Licensing offer draws few takers
The scheme by the Professional Engineers Ontario, launched in May 2007, allows international engineering graduates – and their Canadian counterparts – to waive the $230 licensing application fee and $70 enrolment cost for an intern training program within six months of arriving in Canada or graduating from a Canadian university.
As of the end of June, only 246 of 3,500 newcomers to Ontario with engineering qualifications applied to the $500,000 program. The number is also low among Ontario's 4,500 engineering graduates; fewer than 20 per cent of them have applied so far. Typically, one-third of the province's engineering grads apply for licensure within five years of graduation.
Professional Engineers Ontario chief executive officer and registrar Kim Allen said the body had hoped to attract 3,500 applicants through the program in its first year and was surprised by the poor results. He attributed it to the lack of awareness of the program.
Engineers, one of the largest cohorts of skilled migrants to Canada, do not need a professional engineer's designation to be employed in engineering jobs as long as their work is being supervised and signed off by a licensed engineer.
To increase awareness of the scheme, the engineering body plans to launch a province-wide campaign this fall.
Related News

Scientists Built a Genius Device That Generates Electricity 'Out of Thin Air'
LONDON - They found it buried in the muddy shores of the Potomac River more than three decades ago: a strange "sediment organism" that could do things nobody had ever seen before in bacteria.
This unusual microbe, belonging to the Geobacter genus, was first noted for its ability to produce magnetite in the absence of oxygen, but with time scientists found it could make other things too, like bacterial nanowires that conduct electricity.
For years, researchers have been trying to figure out ways to usefully exploit that natural gift, and they might have just hit pay-dirt with a device they're calling the…