Halifax sugaring studio campaigns for on-the-job training permit
Owners of Fauna say licensing rules too restrictive, making it hard to hire cosmetologists from N.S.
Halifax's only dedicated sugaring studio is leading the campaign to get an on-the-job training permit.
The owners of Fauna Sugaring in the city's North End have launched a petition saying that action is needed to allow salon owners in Halifax and the rest of the province to fill vacant cosmetology positions.
Braden Lamoureux, one of the studio's co-owners, says the current legislation has made it difficult to hire Nova Scotian residents trained in sugaring — a hair removal technique that uses a sticky paste made from lemon, water and sugar.
"The more we learned about the bylaws that exist in Nova Scotia around cosmetology, the harder it has been to actually hire local community members," he said.
People who wish to train and work in Nova Scotia are required to attend a registered school before being licensed by the Cosmetology Association of Nova Scotia. But licensing is also possible for cosmetologists from outside Nova Scotia or Canada who have not been trained in a school, providing that their skills, experience and credentials are satisfactory to the association. An examination is also required to legally practise.
"This monopoly on entry to our industry, the majority held by private colleges, is failing to meet the high output and quality of graduates for many specific skills that the current market demands," the petition reads. "This is leaving many salons understaffed and with no way to sustain employee turnover on their own."
Specifically, the owners of Fauna say sugaring training in the province leaves much to be desired and graduates trained here often have to be retrained at the studio.
"In Halifax, our biggest city on the East Coast, there's only one school that offers what we do for training and they put out five to six graduates a year, so it's really low volume for a city that's about to hit half a million people, and it's just not sustainable," Lamoureux said.
Faith Lamoureux, the studio's other owner, is one of three sugaring practitioners at Fauna and got her licence in Ontario. She also holds an instructor licence that would allow her to teach sugaring techniques, if bylaws permitted.
Another practitioner, Kateryna Dzhuian, is originally from Ukraine and was licensed in Denmark. She completed an assessment with the cosmetology association before she began working at Fauna and did not have to go through training at a registered school before she started working.
Dzhuian said she was glad to have gotten her licence elsewhere so she was able to easily get a position at Fauna.
"I was surprised, honestly, that people in Nova Scotia, they don't know what it is, sugaring," Dzhuian said. "It sounds a little bit strange because it's popular in different countries."
Cosmetology association open to changes
The cosmetology association says while it is open to allowing on-the-job training, the board is looking at all the pros and cons, including how to ensure trainees are properly taught if they aren't trained at a registered school.
Association executive director Dana Sharkey said the organization is aware of the petition. This is the first time this particular issue has been put to the association, she added, and the matter will be presented to members of the group at the upcoming annual general meeting.
"There's been meetings held with [Fauna], as well. The meetings turned out really well in some areas that they wanted," Sharkey said. "Other areas, nobody could agree on, so there still has to be a lot more work done before we can put out exactly what it would look like to be able to train within a salon if it moves forward."
Sharkey also said that Nova Scotia is envied by other provinces for the provincial regulations set out by the association that do work to protect the public.
"With in-salon training, there's a lot of controversy right now around it because not every salon runs the same, not every salon owner would instruct the same," she said. "Will the students get the basics, the foundation of the program that will carry them through their career? Will they get the same training experience?"
The AGM is scheduled for October. The petition is also calling on members of the association to attend the meeting and vote on changing the bylaw.
"We just want to try to create an alternative pathway that doesn't compromise public health or safety, but still trains people through licensed instructors like Faith," Braden Lamoureux said.
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