Irwin Fefergrad is currently the Registrar/Chief Executive Officer and in-house legal counsel for the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario, the regulatory body for Ontario's over 8,000 dentists. He oversees all the professional, statutory, legal, policy, insurance and administrative activities of the College.

Mr. Fefergrad has the distinction of being the first lawyer in the history of the Law Society of Upper Canada to achieve a double specialty: one in civil litigation and the other in health law. He is the first Ontario lawyer to receive a specialty in the practice of health law.

After nearly 30 years in private practice, he came to the College in 2000. Under Mr. Fefergrad's leadership, the College has taken a proactive role on a number of fronts. From privacy legislation to health profession incorporations, from labour mobility to ethics, the College has set the standard for regulators across the country.

In May 2001, he was named Adjunct Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. In August 2001, he accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Dentistry.

In September 2003, Mr. Fefergrad was appointed to the Board of the Royal College of Dentists of Canada.

In addition, he was one of the founding directors of the Canadian Dental Regulatory Authorities Federation and served for several years on its Executive Committee. He continues to very active in the work of the Federation of Health Regulatory Colleges of Ontario.

Mr. Fefergrad is much in demand provincially, nationally and internationally as a guest lecturer in the area of health law and associated issues such as:

• disclosure requirements and consequences of non-disclosure;
• prosecuting a sexual abuse hearing;
• developing an investigation protocol;
• preparing witnesses and expert witnesses;
• writing reasons for decision;
• understanding the rules of evidence;
• gathering evidence and the Charter;
• dealing with frivolous and vexatious complaints;
• judicial trends in informed consent;
• benefits of alternate dispute resolution;
• future of self-regulation.

He has also joined with many judges, such as Justices Cronk, Goudge, Laskin, Bassel, and Farley, to present educational seminars to government and other members of the legal profession.

Mr. Fefergrad has a special interest in education. He has designed and will teach a learning module on ethics to students at the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Toronto. He was instrumental in the design of the College's innovative quality assurance program.

He is currently enrolled in a Master's program in health education at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education.

Also, Mr. Fefergrad was a contributing author to the book, Dental Law in Canada, which was published in 2004 under the guidance of Dalhousie University. Most recently he was guest editor of the publication Current Practice: Dental Hygiene.

He continues with active involvement in the legal profession. Since 1973, Mr. Fefergrad has been an active member of the Ontario Bar Association and the Canadian Bar Association.

In 2009, he was appointed to a three-year term as a member of the Council of the Medico-Legal Society of Toronto, the first dental representative since the Society's founding in 1950.

Before joining the College, Mr. Fefergrad was senior partner with the law firm of Fefergrad, Dizgun in Toronto for over two decades. Called to the Ontario Bar in 1973, he started his legal practice with the firm of Shibley Righton McCutcheon. He continues to appear, from time to time, on health law related matters at tribunals and the courts.

Over the years, Mr. Fefergrad has also made a serious commitment to community work. He served on the Board of Directors of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for almost a decade and as a director of Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto for six years.

He has served as legal counsel to the Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto, and done pro bono legal work for the Advocacy Resource Centre for the Handicapped. From 1995-1997, he was president of the Muki Baum Association for the Rehabilitation of the Multi-Handicapped.