February, 1999
National Engineering Week Ready for Launch
The eighth annual National Engineering Week (NEW) will be launched March 1 at a unique ceremony designed to recognize and celebrate the outstanding achievements of Canada’s engineers.
To be held in the space exhibit area of the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, the ceremony will see Micheline Bouchard, P.Eng., the honorary chair of NEW 1999 and the chairman, president and CEO of Motorola Canada Limited, announce the results of a recent national poll that asked Canadians to select the engineering achievement which makes them most proud to be Canadian. Ms. Bouchard will also reveal the five most significant accomplishments of Canadian engineers, as selected by the NEW 1999 Executive Committee.
The final portion of the NEW 1999 opening ceremony will recognize Canada’s engineers of the future, when the winners of the regional Science and Engineering Olympics are introduced.
CCPE and the national partners in NEW – the Association of Consulting Engineers of Canada, the Engineering Institute of Canada, and the Canadian Academy of Engineering – view NEW 1999 as a unique opportunity to highlight the brilliance of Canada’s engineering profession in this millennium, and to celebrate the bright future that awaits us in the next. This theme is reflected in the bookmarks, pens, and the radio public service announcement developed in support of NEW 1999, as well as in the format of the opening ceremonies. Ultimately, however, the success of NEW 1999 will largely depend on the efforts of the individual Canadian engineers who participate in the activities being organized at the provincial, territorial and local levels.
Engineers belong to a great profession. Their skills and standards of engineering
education are internationally recognized, and the achievements of Canada’s engineers
– including the Canadarm and the Confederation Bridge – are world renowned. NEW
1999, which takes place from Feb. 27 - March 6 this year, is an opportunity to tell
Canadians about what engineers do, and show them that engineering really is “all
around us”.
For more information see the National Engineering Week
website.
As part of NEW, CCPE will host the First National Forum on Engineering and Continuing
Education, Feb. 28-March 1 in
Ottawa. The forum will bring
together stakeholders from all sides of the continuing competence question to exchange
information on engineering’s existing and future continuing education needs, and the
current availability of continuing education courses. Delegates from engineering’s
technical societies, industry associations, educational institutions and governing
associations/ordre will attend the forum, and participate in three targeted panel
discussions on continuing education, as well as a wrap-up discussion.
“The majority of CCPE’s constituent member associations/ordre have introduced, or are seriously considering, some form of continuing competence program,” said Noel Cleland, P.Eng., forum chair and former APEGGA president.
“Regardless of whether those programs are mandatory or voluntary, individual engineers will be expected to pursue continuing education throughout their careers, either by participating in meetings or courses, or through some form of distance education. The forum is an opportunity for the engineering associations to relay their existing and future continuing education needs to course providers, and for course providers to make the associations aware of the range of available courses.”
The forum will be opened by Sir Graham Day, chancellor of Dalhousie University and
chairman-designate of the Ontario Hydro Services Company, and by David Brezer, P.Eng.,
chair of the Canadian Engineering Qualifications Board’s Continuing Competence
Committee. Confirmed speakers include Dr. André Rollin, ing., president of the
Engineering Institute of Canada; Carol Connor, director of DalTech’s Continuing
Technical Education Division; APEGGA Director of Professional Development Len Shrimpton,
P.Eng.; André A. Loiselle, ing., director of corporate affairs of l’Ordre des
ingénieurs du Québec, Don Worth, P.Eng., past-president of the Canadian Institute of
Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), and Leslie Dolman, P.Eng., director of the
University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering’s Professional
Development Centre. Organizations interested in participating in the forum should contact
CCPE for more information.
Both NEW 1999 and the forum demonstrate the value of effective communications. CCPE and its 12 constituent member associations met in Toronto Jan. 28 to discuss possible joint communications initiatives, as well as mechanisms to coordinate the profession’s communications activities and share communications resources. The goal is to develop shared messages and communications initiatives that can be used effectively across Canada.
On the federal government relations front, CCPE and Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) recently submitted a letter and brief in support of Bill C-58, an Act to amend the Railway Safety Act, to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport. If the bill passes without further revision, section 11 of the Railway Safety Act will state: “All the engineering work relating to railway works, including design, construction, evaluation or alteration, shall be done in accordance with sound engineering principles. A professional engineer shall take responsibility for the engineering work.”
CCPE and its 12 constituent member associations have now formed a national working group on railway safety. The group is working with Transport Canada to develop a guideline on what constitutes professional engineering within the railway industry. This guideline, which should allow enforcement to occur at the provincial and territorial level, will be included in an interpretive guide that Transport Canada plans to publish as a complement to the Railway Safety Act. We anticipate that the guideline will be finalized by early March, and that Bill C-58 will receive third and final reading in the House of Commons by mid-April.