Apparently according to Mr. Mullen, three, and soon a fourth, provinces right now are working on Home Inspection Legislation, and they are using the National Certification Model as their guideline.
Mr. Mullen states he cannot divulge this info because he is currently involved in discussion with the interested party. Lets also remember just because a province may use the National as a benchmark it does not mean it will fly, and I am sure unlike CAHPI the provincial government will not arbitrarly impose legislation without input. Just remember CAHPI does not represent anyone other than OAHI and the other provinces.
How provinces can accept a model as a document which has not been approved is beyond me.
I am still waiting for incontrovertible proof as to the 5,000 members that keeps being quoted.
As it remains the National remains another exclusive self regulating body that reports to itself.
I would welcome provincial legilslation (licencing) based on the National.
Ray
All you have to do is simple math to realize that liscencing in the provinces is not feasable at this time in Canada. The numbers just don’t warrent the expense of doing it. Even if there are 5000 home inspectors in Canada, and I truly doubt that number,that breaks down to around 500 per province/territory and the bureaucracy needed to administer the liscencing is going to eat up more than the funds available. What are they going to charge us? At $1000.00 per they won’t get many takers and then the numbers are less than 500 per province. As I see this it is a no win situation for anybody. The province isn’t going to set up liscencing at $500,000 per year when they are going to spend more than that in bureaucrocy to oversee and police it. Sorry, the numbers just don’t add up.
I would love to know where the 5000 number came from. I know who quoted it but I would love to find the source. If there are 2000 inspectors in Canada I will be suprised.
Larry
I don’t disagree with your assessment. As to the 5,000 even I have been usinging it in the past. I am trying to obtain documentation to this effect. Someone suggested the government conducted research on this and came up with the 5,000. But like many things the document remains elusive.
Ray,
I don’t remember the number of 5000 ever being mentioned, however I do remember the CMHC study fom 1996 that is listing the number of inspectors to be at 7000 within its first paragraph, which I have copied below.
"The Canadian home and building inspection industry consists primarily of home/property inspectors (HPI) and public, or municipal building code officials (MBCO). Home/property inspectors provide inspection services primarily to existing residential buildings.They are a significant force in providing real estate pre-purchase and residential renovation inspections. Municipal building code officials are responsible for monitoring new construction and minimum levels of health, fire and life safety under the building codes and various related bylaws.The size of these two sectors combined amounts to approximately 7,000 individuals with the majority represented by various regional and provincial associations."
However you must remember that the number stated is the compined number of Municipal Building Code Officials (MBCO’s) and independent Home & Property Inspectors (HPI’s). Now I would like to suggest that across Canada you may easily have 5000 MCBO’s, which would drasticaly cut down the number of HPI’s, which I would think to be no more than 2000 in all the various Canadian Association. Now based on some of the numbers I have seen and nobody seems to be able to put an accurat count on this, CAHPI may have somewhere in the range of 800 - 1000 of these inspectors under its fold. However, I can not see the number of 5000 HPI’s being a reality. If there are in fact that many HPI’s, you would have to ask how many of them have a P.ENG or other Architectural degrees/certifactions and most likely are members of recognized and more empowered professional associations. These individuals who may also be performing home/property inspections as a small part of their business most certainly would not require the certification of CAHPI. All that said it still leaves us essentially back where we started and that is where did the number of 5000 inspectors come from?
Best regards
Wolf
Don’t count on it. Here in Alberta there are private companies doing permit inspections. I don’t know the process, how they are licenced, but there are several companies doing it. Epcor a power company wholly owned by the City of Edmonton has divested itself of it’s power inspection people. These electrical inspectors have formed an independent company. Perhaps someone out there can provide more details.
I get several calls a year for permit inspections.
As far as interest in the CAHPI certification there is only one other Albertan who has posted on any of NACHI’s board. In the last few weeks I’ve emailed every home inspector listed in the yellow pages in this province inviting them to an Alberta NACHI chapter meeting. So they know about NACHI. They maybe reading but there has been no input to here at least none that I have seen.
What I’m saying is that if they have certification/licencing for private permit inspectors in place. they can extend that to include Home Inspectors. I’m assuming that one would have to be a journeyman tradesman to be an inspector in that trade. They have the records etc in place for the trades.
