OACETT held its 2024 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on June 1. The meeting brought members together with the Board of Directors to discuss the past year’s performance, provide an overview of OACETT’s goals for the coming year, and answer pertinent questions members may have.

This year, we had 916 registrations for the AGM, with an additional 356 electronic proxy votes submitted. Attendees were briefed on business activities OACETT pursued over the past year to advance the Association and learned of how the Association is addressing members’ needs across Ontario. 

As part of his introductory remarks, president Micheal Mooney, C.E.T., acknowledged the past presidents in attendance, and introduced the OACETT Board of Directors and senior management team. He also thanked board member David Visentin for completing his one-year term as the student representative. Mooney then welcomed Liam Croft, the new student representative, who officially joined the Board on June 7. He then saluted the representatives from Ontario colleges, the government, our partner associations across Canada, and other affiliated associations that were present and thanked them for their continued support and collaboration.

Before president Mooney delivered his year-in-review report, he requested approval of some proposed updates to Bylaw 20. The bylaw updates included changes to fixing the length of the president’s term as president-elect in the definitions and create clarity to reflect the CEO’s role on both OACETT’s Board of Directors and the Fletcher Foundation’s Board of Trustees, as the CEO is a non-voting ex-officio member of OACETT’s Board. OACETT members approved the motion.

Next on the agenda was the president’s year-in-review update, which kicked off with Mooney saying, “It’s been a pleasure to lead our great association for the past year,” and how the year-in-review would serve as a reflection of some of the Association’s successes since OACETT’s last AGM. Here are some of the achievements Mooney highlighted.

Government Relations

Mooney said OACETT is ramping up its government relations activities and is seeing results from their ongoing contract with Counsel Public Affairs in generating introductions and discussions with crucial Ontario government elected and ministry officials. According to Mooney’s update, OACETT’s work with Counsel Public Affairs has increased awareness of the Association and its members’ subject-matter expertise. Presently, seeking mandatory self regulatory status with a defined scope of practice remains unrealistic until OACETT generates even greater awareness and has a different political climate.

Over the past year, OACETT has had several successful meetings with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing. At their invitation, OACETT will submit a proposal to seek exemption from some BCIN exams for appropriately qualified OACETT-certified members. OACETT also established excellent relationships with both the Ministry of Educationand the Ministry of Colleges and Universities, establishing OACETT as a trusted source for subject-matter experts in technology curriculum review. For example, OACETT played a role in the insertion of new mandatory technology courses for Grades 9 and 10. OACETT’s leadership has also met with the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. The productive meeting disclosed how much the ministry values OACETT as a source of best practice ineffectively integrating internationally educated professionals into our certification programs and the Ontario workforce. Earlier this year, OACETT CEO Cheryl Farrow also met with the Ministry of the Attorney General to ensure that OACETT is on their radar as a key stakeholder in the engineering community.

OACETT’s next area of focus is looking at opportunities to have OACETT-certified members recognized as qualified persons (QPs) in specific regulatory instances where we know our members have the expertise and are doing the work and simply require an engineer’s stamp and sign-off. This creates unnecessary bottlenecks. However, OACETT needs your help to share those specific examples, particularly where they are aligned with the government’s key priorities. If you have specific examples of work that you are doing that currently only recognizes professional engineers or other regulated professions as QPs, other than in the Engineering Act itself, please send an email to govrelations@oacett.org

Governance

OACETT’s new smaller, nimbler, competency-based Board of Directors was constituted at the June 2023 board meeting and has been hard atwork throughout the year, focusing on organizational priorities defined in OACETT’s strategic plan.

OACETT also launched brand-new committees in September 2023. The goal was to ensure that the Association provided more opportunities for members to become engaged with the governance of their Association. Judging by the 134 applications we received to serve in various volunteer roles, the interest is definitely there. OACETT’s new committees have been going gang busters, ramping up work on several initiatives. There is also work to be done at the subcommittee level. For example, OACETT will be reconstituting its Awards subcommittee. One of their first tasks will be a review of OACETT’s provincial awards program to ensure relevance and inclusiveness.

Members Services

OACETT was thrilled to launch its new website last summer. The new site is a significant improvement, featuring a user-friendly design that is more graphic intensive and an intuitive structure to help users easily understand how to join OACETT and become certified. If you have suggestions for making the site even better, don’t hesitate to reach out to your member engagement and services representative with your ideas.

Membership and Certification

The Registration and Professional Practice team, in cooperation with Confederation College and the Ontario Heads of Technology, is developing an asynchronous course on ethics and professionalism that will serve as preparation for OACETT’s professional practice exam and will be also eligible for college credits. The program is being piloted as we speak and is expected to be launched across the college system for early 2025.

In 2023, OACETT received 1210 new applications, including 601 students. Additionally, 646 associate members became certified, and 183 existing certified members reclassified to C.E.T.

