Supply and Demand Task Force

2008-2010 Committee

 

Co-Chairs
Elizabeth Church (School psychology, Mount Saint Vincent University)
Catherine M. Lee (Clinical, University of Ottawa)
 
Members
Stéphane Beaulieu (l’Ordre des psychologues du Québec)
Jean-Paul Boudreau (Developmental, Ryerson University)
Arla Day (Industrial-organizational, St. Mary’s University)
Olga Heath (Clinical/Counselling, Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Kevin Kelloway (Industrial-Organizational, St. Mary’s University)
Bob McIlwraith (Clinical health psychology, University of Manitoba)
Karen Cohen (Canadian Psychological Association)
Lisa Votta-Bleeker (Canadian Psychological Association)

 

Supply and Demand Task Force

There are a number of pressing issues which need to be addressed regarding the supply of and demand for psychologists. A large proportion of the psychology workforce is approaching retirement. Who will take their places? How many people do we need to train? How should we plan to ensure that there are enough psychologists in areas such as prevention, health promotion and rehabilitation? Will we have an adequate number of psychologists to conduct research, train future students, and develop programs? We have data about the number of students entering and graduating from psychology programs, but little about the nature of their training, and even less about their career paths after graduation. We lack information on how many psychologists are actively practicing in the jurisdiction in which they are licensed, how many are publicly versus privately funded, how many are in health versus correctional versus school, how many are full-time versus part-time, etc. In 2008, CPA struck a task force to examine issues related to the supply of and demand for psychologists in Canada.