The Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) is restructuring its Mandatory Continuing Education Program and has asked members for feedback (which I don’t remember being asked for when it was implemented). Below is the feedback I sent.

Perhaps this is an opportunity for members of our profession to voice our opinions finally.

I have earned about 42 or 43 MCE credits in the past three and a half years and learned nothing that I didn’t already know from simply keeping up to date as I always have.

I was first licensed in 1973 and would not have ever done so if I thought that 30 years later I would be victim to this kind of extortion. If I don’t pay to take these courses, I lose my livelihood. That is what it boils down to. Seems pretty unconstitutional to me. The name RECO was well chosen.

Not too many years ago the Toronto Real Estate Board published the TREB Reporter every week and this had far more valuable and educational material in it than any of these MCE courses and it was FREE. Is it coincidental that this was abandoned around the same time as RECO was formed?

Eighty per cent of the MCE courses offered are a joke. An opportunity for cash hungry entrepreneurs to put together a Mickey Mouse sales training program or computer software course and amazingly it is approved by RECO? Most of the courses are geared around how to make more money in real estate and have nothing to do with keeping informed or protecting the public, which is what it was designed to do.

As a professional I have a responsibility to keep informed and knowledgeable in matters that concern my profession and my duty to my clients and the public. It is just part of my job.

Teacher’s re-certification was taken to a vote and thrown out by the new Liberal government. I recommend the same for this program. To me it is an insult to its registrants.

You asked. I answered.

Allen Burgess  

Royal LePage Homeward

Toronto