Engineers Canada seeks to be clearing house for immigrant engineers’ credentials

Engineers Canada reports that the government would like it to become the sole body to assess the engineering education credentials of foreign engineers who are thinking of immigrating to Canada.

The Canadian government requires some economic class immigration applicants to submit an educational credential assessment (ECA) to verify that their academic credentials are equal to those in Canada.

Engineers Canada intends to become designated by Citizenship and Immigration Canada as the agency for providing those ECAs by next year.

Currently none of the three organizations that are designated by Citizenship and Immigration Canada to conduct educational assessments are engineering organizations. If Engineers Canada becomes a CIC-designated organization it will join the professional bodies of doctors and pharmacists who already have the right to perform such educational assessments.

One of the outstanding issues is that even after approval, an applicant would still have to have their qualifications assessed a second time by the professional engineering association in the province or territory where they seek to become licensed. And currently not all of those provincial and territorial regulatory bodies are willing to accept an academic assessment that has been done by another regulating body.

Engineers Canada says the benefit of them acting as the central clearinghouse for all applications from overseas would allow them to coordinate with the federal government and the different provincial and territorial regulatory bodies. It would also allow them to eliminate duplication in the processing of assessments, and would mean they would manage the logistics of the documentation and payments.

For the potential immigrating engineers, they say, having one clearing house would help them to manage their expectations before they arrive in Canada, and would help them to learn more about the process of licensing.

Engineers Canada suggests that the success of the program depends on most of the provincial and territorial bodies accepting their assessment. It says that applicants will be “clearly advised” which jurisdictions will do so.

Engineers Canada is the national umbrella organization for the professional engineering licensing bodies and is based in Ottawa.

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