BIG PICTURE THINKING FEBRUARY 2015

Transcription

1 BIG PICTURE THINKING FEBRUARY 2015 Canadian Experience Requirement The Big Picture Thinking session at each Board meeting helps to build Engineers Canada s envisioned future. It provides Board members with the opportunity to: contribute new ideas, offer a fresh perspective to the process of envisioning the future, benefit from the insights of other Board members, understand the trials and tribulations involved, gain knowledge of potential growth paths for Engineers Canada, and increase their ability to foresee and avoid the pitfalls. The essential function of Big Picture Thinking is the ability to synthesize data. This means: identifying the overarching patterns and themes in the world outside Engineers Canada, discerning strategic insights by connecting all the dots, and developing appropriate responses to trends and emerging issues to a future vision that describes what will be different because of the work of Engineers Canada. BACKGROUND Every engineering regulator in Canada requires one year of Canadian experience, or equivalent. This requirement has been characterized as being necessary to ensure that the applicant is familiar with the applicable Canadian engineering laws, practices, standards, customs, codes, conditions and climates. 1 In February 2013, the Ontario Human Rights Commission declared that such a requirement is prima facie discriminatory (discrimination on its face) and can only be used in very limited circumstances where they can be proven to be bona fide 2. The policy states that regulators should instead take an individualized approach to assessing applicants, and use competency-based assessment methods, ensuring that they do not assign less weight to international experience. ALTERNATIVES Many engineering regulators recognize alternatives and programs to help applicants work towards the required experience. APEGBC s project has advanced this work, codifying these alternatives and proposing new ones such as: 1. Participation in a bridging program 2. Participation in working in Canada seminars 3. Temporary licences (which require a collaborator) 4. Detailed references from a professional engineer that confirm acquisition of competencies (proposed) 5. Interviews and/or internships with a professional engineer (proposed) 1 Guideline on Admission to the Practice of Engineering in Canada 2 ON HR Commission

2 6. A practice examination (proposed) These alternatives may be used singly or in combination, depending on the situation of each individual applicant. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1. The engineering regulators have a duty to protect the public. Can this duty be met without a requirement for one year of Canadian experience? 2. Are there other ways to assess whether applicants have the ability to practise professionally in Canada? 3. What responsibility does the engineering profession have to ensure that international applicants are licensed as quickly as possible? THE DISCUSSION During discussion of the above questions, Board members brought forth the following points: GENERAL For some, the Canadian experience requirement may seem a big barrier to the immigration process. Nonetheless, there are those who have undergone this process who feel strongly that it is a very valuable process with many benefits. These benefits include an understanding of workplace culture, challenges, appreciation of diversity and broader communications. Overall, this experience requirement ensures the integrity of the profession. Safety is paramount. Perhaps we need to express this requirement more in terms of safety than in terms of an experience requirement. We must reframe the issue away from the human rights context that seems to be coming to bear and move towards saying that anyone coming to Canada must live up to a safety standard. We are not licensing by discipline. We are doing it broadly. Then we say you are only licensed to practice in the areas that you are competent in. This makes it difficult to say who you require an experience requirement for and who you do not require an experience requirement for. Some disciplines certainly need a one-year experience requirement, but there may be other disciplines that do not need the same amount of Canadian experience. In some fields, more than one-year of experience may be necessary. Although some internationally educated professionals see the experience requirement as a barrier we need to shift this perception towards one that reflects its valuable contribution to the licensure process. 2 P age

3 The mission of some regulators is to serve the public interest. This is not the same as protecting the public. Our words drive our thinking and we should be careful to say what we mean. We need to sell the Canadian experience requirement as an advantage, not an obstacle. The experience requirement can have many dimensions. In the North, we have an issue ensuring that engineers can design for the northern climate. We need to protect the public, but also to protect the environment. In the North, the engineer who is perfectly qualified to work anywhere else, is not qualified to work in the North, and does not really know that. In PEGNL we found when looking at this issue as it applied to engineers doing work in the oil and gas industry that a lot of the codes and standards being used were based on codes and standards from places like Houston. So we decided that we would accept the codes and standards of certain external jurisdictions as being equivalent to Canadian practice, at least within the offshore oil and gas industry. We also decided, for example, that an individual gaining engineering experience in oil and gas in Houston would be acceptable for our needs. Relevant experience can be gained outside of Canada. We are regulators not career counselors. It is not our responsibility to help individuals navigate the process. HUMAN RIGHTS IMPACT The Human Rights Commission seems to put all professions under one policy umbrella. Is this even possible? It is a concern that, if we follow through with the recommendations coming from the Human Rights Commission, we may be making it easier for foreign-trained applicants to meet the experience requirement than it is for Canadian graduates. THE NATURE OF THE EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENT We should stop calling this Canadian experience. What it is is a requirement for supervised/referred experience. We need to defend this requirement because it is essential to our ability to serve the public interest. We do not use Canadian experience to exclusively measure codes, climate and culture. We can measure these in other ways. What we are trying to measure is the practical skill, integrity and judgement of the individual. It gets into good character and ethics which are things that the PPE does not measure. What we are looking for is for an individual to demonstrate to a licensed engineer that they ready to take responsibility and to do it with integrity and proper judgement. There is no substitute to demonstrating this in a work environment. This is the nature of engineering. 3 P age

