An important object of regulators is to develop and maintain standards of qualification for entry into the profession. A challenge for regulators is the assessment of the educational qualifications of foreign-trained applicants. Many different measures have been developed and implemented on a provincial, national, and even international level to ensure that the assessment and recognition of foreign qualifications is done in a fair, consistent and non-discriminatory manner. An example of one of these measures is the International Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region, also known as the Lisbon Convention. Canada signed the Lisbon Convention as a non-member state on November 4, 1997, and is in the process of ratifying it. Once it is ratified, it will become binding upon Canada.

Some of the key principles of the Lisbon Convention can be summarized as follows:

The preamble of the Lisbon Convention deals with promoting academic mobility, upholding and protecting the principle of institutional autonomy, emphasizing a fair recognition of qualifications, finding common solutions to practical recognition problems, and improving and making current regulation practice more transparent and adaptable to the current higher education situation.

Existing or future treaties that contain more favorable provisions dealing with the recognition of foreign qualifications take priority over the provisions in the Lisbon Convention.

Holders of foreign qualifications must have adequate access, upon request to the appropriate body, to an assessment of these qualifications.

Assessment of an application for recognition of foreign qualifications must be done solely on the basis of an applicant’s knowledge and skills without any discrimination on the basis of things such as an applicant’s gender, race, color, disability, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin.

The procedures and criteria used in the assessment and recognition of foreign qualifications must be transparent, coherent, and reliable.

Decisions on recognition must be made on the basis of appropriate information on the foreign qualifications for which recognition is sought.

The responsibility to demonstrate that an application does not fulfil the relevant requirement lies with the body undertaking the assessment.

Decisions on recognition must be made within a reasonable time which is specified beforehand and is calculated from the time all necessary information in the case has been provided.

If recognition is withheld, the reasons for the refusal to grant recognition must be stated and information must be given concerning possible measures the applicant may take to obtain recognition at a later stage.

If recognition is withheld or no decision is made, the applicant must be able to make an appeal within a reasonable time.

The ratification of the Lisbon Convention will raise many questions for regulators. Given the fact that [in Canada] regulators are considered to be self-governing and autonomous bodies, they will not be automatically obligated to implement the Lisbon Convention and ratification should not lead to any restriction of their autonomy. Nevertheless, the federal and provincial governments will be required to "take all possible steps to encourage the favorable consideration and application" of the provisions in the Lisbon Convention by all regulators. For regulators, this will probably involve an added source of scrutiny to ensure that they have non-discriminatory, transparent, coherent, and consistent procedures for the assessment and recognition of foreign qualifications.
This article is taken from ‘Grey Areas’ a publication of the law firm of Steinecke, Martin and Maciura.

Links
http://www.coe.fr/eng/legaltxt/165e.htm – Text of the International Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region (Lisbon Convention)

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