Background
David Chochinov, an occupational therapist registered with the College of Occupational Therapists of Manitoba with roughly twenty-four years of practice and an estimated 3,000 clients served, faced professional discipline proceedings arising from a 2018 incident with a young female client. During a treatment session, Chochinov made a comment about the complainant’s “cleavage,” causing her to leave the session distressed. He subsequently discussed aspects of the complainant’s treatment with her mother without the complainant’s consent, and sent the complainant several text messages. A complaint was filed in June 2020 and referred to the Inquiry Committee in November 2022 following investigation.
A panel of the Inquiry Committee found Chochinov guilty of seventeen charges of professional misconduct in November 2025. In April 2026 the panel imposed a penalty that included a four-month suspension of his registration along with conditions he must fulfill before resuming practice. Chochinov appealed both the discipline and penalty decisions under section 48 of The Occupational Therapists Act, CCSM c O5, and brought this chambers motion seeking a stay of both decisions pending that appeal.
Notably, throughout the lengthy period between the complaint and the final penalty decision — spanning roughly eight years from the incident and nearly four years from referral to the panel — the college placed no conditions or restrictions on Chochinov’s practice, and no further complaints arose. He is the sole income earner for a family of five children.
The Court’s Holding
Justice Turner applied the three-part test from RJR–MacDonald Inc v Canada (Attorney General), [1994] 1 SCR 311, and was satisfied that all three branches favoured granting the stay. On the first branch, the court found that Chochinov’s twenty-five grounds of appeal — alleging procedural errors, unreasonable delay, bias, and failures to follow statutory provisions — were neither frivolous nor vexatious, meeting the relatively low threshold for a serious issue to be determined, notwithstanding that some grounds faced a low likelihood of success given applicable standards of review.
On irreparable harm, the court accepted that a four-month suspension would impair Chochinov’s livelihood in ways that could not readily be undone: he had already been required to transfer clients to other occupational therapists and might not recover them, and professionals generally cannot sue their regulators for compensatory damages. Harm to professional reputation is also difficult to quantify. These factors together established irreparable harm.
On the balance of convenience, the court weighed the public-protection interest inherent in professional-regulatory matters against the circumstances of this particular registrant. Given Chochinov’s otherwise unblemished twenty-four-year career, the fact that the college had allowed him to practise without restriction throughout the entire disciplinary process since 2018, and the absence of any fresh risk indicators, the court concluded that the public would not be placed at risk by staying the penalty pending appeal. The stay was granted, with costs reserved to the appeal panel.
Key Takeaways
- The RJR–MacDonald three-part test (serious issue, irreparable harm, balance of convenience) governs stay applications in professional-discipline appeals in Manitoba, and courts must expressly factor public protection into the balance-of-convenience analysis where a regulatory order is involved.
- A professional’s inability to seek damages from a regulator, combined with the difficulty of quantifying reputational harm and potential permanent loss of a client base, can satisfy the irreparable-harm branch even where the suspension is relatively short.
- A regulator’s own conduct during proceedings is relevant to the balance of convenience: allowing a registrant to practise unrestricted for years while discipline proceedings unfold can weigh against asserting urgent public-safety justifications to resist a stay.
- The serious-issue threshold is low — an appeal need only be non-frivolous — but courts will still note that individual grounds may face significant headwinds on the merits without that defeating the branch.
Why It Matters
This decision is a practical reminder that professional regulatory bodies face a meaningful risk of stays when they allow lengthy proceedings to run their course without interim restrictions on practice. The Manitoba Court of Appeal’s reasoning signals that a regulator’s decision to leave a member in unrestricted practice throughout an investigation and hearing can undercut its later argument that immediate suspension is necessary to protect the public, strengthening a registrant’s hand on the balance-of-convenience branch.
For practitioners, the case reinforces that irreparable harm in a professional-discipline context turns on more than lost wages during a suspension: permanent client attrition and unquantifiable reputational damage are cognizable harms, and the unavailability of damages against a regulator amplifies their weight. Counsel representing regulated professionals in Manitoba — and likely in other jurisdictions applying the same framework — should assess all three factors holistically rather than treating irreparable harm as the hardest hurdle to clear.