4 Integrity and judgement can be measured though the references. This is how we traditionally test these things. In looking at references we need to consider that a reference from a PE (or other foreign credential) could be considered equivalent to a reference written by a P.Eng. The experience requirement is not only about learning Canadian codes and standards, but also learning the Canadian way of doing things which is in itself different. If we look at this closely, we are probably looking for something that is more like an internship. By their very nature engineers constantly learn. As they shift between jobs or projects, engineers must constantly learn new codes, standards, etc. As we look at this experience requirement, we must be cautious to not place an unjust burden on applicants from other countries simply because they have to learn new things. References remain one of the best tools we have to address a lot of the concerns regulators have regarding an applicant s ability to practice as a P.Eng. in Canada. There is no one size fits all solution. Each situation has to be looked at uniquely. Exams may be useful, but there are times when individuals may be justified in seeking different options. We should not be moving towards a solution where everyone has to meet the requirement(s) in the same way. There should be different paths through the system to allow for different situations. A TIME-BASED VS A COMPETENCY-BASED REQUIREMENT The requirement cannot be time-based. We need to define what the experience requirement is. Defining all the competencies required within a Canadian experience requirement could be challenging. Rather than focusing on a Canadian experience requirement perhaps we should say the applicant should demonstrate familiarity with the applicable Canadian engineering laws, practices, standards, customs, codes, and conditions as applicable to their discipline. We need to focus on the demonstration of this familiarity and not a specific period of time. There are times when one-year is enough, but there are other cases when one-year is inadequate. If the requirement moved towards a competency-based rather than a time-based process this would allow the applicant as much (or as little) time as is necessary to meet the specific requirement. APEGBC s intention is to move away from a time-based requirement in favour of a competencybased requirement. ALTERNATIVES / OPTIONS The National Admissions Officials Group have drafted a document that suggests alternatives: o A Canadian supervisor for validation of Canadian competencies o Completion of a standardized practice examination 4 P age

5 o Completion of an approved bridging program APEGBC is looking into alternatives and seems to have identified that the problem is around one-year of Canadian experience (i.e. the time requirement). APEGBC in their report notes potential ways of dealing with the time issue. o A detailed reference from a supervisor P. Eng. based on defined competencies o A standardized practice examination o An approved bridging program o An interview or internship We addressed this same problem 10 to 12 years ago. At that time we instituted a provisional license that helped the employer because they had a licensed employee. The provisional license holder had to report to another licensed engineer. A provisional license offers the individual an opportunity to demonstrate competency while gaining engineering experience. This program was similar to an internship and recognized the individual s role in the profession. Codes, climates and culture can be measured by exams. If we use the PPE well, perhaps it could become a useful tool to avoid some of the challenges regarding the current approach to experience. We could then recommend that applicants spend a certain amount of time in Canada before attempting the exam. We are looking to measure things very similar to what we measure with engineers-in-training. We should be looking for the same or very similar things for applicants coming from other countries. The person who says you have passed the items on such a checklist is a P.Eng. SUMMARY The regulators feel that there is a need to confirm engineering work experience in a Canadian context. An appropriate method to assess work experience is needed. Exploring methods that are not time-based appears to have merit. Moving forward, the role of the P.Eng. as an assessor/reference, exams and other alternatives should be explored. The work experience requirement touches on several areas including not only codes, standards and practices but also ethics, responsibility and judgement as well methods to confirm that an individual is safe to practice and competent to serve the public interest. 5 P age