There are different professions that have regulators. They oversee the admission of members into the profession, and the conduct of their members practicing their profession. Some examples include lawyers, doctors, nurses, dentists and engineers.

The licence I am talking about is my engineering licence. I have other licences but they are more like trade licences.

The level of oversight and mechanism for enforcement is different between my engineering licence and my trade tickets. One example is that engineering is self regulating so if I’m a bad engineer I have to go to engineer court (this is a comedic oversimplification) and I could lose my licence. No criminal charges would come from this, but I would be subject to criminal charges if my actions harmed others. The bar for repercussions is much lower than for the trades. For that, I would simply be charged criminally for my actions related to the laws around the trade (or other laws).

I need to renew my licence (basically just give them money, state I am still practicing) and as a separate thing I need to give them my training records for the year to demonstrate that I have completed my required professional development for the year. It just happens that my renewal date and the deadline for the reporting is the same for me because of my renewal date. Kinda nice to only have to remember one date 😄