July 2006 ISSUE
President’s Notebook
A Busy Start to My Tenure
BY DAVID CHALCROFT, P.ENG.
APEGGA President
Since becoming your 87th President I have been a busy lad. Let me recap the highlights of some of the events and meetings that I think will have an impact on our professions.
U.S.-Canada Mobility
The U.S.-Canada Mobility Forum held on April 21 in Edmonton attracted delegates
from U.S. state registration boards, the National Council of Examiners for Engineering
and Surveying, the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region, our 12 sister associations
in Canada, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, and the Western Centre
for Economic Research.
A major initiative that APEGGA has been working on for some time is to achieve a degree of reciprocity with our American friends on entry requirements for Canadian engineers working in the U.S. As it stands now, American PEs do not always have to write any confirmatory exams to gain registration in Canada — to a large extent we consider a PE equivalent to a P.Eng.
However, the same is not the case for a Canadian P.Eng. applying for registration with most of the U.S. state boards. Typically, a P.Eng. is required to write the gruelling eight-hour Fundamentals of Engineering Exam for his or her discipline, and then after several years of work experience has to take the Principles and Practices of Engineering exam to become a fully licensed professional engineer.
In short, this is a very unbalanced process, and it does not live up to the spirit of the NAFTA Sub-Agreement governing professional mobility.
However, at the APEGGA-hosted mobility forum I was pleased to observe that a new spirit seemed to emerge. Delegates agreed on achieving a degree of true reciprocity by 2009 — so that we can indeed say that P.Eng. equals P.E.
In the coming months APEGGA will participate in the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region Summit in Edmonton in July, and will attend the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, in September, to further promote cross-border mobility.
Geoscience Advances
The Canadian Council of Professional Geoscientists, which held its AGM in Saskatoon,
has made great strides in this, its ninth, year. CCPG has hired Ollie Bonham,
P.Geo., its first full-time executive director and CEO, and has set up a permanent
office in the APEGBC building in Vancouver.
The primary issue on everyone’s agenda is to find ways to improve interprovincial mobility for professional geologists and geophysicists. Unlike the engineering profession, there is not yet an agreed-upon national syllabus for geoscientists graduating from science faculties across Canada. Consequently, interprovincial transfers and mobility from one provincial or territorial jurisdiction to another have presented challenges to our Board of Examiners.
I was pleased to hear that the Canadian Geoscience Standards Board will be
recommending a national syllabus later this year and that the CCPG is working
on a standard application form for all jurisdictions. These two measures will
significantly improve mobility for geoscientists within Canada.
Congratulations to Dr. Gordon Williams, P.Geol., a former vice-president of APEGGA,
for being selected as the first-ever winner of the Canadian Professional Geoscience
Award.
And further congratulations to APEGGA’s Brenda Wright, P.Geol., who has taken the reins as president of CCPG for 2006-07.
Notes From the Yukon
Whitehorse, Yukon, was the location for the Canadian Council of Professional
Engineers Annual General Meeting. As usual, the impact and role of Alberta members
in national affairs were certainly easy to see.
Darrel Danyluk, P.Eng., an APEGGA past president, retired as past president of CCPE with many leadership accomplishments to his credit — a job very well done, Darrel!
Dan Motyka, P.Eng., also a past president of APEGGA, was elected to the CCPE executive committee. And Linda Van Gastel, P.Eng., another APEGGA past president, took her new position on the CCPE board of directors.
CCPE is engaged in an amazing amount of work relevant to the engineering profession. Creating both the National Roundtable on Sustainable Infrastructure and the report From Consideration to Integration, or FC2I, are two examples.
FC2I is directed at assisting new immigrant engineers to more quickly and completely integrate into the Canadian profession and culture. With APEGGA receiving over 2,000 applications per year from new Canadians, this initiative will help guide our efforts.
CCPE has extended and improved its Mutual Recognition Agreement with France, providing for acceptance of graduate engineers from France as equivalent to Canadian graduates and vice versa. About 100 French engineers arrive in Canada each year.
Four Canadian provincial associations have now signed the Full Mobility Agreement, which removes the Inter-Association Mobility Agreement’s notwithstanding clause. The clause continues in force in Alberta, however, and gives our Board of Examiners the ability to reject the applicants from other provinces it deems do not meet our standards.
The notwithstanding clause was invoked five times in 2005 by Alberta’s
Board of Examiners within some 500 applications from members already registered
in other provinces or territories.
Across Canada the clause was invoked 22 times within some 2,200 applications,
or about one per cent of the time.
CCPE is in the process of creating a national database for all professional engineers in Canada and is creating a common application form for members making application in several provinces. These measures will go a long way to improving mobility of professional engineers within Canada and to removing some of the irritants which now confront applicants.
Watch for the Summit on Visioning for the Professional Engineering Profession in the fall of 2008. CCPE has signed a memorandum of understanding for this event with other associations representing engineers in Canada, including the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Engineering Institute of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Engineering Students and the National Council of Deans.
CCPE held two sets of awards ceremonies in Whitehorse — the Canadian Engineering Memorial Foundation scholarships were awarded to seven women engineers from across Canada, including Calgarian Laura Wall, E.I.T., who is working on her master’s degree in materials engineering at the U of A. Congratulations, Laura!
CCPE also announced its 2006 Engineering Awards with the Gold Medal Award going to Marc Garneau, P.Eng., Canada’s first astronaut, a three-time space shuttle crew member, and a long-time member of the Association of Professional Engineers of Nova Scotia.
Strategic Plan 2007-2016
APEGGA President-Elect John McLeod, P.Eng., presented the draft updated Strategic
Plan for 2007-2016 to the June Council meeting. Council received the report and
offered a number of comments, which will be incorporated in the final report
to be presented to Council for approval in September.
The top priorities identified for the 2007 Business Plan include
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Finalize discussions with ASET and implement legislation
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Consult members regularly and incorporate input appropriately
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Personalize Professionalism — continue to roll out this program
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Assess the professions’ ability to meet the needs of the Alberta economy over the next 10 years
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Improve the public image of the professions by involving the Association in important public issues where we can contribute to the Public’s improved understanding of the issues
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Continue to progress the issue of mobility for members.
Honours and Awards
I was delighted to host an APEGGA Council dinner honouring a number of guests
from the professions’ education community, including 10 recent APEGGA Gold
Medal and scholarship winners; Laura Wall, E.I.T., winner of a CEMF scholarship;
Dr. Gordon Williams, P.Geol., winner of the new CCPG geoscientist award; several
members of the Board of Examiners; Andy Gilliland, P.Eng., chair of the APEGGA
Education Foundation; and the outgoing and incoming deans at the U of C Schulich
School of Engineering, Dr. Chan Wirasinghe, P.Eng., and Dr. Elizabeth Cannon,
P.Eng.
It was great to see the future leaders of our professions get the chance to meet and mingle with some of its current icons.
Earlier last month, on June 7, Executive Director & Registrar Neil Windsor, P.Eng., and I conducted a special ceremony in Cold Lake, when we inducted Capt. Jonathan Knaul, P.Eng., into the professional fold.
Working military engineers are not required to be licensed. However, we certainly encourage it, which makes Capt. Knaul an excellent example for his peers.
Watch for a picture and stories in the September PEGG.
In Closing
I very much appreciated the e-mails and letters we received regarding my letter
to the Prime Minister about the Gwyn Morgan, P.Eng., issue. They demonstrate
that our members do feel passionately about our professions and how they are
perceived in society — keep your comments coming!
Until the next time, reach me at president@apegga.