Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm Doretta Thompson. I'm a principal in education strategy and communication with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. Over the last two years, I've been the CICA's liaison with HRSDC on our international credential recognition initiatives. With me is Jylan Khalil, the CICA's director of qualification. Jylan is an expert in the assessment of international qualification processes and the negotiation of mutual recognition agreements. We appreciate the opportunity to share with you our ongoing initiatives, made possible through HRSDC's foreign credential recognition program, to improve the labour market outcomes of foreign-trained individuals.
The CA profession is regulated at the provincial level. Our provincial institutes have the constitutional responsibility for qualification and admission to the profession, including the admission of internationally trained professionals. The CICA's role is to work closely with the provincial institutes, through inter-institute committees, to set national standards, which all CAs must meet. Consequently, CAs have full mobility across Canada. And all our international credential recognition initiatives are being developed within this framework and require full provincial support.
Like most professions, ours faces an imminent demographic challenge. The demand for CAs is expected to grow, just as a significant portion of our membership begins to retire. Internationally trained accountants will be an important source of new CAs, and many will need to upgrade their education or experience.
Our goal, consistent with that of the pan-Canadian framework, is to ensure that internationally trained accountants have access to timely, fair, and transparent assessment processes that give full credit for the knowledge and experience they bring to Canada; to guarantee timely assessment of their credentials; and to offer accessible, affordable, focused bridging programs that will enable them to meet Canadian standards more quickly than is possible today.
As pointed out by HRSDC in its recent testimony, the process for recognizing credentials is complex, costly, and lengthy.
We received our first grant from HRSDC's FCR program in September 2009. With it, we created a pan-Canadian web portal to provide internationally trained accountants with clear information on the requirements for becoming a CA in Canada. When we began this initiative, each provincial institute had its own application and assessment process, and the information available varied significantly from province to province, creating confusion among potential applicants both in Canada and abroad.
This grant enabled us to conduct focus groups to better understand the information needs of internationally trained accountants who had become Canadian CAs; to create an interprovincial team to produce a harmonized online application process; and to create a web portal that's easy for applicants to use, provides answers to the most commonly asked questions, and provides information for employers of internationally trained accountants.
While the launch of our “Become a CA in Canada” website will happen next month, the soft launch early this summer is already resulting in a smoother application process for internationally trained accountants, and reduced calls, letters, and e-mails to the CICA and to the provincial institutes. The site has already had almost 9,000 different visitors. About half are from other countries, the top three being India, Pakistan, and the U.S. And completed applications are beginning to come in. We're pleased to provide committee members with screen shots of two introductory pages of the website. To see the full site, you can visit www.becomeacaincanada.ca, or www.devenircaaucanada.ca.