January 2007 ISSUE
COUNCIL BRIEFS
Dues Increase $15 for Rising Costs,
Council Priorities
The following news items were gathered from the Dec. 7 APEGGA Council meeting in Calgary. The next meeting is Feb. 22 in Edmonton at the D.A. Lindberg Conference Centre.
Council strategies and priorities, inflation, salary increases and a topping up of reserves will add $15 to each APEGGA member’s dues in 2007, Council decided in passing a balanced budget. Inflation and salary increases make up 10 per cent of an 18 per cent increase in spending over 2006 projections, Council heard. Spending on strategic and other priorities accounts for the remaining eight per cent of the increase.
Members will see their annual dues rise 6.4 per cent to $250 each from the current $235. Dues will bring in about $8.9 million, compared with a projected $7.7 million in 2006. Expenses total $12.9 million, compared with a pro-jected actual of $11 million in 2006.
With potential members from Alberta, across Canada and around the world applying with APEGGA in record numbers, the Registration Department continues to be a major operational expense.
pplications are expected to number 6,000 or more
in 2006, compared with about 4,900 in 2005.
Back only a few years, to 2004, Registration cost the Association under $1 million.
In 2007, that budget item is expected to reach more than $1.5 million.
APEGGA has no control over the number of applications it receives, and Council heard that application fees do not cover all of the department’s expenses. In fact the budget shows application fees make up about half of the department’s operating costs.
Compliance remains a high priority for Council as well. It’s the department that makes sure Alberta individuals and companies properly use the APEGGA titles, and don’t practice the professions without them.
Says the Finance Committee’s report to Council: “Over the past year the heated Alberta economy has greatly affected APEGGA. We have added staff and propose to add more, primarily to address Registration and Compliance needs, and salaries have increased beyond inflation in order to retain staff.
“To accommodate more staff, additional space in Edmonton must be leased. To manage our business better and to provide a more professional interface with our members, improvements in both the accounting and member management systems have had to be undertaken.”
The budget forecasts a surplus of about $155,000 on total expenses of $12,921,000.
Business Plan Approved
Council approved the final version of the APEGGA Business Plan 2007: Engaging in Growth, which lays out six priorities for the year. These are
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Partner with ASET in regulating the professions
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Consult members regularly and incorporate their input appropriately
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Personalize professionalism so that members exude a strong sense of professionalism
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Assess the professions’ abilities to meet the needs for professional practice for the next 10 years
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Provide leadership on professional issues and technical issues affecting society
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Address professional mobility to and from Alberta, within Canada, with the U.S. and around the world.
Four operational priorities also get strong billing in the plan. These are
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Reduce the time taken to process applications
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Reduce the number of unlicensed practitioners and those using reserved titles inappropriately
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Improve ability to manage member information and access member information from other associations
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Increase work spaces in Edmonton.
Then the plan breaks down the four major Council goals by strategies, actions, measurables — and even managers responsible. Those four goals are regulate the practice, lead the professions, uphold members, and communicate and consult.
The process extends right into budgeting, and Council is pleased with the line of sight it now has. “This is a tremendous governance structure,” said Past President Larry Staples, P.Eng. “I think both Council and staff should be very proud of the level of governance we now have.”
Reserve Policy Simplified
In September, the APEGGA Finance Committee proposed a policy for keeping the reserve at an appropriate size. Council, however, was having none of it. It deemed the policy, which was based on what’s called a Monte Carlo analysis, unnecessarily complicated and wordy.
The replacement version is much simpler, and Council quickly passed a motion accepting it. Under the policy, unrestricted assets will be maintained at 15 to 20 per cent of normal operating costs.
Staff Contribution Unchanged
A proposal to bump up staff members’ contribution to their pension plan is off the Council agenda for now. Council decided that the time wasn’t right to subtract a percentage point of salary from staff and that the increase may not be necessary to keep the plan healthy. The matter was tabled until the June meeting.
The Staff Benefits Committee had called on Council to increase the staff contribution to six per cent of pensionable earnings from the current five per cent, effective Feb. 1. The increase would have represented about $37,000 in 2007.
Under the recommendation, the total contribution of APEGGA would have been $468,000, the total for staff about $240,000. But Council decided to wait until it has a current picture of the fund’s health before considering the staff contribution increase.
New Task Force Addresses Public Profile
Providing leadership in professional matters is an APEGGA Business Plan priority. But what does that mean when it comes to taking action or speaking out in the public arena?
A new Public Policy Issues Task Force will look at exactly that question, Council heard. Among its proposed members are Executive Director & Registrar Neil Windsor, P.Eng., Public Council Member Dr. Larry Ohlhauser, and Darrel Danyluk, P.Eng., a past president of both APEGGA and the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers.
The task force plans a proactive strategy for major issues that could become crises involving public fatalities. It will also have a reactive strategy to deal with actual tragedies, after they happen.
Requirement Remains for Vice-President/President Elect
Under a literal interpretation of EGGP Act bylaws, nominees for the Vice-President/President Elect position on the APEGGA executive must have at least one year of Council experience at the time of nomination. Because nominations are accepted before the end of the actual Council year, that effectively leaves out first-year councillors.
Some years, the Nominating Committee has gone with the literal interpretation. Other years, the committee has been more lenient.
Now, legal counsel has had its say. The nominee must have completed one year at the time of nomination, no exceptions.
Although it is often difficult to round up nominations, Council did not approve of reducing or eliminating the experience requirement. Elected executive positions on Alberta’s biggest professional association demand experience, most councillors concurred.
The requirement varies from province to province. B.C. requires two full years, for example, and Manitoba requires one year. Quebec, on the other hand, has no experience requirement for vice-president.
Documentation Wait Increases Processing Times
The longest block of Registration Department processing time is waiting for documentation, Council heard. Applicants themselves are in charge of providing documents, so that period is out of the hands of staff and Board of Examiners members.
Council has long been concerned about the length of time some of the key regulatory functions take. Although staff and the Board of Examiners have made a number of changes, there’s been only “a very slight improvement” in processing times, Council heard.
The quickest category is transfers from other provinces, which normally take under two weeks. Still, seven days of that involve waiting for documents.
Internationally educated graduates from unaccredited or unlisted programs take the longest amount of time, averaging 259 days. Waiting for documentation for them takes an average of 98 days.
The investigative and discipline process is also a lengthy one, largely because of the need to match the busy schedules of staff, members and lawyers. Council looked at timelines on five completed cases, with the number of weeks between the original complaint and a file’s completion ranging from 134 to 266.