President's Notebook
APEGA
recommended mandatory training in ethics and professional conduct, not only for admission to the profession but also as an ongoing requirement of continuing professional development (CPD). OIQ proposed several specific responses to inquiry recom- mendations, including increased membership fees to fund improved regulatory capacity. Unfortunately, there was substantial controversy and resistance among OIQ Members to fee increases. The Quebec government concluded that OIQ was not responding adequately to the problems identified by Justice Charbonneau’s Commission. OIQ has not yet lost the privilege of self-regulation, but the government appointment of trustees to its board effectively places OIQ on probation. Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) is pursuing compulsory CPD, acting on an October 2014 recommendation of the Elliot Lake Commission of Inquiry into the Algo Centre Mall collapse. The collapse, which caused two deaths, involved questions of both unskilled and unethical practice. PEO did not meet Commissioner Justice Paul Bélanger’s speci- fied deadline of making CPD compulsory within 18 months of this report’s release, because PEO has been consulting its membership about implementing a tiered, risk-based approach to CPD. Individual Professional Engineers would have their CPD requirements deter- mined by the degree of public risk that each Member poses. The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of B.C. (APEGBC) has voluntary CPD reporting, but it failed in 2009 and 2015 to achieve a required two-thirds majority vote of the membership to adopt a bylaw for compulsory CPD. Challenges to self-regulation in B.C. have come out of two reports stemming from the massive, August 2014 failure of a tailings dam at the Mount Polley copper mine. The three-member Independent Expert Engineering Investigation and Review Panel, commissioned by the Chief Inspector of Mines for the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mining, said in its December 2015 report that “the dominant contribution to the failure resides in the design” and that “the engineers of record did not conduct adequate studies and site investigations of the perimeter embankment foundation.” Ongoing regulatory investigations are not necessarily bound by these findings and may reach different conclusions. In its separate report on the failure, in May of this year, B.C.’s Office of the Auditor General said regulation of mining is overly reliant on qualified professionals, including engineers and geoscientists. In its response to this report, the Government of B.C. called this a “criticism of professional bodies’ ability to regulate their professions” but found that claim to be unsubstantiated with respect to mining and inconsistent with long-standing industrial and professional regulatory experience in B.C. Self-regulation of engineering and geoscience was, in this case, supported by the Government of B.C., despite a very pointed challenge. However, the very nature of technological failures that cause major environmental damage, ranging from hydrocarbon spills to groundwater contamination, can be expected to attract
criticism and a public search for blame. Such circumstances will inevitably include questions about the performance of Professional Geoscientists and Professional Engineers, a reality that we must be able to responsibly address. APEGA Members would be extremely unwise to believe that we will be immune from high-profile criticism in cases like these. We must demonstrate meaningful and effective regulatory action within our mandate. Removal or limitation of professional self-regulation is not without precedent. The medical profession in the U.K. has long been regulated by the General Medical Council, but the professionally funded, self-regulatory body has been subjected to reforms in the last 15 years that reduce its autonomy. These reforms were sparked by extensive public scrutiny that followed some major failures. The most notable and extreme was the notorious Shipman case, in which a licensed physician was discovered by police — not the medical council — to have murdered hundreds of patients over a 27-year period. Medical colleagues failed repeatedly to report Dr. Harold Shipman’s openly questionable medical practices. More than a decade ago, in Queensland, Australia, a growing scandal involving the Queensland Law Society and its inability to regulate excessive fee billing by its members led to the state appointing a Legal Services Commissioner, effectively taking over the society’s investigative and disciplinary functions. At the end of June, the B.C. Government removed the privilege of self-regulation from the province's real estate industry, citing its failure to protect the public interest after only 10 years of having this privilege. What is APEGA doing to ensure that we remain responsive and effective in honouring the privilege of self-regulation? Our current legislative review has been strongly influenced by these and other challenges to the privilege of self-regulation. The 2017-2019 APEGA Strategic Plan is structured to better ensure that we are worthy of this privilege. It calls for: • ensuring organizational excellence • improving our commitment to continuing professional development, with a focus on ethics • improving our regulation of ongoing professional practice A new APEGA Vision, included in the plan, is that APEGA “earn the confidence of the public and instill pride in its Members.” This is a call to action to Members, letting us know that individually we must never tolerate unskilled or unprofessional conduct in our ranks. Effectively policing ourselves to protect the public is the es- sence of self-regulation. Ultimately, we must continuously rec- ognize that the privilege of professional self-regulation cannot be compromised by self-interest. By ensuring competent and ethical professional activities, we must never lose sight of our duty to protect public safety and honour the public interest.
Questions or comments? president@apega.ca
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