In recent years, we’ve seen a number of companies, governments, churches, and organizations get their fundamental priorities mixed up and instead focus on wokeness and controlling speech. Has APEGA joined this club? One retired engineer seems to think so.
More super-conservative stuff from the land of magical conservatives.
I never was a P.Eng. but the prov assoc of techs went under the engineers’ umbrella. When i retired it was the insurer who said, oh your plan is so much less cost if you’re not a member. Winning!
Sunny ways Marty.
Marty needs to write directly to Danielle Smith with his concern and not just hope/expect she will see his X posts and act on them.
I was a P. Eng with APEO, which became PEO for over 35 years. They decided a couple of years ago to enforce some “continuing education” scam to force us to take courses, many would be forced to pay the organization or someone else for the courses. I said no thanks, just cancel my license, and they demanded I send them my paper copy of the license and my never used stamp. I told them I lost them in a move.
Ontario is just as bad as Alberta. Once in 35 years I forgot to pay the annual fee on time – no reminder, just an immediate threat to revoke my license.
In Canada, we earn our living only at the sufferance of our owners.
BC is just as bad.
I was a 25 year member of ASTTBC (geomatics), until 2022, when they made their ‘professional standards courses’ mandatory each year. These courses included an ‘indigenous awareness’ course.
MANDATORY. There were other wokester programming to choose from too, including an ABCDEFG course.
I said, No Thanks, not paying my fees anymore, don’t need you anymore. My career had taken me into a new field, engineering related but design/PM. So, my accreditation was a ‘nice to have’ but not a requirement anymore.
It took 3 emails for them to get the message. The last 2 were, shall I say, emphatic about their direction and my choice to walk away.
Been a member of the PEO for 47 years and apparently all that experience is of no value and I must take extra courses to keep working. Thankfully I decided to retire just as they were bringing that in.
I was also a member of APEGA, but I just resigned when I retired. Ditto BC, SK, MB, NB and others. The best one in Canada seems to be NS: when I turned 70 they wrote to me giving me a lifetime membership. I think that is the only province to do so.
I feel like I got out just in time.
I’m still a P.Eng. with Nova Scotia, and yes, the “continuing education” crap burns my gears. I’m active in my field and if I didn’t know what I was doing, my employer would straighten me out or fire me. Why isn’t that good enough for the regulator? Cause it doesn’t generate enough paperwork, I guess.
The regs around that stuff are written in such a way that the heavy thinkers in academia get to pretty much skate on it since research papers and patents get you monster credits, but those avenues are virtually closed off to we mere working engineers. The trick is to get yourself assigned as a mentor for an EIT. You get good credit for that and it’s not a lot of effort.
I’m sure eventually they’ll start shoving gender or DEI or indigenous crap down the “continuing education” pipe at us. Sadly I doubt I’ll be close enough to retirement by then that I can tell them to kiss off.
“Go investigate the engineers at the city of Calgary who ignored all the reports about the failing water mains.”
https://x.com/Martyupnorth_2/status/1898449559636042212
All professions and guilds are captured as they are beholden to the state to enforce their monopolies granted them. I’m not against a voluntary organization ensuring standards on registered skilled people but they must be voluntarily for members and clients and without any government granted monopoly “right to practice”. Caveat emptor. Cultural Marxist capture is complete and this group (Professions and guilds) represents 20% of the workforce.
If they haven’t been captured, why not? Do we want these crazy bastards walking around loose?
My local HS … the same one I graduated from in 1974 … just recently fired their: Football coach (who has a 9-year 75% winning record and took his team to the State championship the past two years), Men’s Basketball Coach, and Girl’s Lacrosse coach (helps with all those Ivy League applications). All these coaches were beloved by students and parents.
The Principal of the school said … “it was time to take another direction with these programs”.
What did these three coaches all have in common? They supported candidates for our local school board who sought to replace current school board members. Replace current school board members who are pushing the full LGBTQueer agenda on the high school, including allowing fake girls into girls locker rooms and bathrooms.
Yes, the cancel culture is alive and well here in Canada’s sister-State of CA
I’m not sure what could happen to this guy other than they cancel his non-practicing engineering designation. I never really understood this. What is the benefit of being a non-practicing engineer? Also, what can APEA do about someone who writes P.Eng. after their name and isn’t registered? Does the organization have any legal authority over people who are not members?
I remember years ago when Voiseys Bay was a thing and the geologist for Cartaway Resources claimed to have 2% nickel from visual estimates of grade in what turned out to be barren core. The Newfoundland Government couldn’t do anything although they did suggest that if the guy was a member of their professional geoscientists association (he wasn’t) they could have fined him up to $5,000. Guy probably walked away with millions.
If you write P. Eng after your name without a license with your provincial body you are in fact breaking the law, just the same as if you added MD to your signature if your aren’t a licensed medical doctor. Like him, I took some measure of pride in having the license for all those years so it was a decision to abandon it.
The Cartaway thing dates from a time when there wasn’t nationwide licensure of geos. Newfoundland, BC, and Alberta had it but most other provinces did not.
Greg is correct about the provincial offence thing. Fines for sure; I think some provinces might have jail penalties too, although I don’t know of anybody in the joint for that.
Carted it away, one might say.
Seems similar to the situation with lawyers.
In a dispute between lawyers, one checked and found that the other had
not registered with the provincial association.
In an angry phone call the one who had checked asked
“Are you making that statement AS A LAWYER ?
The other end swore a bit & hung up.
Remember the CSA scandal? Well, a few years ago, engineers from both APEGA and PEO were caught paying bribes to civil servants (CSA) to amend laws to their liking. Complaints to both orgs were filed and, a few months later, both APEGA and PEO ruled that their engineers paying bribes or accepting bribes to alter their work or to amend the law is legal, ethical, and mighty professional. Nothing to see here. The only other option for these orgs was to cite their own paying members, losing the memberships and therefore the money from dues. And there were quite a few members paying bribes, so that’s a prospective ton of money lost to APEGA and PEO, hence the rulings. Dirty, folks, very dirty.
i remember Clayton Milroy and his secretary ran the whole thing out of a small office in Edmonton.
one annual meeting and everything fished out to committees
a few years later and they had a whole floor.
took a lot of people to fill Claytons brogues
Everything’s corrupt.