Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
My name is Scott Kemp. I am a member of the international relations committee of CALA, which is the Canadian Architectural Licensing Authorities. I'm a practising architect here in B.C. and am the immediate past president of the Architectural Institute of B.C., the AIBC.
With me is my colleague Mark Vernon. He is the CEO of the AIBC and is also, with me, a member of the international relations committee.
I'd like to thank the committee for giving CALA the opportunity to discuss this morning the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
To begin, I want to give you a little background on how our profession is organized in Canada. The Canadian Architectural Licensing Authorities, CALA, represents the 11 regulators—the 10 provinces and one territory. We set the standards for entry into the profession and issue registration of licensing to those individuals who meet the standards of practice.
The regulators individually regulate the practice of architecture in order that the public interest is protected within their province or territory. Through CALA, the Canadian architectural regulators work collectively. We do that to set national standards and programs that meet the regulatory duties as well as satisfy the needs of the profession. In Canada we have full reciprocity, so that as an architect I am able and willing to be licensed and to work in any jurisdiction in Canada.
Architecture is very much an international profession, and we believe that the movement of architects between countries and economies is hugely beneficial to residential, commercial, and industrial sectors, but good for the profession. We're a profession of ideas. Sharing of many ideas is beneficial. We are very active in negotiating mutual recognition agreements for reciprocity—licence sharing—on the international stage. Again, this enriches our profession, but it also enriches the public's awareness and appreciation of architecture, and it results in a better-built environment.
I am very pleased to say that Canadian architects are recognized around the world as being some of the finest architects, and my colleagues have been responsible for many groundbreaking and internationally acclaimed buildings.
The international relations committee represents CALA at all the international meetings and develops and monitors agreed MRAs. What we have at the moment is a mutual recognition agreement between Canada and 42 of the states of the United States; we have a tri-national agreement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States—this was done under NAFTA—and just last year we signed a mutual recognition agreement among Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. That was done under the umbrella of the APEC architect project.
These three MRAs are monitored by a joint monitoring committee. They are structured, and the responsibilities are predetermined and are part of the MRAs that have been negotiated.
I'm very pleased to announce that we're also working very closely with ACE, the Architects' Council of Europe. We are very confident that we'll have an agreement that we can ratify when CETA is ratified next year. That's very big news for us.
To accomplish these agreements—the tri-national, the APEC, and the ACE initiative—we'd like to acknowledge that we have received funding from Employment and Social Development Canada and that this was done under the guidance of Global Affairs Canada.
Now I'd like to focus a little bit on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the way it relates to our profession.