Private member’s bill for RPPs - Strengthening titles

NRU
Nov. 11, 2015
By Geordie Gordon

A private member’s bill intended to strengthen the titles used by professional planners in Ontario, is anticipated to be introduced in the legislature early next year.

Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Peter Milczyn, who has been working with the Ontario Professional Planners Institute over the past several months, told NRU that the proposed legislation will serve to maintain the integrity of the profession by regulating the titles used by professional planners. The final list of titles that could be protected by the legislation has not yet been finalized.

“You have many different forms of [titles] for planners, there’s land use planners, municipal planners. What the bill is proposed to do is better codify what the name is, and whether that name actually means that it’s a professional planner, [who] has the right education and is accredited and subscribes to a professional code of ethics,” Milczyn told NRU.

OPPI professional regulation strategy group chair and Dillon Consulting partner Ann Joyner says the legislation would benefit the public by ensuring that planners who refer to themselves as such have made an ethical commitment to serving the public good as set out in the OPPI Professional Code of Practice.

“The idea is that all individuals who identify themselves as planners will be trained and subject to the high degree of oversight, and perhaps more importantly, ethical commitment to make decisions that reflect the public good. So that’s where we think we’re bringing greater certainty,” she said.

Milczyn says while the proposed legislation will not change the way that the profession is regulated, it should still provide greater clarity for the public by restricting the titles used by professional planners.

“It’s not about regulating the profession the way architects or engineers or other professions are, it’s not creating a college, it would still be a voluntary association, but it would simply better define the term planner and give the public a little bit more certainty about who they’re dealing with. So it [would] prescribe that a member of the [institute] could use a particular term [to identify as a] professional planner.” he said.

Joyner says that the legislation represents progress in the regulation of the planning profession in Ontario.

“It is something that we think is important and reflects a logical next step in terms of professional planning,” she said.

The bill is expected to be introduced early in 2016.