Where My Fee Goes
The College Council today approved the annual membership fee for 2012. The annual fee, which is tax deductible, is $138 beginning January 1.
Council employs a three-year planning cycle to stabilize fees, so Council's intention is that the $138 fee will be in place until 2014.
Still the lowest in Ontario
Your College fee is still the lowest annual fee for any regulated profession in the province.
See the chart of annual fees paid by Ontario’s self-regulating professions.
Increasing our financial stability
“If we had stayed in rented office space – our former location – the membership fee would have been much higher today,” said Council Chair Liz Papadopoulos. “As a former tenant, we knew that we would face a very significant rent increase – almost double what we were paying. Our lease was expiring and we would have had to renegotiate a new, higher market rate.”
The College’s below-market rent deal was coming to an end. Renting was about to become more expensive – much more.
That’s why the College proactively bought a building to reduce our long-term costs and to ensure we keep the annual membership fee as low as possible. Owning a building makes sound financial sense for the College’s future and creates equity for College members. We no longer pay HST on our mortgage payments – which we did on our rent payments.
‘’If you own a home or are about to purchase one, you know that building equity is one of the best way to achieve financial stability,” said College Registrar Michael Salvatori. ‘’It’s the best protection against financial pressures.”
Ontario teachers’ ownership of this building gives us a hedge against unknown future facility costs.
For more information on the building purchase, please read Professionally Speaking.
Reducing our future financial pressures
Like any new owner, we need to absorb a small increase today in order to reduce our financial pressure in years to come – which includes the stabilization of the annual membership fee cost.
Membership growth and increasing demands on College
A number of factors contributed to your College Council’s 2012 fee decision:
- the growth in membership and legislative obligations placed on the College has risen significantly.
- the revenue that each new member generates no longer keeps pace with increasing demands
- an increased obligation in complaints and hearings
- more institutions offering teacher education programs and more additional qualifications programs and courses we have to accredit
- the need to improve access to the profession to provide fairness for internationally educated teachers
- the need to meet requirements of national and international agreements on labour mobility.
To learn more, see a breakdown of your fee and how it supports College activities.