Technology Professionals Canada

Technology Professionals Canada (TPC) continues to flourish as are unified national alliance. A key initiative they have undertaken is the advancement of a common national technologist certification. The favoured certification within the TPC operations committee and leadership council is Professional Technologist or P.Tech. This title focuses on the professionalism of certified members. This is obviously not a decision that OACETT will take without consulting with its members. In the event of any change, there would be a grandfathering period and no immediate requirement for any certified members to change the certification that they are currently using. However, at the national level, all the provincial associations agree that a common certification would go a long way to strengthening recognition and labour mobility and all the organizations have committed to specifically exploring a move to P.Tech.

Technology Accreditation Canada

Technology Accreditation Canada (TAC) is doing work in responding to the long-standing concern articulated by Ontario colleges that the TAC accreditation process is too duplicative of the colleges’ internal program review processes. A gap analysis is going to be conducted that will hopefully identify paths to a streamlined accreditation process that addresses that duplication and will pave the way for greater uptake of accreditation in Ontario.

CEO Report: Progress against the strategic plan

During the AGM, OACETT CEO Cheryl Farrow, CAE, MBA, reported on the Association’s progress against the strategic plan, presenting OACETT’s progress in delivering against the three priorities: Careers, Chapters and Communities.

Careers

From the Careers perspective, OACETT launched on March 4 two new Municipal Infrastructure designations for inspectors and contracta dministrators, the first new designations for OACETT in over 20 years. With leadership from the Emerging Markets Committee of the former IETO, OACETT volunteers and staff have spent more than two years developing the standards and the processes to identify members eligible to be granted the new designations. A lot of very positive buzz was generated during the pilot process, working with seven municipalities of all sizes and from multiple regions across the province. In May, RPPC (Registration and Professional Practice Committee) granted the Municipal Infrastructure Inspector designation to 23 members, and 34 new applications are under review.

In August, OACETT will participate in the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference to help promote the value of these targeted designations. Even if the designation does not apply to your role, it is an example of the work that OACETT is doing to enhance the profile of our profession.

In helpful preparation for the asynchronous PPE course with colleges project, OACETT’s exam and study materials were completely updated, driven by the need to align the content with the new governance model.

As previously mentioned, the new OACETT website, which includes an update of the CTEN job board, continues to provide solid opportunitiesfor both our members and our employer partners.

OACETT continues to expand its CPD offerings, looking to cover as many disciplines as possible and identify partnerships that will help us to keep CPD affordable. OACETT’s recent AI Summit provided some excellent content that was available and relevant to all members at no cost.

Also, the annual Career Summit for internationally educated professionals continues to grow and to engage more partner agencies. In 2023, a very well-received speed-networking component was added to the in-person event and liked by all. Watch for information about the 2024 event in the early fall.

Chapters

On the chapter front, OACETT continues to make a concerted effort to arrange for senior leadership participation at annual chapter meetings to update chapter members on what’s happening at the provincial level and allow them to bring ideas and concerns to OACETT’s leadership.

In fall 2023, OACETT launched a new Chapter Forum initiative, which provides an opportunity for chapter chairs and other chapter executivesto dialogue with the Member Engagement and Services Committee (MESC) and staff team to discuss best practices, needs, and concerns. A second forum was held in January 2024, and in-person regional meetings took place this June at the OACETT Annual Conference.

One of MESC’s 2024 major work plan items is a review and overhaul of the chapter operations manual with a goal to make it more accessible and interactive in a video format. A more comprehensive orientation and training for new chapter executives is also being worked on.

Communities

OACETT has made on going progress in our work with our provincial counterparts through TPC. The Association also continues to host annual leadership summits with our key association partners in the engineering community in Ontario, namely Professional Engineers Ontario, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers and the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies Ontario, to provide mutual updates, address areas of interest and, where appropriate, discuss any issues that are impacting OACETT members.

The Association distributed a comprehensive member survey in June 2023 to help us understand member priorities and ensure the Association addresses at least some of them in its 2024 business plan. OACETT shared detailed findings in The Ontario Technologist’s November/December 2023 issue. Key commitments included establishing a mentorship program and hiring a dedicated resource tofocus on enhancing our CPD offerings, both of which are part of this year’s business plan.

Significant progress has been made on a couple of OACETT’s KPIs. For instance, we launched the free student membership pilot and established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee as part of our new governance model.

OACETT continues to provide strong leadership at the national level on all fronts, with their registrar becoming the chair of the newly reconstituted National Technology Registrars group. CEO Farrow is leading the planning for NEAT (National Engineering & Applied Science Technology) Week, and president Mooney has been a strong advocate for governance review at both TPC and TAC.

OACETT also aims to maintain its target of a minimum of 80 per cent of the members eligible to be certified, having achieved their credentials. With OACETT recently receiving a number of new applications, that figure is currently at 76 per cent. The Association has also just recruited many new members to the Admissions Subcommittee to assist with the pace of processing applications.