Proposed New Reporting Requirements for Licence Holders and Certificate of Authorization Holders

Purpose

Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) is seeking feedback on a proposal to introduce new annual reporting requirements for licence holders. The proposed requirements would support PEO in fulfilling its public protection mandate and its regulatory functions, by ensuring PEO has accurate and up-to-date information about licence holders and Certificate of Authorization holders that is relevant to their engineering practice and/or the provision of services to the public. 

Background

It is a well-established best practice for professional regulators to collect a range of information from those they regulate on an annual basis to support delivery of effective regulatory oversight and public protection. The types of information commonly collected by regulators include:

• Identification and contact information;
• credentials and qualifications information;
• professional conduct and fitness-to-practise information;
• employment and practice details; and
• certain financial and business information.

This information is used to ensure that the regulator is able to properly identify individual licence/ authorization holders, is made aware of any issues that could impact a licence/authorization holder’s ability to competently and ethically provide the services for which they are licenced or authorized, and to understand the division of disciplines, roles and other work-related details in order to better regulate the profession as a whole.

Historically, PEO has not consistently collected the required information from licence and certificate of authorization holders. This has led to incomplete and inaccurate information about licence and certificate of authorization holders, which has limited PEO’s ability to effectively communicate with these parties, identify potential risks to the public, and make informed decisions about how to best serve the public interest and the profession. 

This issue came into the spotlight following the 2016 Downsview Park stage collapse; among other items, the 2019 Coroner’s Inquiry Report recommended that PEO collect additional information from licence holders to better understand their areas of engineering practice. In 2023, the Professional Engineers Act was amended to allow for regulations requiring licence and certificate of authorization holders to provide specified information to PEO. 

This proposal now seeks to identify what that specified information should be. In developing this proposal, PEO conducted a jurisdictional review of annual reporting requirements used by engineering and other professional regulators across Canada. The proposed reporting requirements have been informed by these established regulatory practices to help ensure they are consistent with approaches used by peer regulators, reflect current best practices, and support PEO's public protection mandate.

Objective

By establishing annual reporting requirements for all prescribed licence and certificate of authorization holders, PEO is seeking to ensure that it has the necessary information to:

1. Accurately identify licence holders and certificate of authorization holders and contact them when needed.
2. Evaluate if a licence holder or certificate of authorization holder may present an elevated risk to the public.
3. Better understand the practice of engineering in Ontario by understanding the type of work licence and certificate of authorization holders carry out and who makes up the profession.

This information will allow for improved regulatory oversight, including for early identification of potential issues and allowing for targeted interventions in areas of higher risk. To this end, any potentially relevant information will be assessed to determine whether there is a risk of harm to the public and, if necessary, initiate an investigation.

Scope and Application

The proposed reporting requirements for licence holders would apply to all Professional Engineering licence holders and limited licence holders. The proposed reporting requirements for certificate of authorization holders would apply to all certificate of authorization holders regardless of whether or not they are a licence holder. If a person is both a licence holder and a certificate of authorization holder, they would be required to provide both sets of information.

PEO is proposing to collect the information annually, as part of the licence and/or certificate of authorization renewal process.

Overview of Proposed Information to be Reported 

The tables below provide an overview of the proposed information PEO is seeking to collect from licensees and certificate of authorization holders as part of the proposed new reporting requirements.

The information collected will be kept and used in accordance with the confidentiality provisions of the Professional Engineers Act and any applicable PEO policies. Information that is already publicly available on PEO’s public registry would remain unchanged, including licence holders’ legal and assumed names, employer information, and licence information.