The 2026 PEAK rules in 90 seconds
PEO PEAK is Ontario's mandatory continuing education program for licensed Professional Engineers. Every year you complete three things, submit your records, and move on. Miss it, and your licence is at risk. That last part changed in 2025.
What you owe PEO each year
- Practice Evaluation Questionnaire, which sets your personalized CPD target
- Professional Practice Module, a short ethics and statute review
- CPD Report listing the continuing education you completed
The hours
Up to 30 CPD hours per calendar year. Your actual target is personalized based on how you answer the Practice Evaluation Questionnaire. Engineers with limited engineering practice (retired, transitioned to non-technical roles) may have a lower target, or qualify for the Non-practising Survey instead.1
At least 80% of your required hours must come from core engineering learning. Hours are recorded in 15-minute increments, at a 1:1 ratio with actual time spent.2
The deadlines
- January 31: Practice Evaluation Questionnaire and Professional Practice Module
- December 31: CPD Report
The part that is new in 2026
On November 10, 2025, PEO administratively suspended the first 21 licences for PEAK non-compliance. First suspensions in program history. 2026 is the first cycle where engineers know the suspensions are real.3
If you were waiting to see whether PEO would follow through, that question is answered. The 2026 cycle launched January 6, and the administrative apparatus to suspend is now in place and has been exercised.4
What you must keep
Records for three years. PEO may request documentation as part of its compliance assessment program. Acceptable proof includes enrollment confirmations, attendance certificates, sign-in sheets, and completion records. Keep a simple log of hours-to-activity as you go. Reconstructing it at year-end is painful.
The three PEAK categories, with PEO's actual definitions
PEO recognizes three categories of continuing knowledge activity. There are no explicit numeric caps per category in the current PEO public documentation. The only hard constraint is that 80% of your required hours must be core engineering learning. What you choose within each category is up to you.2
Courses delivered with defined curriculum, qualified instructor, and an evaluation to confirm you learned something. Includes college and university technical courses, manufacturer or supplier training programs, and industrial certification courses.
Examples: a 5-day HVAC design course with a completion test, a refrigeration certification program, a graduate-level thermo-fluids seminar at a university.
Self-directed learning that maintains or expands your engineering competence. No instructor or evaluation required, but the content must be genuinely technical.
Examples: self-study of technical journals and manuals, webinars, trade show technical sessions, standalone workshops, structured mentoring discussions, peer study groups on a technical topic.
When you teach, publish, present, or help develop best practices, you're creating knowledge for the profession. PEO counts preparation and delivery time.
Examples: presenting a technical paper at a conference, publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, teaching a university course section, serving on a standards committee, mentoring a group through a structured program.
A practical way to think about this: PEO's guidance is "we are not concerned with how you learn but what you learn." If a reasonable peer reviewing your CPD log would agree the activity maintains your engineering competence, it counts. If they'd squint, document more carefully or skip it.
Plan your 30 hours: a working calculator
Your personalized target comes out of the Practice Evaluation Questionnaire, but most practising P.Engs land at or near the 30-hour maximum. Use this planner to stress-test whether your current activity mix clears the bar before year-end.
If your gap is large and the year is half over, stack free webinars (see Section 4). If you want a single structured block that covers most of your 30 hours in one week, a 5-day formal course delivers 28 PDHs (see Section 7).
Free and low-cost ways to hit 30 hours
Most working Ontario P.Engs can cover 20 of 30 hours through free or near-free activities if they plan it. Here are the most reliable Ontario-relevant sources.
Professional associations
Thought Leadership Thursdays run weekly, 1 hour each, 1 CPD hour each. Members get free access to a library of recorded webinars and conference sessions with attendance certificates. If you are a practising P.Eng in Ontario, OSPE membership pays for itself in CPD credits alone.6 See OSPE CPD schedule ›
A library of 30-to-40-minute modules on PEO-adjacent topics, mobile-friendly, no login wall. Self-declared as informal education on your CPD Report.7 PEO online learning ›
All IEEE live webinars are free. They archive for 12 months. IEEE Spectrum Tech Insider webinars plus vTools events cover technical topics across disciplines. PDH certificates issue automatically for members.8 IEEE free webinars ›
Supplier webinars and free eLearning snippets mixed with paid membership content. For HVAC and refrigeration work specifically, ASHRAE is the highest-density technical resource ecosystem in North America.9 ASHRAE training ›
Most provincial engineering associations publish free webinars. Ontario P.Engs can self-declare attendance as informal education. Check EGBC and APEGA event calendars for relevant technical sessions.
Vendor-delivered training
Trane, Carrier, Johnson Controls, Siemens, Danfoss, Emerson, Daikin, and Mitsubishi Electric all run free webinars with CPD certificates. Strong match if your practice touches HVAC, commercial refrigeration, or controls. The vendor pitch is real, but the technical content is usually substantive.
