CEO’s Message
APEGA
Rethinking the Value of the Professions
BY MARK FLINT, P.ENG. APEGA Chief Executive Officer
In his inauguration address in 1961, John F. Kennedy said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” These words resonated more than five decades ago and they continue to do so today. As Canadians we tend to gaze southwards, admiring the Americans for whatever they have; in the case of JFK, that was a well-defined vision of selfless nation-building. Last year, one of our own leaders espoused a similar vision during her tenure as the 2014 Massey Lecturer. The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, a former Governor General of Canada, recounted the history of individuals giving of themselves to build our great nation. “We are most fully human, most truly ourselves, most authentically individual, when we commit to the community,” Ms. Clarkson said. “It is in the mirror of our community — the street, the neighbourhood, the town, the country — that we find our best selves.” So yes, we Canadians have a leader — and I am sure there are many others — willing to let us know that we create something bigger than ourselves when we work together and in doing so develop our own individuality. As I listened to Ms. Clarkson’s story, it occurred to me that this was essentially the premise upon which self-regulation was founded. Let me expand. Last year, APEGA Registrar Carol Moen, P.Eng., and I were involved in an interesting case. One of our Members was questioning the value he derived from belonging to APEGA. He was unhappy with the requirement to substantiate his ongoing professional competence and demanded to know what he was getting in return for his dues. I am quite sure that many of you have had similar thoughts and posed similar questions. In fact, in one of my first PEG articles, I offered my thoughts on this very issue. Perhaps now, as I complete three years as your CEO, I have a less facile and more nuanced appreciation for the issue. Perhaps I will start with a provocative stance: Do engineers and geoscientists need to be regulated? After all, anyone can take scientific principles and apply them to create, design, build and maintain stuff. Right? How much education does anyone really need? I mean, every time I drive across a bridge, ascend a high-rise building,
or witness the technological miracle that is Fort McMurray, I say to myself: yeah, we don’t need to worry about this stuff. And I don’t. But why not? Well, the answer is relatively straightforward: because APEGA is made up of competent professionals. Granted, not every jurisdiction in the world does things the way we do them here in Alberta, or Canada for that matter. And yet, for the most part, buildings elsewhere are not falling down and passenger planes are not dropping from the sky. (Well, yes and no. I realize there are exceptions, of course, and I don’t mean to minimize these tragedies.) Amazing feats of engineering are evident around the world in places that are regulated differently. Nevertheless, here in Canada we made a conscious decision almost 100 years ago to create our own system. A system demonstrating our belief that we were the people who had the most accurate knowledge and skills to create things that would be used safely by others. A system demonstrating that we were committed to the people in our communities and that we would not let them down. We would support them with clean water, safe infrastructure, electricity and other utilities. We pledged that we would ensure public safety as fiduciaries of technical expertise. By that I mean that we have been entrusted to use our technical expertise on behalf of the public interest. We evolved a system that ensures that within Canada, engineering graduates have a common accreditation program that produces exceptionally well-grounded scientists who apply their education to serve the public. The world of geoscience education is more complex for many reasons, but the rationale of serving the public is still germane. All of this is truly an outstanding approach to ensuring the responsible application of science. However, this system comes at a price. Here it is, you say. Here comes the punchline. Now is when he justifies the cost of our dues. Well, all right then. APEGA currently employs a highly dedicated complement of 120 employees. Obviously that does cost money. However, we also “employ” about 1,200 active volunteers, some of whom volunteer 10 to 20 hours of their time a week — for free! By a conservative estimate, our volunteers do the work of 50 full- time employees, or 40 per cent or our workforce added to the regulatory and Member services work we do.
6 | PEG SPRING 2015
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