January 2007 ISSUE

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President’s Notebook

Help Build Your Professional Community

BY DAVID CHALCROFT, P.ENG.
APEGGA President

Many of you have asked, “What is APEGGA doing to address the critical shortage of engineers and geoscientists we have in Alberta?” Let me give you some background, as well as some answers and approaches.

Alberta’s two universities produce about one-third of the professionals APEGGA registers each year.  Including those who come from across Canada and around the world, we have added more than 2,500 members to our register in 2006.
Yet all indications are that a need for 3,500-plus new professionals per year will continue for the foreseeable future.

The Alberta Government has responded by announcing significant new money for post-secondary education and the two engineering faculties are increasing their enrolments. University of Calgary’s first-year engineering enrolment is up 17 per cent this year.

The APEGGA Education Foundation has been helping out for a decade on the educational front. It was established in December 1996 by an enlightened APEGGA Council of the day, led by Dr. Fred Otto,       P.Eng., who was then the APEGGA President.

The foundation’s purpose is to dispense scholarships, bursaries and awards to worthy students in engineering and geoscience studies. It also participates in some of APEGGA’s well-received Outreach programs, which involve members with students and teachers from elementary through high school. The foundation is a registered charity, meaning it is eligible to issue tax receipts for donations.

The foundation now administers about 70 scholarships each year, valued at some $90,000 in total. As pointed out in the January PEGG by Andy Gilliland, P.Eng., president of the foundation board, this is a very modest contribution by APEGGA’s 45,000 members to the 6,000-plus students working their way through the engineering and geoscience programs at Alberta’s two major universities.

It works out, in fact, to roughly $2 per member.

Andy and the foundation believe it is time to significantly ramp up the foundation’s support for students studying to enter our professions — and your Council agrees.

Major Campaign Begins
We need to gear up the APEGGA Education Foundation to be able to provide scholarship support to a greater number of students and at higher average support levels. To make this happen, APEGGA is part-  nering with the foundation to mount a major fundraising initiative.

Our goal is to create an endowment fund that can sustain annual scholarship awards of $500,000 per year. To get there we need the support of every APEGGA member.

A modest contribution of $50 or $75 per year by each member can make this happen, along with parallel contributions from industry. I urge you to start the ball rolling right now.

Please fill out and clip the form at right, and send your donation in to the foundation. Remember: this donation is tax deductible.

More importantly, it goes towards developing the next generation of professional engineers and geoscientists for Alberta.

Watch for more developments on this front as 2007 progresses.

ASET Talks
Unless you’ve been holidaying on another planet this year, you are aware that we’ve been holding talks with ASET. These talks centre on the One Act, Two Associations model we proposed in March to the government’s Standing Policy Committee on Education and Employment.

Communiqués 1 and 2 were distributed electronically via the e-PEGG and published in The PEGG. The essence of the proposal  they explained is a way to further enhance the protection of the public by bringing technologists — now practicing within the greater engineering and geoscience industry — under the regulatory framework provided by the EGGP Act.

At present, technologists are not subject to a rigorous discipline process or required to participate in continuing competency programs. The maximum fine that ASET can levy upon a member under their Societies Act mandate is $5 and withdrawal of the member’s voluntary membership — hardly a deterrent that safeguards the public.

This One Act, Two Associations initiative is entirely in keeping with similar regulatory models already place. These include

• 30 categories of medical professionals, now regulated under the Health Professions Act and including physicians, surgeons, podiatrists, physical therapists, paramedics, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, midwives, chiropractors, social workers, dentists and dental hygienists, and 18 others

• professional foresters and forestry technologists, under the Regulated Forestry Profession Act

• professional agrologists and agrology technologists, under the Agrologists Act.

Each of these “umbrella acts” brings together all of the players in the greater industry under one regulatory framework. Each framework provides a more holistic and robust regulatory model than its predecessors, and therefore better serves the public interest.

To help all APEGGA members better understand the benefits to the public and to our membership, APEGGA and ASET will conduct a joint town-hall-style meeting in February. The meeting will be simulcast by videoconference to all of APEGGA’s branch locations around the province. It will also be available for live viewing on your home computer.

Participants at the branch locations will be able to provide comments and ask questions.
Please, plan to attend.

Please also read the frequently asked questions feature in this month’s PEGG, on page 4, opposite of this column.

President’s Visits
An annual ritual APEGGA has engaged in for quite a number of years now is the President’s Visits to each of the 10 branches around the province. These visits give our members a chance to get an update on Association activities and issues, and give the President of the day an opportunity to receive feedback from members.

We also make a point of talking to local officials and industry leaders in each community to get their views on matters of interest to the Association and our members.

The schedule for this year’s President’s Visits is starting to firm up, tentatively as follows:

Firm dates, times and venues will be announced in e-PEGGs and electronic Branch Bulletins, closer to the actual events. I will be accompanied on these visits by President-Elect John McLeod, P.Eng., and Executive Director & Registrar Neil Windsor, P.Eng.

I’m particularly looking forward to a return visit to Fort McMurray in January to see if progress is being made on the critical issues of providing local infrastructure and quality of life amenities that are so needed in this mushrooming community. Without high quality amenities, oil sands operators won’t be able to attract and retain the experienced professional engineers and geoscientists needed to operate and optimize the plant processes over the 50-plus-year lifespan of each plant.

These professionals, say the senior managers of Syncrude, Petro-Canada, Albion and Suncor, we talked to last year, are essential to successful plant operation. Extremely high housing costs and a lack of housing, as well as a lack of quality-of-life amenities such as schools, hospitals, cultural centres, sports centres and fire halls, are detriments to attracting our professionals. Unsafe highways and crowded airport terminals are other significant deficiencies in Wood Buffalo.

We brought these concerns to the attention of government officials, and we look forward to our new government’s approach to dealing with the infrastructure investments needed in the Wood Buffalo Region to sustain the Alberta oil sands as Alberta’s economic engine for the future.

I appreciate the thoughtful feedback we’ve received from members on the ASET talks and other issues. I do read them all and we do take your views into account. As always, you can reach me at president@apegga.org.

I hope you and your family enjoy a joyous Christmas season. Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2007 from all your colleagues on APEGGA Council.

And do remember to consider the APEGGA Education Foundation as your charity of choice for 2007.

• Download donation form here