20090401TownHallArticle

Summary of the April 1, 2009 Town Hall, by Mirus Lu

On April 1st, PEO President Mr. J. David Adams, P.Eng and PEO CEO and Registrar Mr. Kim Allen, P.Eng hosted a town hall meeting in the Eastern Region entitled Engineering Our Future which served as a forum for presenting the proposed national framework for licensure and membership in the engineering profession. The proposed framework would address the engineering profession and its regulating bodies’ need to adapt to changing social, economic, technological and political circumstances in order to maintain currency and relevance.

Through the Engineering Our Future town hall meeting and an article co-written by Mr. Allen and published in the Journal of Policy Engagement, the following goals of the proposed national framework were identified: to facilitate the national harmonization of the requirements for engineering licensure, to ensure full mobility of licensed engineers across Canadian provincial and territorial jurisdictions, to simplify the enforcement of professional misconduct, to assume a role in labor force development and to encourage all engineering graduates to register with the profession.

One of the main aspects of the vision includes, the recognition of the need for a uniform set of requirements to enter the engineering profession, each association president realized the importance of easing inter-territorial mobility – an important factor in keeping the engineering profession current in a reality where an engineering firm may send its employees to various job sites across Canada to perform their duties or where professional engineers seeking employment can seamlessly transition where the need for their skills is in demand.

In addition, the new framework would require all individuals engaged in engineering work, whether a license holder or not, whether working as an individual or on a team, to register with the profession, making the regulation and enforcement of the engineering profession more straightforward by placing the onus of responsibility on the individual rather than the professional engineer supervising a team’s work. By accommodating both licensed and non-licensed members into the professional organization, this requirement would also serve the double-purpose of allowing professional engineering bodies to distinguish and promote the difference between professional engineers and engineering-graduate, iron-ring holders to the public.

The proposed national framework would also aim to address the nearly two-thirds of all Canadian engineering graduates and 83% of foreign-trained engineers are employed outside of engineering occupations. With its renewed emphasis on the Intern license and its newly created Collaborator license, the proposed framework would interactively engage new graduates and recent engineer-immigrants by pairing them with a licensed engineer and help them on their path to licensure.

Currently, the vision and principle of establishing a nationalized framework for licensure remains a vision. The concept of a national framework and the principles to guide the development of such a framework, as agreed upon by each provincial and territorial engineering association’s president, is undergoing refinement through consultations with members of the profession at large. Once refined, the aim is to present the vision of a nationalized framework to each professional organization by May 2009 and to the provincial and territorial premiers by August of 2009. The vision currently remains just that and must pass the scrutiny of each engineering association and various levels of government before being enacted into law. More information about the vision for the new framework and its goals can be found at http://www.peo.on.ca/OCEPP/MA09PolicyJournal.pdf

The engineering profession and its regulating bodies must adapt to changing social, economic, technological and political circumstances. The standards by which engineers are obliged to adhere to must undergo continuous scrutiny and review to maintain currency and relevance.

Currently the vision remains just that, as a task force established in October of 2008 aims to consult with members of the profession before presenting the vision to each professional organization in May 2009 and the provincial and territorial premiers in August 2009. The development and refinement of the proposed national framework will remain a proposal until the various associations and legislative bodies decide to pursue enacting the proposals into law which can take years before becoming a reality.