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WHAT DOOntario’s electrical contractorshave to say about licensing?Steel City ®Adjustable RingA quick solutionfor a common rough-in problemLike all new things, electrical contractorlicensing in Ontario is takingsome getting used to. And while it’scome a long way since its introduction in2007, some say it still has quite a ways togo before it’s fully accepted and lauded.“The license has had a positive effect,but there were tremendous amounts ofgrowing pains with its introduction,”says Glenn Carr of Campbell and KennedyElectric Ltd., who’s also chair of theElectrical Contractor Registration Agency’s(ECRA’s) board. “A lot of problemsarose with the interpretation and implementationof the ESA [Electrical SafetyAuthority] license guidelines,” he says.When the license was being created, therewasn’t enough representation from actualelectrical contractors on ESA’s board and,Carr adds, there still isn’t.“As contractors, we read the regulations in one respect,” saysCarr, while, “ESA—not being in the contracting business—interpret it differently... They’ve taken the electrical contractorout of the licensing, operating it solely out of ESA.” As a result,ESA established guidelines and regulations that are ‘disembodied’from the actual contractors that must follow them; thismeans, inevitably, that contractors won’t always see eye-to-eyewith ESA on what certain regulations really mean.Gary Beer of Jay Electric Ltd. & Enerscan Control—who’salso an electrical contractor representative on the ECRAboard—agrees with Carr. “Terms of governance are always anissue, but people have to understand that this license is brandnew; it’s taken 40 years to get us to this point, so it’s still in astate of flux, and it takes time to correct these issues.”Beer adds that some contractors feel threatened by thepower ESA now wields over their businesses. “Now that ESA’staken over, they have the ability to suspend, cancel, shut down,etc.,” says Beer. “Contractors didn’t anticipate this, and somefeel like they’re in peril because suddenly there’s an authoritythere that can shut you down, take away your permits, andstop you from making any money.”Some contractors also wondered why they had to fork overtheir cash for a license that wasn’t yet established in their industryor among the general public. “At first, the license probablyseemed like a bureaucratic money-grab,” says Don Gosen ofGosen Electric Ltd., who serves as vice-chair of ECRA’s board.“It’s been a bit of a process getting contractors on-side,” headds, “but now I think that they see the advantage of it. It’snot a money-grab at all, but a way of firmly establishing thequalified electrical contractors in the province.”License growing pains also included a surprising amountof applications being sent in to ECRA, and the immense taskWeighing in onNova Scotia’sproposed provincialelectrical contractorlicensing, both Carrand Gosen agree:Learn fromOntario’s mistakes!of evaluating and conferring a licensedelectrical contractor (LEC) title toeach. “ESA has done a marvelous jobin processing the applications,” notesCarr, “although there were some unfortunatedelays because it was so hard forus to anticipate the workload.”Weighing in on Nova Scotia’s proposedprovincial electrical contractorlicensing, both Carr and Gosen agree:Learn from Ontario’s mistakes!“We should hope that they can learnfrom us, and not learn everything thehard way,” says Gosen. “There werenew challenges for us on a regularbasis. Language barriers, huge volumesof applications that we received, newMasters licensing, people that had electricallicenses so old that it was hard toverify their qualifications... You couldwrite a pretty long list of challenges that we faced and we, inturn, found ways to deal with them.”“Once we’re through our growing pains, it’ll be an excellentsystem in Ontario,” adds Carr. “If they pick it up, it’llbe from the point of view of ours, and they can avoid thetroubles we’ve been through.”Carr, Beer and Gosen agree that, while there are still a fewkinks to iron out of Ontario’s licensing system, licensing hashad a positive impact for LECs in Ontario. “We’re finally stoppingunqualified people from doing electrical work becausethey cannot take out permits,” says Gosen. “Enforcement istaking place and now people know that they can be chargedif they’re not licensed.”Carr has been working with ESA to bridge the gap betweencontractors’ interpretation of regulations, and make up foran overall lack of contractor input. He says changes will bemade in the coming months that will help LECs work withthe regulations in a clearer manner.Beer also points out that new policies might soon be implementedthat should drastically reduce a contractor’s fear ofESA by establishing a series of guidelines that lay out the exacttransgressions that would call for an automatic suspension.He also hopes that a Code of Conduct will be written forLECs, and that an ombudsman will be appointed to provideoversight for ESA and ECRA.Gosen adds we should look at licensing for what it truly is: apositive way of recognizing qualified contractors and ensuringthat qualified people do safe work for the public.“There’s a lot of work to be done but, with the group inplace now, we’re in a good position to move forward. 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