They would have to set a standard for home inspectors. That’s a scary though given the lobby groups out there; CAHPI, Real Estate Boards, Lawyers and other interested parties.
NACHI will have to step up if our interests are to be protected.
Like they say use it or loose it. If the other inspectors in Alberta do not come forward and make their concerns known you may not like the results when the gorernment does act.
Not only NACHI members should be concerned but those who do not belong to any association. There has been so much disinformation put out by CAHPI it has grown beyond their control or willingness to address the concerns.
Vern
I think you are missing the point here. Permit inspections are already funded by the government and even if the power company has divested itself of its inspectors it has not divested itself of the resposability of getting the inspection done. It is just trying to save money by outsourcing the process. What they have done is hired as subcontractors the very people that were doing the inspections at a reduced rate due to the fact that they are no longer required to pay EI, Workers Comp or any other benefits. A saving of roughly 30%. So the funding is already there and obviously not well enough funded. Now if you take that scenerio and apply it to our industry you can see that the money is just not there for the bureauocracy to be self sustaining. Besides that, it will take years to get the legislation passed. If the Federal Government had the chance to do this and passed on it, even after spending the initial funds, I don’t see the provinces spending the money on another study to come up with the same conclusion the feds came up with, that it is not financially feasable.
Larry
Here are some more questions I had.
What about this…who is going to market the designation to consumers? CAHPI National? OAHI? Who is going to market it for NACHI members? Better yet…who is going to market it for the non-aligned inspectors? Across Canada yet, which we all know is a very large market.
CAHPI / OAHI? - they’ll need to charge an annual fee (plus the fee to police those accredited…or maybe they should just join CAHPI otherwise it would be cost prohibitive)?
NACHI? - if they consented (which they haven’t contrary to statements made by Mr. Mullen), they’ll need to help fund the program?
CMHC? - who’s footing those costs?
Is Mr. Fontana going to get approval of Canadian taxpayers money for marketing costs for a small group of people called home inspectors?
Oh yeah…and you don’t really think CAHPI / OAHI would do any marketing in the first place, right…I mean, they’ve never done any in the past!
I agree the mathematics of the thing just does not make sense. That, however, makes me suspicious. How many other government programmes can you think of that make monetary sense? In fact, it sometimes seems that the less sense a programme makes the more money the Feds pour into it.
Unless there is a whole-sale stampeed to get into this programme it appears as though it is in trouble before it even begins. Is this why the proponents are undertaking a scare campaign to try to hoo-rah as many inspectors as possible?
I do believe the 7000 figure. They are all working in Kingston!
I went to yellowpages.ca and could only get 2,000 in Canada listed under building & home inspection services. A good number of these people are part-time, won’t be in business next year, and are listed in both categories. Those who don’t have a listing in yellowpages.ca (even a line listing) would not likely not have a business line then, I guess. Hard to imagine that those other groups make up the missing 3,000. Maybe CAHPI thinks all the engineers & architects will want to get their Certification?
So Strange OAHI said they would have Insurance for the members on January First 2006.
They also said NACHI would be reduntant and that they would be no more after Jan 1st.
It looks to me that more of OAHI wishes have not come through.
No one I have talked to knows what happened to the insurance .
OAHI is smaller and NACHI is bigger.
I guess some one must have dropped and broke their crystal ball.
Not much Information for the National Certification has been released.
Here is a contact in Ottawa
CMHC in Ottawa at 613-748-2316 (ask for Jim Robar)
James D. (Jim) Robar, Ph.D
Manager Housing Technology
Technical Policy & Research
Mr. Mullen states that the numbers quoted in the London Free Press can be verified. They can be corroborated by CAHPI Head Office at 1-888-748-2244 or CMHC in Ottawa at 613-748-2316 (ask for Jim Robar) . Mr. Mullen states he would gladly stake his reputation and credibility against mine. The trouble is how does one defend your reputation when you are clearly in the wrong and can’t provide the documents?
That is most strange how CAHPI/CMHC can corroborate numbers that just don’t exist or allude to the fact that CAHPI will certify 5,000 by 2007?
Now I have heard everything! I am sure I will hear even more merde soon.
I am making every effort to get in contact with all those in CMHC, as well as my old competition from CAPHI, and I will never rest again, till I see NACHI at the top of the food chain in CANADA, not CAPHI.