What changed in the 2026 OMVIC course manual

The English student manual that Georgian College links from its OMVIC page is now the 2026 edition of the Automotive Certification Course manual. We compared its text with the 2025 edition line by line. Three changes carry meaning: the pass grade is printed as 80 per cent where it said 75, the sentence on a certificate, a congratulatory letter and a pin for registered graduates is gone, and one sentence in chapter 13 now says “consumer” where it said “customer”. Everything else is the edition and copyright year, one page reference in the answer key, one web address dropped from the resource list, and line wrapping. Georgian’s own page changed in September, and those changes affect a candidate booking the online test more than the manual changes do.

What changed in the 2026 student manual?

The pass grade. The 2025 edition said 75 per cent in two places, the introduction and its fast-facts box. The 2026 edition says 80 in both. OMVIC’s course page and Georgian’s page both now give 80 per cent, and the 2025 edition of the manual gave 75. OMVIC dated the move to 80 per cent from January 1, 2026 for the MVDA Key Elements test, in a December 3, 2025 bulletin; neither page gives a start date for the certification test. The manual now agrees with the two pages. On a 60-question paper, 80 per cent is 48 correct; the certification exam page has the rest of the format.

The certificate, letter and pin. The 2025 edition ended its paragraph on the C.A.L.E. (Certified in Automotive Law and Ethics) designation with a sentence listing three items a registered graduate would receive: a certificate, a congratulatory letter and a pin. The 2026 edition keeps the designation and drops that sentence. The same change is on Georgian’s page, covered below.

Customer and consumer. Chapter 13, on the Consumer Protection Act, has a short box under 13.02 that separates the two words. In the 2025 edition that box tied the personal, family or household purposes test to the word customer; the 2026 edition ties it to consumer, which is how the Act defines the word. Section 1 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2002 says a “consumer” means “an individual acting for personal, family or household purposes and does not include a person who is acting for business purposes”. The answer to the chapter’s matching review question carries the same one-word fix. The box’s point is unchanged: a corporation or a buyer acting for a business can be a customer but is never a consumer. Which one a buyer is decides whether the Act protects them at all, and the consumer protection guide opens on that distinction.

Apart from those lines, the two editions read the same. Every rule and figure a candidate looks up during the test says what it said in 2025, so a candidate holding the 2025 hard copy is studying the same material. Only the hard copy of the manual may be used during the test, online or in person.

The MVDA Key Elements Course manual, for the shorter course grandfathered registrants take, was reissued in the same way. Georgian’s file is still labelled the 2025 edition, but its text now gives 80 per cent, drops the certificate, letter and pin sentence, and makes the same consumer fix.

What changed on Georgian College’s OMVIC page?

We compared the page on September 30, 2026 with our copy from September 2, 2026. Five things moved for a certification candidate.

No certificate after registration. On September 2 the page still said that once a student registered with OMVIC, Georgian would send a certificate naming them Certified in Automotive Law and Ethics, with a letter of congratulations, and only after OMVIC approved the licence. That paragraph is gone. The notice above it, already there in early September, says that from September 2026 a passing grade of 80 per cent earns a digital badge instead of a physical certificate, and that the badge shows course completion, not registration with OMVIC. The Key Elements post covers the badge in more detail. The page still says a registered dealer or salesperson who passes the course may use the C.A.L.E. designation.

Online-test support around the clock. The technical-requirements section now gives a new phone number and a new email address for Oliver’s Publishing desk side support, with hours of 24/7. On September 2 the same section gave a different number and address, open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The FAQ lower on the page, under forgotten portal logins, still gives the old address and the weekday hours, so take the contact details from the technical-requirements section.

A shorter macOS list. Big Sur and Monterey are gone. The supported Mac versions are now Ventura 13.7, Sonoma 14.4 and Sequoia 15.5, where the September 2 list named earlier point releases of each. Windows 10 version 1803 or later is still accepted, Windows 11 is now listed as recommended, and Chromebooks still cannot run the test software. A candidate on an older Mac should check the version before the test day or book an in-person sitting.

One fee on the page. In early September a fee-increase notice gave $288.94 for domestic and permanent resident students and $563.97 for international students from September 1, 2026, while the self-study fee block further down still showed the September 1, 2025 figures. The fee block now shows the 2026 figures too. What the course costs next to OMVIC’s own application fee is in the licence cost and timeline guide.

Who must take the course. The list lost one line: grandfathered registrants seeking re-registration more than six months after their registration expired. The line on anyone who passed the course and seeks re-registration two years after expiry is still there. Georgian gives no reason for the change. The education requirement itself is set in the regulation. For a salesperson, section 13(1) of O. Reg. 333/08 accepts an applicant who was registered as a salesperson under the Motor Vehicle Dealers Act before its repeal, without the course, if the application is made no more than two years after their most recent registration expired, and section 13(2) still lets the registration carry a condition to take the course. A registrant whose registration has lapsed should ask OMVIC what applies before paying Georgian for a course they may not need.