Mission, Vision and History
Vision Statement
Recognizing the emerging inter-disciplinary nature and frontiers in engineering and other professions under technological convergence, the emerging crisis due to narrowly defined educational disciplines in regulated professions, ineffectual skills development and employment barriers under globalization, CAPE will aim to position its members to combat employment challenges, rapid change in the workplace and transition into today’s engineering jobs in Canada.
Mission Statement
To achieve its vision, CAPE will:
- Support members to develop skills suited to today’s engineering.
- Support members in pioneering engineering innovation in Canada.
- Engage with other professions to meet changing needs under convergence and to work across professional and disciplinary boundaries
- Take a client-centered approach where CAPE develops unique solutions that place its members at the centre while meeting different client needs. CAPE clients under this structure will include members, other immigrant professionals, employers, service providers and the government.
Values
- CAPE will not promote the self-interests over public interest in defining regulation of professions.
- CAPE will focus on employment rather than licensing/regulation of its members.
- In respect of engineering CAPE will continue to adopt the positions outlined in its various submissions namely:
- The reserved title and assumption of deficiency of credentials locks immigrants with engineering backgrounds out of the practice of engineering and is unjustifiable.
- Due to the absence of a definition of the constituent elements of the one year experience under a professionally licensed engineer, the limitation period attached to the provisional license, the lack of criteria to appeal against licensing decisions, and legal issues that exist in this, the regulatory process must be addressed.
- Due to the absence of the definition of the ‘skills gap’ between immigrants with engineering backgrounds and mainstream engineers, and non-recognition of these by PEO, bridging programs to address the ‘Canadian experience’ needs of employers and regulators for immigrants with engineering backgrounds need to be reviewed.
- The recommendations of the licensing process task force of PEO place an unnecessary burden on applicants and only serve to make the licensing process more onerous.
- The employer drive for recruitment of ‘engineers’ under the Provincial Nominee Programs in Alberta, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island is at variance with Provincial Professional Engineer Acts and regulation.
- CAPE will continue to support the stand that Ontario and the rest of Canada must meet the obligations signed to under NAFTA and GATS.
History
Organizational Structure (1990-2006): Group/Project
CAPE was established as a small advocacy group of immigrants with engineering backgrounds between 1990 and 1993 in response to the difficulties that this group was facing in accessing the engineering profession in Ontario.
In 1994, the Coalition for Access to Professional Engineering (CAPE) was officially founded under the chairmanship of Mike Dang and comprised of a body of immigrants with engineering backgrounds, individuals and service organizations. From 2003 to 2006, CAPE functioned as a project under the trusteeship of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA).
Organizational Structure (2006-2012): After Incorporation
In June 2006, CAPE incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation to serve immigrants with engineering backgrounds after election of its First Interim Board of Directors. The Interim Board went through an intensive period of training and developed its first independent strategic plan presented to CAPE members at the Inaugural Annual General Meeting in November 2007.
After incorporation CAPE, has been intermittently faced with sustainability challenges, both financial and physical, since staff and resource funding have consistently relied upon project funding. However, through its robust fee-for-service initiatives and strong volunteer and staff base, CAPE is able to sustain its services to members
Increasingly a choice partner for Service Providing Organizations (SPOs) and other agencies working in the settlement of engineers as professional immigrants in Ontario, CAPE continues to leverage its knowledge capital products (including groundbreaking research and online curriculum development/ learning tools) into fee-for-service offerings, sustaining it in times when its own funding is limited. CAPE has also consistently demonstrated its ability to receive project funding from different Ontario ministries, a vote of confidence in the value it adds to the service of immigrants with engineering backgrounds in their struggle to find their rightful place in engineering in Canada. CAPE has built a reputation for rigorous, independent and innovative work.
Since the beginning of 2012, CAPE has entered into a transition to change its organizational structure in keeping with emerging demands for inter-disciplinary and inter-professional collaboration within engineering.
A chronology of projects and initiatives we have undertaken is tabulated below
YEAR |
INITIATIVE |
PURPOSE |
OUTCOMES |
2006 |
CAPE Volunteers |
Employment supports |
Developed online employment support tools for CAPE Members |
2006/2008 |
HRSD/MTCU/CAPE |
Skills Commensurate Engineering Access Project |
Project began December 2006:
|
2008/2009 |
CAPE Volunteers |
Training supports |
Developed online skills Gap Analyzer |
2008/2010 |
MTCU/CAPE |
Leveraging Global Engineering Skills Project |
Piloted employer driven curricula development process deriving from the skills Gap Analyzer Approach for selected specializations for:
|
2011/2012 |
MTCU/CAPE |
Exploratory Study - Navigator Project |
CAPE has secured funding from the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities to carry out an exploratory study (November 2011 to February 2012). The piloting of the CAPE talent integration process through the Navigator Project for health professions was the focus of the exploratory study summarized here. The hypothesis for this pilot project is premised on the fact that the CAPE talent integration process addresses and can strengthen processes needed to address many of the critical issues facing HHR planning and deployment identified above. This exploratory study specifically includes a literature review and environmental scan of HHR practices and stakeholders. The objective of the exploratory study was to achieve the broader goals of:
A comprehensive literature review of the state of HHR planning in Canada, its jurisdictions and Ontario and new developments in HHR practices identified 117 HHR stakeholders. Of these stakeholders, 34 were federal and 83 were Ontario based. A framework categorizing these stakeholders as governmental, inter-provincial, regional, multi-professional, profession specific or other emerged from a multi-dimensional analysis. 40 stakeholders (4 from federal organizations) participated in the environmental scan as key informants and provided feedback on adapting the CAPE Talent Integration Process for health professions. 19 of them also participated in a Multi-Stakeholder Consultative Meeting held in Toronto on January 31, 2012 to validate the project hypothesis and develop a conceptual framework for a piloting the CAPE Talent Integration Process. This framework resulted in a pilot framework comprising a profession-specific pilot, a multi-profession pilot and a pilot gaps-driven bridge training program for health professions. A number of stakeholders including regulators, profession-specific and multi-profession associations and bridge training programs expressed interest in joining the advisory committee and/or participating in the pilot project. |
2012/2013 |
MTCU/CAPE |
Pilot Navigator Project for Selected Health Professions |
CAPE has secured funding from the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities to carry out IEHP-Pilot Navigator Project for Selected Health Professions (May 2012 to September 2013) to duplicate its knowledge products for the Health Sector in order to investigate the potential for this new strategic driver. Objective of Navigator Project for Selected Health Professions is to improve the quality of employment preparation and skills development programs for health providers (focusing on the foreign trained entrants) from selected health professions using the CAPE employer-driven curricula development process. Using special knowledge intensive competency-based tools to match health professionals skills in real-time with employer needs to identify the gaps and surpluses in skills, we will develop and enhance stakeholder knowledge of the changing nature of skills requirements for particular professions and promote talent sourcing and management. IEHP NAVIGATOR PROJECT FOR SELECTED HEALTH PROFESSIONS OBJECTIVES
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