On May 23, the Ontario Minister of Labour, Immigration, Training, and Skills Development, Monte McNaughton, in Toronto, informed that the Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) removed the condition of Canadian Work Experience from their application requirement. PEO is the first organization to do so.

According to the minister, the removal of the condition of the Canadian work experience will make it easier for competent professionals to get jobs in the field of their studies. The minister further added that It’s common to see that skilled individuals that are qualified engineers, doctors, or accountants are working in a low-wage job that is not related to their professionals. This means that individuals are finding it difficult to work in their professions or are forced to work in unrelated jobs.

As per the latest PEO work experience requirement, applicants that are applying for an engineering license must supply four years of engineering experience after completing their graduation, which is real and agreeable. The applicant must have gained at least one year of such experience under a licensed professional engineer in a Canadian jurisdiction. The minister further added that 300,000 jobs are vacant in Ontario, and thousands are specifically in engineering, which can impact the productivity of billions.

This removal of Canadian work experience is in response to the Working for Workers Act of 2021. According to this act, licensed professions, including engineering, must evaluate the applicants in a fair and unbiased manner. This is to make sure that the newcomers can seamlessly continue their jobs in Ontario without any obstacles or unfair treatment.

According to PEO’s president Roydon Fraser, 60 % of the license applications that are received every year are mainly from overseas skilled engineers. He further mentioned that the release of the work experience condition would enable eligible overseas engineers to get the license more quickly. As per PEO’s 2019 data, Ontario hosted 85,649 licensed engineers. This data was the second largest recorded data of overseas skilled individuals, with 24,258 individuals registered in the profession. As per the minister, abolishing the work experience requirement will allow eligible professionals to get jobs in their fields while fulfilling the license and examination requirements of the province.

According to Royce, PEO will keep working to make sure that all competent engineers satisfy the required licensing qualifications, and through a competency-based assessment model as well as other methods for evaluation, only the rightly qualified people can practice engineering in the province.

Currently, in Ontario, a newcomer with the skills and technical capabilities to qualify for the profession’s licensing examination may still be stopped from registering themselves without Canadian work experience. This implies that individuals are required to have Canadian work experience. For this, they can get a job experience in any field, even if the job is not related to their profession.

Other licensed professions in Ontario

In Canada, Ontario is the most populated province, but in various sectors, it is experiencing a severe labor shortage. The most notable obstacle to filling the vacant jobs is obtaining the accreditation needed for the regulated professions.

The province of Ontario is making efforts to make it easier for newcomers to pursue jobs in licensed professions. For instance, the province has established laws that enable nurses to work in the province from other Canadian jurisdictions without needing to register with the relevant health regulatory institutions. In addition, it is also permitting foreign nurses to enroll in a temporary class and instantly begin their work while they legally register themselves. According to the report, last year, 12,385 new nurses were registered in the College of Nurses Ontario, and 5124 nurses were qualified from foreign countries. Additionally, the College has also revised its language proficiency policy, and it has also partnered with other colleges and universities to make it easier for applicants to satisfy the educational conditions.