Dear Registrants,
The College is embarking on a journey of significant change to meet the needs of Ontarians now and into the future. The College’s duties and objects are defined in sections 2.1 and 3 of the Health Professions Procedural Code, being Schedule 2 to the Regulated Health Professions Act,1991. The duties of the College are to work with the Minister of Health to ensure a sufficient supply of competent regulated health professionals, and to serve and protect the public interest when carrying out its objects. It is also incumbent upon the College to work collaboratively with other entities, such as the Office of the Fairness Commissioner (OFC). The College has been notified of concerns about the fairness of its psychology registration practises for several years. This is not new and has been published publicly in various reports from the OFC. For example, in its 2016-2017 report, the OFC noted, “the College of Psychologists of Ontario reintroduced a proposal to close the Psychological Associate class while maintaining a doctoral degree as the standard for entry to practice for Canadian and American educated applicants. The OFC has found the proposal unfair because it would restrict qualified applicants’ access to the profession of psychology.” Despite these reported concerns, the College’s stance from 2019 until these registration modernization initiatives has been to “uphold the doctoral standard” and to eliminate registration of masters-level psychological practitioners.
Today, under the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, a graduate with a clinical psychology Master’s degree can choose to either remain in Ontario and work for four years, without College evaluation, and then complete the year of supervised practice (along with the oral examination) to register as a Psychological Associate. Alternatively, they can choose to move to a Canadian jurisdiction that neither has the four-year work experience requirement, nor the oral examination, and then move back to Ontario and become registered here as a Psychologist. This creates the double standard that the OFC warned about many years ago.
There is no doubt that there are challenges ahead and that some of our registrants have questions about these potential changes. It is important for the College to receive your feedback and yet it is also incumbent upon the Council (Board of Directors) to function independently, in the public interest, and to fulfil their fiduciary duty, even when their decisions may be unpopular with some registrants. Registrants of the professions are encouraged to engage in the governance process through Board elections. Change can be difficult; with change also comes opportunity. Ontario is poised to be a location of choice for newcomers from across Canada and the globe. The current state is that Master’s psychologists exist across Canada, including Ontario, and around the world, and the College is dedicated to reducing barriers to entering the profession. I am excited to learn that some educational institutions are taking a lead as first movers to plan for the possible
I end my message with the following question, why the outrage when Ontario attempts to align their registration regulation with the Yukon (newest regulated jurisdiction; 2025)? Why was there not a national concern from the Associations and others regarding the people of the Yukon? What are the assumptions at work?
We look forward to working with other jurisdictions both within Canada and globally.
Tony DeBono, MBA, Ph.D., C.Psych.
Registrar & CEO