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Two schemes, both in development.

Where no Canadian credential exists at all. Published at the stage they are actually at, because a board that overstates its progress has already told you what it is.

Certification bodies fail in a predictable way: they announce a credential, sell it, and then discover that the examination cannot be defended when somebody who failed asks how the pass mark was set. The work that prevents that happens before anything is sold.

Current status — September 2026

CABCEP issues no certification. Neither scheme below is open, neither is accepting applications, and no examination has been delivered. Nobody holds a CABCEP credential because none exists.

CABCEP is not accredited and has no accreditation application in progress. Accreditation follows a working credential; it cannot precede one.

Scheme one — Efficiency and retrofit contractor

Envelope work, air sealing, insulation, and heat pump retrofit quality. This is the first scheme because the gap is total: nothing in Canada certifies the people doing the highest-volume energy work in the country, and the nearest instrument anywhere is American and written against American construction.

What it would cover: diagnosing where a building actually loses energy, sequencing measures so they do not undo each other, air sealing and insulation execution, moisture and ventilation consequences — which is where well-intentioned retrofits do damage — heat pump sizing against a real load calculation, commissioning, and verification that the work performed.

Who it would serve: contractors who want to be distinguishable from the ones who undercut them, utility and provincial programmes that currently have no quality instrument at all, and building owners with no way to tell the difference.

Stage: scoping and job task analysis design.

Scheme two — Commercial and industrial energy auditor

Commercial auditing in Canada is satisfied in practice by American credentials. A Canadian scheme would be written against Canadian energy codes, Canadian climate zones, Canadian utility rate structures — demand charges and global adjustment behave nothing like the American equivalents — and the provincial and municipal reporting obligations that increasingly drive the work.

Stage: scoping. It follows scheme one, not alongside it. A board developing two schemes at once, at this size, would do neither properly.

How a scheme gets built

  1. Job task analysis. A documented, evidence-based study of what practitioners actually do, validated by practitioners rather than assumed by a committee. Everything that follows is traceable back to it, and a scheme without one does not survive assessment.
  2. Scheme committee. Balanced representation — practitioners, employers, regulators, programme administrators, users and general interest — with no single interest in control.
  3. Examination development. Items written by subject-matter experts who are not the people who train candidates, reviewed, piloted and analysed.
  4. Cut score. Set by a defensible standard-setting method, not by choosing a round number, and supported by reliability statistics.
  5. Delivery and proctoring. Independent of any training provider, with candidates examined by people who did not teach them.
  6. Certification decisions. Made by the board on the examination result and the published eligibility rules, and by nobody with a commercial interest in the outcome.
Open entry, permanently

Any scheme CABCEP issues will be open to candidates trained anywhere, or nowhere. No CABCEP scheme will ever require a particular course as a condition of sitting an examination, and no training provider will be described as a preferred or recommended route. This is written into the impartiality policy before the first scheme exists, deliberately.

What we are not doing

We are not building a solar credential: an accredited one exists and duplicating it would serve us and nobody else. We are not building a residential energy advisor credential: that is a working federal programme and we have no business attacking it. And we are not selling anything on the strength of a scheme that does not exist — there is no pre-registration, no founding-member certificate and no deposit to take.

Common questions

When will the first certification be available?

We are not putting a date on it. A job task analysis and a defensible examination take as long as they take, and a board that announces a launch date ends up shipping a weak scheme to meet it.

Can I pre-register?

No. There is nothing to pre-register for and we will not take money for a credential that does not exist. Get listed on the registry instead — that is real and it is free.

Will the first certifications be accredited?

No. The first certifications, when they exist, will be issued conformant to the international standard but unaccredited, and described that way in those words. Accreditation follows a working credential with real candidates and witnessed examinations.

Who decides what is on the exam?

A scheme committee with balanced stakeholder representation, working from a documented job task analysis. Not the board alone, and not any training provider.

Can I help write it?

Yes, and we would rather have practitioners than professional committee members. The call for committee members is open.

Related

Where to go next

The registry

Put your credential on the public record.

Listing is free, verified against the issuing body, and open to practitioners certified by anyone. The registry is only worth anything if it is the whole industry.