May 2007 ISSUE
compliance
Meet Saskatchewan’s ‘Runaway Train’
BY DAVE TODD, P.ENG.
Director, Compliance
How important is it that only licensed professionals represent themselves as engineers and geoscientists? If you ask the people defrauded by Regina’s William George Kurk, a.k.a. T.W. Koch, they might answer, “More important than we ever knew.”
That’s because they learned the hard way that smooth talk and a sincere, pleasant and knowledgeable demeanour are no guarantee of professional work. Media reports out of Saskatchewan chronicle Mr. Kurk’s litany of illegal activity, which included defrauding banks and clients, creating illegal “engineering” reports, and even causing a home to collapse because of his faulty excavation.
We think the information you read here strongly underlines why Council maintains
a target of 100 per cent compliance with the licensure requirements in the Engineering,
Geological and Geophysical Professions Act. It is the APEGGA Compliance Department
that investigates potential non-compliance.
In this space we normally provide a round-up of Compliance’s monthly
statistics and activity. We’ll catch up on that information next month.
Keep in mind that our work centres on all non-members – companies required to have permits that don’t, lapsed professional members from Alberta or other jurisdictions, and the other William Kurks who may be out there. Our focus is companies and individuals that may be, inadvertently or not, holding themselves out as professional members or practicing the professions illegally.
The department does this by enforcing the right-to-practice and right-to-title provisions of the EGGP Act. We rely heavily on reports from the public and from you, our members, to trigger investigations. In fact, under the APEGGA Code of Ethics, you are obligated to tell us about non-compliance.
Your actions could even uncover another William Kurk. The Regina Leader-Post headlined a Feb. 20 story about Mr. Kurk this way: “Lies built upon lies. William Kurk can’t tell the truth about anything in his life – from having cancer, to being an engineer, to delivering an honest day’s work.”
A former girlfriend quoted in the same story said: “He has no respect for the law, anything. He’s like a runaway freight train. People need to be aware of it.”
The Regina man, 38 years old at the time, pleaded guilty in March in Regina Provincial Court to nine criminal and three income tax offences. A number of other charges were stayed. The deal included restitution totalling $180,000 and fines worth nearly $30,000 for tax evasion.
One couple had to tear their home down after the replacement of a basement foundation went bad. Myna Parisian told CTV that Mr. Kurk was “very nice, very accommodating. He seemed to know what he was doing. He showed up in a nice shiny truck and he presented himself very well. He said he had 25 years’ experience lifting houses.”
In a wicked bit of irony, Mr. Kurk’s company, LW Construction, promoted itself with the words “building with integrity.”
Under this plea bargain, Mr. Kurk was sentenced to four years in federal penitentiary.
He’s been to jail before. In fact his criminal record runs to 27 previous
convictions. Mr. Kurk last went to jail in 2001, for fraud, on a sentence of
two years less a day handed down by Justice Duane Koch.
Still on probation for those offences, he adopted the judge’s surname as
an alias.
The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan investigated Mr. Kurk. APEGS operates under legislation similar to the EGGP Act.
Mr. Kurk pleaded guilty in Saskatchewan Provincial Court last year to APEGS charges that he completed, signed and sealed three illegal engineering reports. The reports related to the condition of three basements. Mr. Kurk was not licensed and used a counterfeit seal. He was fined $3,000, ordered to pay restitution of $1,350, and placed on six months’ probation.
Saskatchewan’s Mr. Kurk is an extreme case, but its message is clear. Compliance is an important function of APEGGA. The department helps protect the reputations of members and their professions, and, even more important, it helps protect the public.
We encourage you to do your duty and report non-compliance. We also encourage you to run the name William Kurk through a search engine and read the background for yourself. His story is an eye-opener.