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This year, the Government of Ontario drafted Omnibus Bill 68; the “Open for Business Act”. This bill was broad-reaching, embodying a significant number of changes to a wide range of existing provincial legislation, including the Engineering Act of Ontario. One of the 66 modifications to the Engineering Act was the removal of an exemption clause for natural scientists such as physicists. This action, which came to the CAP’s attention very late in the legislative process, re-ignited a long standing concern of the CAP and spawned a nation-wide campaign to reinstate the exemption.

The long standing concern is a simple one:  the engineers, in their efforts to ensure that they meet their legislative requirements under the Act, periodically review and modify the definition of the practice of professional engineering.  By necessity this definition is broadly phrased; however, such wording is so broadly stated that it can be interpreted to encompass the work of many natural scientists.  For decades now the CAP, through the efforts of many of its members, has been working hard to have an exemption for the natural scientists included in the provincial engineering acts across Canada, or retained in the Act in those provinces that have one.  In 1995/96, when the engineers were developing a national definition for the practice of professional engineering which they intended to introduce in each of the Acts across Canada when such an opportunity arose, the CAP negotiated a more descriptive exemption with the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, which was then recommended to the provincial organizations as a model exemption to include with the proposed national definition of the practice of professional engineering.

The CAP felt that the current action by the Ontario government to remove the exemption from the Ontario Engineering Act would have a negative impact on Ontario’s innovation, competiveness, and quality of life. The good news is that swift action by the CAP, and its members who responded to a call for a letter writing campaign, has led to an agreement with the Professional Engineers of Ontario to take steps to protect the rights of natural scientists – a solution which could potentially lead to a similar initiative adopted across the country.

In this editorial, I will succinctly review the past history of these threats across Canada to show that there has been both slow progress but that there is now realistic hope for a long term solution.  This does not mean that the natural science community does not have to remain vigilant. The monitoring of the provincial legislation across the country is one of the CAP’s most important roles and, as such, is one of the main responsibilities of the Director of Professional Affairs.

Few disciplines are as closely related as science and engineering. They attract students with similar academic skills and often with similar interests. The decision to choose one over the other depends upon one’s temperament, or sometimes is purely a concern over job prospects. In today’s economy, science no longer simply heralds the technological developments of the upcoming decades, but its new findings form the basis of current applied research in academia and industry. More striking is that today’s forefront technology, often labelled hi-tech, relies on science that is not taught in Engineering faculties, especially not at the undergraduate level. For instance, most semiconductor devices rely on quantum mechanics, which is rarely taught even at the graduate level in Engineering faculties. An important area of applied research is photonics, but optics is not taught systematically in all engineering programs and when present is usually descriptive rather than fundamental. In other areas, such as imaging, radiological sciences or health and biophysics, the separation between the applied science and engineering is blurred. In many of these fields the acknowledged experts are natural scientists who have received training in the faculties of science and/or medicine and not in engineering.  These highly trained scientists have a history of being involved in health care and are very conscious of their responsibilities to protect the safety of staff, public and patients and there are numerous examples where scientists have been instrumental in detecting and preventing problems which would have been detrimental to health and safety.  There should be more cross-disciplinary cooperation between Science and Engineering, but the professional nature of the Faculties of Engineering creates an unfortunate barrier, hence the appeal of Engineering Physics programs. It is essential for innovation that engineers and scientists work side by side as equals, contributing to the best of their abilities in technological ventures. Hi-tech prospers everywhere in the world when there is open cooperation between engineers, scientists and technicians.  And what is good for the partnership between science and technology is good for the economy.

In the latest incident, the old version of the Ontario Engineering Act read [1]:

  “Practice of professional engineering” means any act of planning, designing, composing, evaluating, advising, reporting, directing or supervising wherein the safeguarding of life, health, property, or the public welfare is concerned and that requires the application of engineering principles, but does not include practising as a natural scientist” .

The new version is:

  “Practice of professional engineering” means any act of planning, designing, composing, evaluating, advising, reporting, directing or supervising that requires the application of engineering principles and concerns the safeguarding of life, health, property, economic interests, the public welfare or the environment, or the managing of any such act.”

