The Future of Mandatory Reporting Laws: Developing a Legal and Policy Framework for Determining What Reporting Obligations to Impose on Professional

Individuals within a professional-client relationship reveal a range of sensitive information that they might otherwise be reluctant to share with others. Mandatory reporting laws -- laws that require professionals to report client information to the state -- allow governments to extract this information in order to use it for social goals. These laws are widely used yet poorly understood. There is no apparent rationale for what is reportable and what is not. The existing legal literature largely ignores the interactions of these laws with the common law and other statutes, and particularly their compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The literature also considers individual mandatory reporting laws in isolation.;This thesis provides a legal and policy analysis of mandatory reporting laws as a family of related laws in the Canadian context. The legal analysis considers the impact of these laws on the client's interests in autonomy, privacy, and access to services, and on religious and conscience interests of the professional. It concludes that existing mandatory reporting laws infringe Charter rights in several ways. Some of these infringements will be justifiable under section 1 of the Charter as reasonable limitations in a free and democratic society. Others likely require legislative amendments. Overall, however, Charter compliance is not a significant restraint on lawmaking in this area, leaving legislators and policymakers vast possibilities to navigate. The policy analysis complements the legal analysis by setting out a four-component framework for evaluating existing laws and new proposals. The first component focuses on the purpose of the law; the second, on the special ability or opportunity of the professional to detect the reportable occurrence; the third, on the connection between the purpose of the law and the purpose of the profession; and the fourth, on the long-term impacts on the client-professional relationship.;Together, the legal and policy analysis should enable legislators and policymakers to improve the coherence and consistency of lawmaking in this area. This thesis demonstrates that mandatory reporting laws are a powerful legal tool, but one that should be employed sparingly and carefully because it comes with real though often intangible harms.