ASHRAE and CSA standards committees, codes review sessions, and technical society local chapters. Participatory activities count under informal education. Keep sign-in records.
Self-directed learning (counts as informal)
Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, and most major Ontario public libraries provide LinkedIn Learning free with a library card. Technical courses from 30 minutes to 8 hours each. Export completion certificates.
Audit mode is free for most Coursera and edX engineering courses. You pay only if you want the certificate. For CPD, you just need a hours log, not a certificate, so audit mode is enough.
PEO explicitly accepts self-study of books, journals, and manuals. Track time in 15-minute increments. PEO's own language: "we are not concerned with how you learn but what you learn." Podcasts cited in engineering circles: The Engineering Commons, Practical Engineering (YouTube), ASHRAE Journal podcast, IEEE.tv.
Self-reporting and the 3-year documentation rule
PEAK is self-reported, but it's not unchecked. PEO's compliance program will be developed further in the coming cycles, and as of November 2025 they now have a precedent for administrative suspensions. Plan your documentation at the same time you plan your hours.
What PEO may ask for
- Enrollment or registration confirmations for webinars, conferences, courses
- Attendance certificates where issued
- Sign-in sheets for in-person or peer-group sessions
- Completion records for formal courses (transcripts, certificates)
- A simple log of self-study activity: book or journal title, dates, hours logged
How to document without losing your mind
Put your CPD tracking wherever your engineering work already lives. A single tab in a spreadsheet, a Notion page, or a running text file in your project archive. Columns: date, activity, category (formal / informal / contributions), hours logged, proof stored (link, PDF filename, or "screenshot on file"). Update it weekly. Never annually.
Red flags to avoid
- Vendor marketing sessions dressed as webinars. If the learning content is under 30% of the runtime, log conservatively or skip.
- Reading hours with no record. "I read a lot of journals" is not documentation. A date-and-title log is.
- Recycling old records. Each year stands alone. Hours carry over only in the specific cases PEO documents.
- Retroactive reconstruction. Piecing together 30 hours in December from memory almost never survives scrutiny. Document as you go.
Getting your employer to pay for formal training
If you want formal instruction rather than free webinars, the question becomes who pays. Ontario employers are generally willing to fund training that keeps a P.Eng's licence current, because that licence is often a condition of the employee's role and the employer's project deliverables. The economics are better than most engineers realize.
The CRA tax math
When an employer pays directly (or reimburses you) for training that is primarily for the employer's benefit, two things happen:
- The payment is non-taxable to you. It does not show up as income on your T4. The CRA standard: if the employee "resumes work for a reasonable period after training," the employer is the primary beneficiary.10
- The employer deducts the cost as a training expense. Full deduction against corporate income.
The effect: a $1,800 course costs the employer roughly $1,323 after tax at Ontario's combined federal and provincial corporate rate of 26.5%. You are not asking your employer to spend $1,800. You are asking them to spend $1,323 on a mandatory licensing requirement that protects their P.Eng-stamped work product.11
If your employer does not pay and the course is required to maintain your professional licence, you may be able to claim it on Line 21200 of your personal return as a professional dues deduction. The CRA folio on employment expenses is explicit: membership and dues required to maintain a professional status recognized by statute are deductible. PEAK CPD falls within that framing for most practising P.Engs.12 Consult a tax professional for your situation.
Typical Ontario engineering training allowances
Published benchmarks are scarce but the pattern in mid-to-large engineering firms is consistent:
- Entry-level to 3 years tenure: $1,500-2,500 per year
- 4-5 years: $2,500-3,500 per year
- Senior: $3,500-5,000+ per year, often with employer-directed conference budgets on top
Firms known for explicit training investment in Ontario engineering: Stantec, WSP, Hatch, AECOM, SNC-Lavalin, EllisDon. Municipal employers and mid-size consultancies vary. Manufacturing (Linamar, Magna, Bombardier) is mid-range. If your employer has no written policy, you can still ask. 79% of Canadian engineering employees say reskilling opportunities matter to their retention, which is the leverage you have.13
Generate your training request email
Fill in your details and the tool below will draft the email. Copy it, adjust for tone, and send it to your manager.
If your employer says no
Most "no" responses in engineering firms are budget-timing rather than policy-denial. Ask which quarter has training budget available, whether a half-course or shorter format would fit this cycle, or whether the cost can be split across two fiscal years. If your employer refuses outright, you still have the Line 21200 personal deduction path, and you still have the free-stack option in Section 4 to meet your PEAK hours another way.
When a formal course is worth the money
If you can hit 30 hours through OSPE webinars and technical reading, you should probably do that. Formal courses cost real money and real time. The question is whether the return justifies it. Here is when the answer is yes.
Scenarios where formal instruction pays off
- You have a real skill gap in a technical area you now need for paid work. You are doing HVAC commissioning but have never been trained on psychrometrics. You are designing a chiller plant for the first time. The free-webinar path will not close a gap like this.
