to talk about that through this segment into the next. I hope you don't mind. But this is going to be a big conversation.

Last week, you told me that Ontario is proposing significant and drastic cuts to the training standards of people who will eventually be psychologists and who will be helping us as Ontarians navigate the difficult world of mental health and the issues that we are living

with in the 21st century. Exactly. And when people hear it, I don't think they're going to believe what we have to say, but it's true. Yeah, this is the,

okay, so they wanted, the college of, is it the College of Psychology? It used to be a college of psychologists. Now it's College of Psychologists and Behavior Analysts of Ontario. Okay.

So the, this is a college of, the college. Okay, it's just called the college now. And there's a whole bunch of things that they want to get rid of. They want to replace the title psychological associate with psychologist for math, with just psychologist for master's levels registrants, although a psychologist with only a master's from another province where that is all they need can come here and start practicing as a psychologist right away. Exactly. So there's like this interprovincial trade agreement. So yes. So if someone just has a master's, they'll say from a

Alberta or from the East Coast, and they're registered as a psychologist there. They come here, and Bob's your uncle, they're starting right away. They want to reduce by 75% the supervised practice hours required. So, and which means removing the four-year supervision requirements for those with only the master's re-. Okay, so what's the justification for any of this? Okay, so they call it a justification. And many of my colleagues, including myself, disagree that as a justification. It sounds like more like your rationalization, but basically they're trying to say we want, this is twofold. One, we want to get people into the field faster so that, like, they want to get easier for psychologists to get to the field. And two, because they want to provide more care

for the, you know, the many people in Ontario who don't have, you know, help, like they don't have access to mental health care. So that's the ostensible reason. And if I can say why it doesn't make much sense. Please do. Okay. So if you want to reduce the education component from a PhD to a master's, I can understand that, but it would have to go along with having the people who are, you know, who have that limited education. They have to get that education like on the job training, like an apprentice. Yeah. Okay. And that's part, sorry, yes. No, I was going to just bring that up. I was trying to, I've been thinking about it since last week. Like, what would I compare this to? You know, and I would compare it to cutting out the apprenticeship of, you know,

it's a significant amount of the apprenticeship for the trades. And so all of a sudden, the people who are building my house that I fully expect because I'm paying full freight for it is going to be a house that I can, that will be up to code that I will be able to live in for as long as I want and I'll be able to sell it. It's going to increase in value. But if these guys don't know about electrical work and if they don't know how to fasten joints. If they don't know what a load-bearing wall is, good luck to me, and I don't know how safe

my family's going to be in that house. I don't see how it's any different when you're trying to build up somebody's mental health, right? If it's built on shifting sands and if people don't know the difference between one process or another, and they don't know the difference between right and wrong because they haven't trained enough, I don't know, I don't know the value of putting those people into the market. And that's exactly it. Because, you know, people don't understand. So college, it's not that we just sit on, you know, with someone on a couch and, you know, talk about, you know, some boring issues or, you know, minor issues. I mean, sometimes we do. But, you know, some of us also write reports for the courts. Right. Some of us assess people, you know, for the courts,

for schools, for, you know, for insurance, for the workplace. We have to have that, you know, that expertise and that expertise is gained not from reading a bunch of books, but from having done many assessments under the care of somebody who's done even more and who can help make sure that when we're diagnosing, when we're making recommendations, when we're assessing, or when we're providing treatment and therapeutic care to people with some very serious issues, we know what we're doing, we have the confidence and the wherewithal that you can let us out into the wild, so to speak, and that we're going to do more good than harm. And reducing that type of process by 75% obviously, contradicts that type of sentiment.

Well, what is it, what did somebody say once? Intelligence is knowing that tomato is a fruit, but knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Intelligence is knowing not to put it on a fruit salad. And like it's, it's, you don't learn that from books, I don't think. You learn that from working practically with somebody who can train you. And, you know, I don't want to make light of this, but sometimes comedy is the best way to highlight this stuff.

