APEGA
“I firmly believe that a key element of APEGA’s self-regulation mandate can be to promote pride in our professions among our Members. If we all exhibit that pride, we will be motivated to lodge complaints about any Member who is failing to perform up to the ethical and practice standards we collectively demand.”
to ensure a totally preventive regime. Consequently, our Members need to identify those among us who should be investigated before the public finds it necessary to file a complaint. I firmly believe that a key element of APEGA’s self-regulation mandate can be to promote pride in our professions among our Members. If we all exhibit that pride, we will be motivated to lodge complaints about any Member who is failing to perform up to the ethical and practice standards we collectively demand. You bring an interesting perspective to the legislative review process, having spent over 40 years protecting the public interest through your work on drinking water safety, in environmental risk consulting, and on the Alberta Environmental Appeals Board. How will your knowledge in these areas help inform the legislative review process? SH As I noted earlier, the legislative review process is of particular importance to me. My views guiding my career have been driven by the perspective I learned from my Dad. That is, that personal integrity is the most important characteristic that anyone must honour and demonstrate in a career. I accepted the Cabinet appointment to serve as an administrative law judge in 1996 for the Alberta Environmental Appeals Board (EAB). Frankly, in the beginning, I didn’t fully understand what I was taking on. I quickly learned that natural justice, the foundation of conflict resolution in a civil society, was engrained in all aspects of the EAB and was something that I was inherently comfortable respecting. The EAB often provided findings that were contrary to the expectations of
appellants, but EAB-sponsored, third-party surveys of participants consistently showed that appellants believed that they had been heard and treated fairly. My 13 years on the EAB, including four as its chair, provided me with an excellent opportunity to hone my listening skills and develop my ability to make reasonable and fair judgments within the constraints of the legislation about complex disputes. An ability to listen and understand others is a skill we are all challenged with achieving in a world where technological distractions and information overload abound. In my experience, most conflict arises from inadequate listening skills, including a tendency for others to hear not what you are actually saying but what they expect you to say. There is no magic answer to this challenge, but awareness of its importance is a significant first step to improving understanding and reducing avoidable conflict. Another experience with a long-lasting impact on my career and on me personally was my participation from August 2000 to May 2002 on the Research Advisory Panel to Justice Dennis O’Connor, Commissioner of the Walkerton Inquiry. Justice O’Connor is a remarkable man who demonstrated exemplary character as a judge entrusted with finding the truth in a terrible tragedy. In addition to over 2,000 drinking water consumers suffering serious illness, seven died and 27 (half between the ages of one and four) developed a serious kidney ailment with potential life-long consequences — all from consuming contaminated drinking water from a public water system. There was enormous pressure from the Ontario Provincial Government to place the blame solely on the operators, but Justice O’Connor recognized that, above many other contributing factors, the provincial
and considering any relevant initiatives that we might adopt in these circumstances. I believe that our Members are uniquely well placed to drive innovation and creativity, which can help Alberta weather the current downturn and seize opportunities to become stronger than ever. APEGA only exists in its current role because of the authority vested in us by the EGP Act . We have been undertaking a major review of our legislation with extensive consultation of our membership to prepare recommendations to the Government of Alberta for the first major overhaul of the Act in over 30 years. During the coming year we need to tackle the General Regulation, which contains most of the operational detail for exercising APEGA powers, and our Bylaws, which provide the procedural details for our governance and operations. These activities are critical to APEGA being able to deal effectively with current and future challenges for our professions. I will do my utmost to engage our Council and our Membership in providing continuing input to this process to ensure that we present the best possible recommendations to the Government of Alberta. The challenges facing APEGA are only likely to grow as external factors like outsourcing make regulation of professional practice more complex. APEGA has protected the public by initially being diligent about those we admit to practise our professions. APEGA has taken important steps to improve our investigative processes to ensure we can be responsive to complaints about unprofessional conduct and unskilled practice. We are evaluating our practice review and Continuing Professional Development programs. However, we cannot realistically expect that APEGA can ever have the staff capacity
SUMMER 2016 PEG | 11
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