Once upon a time, there was a document named CARs. This document lived in a time of multiple ratings for AME's and stated that each AME applicant had to have a minimum amount of time working at each rating for the AME to receive those ratings on his/her license. It DID NOT say a license would be approved with only one rating. In fact, it was common to receive two or more ratings at time of license issuance if the AME could prove experience.
Poor CARs, the system of multiple ratings was updated until it became only a two (not including 'E', 'S') rating license. However, CARs was being looked after by the semi-illiterate who couldn't fathom that CARs wording was now out of date and did not accurately reflect the new licensing system.
Then one day, the now vulnerable CARs was assailed by the evil DB. DB (short for Dull Bureaucrat, shame on you who thought of douche bag!) was a very wicked fellow. Lacking in skills himself, he felt he could make his mark as a government employee. Officially, he was head of Maintenance & Manufacturing until about 2002 or 03, but we'll just call him DB for short. He (mis)interpreted CARs to say the a single license AME was a four year license. To get the second rating would take another year, in theory. (note: this assumes your local TC guy doesn't interpret the new policy to the letter and decide if you work on the second rating only 50% of the time it should require two years of experience to gain the required one for the extra rating).
The evil DB did this without any industry consultation (including the college system pumping out apprentices). In fact, DB was so useless as even a bureaucrat that he failed to properly notify his own offices and up to two years later many TC inspectors had still not heard how he had bastardized and sodomized poor CARs.
The industry responded in it's usual decisive way: By doing nothing. After all, it's far easier to burn through cheap, tax-payer subsidized apprentices, than risk any kind of TC wrath by kicking up a fuss.
The government reacted to it's own child, CARs, an act of parliament, being abused by doing nothing. After all, it's much easier to shuffle ministers around and kow-tow to special interest groups for re-election than to kick up a fuss.
So, today we have a system that has proven so successful in raising the profile of AME's that NLC scrapped an entire apprentice intake and BCIT was running last year at around 30% capacity at a time of rising unemployment. HELLO TC, IS ANYONE F*CKING HOME?
Apparently, the best way to ensure aviation maintenance safety is to chase away the best and the brightest applicants to other trades and skills. The brightest having the ability to analyze to choice between a guaranteed B.Sc in 3 years 9 month or maybe on M license in four or five, and then maybe the second rating a year or two after that. HELLO, TC? ARE YOU THERE?
And that, boys and girls, is how an act of parliament (CARs) was usurped by the truly incompetent and left alone to suffer and wither from neglect by those that were charged to look after it.
And they all lived unsafely ever after.
Oh, yes, and don't forget to have an M1 and an M2 logbook because it's so intuitively obvious how changing a landing light on an M1 machine is SO different than doing it on an M2 aircraft. 
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