And there was a great S&L skit from years ago with Will Ferrell playing Robert Goulet, the crooner. And he decided to make a rap album. And because he had no respect for hip-hop artists. So he figured Bob Goulet was going to do hip-hop better than hip-hop artists. And he pointed out, you wouldn't hire a clown to fix a leak in the John. So why are you letting these hooligans tear down the biz?

I suspect by doing this, the hooligans are going to tear down the biz. We're going to talk about more of that with our good friend Orrin Amitay after the break. We are continuing our conversation with Dr. Oran Amate, who is very concerned, as I think all of us should be, with the future of psychological help for Ontarians. when we learn that the college that the governing body for that that profession is watering down and lowering the standards by and not by a little bit, but by 75% for those who would be entrusted with the psychological help of their patients or clients.

I'm not quite sure what the nomenclature is. And Orne joins us again. Orrin thanks so much for sticking around. Well, thank you for allowing me to discuss this because it's something that the public, was not really consulted on. I mean, they were briefly. The psychologists were not, again, briefly. And we, I think, gave a resounding no, yet the college still is going ahead with these changes. And if I can add a couple of other ones, just so people understand. Yeah, please. Okay, so there is an ethics exam that we have to take. It is really difficult. And they are implementing a change whereby it's not a, you know, you don't have to pass it. All you have to do is

get these online modules do it and basically there's no stakes involved you just have to do it go through it and say yep i got it okay that's number one and number two there's areas of competency that we have to show that we've you know got the requisite knowledge education and experience and training so for example working with um you know let's say elderly people working with children working with families uh neuropsychology and so on and they are allowing they want to collapse it so that you can just basically do whatever you want. And there are some cases that I've seen where people who clearly do not have that experience are listing themselves as competent in those areas right now with no oversight, basically,

because it's hard to oversee all of this. And so, you know, you're going to have people who do not have that competence to, let's say, you know, talk about neuropsychology, yet they're going to be able to do so. And unless something terrible happens, you know, and then it's, by then it's too late. Yeah. They're not going to be, they're not going to be caught,

basically. So it's, you know, it's just, it's allowing for people to practice outside of their areas of expertise. And that is very concerning. And again,

no ethical exam. It's just, you know, read, learn about it online and then you're good to go. And now I remember what we were talking about last week. We were talking about the attraction of patients to their psychologists. And,

and, and, and, and, and, the, the, the,

the dangerous mind field that that presents, however, You know, you and I talked about how people like yourself who've gone through the rigorous training have been trained to understand, identify when that becomes an issue and be able to talk about it with the patient so you can diffuse the tension and then deal with it because it is a psychological issue that deserves attention. and if you don't have that proper training, you could make things worse. You could find yourself crossing a line yourself, and that doesn't help anybody. No, it causes a lot of damage to the person on the other side,

the client who's in a very precarious position. And again, that was the topic that we were talking about last week, which brought me saying that, you know, without this is a, it's a relatively common occurrence. It doesn't happen all the time to everybody, but most people can say they've had some type of experience like that. Or even, let's say, if the client themselves don't express that attraction, if the therapist, let's say, has those issues, or they have some other counter transference issue, you know, and there's a boundary issue or something like that, it's important to be able to have people around you that can guide you so that you don't make a mess of the situation.

And again, taking off that supervision, those guardrails are no longer. there. People have to understand there's no rationale for taking off those guardrails. Well, yeah, you know, if anyone's watched that show shrinking on Apple TV that stars Harrison Ford, and I don't know if they're psychiatrists or psychologists, but it's a team of medical, you know, mental health professionals working together in an office and they're great friends, but every now and then one of them really needs to talk about an issue that they're having, and they bounce ideas off each other and they lean on each other. There's a mentorship aspect to it.

And if you cut the training by 75%, you also cut the depth of those personal connections with your peers. And so you're not going to have, at the outset, you know, you're not going to have that comfort with these people. You know, after with 75% more training, that stranger becomes a trusted advisor. and you're not going to have what you might need in that moment in terms of human resources to lean on and to glean from. Well, exactly. I still, to this day, you know, I don't know how many decades later, still call my former supervisor who passed away two years ago my mentor.

