OCTOBER 2004 ISSUE
COUNCIL BRIEFS
The following news items were gathered from the last APEGGA Council meeting, held Sept. 16 in Edmonton. The next meeting is Nov. 25 at APEGGA’s Calgary Conference Centre.
Government Favours Self Regulators
Reclamation certificates mark the official completion of a company’s responsibility for an upstream oil-and-gas site. But right now there’s a backlog of certificate applications at Alberta Environment, resulting in extensions of surface leases and extra industry costs.
As well, problems in the quality of reclamation and remediation work have undermined the public’s confidence in industry and government.
What’s the solution? Turn responsibility over to members of APEGGA and five other professional regulatory associations, Alberta Minister of Environment Lorne Taylor has decided.
In accepting a proposal from the six self-regulators, the minister has endorsed the concept of members signing off and not requiring additional specialist certification, APEGGA Council learned.
However, to handle the demand until the agrologist and biologist associations establish technologist categories of licensure, the various players will develop an interim certification board. The six self-regulators are also developing a joint practice standard, which will define members’ professional responsibilities and practices in upstream remediation and reclamation.
The participating organizations – representing more than 6,000 licensed environmental professionals – are APEGGA, the Alberta Institute of Agrologists, the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists, the Association of the Chemical Profession of Alberta, the College of Alberta Professional Foresters, and the College of Alberta Professional Forest Technologists.
Electronic Voting Investigated as Way To Improve Participation
Council and staff are taking a hard look at the virtual universe as a way to get more APEGGA members involved in self-governance.
Right now, only about 16 per cent of eligible members take part in the mail-in Council elections held each year. A much smaller percentage of members attend the Annual General Meeting, which alternates between Edmonton and Calgary each April.
The idea is to increase member participation in votes and polls through the use of computers and software. And the challenge, Council heard, is to do so without eliminating the essential qualities of the old-fashioned way – an audit trail and voter privacy, for example.
If APEGGA uses both the Internet and regular post for elections, the combined system must include a reliable way of validating a member’s right to vote, Deputy Registrar Al Schuld, P.Eng., told Council. It must protect the secrecy of a voter’s choices, and it must provide equal access to voting to all members.
Council discussed the electronic linking of off-site venues to the Annual General Meeting. Systems also exist to allow electronic voting at large meetings.
The Acts, Regulations and Bylaws Committee is looking at how electronic voting and other electronic participation can be accommodated within APEGGA’s governing legislation.
Awareness Emphasized In Dealing With Insurance Issues
APEGGA will focus on awareness and helping members maintain and better the quality of their practices, as a way to improve their risk ratings with insurance companies. Council approved a long list of implementation items that came out of the work of the Insurance Review Task Force, which has held a dozen or more meetings since it was struck a year ago because of insurance troubles facing members.
The problem is that professional liability insurers became leery of engineering firms after significant losses in their industry. For APEGGA members, that’s in some cases meant less selection, higher premiums, greater limitations and more exclusions. Some members have ended up buying policies they don’t want because of the way insurance is bundled.
The task force and Council decided against competing with private insurers by creating a self-insurance system for errors and omissions insurance. So far, the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers has not supported self-insurance, either.
See related stories, Practice Quality Identified As a Key to Better Insurance (page 1 of The PEGG) and A Peer Review Primer for Consulting Engineers (page 24 of The PEGG)
Members Take Part In Selection Of New Logo
Next month, members will have the chance to tell APEGGA which of four logos the