VAUGHAN, Ontario — Seventy-five years ago, a group of pest control operators came together to address a common concern: gas rationing.
It was 1942, World War II was in full swing, and operators were finding it difficult to secure the fuel they needed to get from account to account.
Convincing the government that pest control was an essential public health service (and worthy of a higher fuel allowance), spurred P. Henri Maheu, president of Mysto Inc., in Quebec, to invite colleagues, government officials, university researchers and suppliers to meet in Montreal.
The response was overwhelming and the group promptly established a board of directors, nominated an executive, and crafted the necessary organizing documents to form the Canadian Pest Control Operators Association. In 1943, the group held its first national pest management conference.
Transformative years. Through the decades, the association brought the value of pest management to public light, raised industry professionalism through education and presented a unified voice to government regulators.
The latter became increasingly important in the early 1990s when pesticide regulation shifted from Ag Canada to Health Canada. That’s when provincial and federal regulators began taking “a more enforcement posture,” recalled Abell Pest Control President John Abell, who headed the group now called the Canadian Pest Management Association in the mid-1980s. “We noticed a big change in provincial regulations where the field officers instead of working with industry were finding fault; they were out there to find people breaking laws,” he said.
By the mid-1990s, provincial associations had grown stronger while CPMA was on the brink of dissolving. Then-president Gary Muldoon, who heads Orkin Canada, invited the four provincial groups operating at the time to convene at the annual Structural Pest Management Association of Ontario conference. With methyl bromide under intense pressure for ozone depletion, the provincial groups saw the value of maintaining closer communications with Ottawa and agreed “to come on board with CPMA,” giving the industry “a much more powerful federal voice” during a critical time, he recalled.
Re-energized, CPMA formed “a mandate to educate the Canadian pest control companies” by having provincial associations take turns hosting the annual conference and by bringing in big-name speakers and a professional to organize this event, said Don McCarthy, who was CPMA president twice and is the former president of Braemar Pest Management. “We were on our way,” he recalled.
In 1998, CPMA teamed up with the National Pest Management Association. As a “region” of NPMA, the Canadian group got a seat on the NPMA board of directors, and members gained access to its deep technical and educational resources. “It was absolutely the best thing that could have happened,” said McCarthy of the relationship.
Two years later, CPMA enlisted NPMA to organize its annual convention. When the association’s executive director resigned, it awarded its management to NPMA, which had begun offering this service to state associations in the U.S. Dominique Stumpf, now CEO of NPMA, served as CPMA executive director for 12 years and “was instrumental” in organizing conventions, guiding government relations, and managing member services and finances, recalled McCarthy.
Today, CPMA is focused on three key areas:
1. Developing an even stronger relationship with government regulators. “We’ve really made a lot of headway through the years” with Health Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency becoming more open to the industry’s point of view, according to Kathy Cano, CPMA past-president and quality assurance manager of Orkin Canada.
That work will continue, as the collaboration is helping to expedite the product registration process “so that we can get tools for our companies much sooner” and it is having “a really huge impact” on the product re-evaluation process, explained Sandy Costa, who took the reins of CPMA at the convention and is vice president of business development at GreenLeaf Pest Control.
2. Encouraging education across the industry. CPMA plans to work with associations that don’t have provincial recertification requirements to get them adopted, or at least get PMPs recognized for going “above and beyond to stay current” with industry changes, said Costa. Ideally, the association would operate a national database to track continuing education credits for PMPs, provincial associations and ministries, she said.
3. Expanding member benefits. “We really want to take a look at our membership benefits” to make sure that as members’ needs evolve so does CPMA’s offerings, said Andrew Bray, executive director, CPMA. The association currently has 455 members and “I would love to be at 500 next year,” he said. As membership grows, CPMA can provide more education, training, affinity programs and government affairs support for members.
Looking forward. CPMA will work closely with the presidents of the six provincial associations who sit on its board — “a really talented team” — to determine the collective direction of the association, said Costa. Abell Pest Control QA Manager Steven Graff, who was CPMA president from 2013 to 2015, urged PMPs to get involved in the provincial associations, which brings in new ideas and ensures that concerns facing the industry are brought forward so action can be taken.
A committee is overseeing the realignment of CPMA’s core mission, vision and values, which will serve as strategic guideposts in coming years. The association also is exploring ways to increase its participation in provincial meetings, ramp up communications with stakeholders and attract the next generation of professionals.
The association “represents the Canadian industry very, very well” and “truly is a great value to our industry,” said Abell, who regularly participates in global pest management symposia. “It ranks up there as one of the better federal associations in the world” in terms of prestige and accomplishments, he said.
CPMA is “a very sound association, so if the next 75 years are anything like the first 75, the sky’s the limit,” said Bray.
