Great news. Ontario has become the first province in Canada to direct 36 professional regulatory bodies to make it easy for foreign-trained professionals to be accredited to work in Ontario. This is a major game changer as Canada removes the registration barrier for 36 types of foreign-trained professionals

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.

“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 Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), which represents 85,649 members and is the fourth largest regulated profession in the province, made the decision on Tuesday to remove the requirement for “Canadian Experience” as a registration prerequisite.

“By no longer requiring proof of Canadian experience when applying for an engineering license, 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 licenses is efficient, transparent, and fair, and will provide most applicants with a registration decision within six months of submitting a completed application.”

Professional Engineers Ontario CEO Jennifer Quaglietta.

The lack of Canadian work experience has been cited as a key barrier to earning professional designations in Canada by skilled immigrants returning to their fields of training.

In 2021, amid a labor 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.

“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 labor shortages and grow our economy,” he told the Star in an interview. “There’s going to be zero tolerance.”

The Canadian experience requirement for licensing applicants to the engineering profession has been removed, but the process is still rigorous and assesses their knowledge and competencies in technical communication, project management, and professional accountability.

To be eligible, candidates are required to possess 48 months of engineering experience and clear a national professional practice test that evaluates their comprehension of ethics, engineering practice, professional liability, engineering law, and so on.

“This multi-faceted process will continue to ensure that all professional engineers meet rigorous qualifications for licenses and that only properly qualified individuals practice engineering,” said Quaglietta, adding that up to 60 percent of the engineering license applications each year are from internationally trained engineers.