The Ontario Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development, Monte McNaughton, announced on May 23 in Toronto that Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) is the first professional association in the province to remove the requirement for Canadian work experience from their application criteria.
According to the minister, eliminating the requirement for Canadian work experience will make it easier for qualified individuals to get employment in their field of study.
“It’s an all-too-common experience: meeting a skilled newcomer who was trained as an engineer, doctor, or accountant, working in a low-wage job that has nothing to do with their profession,” said McNaughton.
Candidates requesting for a licence must be able to provide 48 months of verifiable and acceptable engineering experience after graduation, under the most recent PEO work experience standards. That experience must have included at least 12 months working for a licenced professional engineer in Canada.
According to McNaughton, there are 300,000 empty positions in the province, many of which are in engineering and might result in billions of dollars’ worth of lost output.
The Working for Workers Act of 2021 is what prompted the change. According to the Act, regulated professions like engineering must evaluate competency without discrimination. To guarantee that newcomers may continue their careers in Ontario, this is being done.
Sixty percent of the licence applications submitted each year, according to PEO President Roydon Fraser, are from engineers with foreign training. He contends that eliminating the prerequisite of Canadian work experience will hasten the licencing of skilled foreign engineers.
There were 85,649 licenced engineers in Ontario as of 2019, according PEO statistics. With 24,258 registered members, it boasts the second-highest number of members with foreign training. The removal of the work experience requirement, according to the province, will allow qualified individuals to pursue their professions while still meeting Ontario’s licencing and test criteria.
By using a competency-based assessment methodology and other evaluation techniques, “PEO will continue to ensure that all professional engineers meet rigorous licencing requirements and that only appropriately qualified individuals practise engineering,” adds Royce.
A immigrant who has the knowledge and expertise necessary to pass the licencing examinations for their profession might nevertheless face barriers to registration under the existing system if they have no prior work experience in Canada. This implies that many people must obtain this experience through whatever employment they can find, even if it’s in a field unrelated to their field, like retail or hospitality.
Other Registered Professions
Ontario, the most populous province in Canada, is currently facing significant labor shortages across multiple sectors. One major obstacle in filling vacant positions is the challenge of obtaining the necessary accreditation for newcomers in regulated professions.
To address this issue, Ontario is implementing measures to facilitate the entry of newcomers into regulated fields. For instance, it has recently passed legislation that enables nurses from other Canadian jurisdictions to work in the province without undergoing registration with the relevant health regulatory colleges. Additionally, internationally educated nurses are now able to register in a temporary class, allowing them to commence work sooner while they progress towards full registration.
According to the College of Nurses Ontario, out of the 12,385 new nurses registered with the college last year, 5,124 received their training outside of the country.
Furthermore, the College has made adjustments to its language proficiency policy and has established collaborations with colleges and universities to assist applicants in meeting the educational requirements.
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