Internationally trained engineers will no longer be required to have Canadian experience to be licensed in Ontario, as the province adopts a new law that’s meant to remove the barriers keeping skilled immigrants from working in their former professions.
On Tuesday, Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), which represents the fourth largest regulated profession in the province with 85,649 members, becomes the first professional regulatory body after the law was introduced to remove the requirement from their application criteria.
“By no longer requiring proof of Canadian experience when applying for an engineering licence, PEO will effectively ensure that qualified international applicants are licensed fairly and without undue delay so they can actively work as engineers,” said Jennifer Quaglietta, the regulator’s CEO registrar.
“Our new application process for professional engineering licences is efficient, transparent and fair, and will provide most applicants with a registration decision within six months of submitting a completed application.”
The lack of Canadian work experience has been cited as a key barrier to earning professional designations in Canada by skilled immigrants in returning to their fields of training.
In 2021, amid a labour shortage during the pandemic, the Ontario government introduced new regulations to force some professional regulators to drop Canadian work-experience requirements from their licensing criteria — and to speed up processing times.
“This is, quite frankly, a game-changer for newcomers coming here, but also for businesses who are struggling with a huge labour shortage,” said Labour Minister Monte McNaughton, whose ministry also oversees training, skills development and immigration.
“Only a quarter of internationally trained immigrants in our province are working in the professions they studied for. This is an injustice to these workers, and it doesn’t take a math major to figure out the current numbers don’t add up.”
He said roughly 300,000 jobs continue to go unfilled across the province every day, including thousands in engineering and it costs billions in lost productivity.
The amended Fair Access to Regulated Professions and Compulsory Trades Act covers 36 non-health-related professions and trades, ranging from architecture to teaching, social work, plumbing, electricians’ work, autobody repair and hairstyling.
McNaughton said the regulatory bodies have until Dec. 2 to remove the Canadian work experience requirement, unless an exemption is granted for public health and safety reasons.
Regulators will be fined up to $100,000 for non-compliance.
“We’re not going to have any regulatory body stand in our way. We want to help lift immigrants up so they can earn more money for themselves and their families and also fill labour shortages and grow our economy,” he told the Star in an interview. “There’s going to be a zero tolerance.”
Despite the removal of the Canadian experience requirement, licensing applicants to the engineering profession are still subject to a rigorous process that covers their knowledge and competencies in technical communication, project management and professional accountability.
Candidates are still required to have 48-months of professional experience in engineering and pass a national professional practice exam that includes ethics, professional practice, engineering, law and professional liability.
“This multi-faceted process will continue to ensure that all professional engineers meet rigorous qualifications for licences and that only properly qualified individuals practise engineering,” said Quaglietta, adding that up to 60 per cent of the engineering licence applications each year are from internationally trained engineers.
Clarification — May 25, 2023: Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) is the first professional regulatory body to remove the requirement of Canadian experience in order to be licensed from their application criteria after the provincial government introduced legislation. A previous version of this article said they were first.
Nicholas Keung is a Toronto-based reporter covering immigration for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @nkeungSHARE:
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