The main change is the removal of the exclusion for natural scientist, while adding “managing”. The exclusion clause is essential to safeguard the professional practice of natural scientists, because it is generally agreed that “engineering principles” include the principles of natural science upon which they are based. Read literally, the new act would mean that all scientists would need to be supervised by a professional engineer. Natural scientists were not consulted in the drafting of the new act as they should have been, and contrary to its expressed intent, I believe the new legislation fell short in its goal to move closer to national guidelines.  Although the new definition adopted through this Omnibus Bill appears to be a simple rephrasing of the definition recommended by their national umbrella organization, Engineers Canada (formerly known as CCPE, or the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers), the “Natural Scientist Exemption Clause”, which was negotiated in 1996 between the CCPE and the Natural Science Societies of Canada (led by the CAP) and which should have served as a model for the new Ontario Act [2], was not included. This Clause reads:

  Nothing in this Act shall prevent an individual, who either

  (i)  holds a recognized honours or higher degree in one or more of the physical, chemical, life, computer, or mathematical sciences, or who possesses an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience, or
  (ii) is acting under the direct supervision and control of an individual in the preceding paragraph

  from practising natural science which for the purposes of this Act, means any act (including management) requiring the application of scientific principles competently performed.

Bill 68 was too broad-sweeping to allow for its delay while this issue was being addressed with the PEO.  It passed third reading in mid-September; however, as mentioned above, the swift action by the CAP and a letter-writing campaign led to an agreement with the PEO in early September to develop a regulatory process to protect the rights of natural scientists.

A key aspect of any bill is the set of regulations used to enforce it. With the cooperation of the PEO and the support of the Attorney General the natural science community will hopefully be able to develop regulations which will ensure that natural scientists are able to independently practice their profession and to progress along their career path, wherever it may take them.

It is not hard to imagine the human resource inefficiencies and the losses of opportunity for natural scientists if the supervision of cutting edge technological developments was based on professional affiliation and not on merit. 

Science probes the frontiers of our understanding of nature. Advances that have great potential applications eventually make it into graduate engineering curricula, but only much later do they find their way into the undergraduate curriculum (the B. Eng is the minimum requirement for holding a P. Eng designation). A group leader should be the best qualified whether an engineer or a scientist. This makes the implementation details of Bill 68 crucial. Helping to draft those regulations will keep our executive busy in the coming year. On an encouraging note, a group of representatives of a number of science societies, led by the CAP President, Henry van Driel, met with the PEO Council on September 24th to discuss the concerns the natural science community has about the removal of the natural scientists exemption clause from the professional engineering act in Ontario.  After considerable discussion two resolutions were voted on and adopted unanimously by PEO’s 29 member Council: 

(1) to immediately set up a joint task force of natural scientists and PEO to address the concerns of the natural scientists and investigate the development of a regulatory solution (this task force is to report to PEO Council at its meeting in February, 2011), and

(2) that the PEO, pending a successful resolution of the concerns of natural scientists, will not seek prosecution of any natural scientists under the new act without first consulting with the most appropriate scientific society [3].

The situation in Ontario is not novel in Canada. Having engineering acts in each province, and a national body that can only recommend actions to the provincial engineering associations (not direct them to take it), greatly increases the complexity of this situation.  In instances where the national guidelines (definition and exemption clause) are not adopted by the province, there is a higher possibility that the wording in their Act could inadvertently restrain the practice of natural scientist.  Interestingly, the first threat came from Ontario in the early 1980’s, with the APEO, now the PEO, proposing a new definition of the practice of professional engineering. After lobbying and negotiation, an exemption clause was put into the new Ontario Engineering Act in 1984 [1]. The next alarm came in 1993 when British Columbia was also about to pass a new act using a definition similar to the one originally proposed in Ontario (without an exemption). The CAP and its BC members managed to have this put on hold and immediately thereafter a group of natural scientists, led by the CAP, entered into discussions with the CCPE who was trying to develop a definition of the practice of professional engineering that could be adopted as a national standard.  These discussions led, in 1995/96, to the recommendation of an agreed upon exemption clause for natural scientists mentioned above [2] as part of the national standard. 

