Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario

The Association of Management, Administrative and Professional Crown Employees of Ontario is a trade union representing public sector employees in the Province of Ontario, Canada. It is known by its acronym AMAPCEO, pronounced "a-map-see-oh", in conjunction with the tagline "Ontario's Professional Employees".

AMAPCEO represents over 13,000 professional and supervisory public servants, most of whom work directly for the Government of Ontario. Of Canada’s ten provinces and three territories, Ontario is the most populous (at 13.6 million in 2014, constituting almost 40 per cent of the Canadian population) and the second largest in area (1.076 million km²).

Ontario's political system in based on the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy and the career public service is apolitical and non-partisan, providing objective advice to, and implementing decisions of, successive governments, regardless of the political party that is elected to form the government at any given time.

AMAPCEO-represented employees in the Ontario Public Service (OPS) work in every government ministry and in a number of agencies, boards and commissions in over 130 cities and towns across Ontario and in eleven cities outside Canada. As of April 1st, 2016, AMAPCEO also represents six bargaining units outside the OPS in the broader public sector (or BPS): the Office of the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth (OPACY), an independent office of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario; Public Health Ontario (PHO, formerly known as the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion), an independent provincial Crown agency; Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care (formerly the Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre), which was the final psychiatric hospital divested from provincial government operation; the Medical Advisory Secretariat at Health Quality Ontario (HQO, formerly known as the Ontario Health Quality Council), an independent provincial Crown agency that promotes and monitors quality assurance in the health-care sector; the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an independent agency that promotes and funds artists and arts organizations; and the Office of the French Language Services Commissioner (OFLSC), established as an independent office of the Legislative Assembly in 2014. (An eighth unit at the Ontario Racing Commission was also represented by AMAPCEO until its April 2016 merger with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario.)

Over eighty per cent of AMAPCEO members work in the provincial capital city of Toronto. Members include policy analysts, financial analysts, auditors, economists, mediators, arbitrators, scientists, chaplains, veterinarians, program supervisors, child and youth advocates, clinical co-ordinators, psychiatric patient advocates, media relations and communications officers, epidemiologists, arts granting officers and many others.

As a trade union, the Association is relatively young, having been established in 1992 as a grassroots organization to represent employees who, at that time, were excluded from collective bargaining. In 1993, AMAPCEO negotiated a Social Contract sectoral framework agreement with the provincial government on behalf of 12,000 excluded civil servants. When bargaining rights were extended by the government to some previously-excluded employees, AMAPCEO successfully signed up a sufficient number of members (subsequently certified by the Ontario Labour Relations Board) to achieve voluntary recognition by the government as an official bargaining agent in March 1995. At that time, the membership was approximately 4,500 employees; total bargaining unit membership has tripled in size since certification. AMAPCEO celebrated the 20th anniversary of its founding in 2012, the 20th anniversary of voluntary recognition in 2015 and the 20th anniversary of the negotiation of our first collective agreement in 2016.

The founding president was Janet Ballantyne; the founding Vice-President was Art Halpert. In 1995, Gary Gannage and Robert Stambula were elected, respectively, as President and Vice-President. Stambula was succeeded by Sally Pardaens (subsequently known as Sally Jurcaba), a former Chair of the Finance Chapter, who was elected at the 2013 annual convention. Gannage was succeeded on January 1st, 2015 by Dave Bulmer, who worked as a professional educator in London for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. At the time of his election, Bulmer was AMAPCEO's Treasurer and, before being elected to the Board of Directors, had served as the London Chapter Chair. Cynthia Watt, then Chair of the Education/Training, Colleges and Universities Chapter, was elected to succeed Jurcaba as Vice-President at the 2014 convention. Besides Bulmer and Watt, the other executive officers are the Secretary, Glynn Robinson, and the Treasurer, Chris Harper. Bulmer and Harper were re-elected to two-year terms at the 2016 convention held on December 2nd and 3rd in Toronto. All members of the Board of Directors serve two-year terms, staggered so that one-half of the Directors and one-half of the executive officers are elected annually. One of the Directors is elected Board Chair and joins the four executive officers on the Board Executive Committee.

At a special convention held in June 2016, AMAPCEO adopted a new governance structure and system of member representation, effective January 1st, 2017. The functions of the two former central governing bodies (the 9-member Board of Directors and 32-member Provincial Council) are merged into a single new Board of Directors consisting of 16 members: the four executive officers (President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer), who continue to be elected by the annual delegates' convention, plus 12 Directors, each elected directly by and from AMAPCEO members in each of 12 new Districts. The 12 Districts, consisting of roughly equal membership determined geographically, have replaced 23 Chapters, most of which were ministry- or bargaining unit-based, ranging considerably in size of membership. Three of the Districts represent members outside the City of Toronto and the remaining 9 Districts represent members working within Toronto, proportionate to the distribution of AMAPCEO members across the province. The new structure is expected to provide more effective representation for members, strengthen the development of leadership capacity and promote greater member engagement in the work of the organization.

AMAPCEO employs approximately 40 full-time professional staff who provide advice and services to members from an office in Toronto (1 Dundas Street West at the corner of Dundas and Yonge Streets - a location close to where most members work and where our employer counterparts also work). All employees in the office except the senior staff are members of a bargaining unit represented by the national Canadian union, Unifor. In May 2014, Anthony Pizzino was named as the inaugural Executive Director (or Chief Administrative Officer) of AMAPCEO. Other senior staff include: Farrah Charania, Manager, Human Resources and Administrative Services; Ankur Lall, Manager, Strategic Planning and Projects; Michael Mouritsen, Director, Membership Services; Rob Smalley, Director, Labour Relations Services; and Angela Stewart, Director, Finance and Administration Services. Anthony Schein is Executive Assistant to the President. As part of an office re-organization implemented on July 1st, 2016, three Team Leads were appointed to enhance service delivery to members: Mark Bonaparte, Team Lead, Dispute Resolution; Burke Moffat, Team Lead, Labour Relations and Bargaining; and Jennifer Sherwood, Team Lead, Member Engagement.