- You are pivoting your practice. A civil P.Eng moving into mechanical systems, a mechanical P.Eng adding refrigeration to their consulting scope. Structured instruction compresses a year of self-study into a focused week.
- Your employer will pay and your manager wants evidence of structured investment. The formal category, with a published syllabus and completion certificate, is easier to justify on an invoice than ten hours of self-directed reading.
- Documentation matters for your role. Engineers who stamp drawings for regulated projects, expert witnesses, and sole practitioners may want auditable proof of competence in the specific technical areas they stamp.
- You want the accountability. Some people absorb material better in a structured cohort with a live instructor who answers real-time questions. If you have tried self-study and it didn't stick, you are that person.
What to look for in a formal course
- Published syllabus with topic depth, not just topic breadth
- Instructor with active P.Eng licence and practical experience, not just teaching credentials
- Class size that allows real question-and-answer time
- Completion certificate that lists CPD hours, content areas, and dates, ready to attach to your PEAK record
- Clear policy on what happens if you miss a day (partial credit, makeup session, refund)
If you want a course built specifically for this
Canetco offers 15 live online courses across HVAC, refrigeration, energy, and thermo-fluid systems. They are PEO PEAK compliant, delivered live via Zoom, and taught personally by Dr. Mohamed Hamed, PhD, P.Eng., FEC. Course lengths range from 1 day (2 PDHs) to 5 days (28 PDHs). Completion certificate is issued with detailed hours and content, ready for your PEAK records.
If a 5-day course fits your situation, one course covers 28 of your 30 required hours and leaves room for two free webinars to round out the year. Browse the course catalogue, or ask about custom training for your team or organization.
Frequently asked questions
How many CPD hours does PEO require per year?
Up to 30 CPD hours per calendar year. Your exact personalized target comes from the Practice Evaluation Questionnaire and may be lower depending on your engineering activity. At least 80% of required hours must be core engineering learning.
When are PEO PEAK deadlines?
Practice Evaluation Questionnaire and Professional Practice Module are due January 31. CPD Report is due December 31. You log activities in PEO's online portal throughout the year.
What happens if you don't complete PEAK?
Licence suspension. On November 10, 2025, PEO administratively suspended the first 21 P.Eng licences for PEAK non-compliance. This is now active enforcement, not a warning. If you miss the annual requirements, your licence is at risk.
What counts as CPD for PEO PEAK?
PEO recognizes three categories: formal education (structured classroom-based with an evaluation), informal education (self-study, webinars, technical reading, mentoring), and contributions to knowledge (teaching, publishing, presenting, standards work). Activities must maintain or expand engineering competence.
Are free webinars valid for PEO PEAK?
Yes. Webinars count as informal education as long as the content is technical and maintains or expands your engineering competence. Keep proof of attendance, which can be a registration email, attendance certificate, or sign-in log. PEO requires three-year retention of records.
Does reading technical books or journals count?
Yes, as informal education. Track hours in 15-minute increments. Keep a log of title, date, and hours. PEO's own guidance: "we are not concerned with how you learn but what you learn."
Can I claim hours from a webinar I watched last year but didn't log?
Only if the webinar occurred in the CPD year you're reporting. Each year stands alone. Hours are not retroactively portable across years in the general case. If you're uncertain, log it in the year it happened and document thoroughly.
Is there a cap on formal or informal hours?
PEO does not publish explicit numeric caps per category in current public documentation. The hard constraint is that 80% of your required hours must be core engineering learning. Within that, you choose the mix. Third-party sources occasionally cite specific category caps that are not confirmed in PEO's official pages. When in doubt, check the most recent PEO PEAK FAQ document or contact PEO directly.
Can my employer pay for a PEO PEAK CPD course?
Yes, and the tax economics favor them doing so. When employer-paid training maintains the professional licence required for your role, CRA generally treats the payment as non-taxable to you and fully deductible to the employer. At Ontario's 26.5% combined corporate tax rate, a $1,800 course nets out to roughly $1,323 of actual cost.
How long do I need to keep proof of CPD activities?
Three years. PEO may request documentation during compliance assessment. Keep enrollment confirmations, attendance certificates, sign-in sheets, completion records, and a simple log of self-study activities with dates and hours.
What if I'm on parental leave or medical leave?
PEO has provisions for reduced or waived CPD requirements during documented leaves. The Practice Evaluation Questionnaire captures this. Check the current PEO PEAK FAQ for the exact process, or contact PEO directly to confirm.
Do I report my hours to PEO monthly or annually?
Annually, via the CPD Report due December 31. You can log activities throughout the year in the PEO online portal, which is strongly recommended over year-end reconstruction.
About the author
If a structured course is the right call
15 live online courses in HVAC, refrigeration, energy, and thermo-fluids. PEO PEAK compliant. Taught by Dr. Mohamed Hamed, PhD, P.Eng., FEC. Completion certificate issued with your CPD hours.
View the 2026 Course Calendar