Management Accountants of Alberta and British Columbia agree to labor mobility for their members

The Society of Management Accountants of British Columbia (CMABC) and the Society of Management Accountants of Alberta (CMA-Alberta) have agreed to labor mobility for their members in compliance with the Trade, Investment and Labor Mobility Agreement (TILMA) between British Columbia and Alberta.

This labor mobility agreement between the two organizations representing Certified Management Accountants (CMA) in Alberta and British Columbia reached on October 3, 2008. It will provide their members an opportunity to work in both provinces without having to complete additional regulatory registrations and paperwork, which will expand their members’ professional reach and open up employment opportunities.

It has been estimated that over 4,300 CMAs in B.C. alone will benefit from this pact.

This recent development is part of Canada’s approach to fully harmonize different accreditation and licensing requirements between Canadian provinces and territories, so any qualified worker in an occupation in one province or territory must be granted access to similar employment opportunities in any other Canadian jurisdiction. Because of different accreditation and licensing requirements across provinces and territories, it has been estimated an about 25 per cent of jobs (in healthcare and engineering sectors, for example) have serious mobility constraints in Canada.

This important issue is being addressed by the Government of Canada and the provincial and territorial governments through the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), which was came into effect on July 1, 1995. However, due to the slow progress of AIT in removing barriers to labor mobility, the governments of British Columbia and Alberta signed the British Columbia – Alberta Trade, Investment, and Labor Mobility Agreement (TILMA) on April 28, 2006 that represented a fundamentally different approach that went well beyond the AIT.

TILMA has helped create the second largest economy in Canada and considered an important step for both provinces to realize improvements to labor mobility beyond what AIT has achieved. The agreement was came into force in April 2007, and will be fully implemented by April 2009, at which time individuals in all occupations will be free to move and work in their chosen field in both provinces.

A recent report by Canada's Competition Bureau has also criticized Canada's accounting profession for being over-regulated, particularly in the limits it places on who can offer certain professional services. The Competition Bureau, an independent agency whose goal is to protect and promote competitive markets, released its report in December 2007, calling on Canada's self-regulated professions such as accountants, to re-examine their rules to ensure they serve the public good and not restrict competition.