Regulating Art Therapy
In October 2017, CATA-ACAT’s Director of Governance and Government Relations, Waqas I. Yousafzai presented an update on the Government Relations and Advocacy work of the Canadian Art Therapy Association at the 40th annual art therapy conference held in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Waqas presented, reviewed, and took questions on our advocacy efforts over the past two years. He also provided updates for members on what is happening across the country to regulate art therapists as counseling professionals. He reviewed the ongoing grass roots work being undertaken on the application for regulation in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador. His work seeks to establish a a regulatory body with a standardized code of ethics, standards of practice, and competency models.
His presentation also included an update to be provided on the 2016 advocacy effort to seek a GST/HST exemption from the Department of Finance for art therapy services provided to the public. Due to multiple requests to raise awareness of the work, we have included a PDF of his PowerPoint presentation below.
Please note that this PDF was created to be a supplementary source of information and does not include everything that was discussed at the 2017 CATA/ACAT Conference.