Ontario Licensing

Does anyone have an update on Ontario Licensing. From what I read in the newspaper the province is still moving forward with it but it’s been pretty quiet since the election. It would be appreciated if someone could offer an update on the progress of licensing HI’s in Ontario.

Nothing online that I can find past February.

Don’t jinx it man, just delete the thread and go back to work :wink:

I don’t think much will happen until the CSA standard is validated. One of the keystone details includes the endorsement requirement of only one home inspection “standard” to practice in the province.

The CSA inspection standard will likely not be available until next spring.

If the CSA standards of practice guide does go ahead then the Home Inpection will be made into a trade. The only ones that will profit in this will be the Frachiser and Training Facilities, Government and CSA. This does no good to protect the consumer because the guide itself will have next to nil input from veteran Home Inpectors.
It will be like what is happening with Tarrion and look like it protects when all evidence will show in time it was designed as a money making scheme.

HI licensing laws only provides income for the people who implement them: never for the consumer or home buyers. Licensing only provides a basic, minimum standard. So, you get low prices, and basic almost say nothing reports, that the REA’s want, so they can get their commissions by selling homes to unsuspecting home buyers.

You know the drill. In the state of Kansas, we got them out. They were basic, worthless, and discredited our industry.

Everyone that has a driver’s license is a good driver, right?

Making a pun - you hit the nail on the head!

Although there’s a wide variety of input from other groups as you noted, including consumers, I’m fearful that the end result will not be in the best interest of “home inspectors”.

From my preliminary understanding - expect an expanded scope of work and potentially more risk.

ASTM tried this in the US, and it failed. Mainly because home inspectors made it an issue. The other issue is pay for use of the “standard” that is the common practice of organizations such as CSA, ASTM, etc.

A never ending wheel of cash. Thanks Claude.

There may be a way to ensure the CSA standard is kept free. Publish the existing SoP under an Free-Source license.

As with Software Code, the SoP can require anyone who includes all or part of the SoP in another document offers that derivative document free as well.

Then is the CSA/ASTM or wherever can be shown to have included content from the Free-Source licensed SoP, they cannot legally charge for it.

The S.O.P has already been published and used by many Home Inspectors. It has not stopped any Home Inspectors from performing a good thorough job and the only thing that will bring that level down is the interference with those who do not know our job and plan to lower the bar by forming a minimum license.
CSA should have no playing field with Home Inspection regulation nor should any government that has no clue what is required to be a good Home Inspector.

You are missing the point again Kevin. No matter how we feel about whether the CSA or the Government, regardless of their abilities in the HI field, regulate the profession, the likelihood is the Government will, and the CSA “standard” as such will be the one adopted.

Publishing an SoP under copyright, and publishing it under free-license are two different things.

For example, the CSA could very well go to ASHI and pay them a small royalty to replicate the SoP, include that in their SoP under agreed license and then charge homies $500 for it.

If however the bulk of the contents of an SoP were published freely for ANYONE to use under a FREE-LICENSE, then any inclusion of the content in another document would mean that the content of the derivative document free too.

That is the purpose of FREE-LICENSING.

As the InterNACHI SoP is the one probably most widely used, it is possible it will have clauses in it that will be plagiarized by the CSA. Making it a FREE-LICENSE publication with strict reproduction clauses for maintenance of the free access would force the CSA to either derive their own document from scratch or if they have already plagiarized from the SoP sell it free.

My only concern is that with the people on the CSA panel for the SoP development mainly belonging to only one HI Association, the choice of base SoP has already been made, and it is not likely to be InterNACHI’s in which case this is all moot.

Thanks for putting me on your ignore list it makes me feel better on my next move in the game of chess.

Maybe we should add this survey to the list of Home Inspector Surveys. I’m sure it would be as important, if not more so than a police background check.

:mrgreen:

Brilliant!