01/27/2021
URGENT SITUATION LESS THAN 24 HOURS TO ACT.
PLEASE HELP US OUT. READ POST MAKE YOUR MIND UP AND ACT.
**EDIT: this immediate change may concern Ontario at this present moment, but it sets a serious precedent and could eventually lead to the same changes across Canada or other countries.
Hey all.
There is change afoot in Ontario. The Ontario professional foresters association(ofpa) is looking to change the forestry act in a way to remove exclusions on arborist and other non regulated trades that work with or around trees in Ontario. By removing this exclusion as it is now it will require arborist to have the work we perform to be supervised OR approved by a registered forestry professional(rfp). We just found out about this proposed change in the last few weeks and the final day of the initially public consultation period end tomorrow.
What does this entail for us? Anytime we get a call to perform work on trees on Ontario we could be required to have an RFP approve or supervise the work we perform. This could mean having to contract an RFP or hire one on staff permanently to support our operations and make us compliant with the amended act or face fines that could range into the 30000$ range. Arborist already have a hard time making sustainable profits due to large overhead costs. This amendment is not sustainable to a vast majority of us. For people who have worked this industry for several years we basically would be unable to perform our jobs unless we looked at returning to school to become foresters. This is a 4 proposal.
What does this mean to you. As this is not a sustainable proposition costs will be shifted to the tree owners this will add massive costs to the maintenance of your trees or their removal. This will also affect municipalities needing to hire RFP's for all activities they do in parks, streets and such where trees are present. This will contribute to a tax raise as well as people losing their jobs as they no longer meets the necessary criteria to perform the jobs they trained for.
This could also raise electrical costs as this could affect utility arborist as well
A friend of mine made the comparison that this proposed change would be akin to making it necessary to have a degree in psychology to be a babysitter. The work foresters do is a completely different scope of work than what an arborist performs. It makes no sense to make this change. There are many improvement to be made to the training and education of arborist as well as oversight and regulations to govern our trade, but this is not the way to do it. We would be handicapping our industry, raising costs, limiting advancement for workers in the industry.
To learn more about these proposed changes you can visit the ofpa website or go see the international society of arboriculture of Ontario Isa Ontario (isao) web page.
Please sign this petition and find the links to letter templates to send to the concerned people about this issue in government to tell them you disagree with this proposed change.
THANK FOR YOU SUPPORT.
Stop the PROPOSED changes from the Ontario Professional Foresters Association!. 225 signatures are still needed!