Evidence of meeting #13 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was services.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Vincent Bloc Shefford, QC
I will give the floor to my colleague, but I'd like us to take ten minutes in camera, at the end of the meeting, to discuss various things concerning witnesses who appear before our committee. If possible, I'd like to obtain more details about that, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like my colleague to use the time I have remaining.
December 13th, 2007 / 9:25 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
Good morning, gentlemen.
Mr. McCulloch, I listened to your presentation. I tried to understand it as much as possible, but I found you spoke rather fast, and English is my second language. I think that if you could have given us a document containing your presentation, we could have found out more about you. As a precaution, I searched the Internet to get a bit of information about your organization, and that's the only written information I have.
I'm a professional engineer. I also studied project management in Quebec. I was wondering what the status of your association was in Quebec. Its acronym exists only in English. CMC is the acronym for Canadian Association of Management Consultants. I see that in French, it's called l'Association canadienne des conseillers en management. That's a bit of a hard sell.
I personally worked for 35 or 40 years in the field of engineering administration and I don't recall ever hearing about the existence of your organization.
I'd like to get a glimpse of what your association does in Quebec?
9:30 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
I'm going to have our president and CEO comment. She's working closely with the Quebec organization.
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
Some years ago--I think it was in the early nineties--the office of the professions brought a number of professional bodies together. In the CMC case, the AdmA or administrateur agréé designation became the regulated designation, and CMC became a subset of that designation. So they have not had very much visibility in Quebec.
Because the CMC population in Quebec is owned by the organization, we cannot manage them. They are managed by the organization. We have to defer to them for all of the management, whereas in the rest of Canada our office is a virtual office for the entire country and we manage.
I wasn't able to listen to all of your beginning parts, but I tuned in later. I'm sorry. Our website is not totally bilingual, that's for sure, although we do have some things in French. Our exam process is in two languages. Our code of conduct is different in Quebec, just because the law is different in Quebec, but there are great similarities to it.
Am I answering your question?
9:30 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
There's also the conseillers, the CMC.
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
They had to add the word certifiés to conseillers en management thanks to the CMAs who lobbied very hard in Quebec to ensure that the generic term conseillers en management was not protected.
9:30 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
Did I understand correctly that in Quebec, they refer mostly to “administrateurs agréés” in the case of your organization?
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
They must use both AdmA and CMC. But if you go to ADMA's website, you will have to dig to find CMC.
9:30 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
There are some members of ADMA who are not CMCs.
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
Yes.
9:30 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
So it's a subset.
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
They also have two other designations underneath the AdmA. So it's AdmA on the top, CMC, the financial planners, and one other.
9:30 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
They've been in the Quebec statutes since 1968 or so.
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
The organization has.
9:30 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
So it's been around for 40 years.
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
Yes.
9:30 a.m.
Bloc
Robert Carrier Bloc Alfred-Pellan, QC
In any event, to my knowledge, the professional orders are governed by each of the provinces. For example, in Quebec, it's the Office des professions du Québec who administers or supervises all professions such as architects, engineers, lawyers and so forth. It's the same in other provinces.
So really, your association is not a professional order, it's a professional association. I'd understood that you were asking for help from the Government of Canada to have your group or your name accepted.
Is that correct?
9:30 a.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
The Canadian Association of Management Consultants has all the individual members as members. The institutes of certified management consultants also have those individuals as members. The legislation belongs at the provincial level, as it does for all other professions. At the same time, we do have reciprocity; this is one organization in which we have so far succeeded in having the national body represent, for the most part, the interests of the various provinces.
The AdmA designation only exists in Quebec. It's not found anywhere else in Canada. It's a unique one.
Does that answer your question?
9:35 a.m.
Vice-Chair, Canadian Association of Management Consultants
That one difference.... We struggled with it for about 10 years, trying to pull it together, so that we would have a national representation and people would recognize they were part of a national group.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Colin Carrie Conservative Oshawa, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I was quite interested when you talked about professional associations and the difficulties in Canada.
In my former life I was a chiropractor. It's interesting--I can practise in Ontario, but I would need to write a whole new set of boards to practise in British Columbia. I have friends in the medical profession, and it's the same type of thing. This seems to be a challenge. I think it makes sense to have some type of national standard.
What do you think the federal government's role might be in some type of convergence of national standards? What could we do to help this process along?
9:35 a.m.
Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist, Conference Board of Canada
I think the federal government got the framework right. The Agreement on Internal Trade was the right starting point to make a political commitment to try to reduce the barriers. It frankly is a matter of how much energy you're going to bring to the table. I think the current finance minister's efforts to try to come up with one national securities regulator, for example, is clearly a step in the right direction.
It's almost like asking where you can make the most progress. Can you find allies at the provincial level to try to move the whole dialogue forward? Can you point to areas where the gaps are huge and, frankly, use almost the bully pulpit to embarrass provinces to have further degrees of alignment? Ultimately there is federal authority, constitutional authority, to use in effect a nuclear weapon to bring about a national economy. I don't think there's any appetite across the country right now to do that, but I think constantly shedding light on the irrationality of barriers, based upon things like chiropractic standards....
That's a fascinating story, because.... I find the TILMA really quite an interesting agreement. It's about trade, investment, and labour mobility, but on the investment side, the two provinces actually haven't agreed to a common securities regulator, which is of course what Minister Flaherty is trying to do. More importantly, if you look in the annex there are 63 categories--and I suspect chiropractors are in there--going from acupuncturist to water well drillers, and they're now talking about coming up with common standards and common recognition processes for these 63 categories over a three-year roll-in period. The fact that it's going to take three years across such a huge array is really quite instructive.
The federal government probably has to be there, constantly applying pressure by identifying areas where there are huge gaps and where progress could be made fairly quickly, trying to use its facilitating powers to bring the provinces together, and pointing to the benefits in productivity and competitiveness of having a single national standard. That has happened, as I pointed out, in Europe. It's really striking to look at the European experience and then at the lack of progress in Canada over the last 10 or 20 years.
