Happy Saturday!  Is it frosty in your location?  I woke up to -23 C, -29 C with the wind chill! 

All PEng's should have received their voting packages via email yesterday, January 18th.

One of the questions that was not asked during the Coucillor-at-large webcast was our thoughts as candidates regarding PEO's role in the Engineers Canada 30 by 30 initiative.  I noted a thread on the LinkedIn Professional Engineers Ontario Discusion Group with comments that this is an OSPE and not a PEO responsibility and that the PEO should not be contributing resources to this.  This is my response:

"I’d like to offer a different perspective.  We’re not talking about a driver’s licence.  If this was simply about obtaining a P.Eng. licence and making sure that the process was equally accessible to everyone, I would agree with some of the comments, but that’s not the case.  When you obtain your P.Eng., you are also becoming a member and associated with that is the PEO and chapter culture.  We have chapters, we want people to be engaged in their chapters and in our self-regulated profession.  For some, obtaining and / or retaining their P.Eng. is a choice if they are non-practicing or employed in a workplace that falls under the industrial exemption.  Our annual licence fees contribute to the culture. 

Have you ever had men email you and share that they attended a few chapter events, but they didn’t return because, as a man, they felt uncomfortable and unwelcome?  I have had women contact me with exactly those words. Have you ever been at PEO event with your non-engineer wife and have her later share with you that she was talking to a female chapter member about your engineering work and the woman stated to your wife “More important than his work, is he good in bed?” – this has happened to me and my non-engineer husband.  How many dozens upon dozens of PEO and chapter meetings and events have you sat through and the only pronouns used in reference to engineers throughout have been masculine? 

We, the PEO, need to sell the profession and value of becoming and staying licenced even if an engineer, like myself, is non-practicing.  We want female graduate engineers to want to become Professional Engineers and to be proud of being one.  The PEO has the responsibility of ensuring the PEO and chapter culture is inclusive and welcoming – we need to put resources towards continuing to change the culture and to making sure that it actually changes."

What are your thoughts about the chapter and PEO culture?  What changes would encourage you to participate more in the volunteer aspects of our profession?

Webcasts and issues

Did you have an opportunity to watch the PEO Election live webcasts last week?  If not, the PEO has now posted links to all of them on their web site.

What do you think of the webcasts as an opportunity to get an introduction to the candidates?  For many of our licencees in remote areas of the province or who are not engaged at the chapter level, it is the only way to learn a little bit about the candidates and the issues. 

What are some of the issues for you?  And how do you learn about them?  I’ve noted that the Engineering Dimensions editorials have been providing a good window into the challenges faced at council, as well council minutes and audio tracks can be accessed through the council page.  How often do you read Engineering Dimensions?  Do you ever check out the posted council material or listen to the audio recordings?

Some of the important issues that I’ll be posting about in the coming weeks include:

1)  Straying from our regulatory mandate.

2)  Potential of increasing government oversight.

3)  Potential for a deficit budget in 2019.

4)  Continuing professional development and use of PEAK

5)  Governance training for councillors.

6)  Reaching and engaging licencees that are not active at the chapter level.

7)  Succession planning for future councils.

  

Please contact me with what you feel are the important issues and your thoughts on these issues.

Thank you to the various chapters that have been inviting candidates to their AGMs or Executive Board meetings.  I will be participating when I can given distances and the unpredictability of winter driving conditions.  

I also have a Facebook and Twitter page set up from which I post items of interest to engineers throughout the year.  Stop by and follow me!

Thank you for stopping in and have a great day!

2019 Election - Running for PEO Councillor-at-Large

Happy New Year! 


I noticed this week that all the election material has been posted to the PEO website, stop by and take the time to get to know all of the candidates and their platforms before you vote later this winter.



A bit about me, this past summer I retired from the Ontario Public Service where I had held a variety of technical and leadership positions for about 15 years in a regulatory environment.  I served PEO council as a Northern Regional Councillor 2012-2014 and Vice President (Appointed) 2013.  It was a challenge to balance being fully employed and representing Northern Ontario Engineers, now that I'm retired, I look forward to contributing to my profession by serving on council and volunteering for committees to improve our association.



