To register as Professional Engineer (Electrical & Electronics) in Canada

[SA07]

Hi
Suppose an electrical engineer migrates to Canada and he wants to register with the council of engineer in Canada. Is there any consideration given if he is already a registered engineer in his country? If his country forms part of the Commonwealth? Or he should restart the process from zero?
I notice that each provinces have their own council. If the engineer is registered in a province and he relocates to another province, is his registrattion recognised or he must again restart from zero?
Does the councils of engineers in Canada accept degrees of engineers from other countries (Commonwealth)? Is there any exams that the engineer should take first before starting the process of registration?

How much time approx. it takes for someone to register as PE in Canada? Can someone share a doc/guidelines for registration please? Thanks

 

[BrianPetersen]

You register with the province that you plan to work in. For example, check with

http://www.peo.on.ca

for Ontario. There is a process for registering with foreign credentials but be prepared for this to be time consuming and awkward (I get the impression that PEO is being forced into doing this against their will). Once registered in one province, it is much easier to register in others.

 

[Gr8blu]

To echo BrianPetersen: each province has its own "rules" - some are a bit more stringent than others. In general, Ontario and British Columbia PE certification is taken on par in other provinces (and eases the local province registration). However, it is not consistent across all provinces/territories, nor is it necessarily reciprocal between entities.

That being said - you will need to have your academic history accredited by a specific Canadian institution (as an international applicant, it would be World Education Services (for Ontario, at least). Expect the process to take anywhere from 6 weeks to a year, after receipt of all documentation. In parallel, you can also get your engineering experience accredited (from another entity) - but that will take some time as well. You will need a minimum of 48 months in an engineering capacity - maybe more as an international applicant, because not all experience is treated equally.

Then you have to complete the online application (might take a couple of hours). Once submitted, the provincial body (PEO in this example) can take up to 10 business days to tell you whether your application is complete. If not, you have 60 calendar days to correct deficiencies - and note that you only get that ONE chance to get it right. Only when it is correct will the provincial body begin the actual assessment process - which can easily take up to 180 calendar days. Once they indicate the assessment is a "go", the applicant will have 180 calendar days to take the appropriate practice exam. Note that these only come up every so often, so plan accordingly. The exam results get adjudicated, and sometime later the provincial board will either tell the applicant to pay the fee or re-test. Payment of fee starts the actual license grant, which has been known to take 30 days or more.

All in all, be prepared for somewhere between 1 and 3 years to get all the way through the process from the initial submittal to receipt of license - assuming everything is in order the first time around and the test is passed on the first attempt.

Canada does NOT have a reciprocal agreement with other countries: this means that everyone wanting to be registered as a professional engineer in Canada goes through this process, regardless of their country of origin. Even Canadians - although some of the initial stuff gets short-cut since they are (typically) graduating from Canadian schools.

Converting energy to motion for more than half a century

 

[LionelHutz]

That's a decent answer, when I saw the question my first thought was that he'd need to get what ever academic history he has accredited or accepted as equivalent to a Canadian engineering degree since there is no reciprocity between commonwealth countries.

 

[SA07]

Thanks for the info/advice