Readers’ Forum

Aboriginal Articles Play Important Educational Role

We welcome Readers’ Forum letters of interest to the professions. Send them to George Lee, glee@apegga.org. Keep them to 300 words or less — longer letters published at the editor’s discretion. Letters represent the opinions and not necessarily the expertise of writers. The PEGG reserves the right to edit or reject any letter.

Re: Laboucane Articles on Aboriginal Issues Don’t Belong in PEGG, by Konstantin Ashkinadze, P.Eng., Readers’ Forum, The PEGG, November 2008.

I am again responding to an APEGGA member’s opinion that discussing Aboriginal issues in The PEGG is not appropriate. My rebuttal shows, again, that these opinions are based on a lack of knowledge and not an educated belief.

Mr. Ashkinadze asked: “Are we, as professionals or citizens, liable for the actions of our distant predecessors who conquered this land?” The Canadian Federal Government sure thinks so.
On June 11, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave the first formal apology to those subjected to the Indian residential school program. Mr. Harper declared: “The government of Canada sincerely apologizes and asks forgiveness of the Aboriginal peoples of this country for failing them so profoundly. We are sorry.”

If our own government is now taking responsibility for past actions, shouldn’t we, the people of Canada, agree with their noble admittance?

The writer also asks, rhetorically, whether we feel should feel entrapped for every land development project we contemplate. Well, it’s the law. Consulting with First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities where a project may impact reserve or traditional territory lands is a requirement set by the courts and the federal government. So it’s not a matter of should we get entrapped — it’s a matter of educating ourselves on issues that we must address.

Mr. Ashkinadze also commented that we should not “jump to call these past actions crimes” because “they come from a totally different time.” He goes on to say, “We cannot properly judge them by today’s standards.”

The last residential school was closed in 1996, a year that I would not consider “a totally different time.” The Canadian government funded schools where Aboriginal children were forced to attend, between 1892 and 1969, to “remove the Indian from the Indian,” as some called it. Aboriginals were separated from their families, and their cultures and traditions were replaced with “white” ones.

By these actions, the government attempted to force assimilation of the Aboriginal people. I hope that Canadians would not find this acceptable behaviour in the past few decades.

Once Mr. Ashkinadze gains a better understanding of Aboriginal matters, perhaps he will appreciate why the Aboriginal articles are appropriate. His uneducated view is the very reason why we need to be taught by Mr. Laboucane’s articles.

Kirsten Kae Merle, P.Eng.
Edmonton

Task Force Chair Outlines Reasons For Keeping Insurance
Re: Secondary Liability Insurance Program Should be Revisited, by Dr. K. C. Porteous, P.Eng., Readers’ Forum, The PEGG, November 2008.

Dr. Porteous raises several issues concerning the Secondary Liability Insurance Program provided by APEGGA.

As a result of concerns about liability issues, APEGGA Council has initiated two separate reviews of professional liability. The Insurance Review Task Force described in the letter was actually the second iteration of the task force. I was chair of the 2007 Insurance Review Task Force.

The task force wrestled with the issue of whether primary liability insurance is a requirement to protect the public. The task force concluded that, while primary liability insurance is an excellent way for a professional and his or her client to manage risk, it is not a foolproof method. Neither is it the only method available to allocate risk between the professional and the client.

Rather than insist on mandatory primary liability insurance, the task force recommended that APEGGA improve the education of members and clients, so that they can properly recognize and manage the risks associated with the provision of professional services. The suggestion that there is or needs to be the same approach for primary and secondary liability insurance coverage is not correct.

The task force reviewed our current secondary liability coverage and spoke at length with the broker and the insurer. The coverage does much more than protect members who were involved in the engineering consulting business or who choose to moonlight.

In our increasingly litigious world, the major benefit perceived by the task force is the response the insurance will provide to any member if the member is named for any reason in a statement of claim. The insurance will respond with legal representation of the member, within the limits of the policy.