Make sure to check out the All-Candidate Meetings which will be broadcast live January 7th to 9th and available for viewing afterwards on the PEO website.


I will be updating my blog thoughout the election, so please stop by - I'd love to hear from you as well so please send me questions.  I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.  

I wish you good health and happiness for 2019!

Running for the OSPE Board of Directors

Welcome to my blog! 


Earlier this year, I received a call asking if I would run for the OSPE board.  It was a humorous situation as the individual who called me, OSPE director Sue Tessier, was one of the women I had called in 2014.  I had helped to convince her not only to become an OSPE member but to also run for the board!  Now the tables had turned.


Last fall, I had made the decision not to run for PEO this year - the volunteer time commitment to sit on PEO council and starting a new job last summer weighed heavily on that decision.  I look forward to serving the profession in a different capacity on the OSPE board of directors. 


I watched the PEO election results with interest a few weeks ago.  Not much has changed on the face of the 27 current members of council.  No women ran for council - there are no elected women remaining on council and only one female PEng who sits in an appointed position.  You can same the same for the age demographics of the councillors.


One of my goals while serving as an OSPE director is to work towards finding ways to make serving the engineering profession as a leader on the OSPE board or PEO council more attractive and accessible to a broader range of engineers.  I believe this is important if we are to improve relevancy amongst our diverse membership.


I have left my blog posts from last year's PEO campaign available so that you can learn more about me.  I am always happy to hear from you and to respond to your questions.  SandraAusmaPEng(at)gmail.com

Down to the Short Strokes

Not only are the Olympics winding up, we are entering the last week of PEO elections. 

Licencees now have all three eBlast, access to the recorded all candidates meetings, had the opportunity to review the additional material provided by the candidates and had the opportunity to contact candidates with outstanding questions and concerns.  I hope you’ll now take a few moments to vote at www.peovote.ca

Voting couldn’t be easier, it takes less than one minute.

I also want to ask you to please ask all the professional engineers that you know to also vote. 

With less than a 10% voter turnout last year, I find it difficult to consider ourselves a selfregulated profession.  We can only do that together.

Below, I’ve reproduced my three eBlasts.

eBlast #1

Andrew Carnegie, the great Scottish industrialist and philanthropist summed up the importance of the PEO elections thus “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say and I look at what they do”.   Those of you who believe in improving our organisation by casting a vote, should do the same.

Fellow engineers, hindsight is always 20-20.  Past council mistakes have hurt our organization and slowed our growth, but we now stand on the threshold of many great opportunities.  How do we begin?  By working together, by leading our council to be fiscally realistic and sensible in the spending of licence holder’s money, by striving to be relevant and by attracting our future – young engineers with fresh ideas and enthusiasm. 

My two years on council as Northern Region Councillor and past year as Appointed Vice President have been true learning experiences.  I have participated in chapter events across Northern Region, been active on the Regional Councillors Committee (RCC) and the Executive Committee, and contributed to the significant positive steps forward that PEO Council has made in the last 2 years.

Teamwork is still a work in progress at council; team building is a strength I bring to council.

eBlast #2

Isaac Bashevis Singer must have been reading my opponents misleading election materials when he said “If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet”.  Looking at the election material that is circulating, I really do think that if half of this were true, we certainly don’t deserve to be a self-regulated profession!  We hear the same criticisms of council and the PEO loudly repeated by the same group of people – you know who these critics are.  Dig deeply into their criticisms.  PEO does not need leadership that thrives on criticism, and they certainly do not need individuals who don’t understand our political and financial environment. 

Let’s focus on the strengths and significant accomplishments of our hardworking and dedicated council, staff and countless volunteers.  Together as a team we do great things.  Leadership builds on the strengths and skills of each individual contributing to our great organization and profession creating a team that will carry us into a successful future.  Mistakes are only true mistakes if we do not learn from them and improve.