In 2001, BC again began drafting a new Engineering Act. An agreement was again reached, this time for the Act to include the Engineers Canada exemption clause, with the additional requirement that the natural scientist be a member of a recognized Canadian learned society, or work under such a member. The BC act ambitiously also tried to include technologists, but this complicated matters and the act has still not been made it into law. At the same time, at the other end of the country, Nova Scotia was revising its Act, which, in the CAP’s opinion, had an inadequate exemption clause. An improved modification was proposed, but the revised Act died on the legislative table on June 1st, 2001 when the Nova Scotia government prorogued its legislature.

The recurring protectionist trend seems uniquely Canadian.  It pops up regularly.  Fortunately, the CAP has been successful in its interventions, but a long term solution is needed.   This will be a challenge to achieve, because of the existence of so many legislative Acts – one per province and territory.  It is this concern with professionalism that led the CAP to create the P.Phys. designation in 1999, which has the “hallmarks of P. Eng. but without the provincial legalities” [4].

It appears that the natural science community is in a unique position at this point in history.  An ongoing and increasingly important concern of all engineers across Canada is the ability to easily move from province to province while preserving their P.Eng. status (i.e. the portability of the verification of credentials) and national standards with respect to the monitoring of good practice. They are looking more and more towards establishing national standards to allow for this movement of their members.  One obvious standard that needs to be in place is the definition of the practice of professional engineers.  As mentioned earlier, the national body (Engineers Canada) recommends that the definition include complementary exemption clause for natural scientists.  The work of the PEO to develop a regulatory solution for this exemption could well be the flagship for a national solution to this long-standing situation.

Of course, embodying a solution within legislation would provide protection for natural scientists but it seems unavoidable that such a solution would not also embody some sort of requirement of membership in a professional society for those members most in need of such protection, which makes the CAP feel slightly in a conflict of interest, since it seems self-serving (but it is a criticism which easily applies to professional engineering associations).

As this brief summary of the national situation shows, there is a patchwork of legislations, with a number of them leaving us in limbo because the CAP has signed agreements (expressions of intent) but no exemption incorporated into law in that province. Until a more permanent solution exists in each province and territory across Canada, the vulnerabilities remain.  I am confident, however, that the key role that scientists play in industrial technologies, whether communications, electronics, medicine or industry, combined with the quality of work they perform, will allow us to diffuse threats coming from regulations. The issues are well defined. Since 1981 Peter Kirkby forcefully and extensively argued that professionalism should be a primary concern of the CAP. He repeatedly made these points within Physics in Canada and spearheaded the formation of the CAP Committee on Professionalism [5]. He died prematurely and accidentally in 1995 [6]. A medal was created to honour his contributions, the CAP-COMP Peter Kirkby Memorial Medal for Outstanding Service to Canadian Physics, which was first awarded in 1996, and is normally awarded bi-annually (the CAP is currently accepting nominations for 2011). Paul Vincett, who so effectively fought for the professional interests of Canadian physicists, received the medal in 2001 [7]. He continues to be a strong advocate, particularly in his current role as the CAP’s Director of Science Policy. The CAP also has a dedicated Director of Professional Affairs who makes efforts to monitor the engineering acts across Canada as well as works on a Committee that oversees the CAP’s professional physicist designation.  I think that their tasks would be more effectively carried out if the Committee on Professionalism were resurrected to have national representation, and, in particular, assist the Director of Professional Affairs. 

With its core of devoted members, the CAP is well prepared to defend the professional rights of physicists and continues to play a leadership role among natural science associations. The ideal formula to establish a lasting permanent arrangement with professional engineering associations has not yet been found, but the current state of the discussions in Ontario is promising and resolution can be hoped for over the years to come, especially with the commitment of our members to such a solution.

B. Joós, P.Phys.
Editor, Physics in Canada

Comments of readers on this editorial are more than welcome.