Characteristics of a Profession Artur Victoria Forewords In Québec, 54 professions are governed by the Professional Code and supervised by 46 professional orders. As stipulated in article 25 of the Professional Code, several aspects must be considered to determine whether a profession should be regulated and supervised by a professional order. The factors taken into account are mainly related to the nature of the professional activities in question and the characteristics of the individuals who practise them: - The knowledge required in order to engage in the activities - The degree of independence enjoyed by the persons practising the activities and the difficulty which persons not having the same training and qualifications would have in assessing those activities - The personal nature of the relationships between such persons and those having recourse to their services, by reason of the special trust which the latter must place in them - The gravity of the prejudice which might be sustained by those who have recourse to the services of such persons, because their competence was not supervised by an order - The confidential nature of the information to which such persons are made privy in the course of practising their profession - Québec Inter professional Council definition. Characteristics of a Profession In a profession, autonomy and self-regulation still hold true or are even desirable in the modem corporate and bureaucratic world. A profession's right to exist, along with the power and privileges its members enjoy, rests upon the professions upholding of public values through the development, transmission and application of a body of knowledge. The creation of this body of knowledge and its concentration in the hands of a few creates a knowledge gap between the professional and client. That gap gives the profession power. Such power is reinforced by differential access to other resources -technological, physical and organizational. For example, it is not just medical knowledge but access to medical technology that gives the medical profession its capacity to heal. It is the institutional links to courts that make barristers so effective.