I believe we face real challenges, including attracting and retaining young engineers not only to the profession but to full participation in our association.  Let us create a welcoming and diverse profession that reflects our society in the 21st century.   

Let’s ask ourselves: are we prepared to move into the 21st century of self-regulation?  Or are we going to remain the self-regulator of 1922?  Only you through your ballot can make that decision.

eBlast #3

“I have voted for the very first time in a PEO election.  Good luck lady!”  These words of support came this week in the form of an email from someone who has held a licence for over 10 years.  I’m hoping that this election will inspire 10,000 more members to vote for the first time!

In the most recent eBlast we read much about the direct “attacks” to our self-regulated profession.  I’m concerned about our ability to call ourselves a self-regulator when less than 10% of our licencee’s vote.  Our direction, future and how we respond to challenges is not in the hands of 77,000 members, it is in the hands of barely 7,000 members. 

Did you participate in the membership survey?  Of those that responded, two of the top 5 reasons given for not voting are #1 “There have been no pressing issues which inspired me to vote” and #5 “PEO elections are not relevant to me”.   We are not effectively communicating to our members.  Why are the most recent headlines about challenges to our profession not of major concern to all licencees? 

We must demonstrate leadership on challenges with PEO solutions for Ontario engineers.  Challenges such as the potential imposition of continuous professional development resulting out of the Elliot Lake inquiry; the ongoing work to repeal the industrial exception; Bill 141 - Infrastructure for Jobs and Prosperity Act, 2013 - that requires architects to be involved in the preparation of a design for the construction of defined infrastructure projects, but not engineers; and the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s challenge to our reasonable requirement of one year of Canadian experience for licensure.

My Voice on Council

I admit I’m not one of those councillors that must say something to every agenda item or even every motion that comes before council.  Between the elected councillors (13), vice president (1) and presidents (3) along with the appointed councillors (12) there are up to 29 people around the council table at any given meeting of council.  Anyone can speak to an agenda item or motion with a 3 minute time limit – sometimes councillors speak more than once on a topic.  If everyone were to speak to an item, that could be 1 ½ hours or more per agenda item!  So, unless I feel that I have something new or unique to contribute to a discussion, I prefer to listen and think about what is being presented, the various positions and the implications of the motions.

I’ll provide an example of an occasion at which I did speak up.  At the 486^th Meeting of Council on 10 June 2013, a member motion was brought to council to “Reinstate constraints on candidacy for President-Elect and Vice-President”. You can view the motion and provisions of agenda item C-486.3.4 (pg 21 of 171) at http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php/ci_id/26114/la_id/1.htm  The presented provisions existed prior to 2007 and were contained in legislation (O. Reg. 941).  One of the provisions was to prevent the Past-President from running again for any officer position for at least two years.  Another stated that no member be eligible for election as President-Elect unless that member had served at least two full years as a member of the Council prior to which the member would take office as President-Elect.  Similarly for the position of Vice-President, the requirement would be for one full year on council.

These provisions are reflected in the opinions expressed during the membership survey.  You can view the survey results in the agenda of the 487^th Meeting of Council held 26 September 2013 http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php/ci_id/27094/la_id/1.htm With respect to the period of time between the end of a president’s term and eligibility to run again – 66% of respondents agreed that there should be a period of time between the two (page 9 of 294).  There was also a question about a minimum service requirement on Council before eligibility to run for President-Elect or Vice-President (pg 11 of 294) – 80% of members supported this concept in the survey (pg 100 of 294).

So let’s go back to the motion in front of council.  You can listen to the discussion of agenda item 3.4 starting at minute 36:11 at http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php/ci_id/27183/la_id/1.htm We decided to sever the motions to address the issues separately.  The minutes around this can be viewed at minute 11255 through the following link starting on page 6 of 17 http://www.peo.on.ca/index.php/ci_id/27183/la_id/1.htm. Council supported the motion regarding the minimum time between Past-President and eligibility to run for President again.  Members have been quite vocal about this. 

