Professional Governance Act coming into force February 5, 2021

The Professional Governance Act comes into effect on February 5, 2021.

The Professional Governance Act (PGA) is the culmination of over three years of work beginning with the Professional Reliance Review in October 2017 developing into law through 2018 and receiving royal assent in November 2018. The PGA governs five professional regulators overseeing agrologists, applied biologists, applied science technologists and technicians, engineers and geoscientists, and forest professionals. In addition, the government of BC announced in July 2020 that the Architects Institute of BC would eventually be transitioning from the Architects Act to the Professional Governance Act.

The Act is intended to “provide a consistent governance framework for self-regulating professions that incorporates best practices of professional governance.” Full enactment of the Professional Governance Act (PGA) results in the following:

• College of Applied Biology Act (CABA) being repealed. The College’s statutory mandate is now governed by the PGA;
• Applied biology professionals who are registrants of the College will now be regulated by the bylaws that replace the College Rules; and
• A revised Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and the policies and standards that support the College’s mandate to protect the public interest will come into effect. While the governance structure is changing, the College will remain the sole regulator of applied biology professionals.  Registrants will continue to be required to adhere to the standards, competencies and code of ethics under the new bylaws.

You can learn more about how activation of the PGA immediately affects your practice by reading the College’s Professional Practice primer.

• Download the College’s Professional Practice Under the PGA primer.

Supporting documents such as the College’s new bylaws, Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (Schedule 1, Bylaws), and various policies and standards will be released on Friday. If you have any questions regarding the implementation of the new Act, please do not hesitate to contact the College office at 250-383-3306 or email admin@cab-bc.org.