Dr. Porteous, through his previous involvement with Council, had access to the claims history of the program and quoted that history in his letter. The task force specifically reviewed the overall design of the program, and met with the broker and insurance provider to better understand the design and performance of the program. With the assistance of an experienced insurance professional, the task force reviewed the premiums paid by participating member associations with the claims paid out by the insurer.

The task force believes that the modest cost of the insurance (per member) can be reduced even further through the policy renewal process. Steps have been taken to ensure that, through Engineers Canada, the policy renegotiation process should aggressively seek to lower the cost of the program or improve the coverage. Given the modest cost, the task force concluded that it would be more effective to seek improvements through this renegotiation process than through withdrawing from the program.

APEGGA Council accepted the recommendations of the task force, which concluded that the annual cost of the program does provide good value to the membership. It is always a tough decision to determine that all members should pay for a service that is perceived as having different value by different constituents of the membership. The task force found this to be one of the most difficult issues, but concluded that all members will potentially benefit from the coverage, and that, given the modest cost of the coverage, the Association should continue it.

Dr. Porteous mentioned that the member services association in Ontario has chosen not to participate. Of course the flip side of that argument is that every other provincial and territorial association has chosen to participate, so APEGGA is not alone in recognizing the value this program provides to members.

Based on the above considerations, Council in September 2007 unanimously accepted the recommendations of the task force to retain the Secondary Liability Insurance Program, to request the Staff Liaison Group to be more proactive in managing the program, and to provide additional education to members. The task force was then stood down.

As Dr. Porteous has raised no new issues in his letter, the APEGGA Executive Committee sees no purpose in reconstituting the task force only a short time after its recommendations were accepted by Council and it was stood down. That is not to say that this program will never be reviewed again. As time passes, and conditions change, future Councils will undoubtedly request and receive reviews of and recommendations for this program.

W. James Beckett, P.Eng.
Chairman
Insurance Review Task Force

One Possible Weakness Does Not Negate Our Climate Change Duties
Re: Cloud Cover Has Big Role In Complex System, by Barry Moore, P.Eng., Readers’ Forum, The PEGG, November 2008.

The letter provides an interesting example about how easy it is to fall into the trap of believing that an underlying problem does not exist because of an identified possible weakness in one of the assumptions made in climate models. All scientists and engineers work with physical models to solve problems involving physical phenomena and test their results by adjusting the assumptions and boundary values.

The basic facts concerning global warming are independent of any physical model for this problem. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 p.p.m. at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and is now about 384 p.p.m.

The most reliable and accurate measurements started in 1957 at Mona Loa in Hawaii when this value was 315 p.p.m., and it has been increasing by about 1.45 p.p.m. per year. Since then, a large number of measurement sites have contributed similar data. It is notable that in the last few years the slope has crept up to two p.p.m. per year.

Since 1880, the global mean temperature has increased by about 0.8 degrees C.

It is the correlation between these two sets of observations that underlies all assumptions about future global climate warming. It is also well known that the increase in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is directly related to the global amount of industrial activity as estimated in various ways.

There is reason to assume that this level of industrial activity will probably continue to increase in the future, albeit with some delay due to the present economic slowdown, as global industrialization increases. Consequently, one can conclude that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to increase, as will the global mean temperature, unless new sources of energy replace the burning of fossil fuels to power our global industrial complex.

We do not need to have any model of global warming that fits the past data and predicts future global temperatures in order to justify taking immediate and decisive action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The warming is going to continue unless there is global action to arrest its increase.

Gravity determined the orbit of the Earth long before Newton discovered his gravitational law. It continued to do so even when Einstein replaced the law with his General Theory of Relativity, and the law remained a good first approximation. Theories evolve in time but the physical phenomena that they explain remain unchanged, although the details may be refined by improved measurement techniques.

 I fail to understand why there should be any controversy about these simple facts. All pure and applied scientists should become proactive and work to find suitable solutions to this enormous and potentially environmentally destructive situation that has been created by the ignorance of humans, primarily in the developed countries.

Harvey A. Buckmaster, P.Eng., P.Geoph.
APEGGA Life Member
Victoria, B.C.

Editor’s Note: Due to space limitations, a number of Readers’ Forum submissions are being held for publication in March.