The second part, regarding terms on council prior to being eligible to run for council was more thought provoking.   One of the early points that was raised was that this would discount the significant accomplishments of several of  our accomplished presidents that had no experience prior to their election to the position of president, for example our current President Annette Bergeron.  Catherine Karakatsanis also had no prior experience on council and made significant contributions.  These two women were elected by significant majorities – so I find the survey results interesting in which 80% of members that participated in the survey prefer the President-Elect to have experience on council.

During the discussion around the motion, I spent a few moments thinking about the implications of the motions in front of us.  In principle, I initially thought to myself that having executive with council experience was a good thing.  But what about the profession as a whole?  Being a women, the first thing that jumped into my mind was “How many women would be eligible to run for president in 2014 if the second part of the motion carried?”  Annette and I were the only two women on council.  Annette would not be eligible to run yet since she would become the Past-President.  So of the current council, I would be the only eligible woman.  Say we go back 5 years, how about all those women that served on council?  Well, there only two other women that served on council during that period – Diane Freeman and Catherine Karakatansis – and they have moved on in their careers and would not likely run again for president.  Hmmmm….  This is a significant burden to carry for any woman who was thinking of running for council.  You can hear my comments at about minute 47:06. 

The motion was defeated, but the issue has not gone away since it was raised in the membership survey as something that members feel strongly about.  Council will need to address again.

I’d like to know your thoughts on this, so please share.

Questions and answers...

During the videotaped all-candidates meetings, members had the opportunity to post and vote for their priority questions on-line.  The moderator then selected the questions he would ask the candidates or ask questions of his own devising. 

I noticed on the last night of the meetings, that a question was posted asking about a more spontaneous form of questioning in which the candidates didn’t know what the questions were ahead of time so that they couldn’t prepare responses.  Candidates have one minute to respond to questions, which is a very short time to formulate and articulate an opinion, particularly under glaring lights in front of cameras.  I would prefer a platform where the candidates could initially respond with their prepared response, followed by a short facilitated back-and-forth debate based on the question and responses. 

Over the next few days I’ll be posting my one-minute responses to a variety of questions that you, the members posted. 

What are the lessons learned from Elliot Lake?

Immediately after the collapse, our profession was criticized and blame was placed upon us as a regulator.  In response to the collapse, we established a top-notch team of councillors that are structural engineers in addition to our three presidents.  We responded quickly and openly to requests from the enquiry.  In the end we were complemented on our well thought out contributions.  Kudos to the committee! 

What are the lessons learned?  That responding quickly and transparently is paramount.  Also, we can no longer hide behind self-regulation and our professional engineers stamp as our only qualification of expertise and quality work.  Since continuous professional development has been raised at the inquiry, we need to confront CPD and come up with a made in Ontario by engineers for engineers’ solution.  Additionally, moving forward we must act proactively to weed out and discipline engineers that are not providing services against measureable standards.   

What are your thoughts on the repeal of the industrial exception?  Should PEO continue in its efforts?
With the province officially putting the industrial exception on the shelf, I believe this is an opportunity to sit back and reflect on a new approach.  We are the only province that has an exception such as this – in the future; this may be an obstacle to the mobility of our engineers across provincial boundaries.  I believe the repeal is important, but we still have homework to do.  I have spoken to several professional engineers who are convinced that this is a cash grab by the PEO to gain more members and dollars – so one of our jobs is to reach out to convince our licencees.  Once convinced, they can help us lobby.  Why do they feel this way?  Because I don’t believe we have the evidence we need to demonstrate that the repeal would impact the number of injured workers or workplace related deaths in Ontario.  We need to continue to work with the Ministry of Labour, Unions, and other organizations to collect this important data and build a truly solid foundation to gain acceptance for the repeal. 

We also need to continue to build relationships with our friends in government and leaders in the manufacturing sector.