Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of a medical professional’s freedom of expression on social media when commenting on politically sensitive issues unrelated to direct patient care.
• Characterization of a short social media video (and its follow-up comments) as potential disciplinary misconduct versus protected political speech.
• Legality and reasonableness of the Comité des requêtes’ decision to issue a reprimand based on complaints and the syndic adjoint’s investigative report.
• Superior Court’s judicial review assessment of whether the Comité des requêtes respected procedural fairness and applied the proper legal framework to freedom of expression.
• Court of Appeal’s evaluation of the criteria for granting leave to appeal (article 30 C.C.P.), including proportionality, interests of justice, and the seriousness of the legal questions.
• Allocation of legal costs at the leave stage and refusal to order the professional body to fund the resident’s appeal, with costs left to follow the outcome of the future appeal.

Factual background

The respondent, Sirin Chami, is a medical resident in Quebec. In May 2024, she posted a 45-second video on her personal Instagram and TikTok accounts. In the video, she wore her lab coat, identified herself as a Canadian doctor, and condemned Israel’s actions in the Israel-Palestine conflict as a genocide, while also denouncing Zionists. She later expanded on her views in written responses to comments posted under the video. These public statements triggered a significant reaction, and the Collège des médecins du Québec received 15 complaints from members of the public concerning her conduct and statements online.

Professional investigation and initial disciplinary outcome

Following receipt of the complaints, the Collège initiated an investigation through the office of the syndic adjoint. After reviewing the social media posts and the context in which they were made, the syndic adjoint recommended that the Comité des requêtes issue a reprimand against the medical resident. Relying on that investigative report and after hearing representations made on behalf of the respondent by her counsel, the Comité des requêtes decided on 9 September 2024 to formally reprimand her. The reprimand was thus an administrative/disciplinary measure grounded in the professional body’s mandate to protect the public and uphold standards of professional conduct, in circumstances where a physician-in-training used her professional status in a public, politically charged communication on social media. While the decision refers to the reprimand, there is no indication of a detailed written set of “policy terms” or the verbatim clauses of specific professional codes or guidelines beyond the general framework of professional discipline and conduct; the focus in the appellate judgment is on the nature of the reprimand and its legal justification, rather than on particular codified clauses.

Judicial review before the Superior Court

The medical resident challenged the reprimand by filing an application for judicial review in the Superior Court, District of Montreal. The matter was heard by Justice Eleni Yiannakis, who rendered judgment on 21 October 2025. In that judgment (Chami c. Comité des requêtes du Collège des médecins du Québec, 2025 QCCS 3764), the judge quashed the decision of the Comité des requêtes and returned the case for a new hearing before a differently constituted panel of the Comité. Although the present Court of Appeal decision does not reproduce the Superior Court’s full reasoning, its outcome indicates that Justice Yiannakis found fault serious enough—whether in the assessment of freedom of expression, procedural fairness, or reasonableness—to justify setting aside the reprimand and ordering a new hearing. The Superior Court therefore effectively reset the disciplinary process, leaving the question of whether any sanction was justified to be reconsidered de novo by a new panel.

Emergence of a novel legal question on professional speech

The Collège des médecins and the Comité des requêtes, dissatisfied with the quashing of their decision, sought leave to appeal the Superior Court judgment to the Quebec Court of Appeal. At the leave stage, Justice Stephen W. Hamilton, J.A. emphasized that the proposed appeal raised a question of principle concerning the limits of a professional’s freedom of expression in relation to political speech unconnected to her day-to-day professional activities. The case sits at the intersection of administrative law, professional regulation, and freedom of expression in the era of social media. The Court of Appeal noted that the Supreme Court of Canada has already addressed disciplinary limits on lawyers’ expression in cases such as Doré v. Barreau du Québec and Groia v. Law Society of Upper Canada, where comments related more directly to professional practice and courtroom conduct. In addition, various professional disciplinary tribunals have addressed professionals’ political or public statements in other contexts. However, the Court of Appeal pointed out that neither party was able to identify an existing judgment from a superior court or court of appeal in Canada dealing specifically with the issue presented here: a physician or medical resident’s political expression on social media, expressly tied to their professional identity but concerning broader geopolitical issues rather than clinical practice. This novelty weighed heavily in favour of submitting the matter to the Court of Appeal on the merits.

Appellate criteria: leave, proportionality, and interests of justice

Under article 30 C.C.P., leave to appeal from a judgment rendered on an application for judicial review is discretionary and will be granted where the judge considers that the matter should be submitted to the Court of Appeal, for example because it raises a question of principle, a new issue, or a legal question that has generated conflicting case law. The Court must also look to the broader framework of the Code of Civil Procedure, including the “best interests of justice” in article 9 and the principle of proportionality in article 18, ensuring that an appeal is not doomed to fail and that judicial resources are used efficiently. Applying these criteria, Justice Hamilton held that the proposed appeal met the threshold for leave. The legal question was sufficiently important and novel, given the widespread use of social media by professionals and the delicate balance between regulated conduct and constitutional or quasi-constitutional rights to freedom of expression. The respondent medical resident argued that proportionality would be better served by denying leave, allowing the matter simply to return to the Comité des requêtes for a new hearing, with the possibility of a further appeal only if one of the parties was again dissatisfied. The Court of Appeal disagreed, considering that sending the matter back without appellate guidance, only to have it likely return to the courts later, would not be an efficient use of judicial resources. Since the proposed appeal was not manifestly hopeless and raised a serious question that would benefit from clarification at the appellate level, the interests of justice favoured granting leave.

Procedural directions for the appeal

Having decided to grant leave to appeal, the Court of Appeal made a series of procedural orders to structure the forthcoming appeal. The Court directed that the matter proceed on the basis of memoranda rather than full appellate briefs, on an accelerated schedule. The appellants (the Collège des médecins and the Comité des requêtes) were ordered to file and notify their memorandum, with a written argument capped at 20 pages plus prescribed schedules, by 4 March 2026. The respondent was given until 15 April 2026 to file and notify her memorandum, also limited to 20 pages, along with any additional documentary elements not contained in the appellants’ schedules. The file was then referred to the Master of the Rolls to issue a notice of hearing, and equal oral argument time—45 minutes per side—was allocated. These directions underscore the Court’s view that the issue is legally significant but suitable for streamlined treatment, allowing timely appellate clarification while containing procedural complexity.

Costs, legal fees, and overall outcome at the leave stage

The respondent requested that, if leave to appeal were granted, the Court should order the Collège des médecins and the Comité des requêtes to pay her legal fees for the appeal. Justice Hamilton observed that, even assuming the Court possessed jurisdiction to make such an order at this preliminary stage, the record disclosed no basis justifying it. The Court therefore refused to grant any special order requiring the professional bodies to fund the respondent’s appeal. Instead, the judgment concludes by specifying that costs are to “follow the outcome of the appeal,” leaving any eventual monetary award for costs to be determined by the panel that will hear and decide the appeal on the merits. In this leave decision, the successful parties are the applicants, namely the Collège des médecins du Québec and the Comité des requêtes, as their application for leave to appeal is granted. No damages or quantified costs are ordered at this stage, and the total monetary award in their favour cannot be determined from this decision, since costs are expressly deferred to the final disposition of the appeal.