Yeah. We had a mentorship relationship. It was very deep. And, you know, I don't know if that would have been established after only one year. And, you know, I sought guidance from him throughout my internship. entire career. And so, yes, you're absolutely right. When you take that away, and I'm going to tell you right now, when you take away what I consider to be the most important part of the education process is the practicum or the internship, which you should have many of, right,

during your education and then afterward, having that follow up. Yes. So, yeah, and by the way, they are psychologists in the show shrinking. Yeah, they are psychologists. Yeah, exactly. So that, you know, on day one when you're working with one of those people, that person is a stranger to you. Within a year that might, that person might become a colleague and a trusted advisor. If you don't have that connection, then, and that connection can only be built through experience and time. And it seems like by shrinking this, you are abandoning and casting away all the benefits that working together produce. But I want to ask you about what you call the collapsing areas of competence. What do you mean by that?

So right now you have to identify which area you can work in, whether it's school, youth, families, elderly couples, adults, neuropsychology, and you have to declare it and you have to show, I mean, if they ask, you have to show that this is how I receive that competency through this training, through this education and so on. And right now, they're just going, they're proposing. And I think that, again, they're in the process of implementing it. They're just putting you into, like, I think health or industrial organizational. So under health, you can claim to work with anybody. Yeah.

Okay. Again, and so someone who doesn't have the requisite training and in supervision, they are probably going to get, you know, over their skis, and they're not going to know that they shouldn't be working with certain populations. And there's a lot of self-regulation there. Or say, you know, that I don't think that a neophyte psychologist has the, you know, the psychological and intellectual and emotional ability necessarily to self-regulation. regulate. And so that's a big concern. And also one other thing, which is with all this watering down,

what is going to distinguish a psychologist from a psychotherapist? There are two different professions. Yeah, yeah. I have no, I have no idea. But I do know. Now, okay, we've been saying Ontario is doing this. And when people hear Ontario, they assume it's the Ontario government, but this is the college that governs, right? So that's right. So what are the options to push back on this? What tactics can be used to let the college know that if you start pumping out this level of quality, there will be no uptake. I mean, is it up to various employers to say, yeah, sorry, you just don't have what we're looking for? That could be an option, but a lot of people go into private practice.

So what the option is, and this was, look, this was promoted. through the, I think the fairness, I forget the commission is, the fairness commission. That was kind of what instigated this. A fairness to whom? Because I would argue this is unfair to those who are seeking treatment. Well, I agree 100%. So who are they saying it's fair to? Look, I'm speculating, but it's 2026.

Is this a fairness to, you know, people who've been kept out of this profession due to systemic and equity. I think you hit the nail on the, the DEI head. So, yeah. I mean, that's literally, I have perfect time to use it. That's insane.

Yes. Yeah. Good choice of words. Yes. Yes. Okay. Last word to you, my friend. Okay.

Well, so I was going to say, what can people do? So there are a number of groups, individual psychologists, who have joined together with other like-minded people, trying to advocate for a review. of this. They're going to the government and they're saying, let's look at how these decisions came about. And let's look at to see if there's anything that warrants such drastic changes.

And I'll tell you right now, you know, the punchline, there is nothing. Nothing justifies what they're doing. And so a number of my colleagues are fighting to make sure that the people in charge, not the college, but, you know, the people above them that regulate the colleges and, you know, who govern the bodies, right, that they step in. And I would hope that I would help that, hope that people who are striving to be psychologists from those communities that are seeking to help, I would hope they'd come out and say, this is patronizing, this is infantilizing, and this is not the path that I want to take in order to be respected by my peers, in order to help the people who need my help because I want to be a psychologist,

and I want to do it the right way. I hope those voices stand up as well. Dr. Orna, I'm going to say, thank you very much, my friend. My name is Mickey Fox. Friday, February 27th on Global. I'm Sheriff of Edgewater. For horror, keeping the peace. Cartel's moving in. Means every investigation.

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