President’s Message By Lorne Kashin, RO

Wow! Amazing how things can change almost overnight. The BC government announces a new regulation and highlights on‐line dispensing of glasses and contact lenses and gives opticians the right to provide stand alone sight testing for their clients. Governments seem to be moving in the direction of allowing people choices in almost everything including healthcare. The public may choose between safe choices, regulated, and ‘buyer beware’ choices from non regulated sources. If we as regulated professionals want to survive in this market it will be up to us to provide our clients with a reason to come to us for vision care. Hopefully we won’t see our Ministry of Health allow the dispensing of eye wear and contact lenses by un‐licensed individuals. Whether this happens or not we will continue to see more competition for our services. The Internet is here to stay. Unless the government starts censoring the internet and Canada Customs checks every package coming into our province, mail order will continue to be an option for our clients.

I do believe we need to step up our dialogue with government. It has to come from the on the ground opticians. You must meet with your MPPs. You voted them in. Remember the board is only a small group of opticians and one Executive Director while there are 2500 opticians and students in Ontario. Imagine if most went to see their MPP’s! But, our argument to government can’t be about us facing competition. It must be about our belief that the public is best served by regulated Professionals providing eye wear and contact lens dispensing and that there is a risk of harm in receiving product from unregulated providers.

You have choices. You can listen to the ‘doom and gloom’ bunch who believes we’re on a slippery slope to disaster. You can sit back and hope things work out and the government continues to legislate clients into our dispensaries or you can join with colleagues and become active in the OOA’s efforts with government. You can develop a vision for the future that includes a robust and energetic profession of opticianry. I vote for the last strategy.

We have to continue to upgrade our knowledge and skills and increase our scope of practice as other professions are doing. We cannot hold onto the model of dispensing that’s existed for the last 60 years. It’s not a good path to go down thinking that if we stop pursuing refraction the ODs will test eyes and not dispense and the Internet and other unregulated dispensing will be stopped. The Ontario government has not been able to close the doors on a small chain of optical stores that have been found guilty of prescribing and dispensing even after they were denied an appeal from the highest court in the land. Unbelievable! I’m sounding like a broken record but I have to repeat this. Opticians will be refracting in the future and this will bring patients to our practices and give us a chance to show them what a highly trained passionate optician can do for them. Expand your practice. Low vision, geriatrics, kids, and of course, as an expanded scope ‐ refracting. It’s hard to hit a moving target.

And how about that Inside Optics! People had fun! The atmosphere and the feedback confirms my own experience which was great presentations, great trade show, great discussions and decent food. The AGM saw us form a new board of directors. I welcome our new members to the board and welcome back the rest. I look forward to working with everyone this coming year. As we await the release of the HPRAC referral we must continue to focus on our future. We must see the bigger picture and continue to raise the bar.

Lorne Kashin R.O. – President