Cosmetologists should be regulated in BC to ensure safety and health for consumers
By Marinko Banicevic
If you are a sheep in Western Australia getting a haircut, the person cutting your wool must meet government standards to ensure that the sheep is shorn efficiently and quickly without cuts or injury to the sheep or shearer. But if you’re a human getting a haircut or esthetic services in British Columbia, the person cutting your hair or nails could have no formal training or credentials. Shouldn’t the BC government ensure that cosmetologists meet professional as well as health and safety standards?
In 2003, the government of British Columbia deregulated the cosmetology industry, and the industry has been trying ever since to reinstate regulation.
Cosmetologists are the people who cut our hair, do our nails and perform our esthetic services. In BC, these personal services can currently be performed without any formal training or even without any permits whatsoever.
Those in the industry want standards and want them enforced. We take pride in our skills and training, and view our profession as a trade, not an unskilled service job. There are approximately 25,000 beauty professionals in British Columbia. Regulation would ensure that minimum standards for training, health and safety would keep the public safe and well treated by salons, spas and estheticians in BC. Give us back the dignity and pride we deserve while at the same time returning confidence to our clients.
Since the deregulation of the cosmetology industry, the government has spent time and money redefining the industry. They recently spent about a quarter of a million dollars to fund a government-appointed Personal Service Industry Human Resources Committee. The Cosmetology Association of British Columbia (CIABC), though not perfect, already performs a similar function as this committee and in its 75 years of existence, has never cost the government a red cent.
We have heard lots of talk of how to manage our unregulated industry, even to bring funeral homes and the cosmetology industry under the same administrative umbrella. Since their patients are less concerned about injury than our live customers, this proposal is pretty much ridiculous.
British Columbia’s political parties are spending lots of time this election talking about support to business and their commitment to public health, but our industry has seemed to escape their attention. Given the current public health crisis of flu pandemics, health and safety issues like regulation of the cosmetology industry should be bigger news to those planning to govern our province.
Marinko Banicevic has been a licensed cosmetologist since 1971 and is the owner of The Megahair Group. He is on the board of the Cosmetology Association of British Columbia, and until his resignation on April 29 in protest of a lack of action on regulating cosmetologists, a board member of the Personal Service Industry HR Committee.
Contact: Mark Banicevic cell 604.220.6222, mark@megahairfamily.com
