Saturday, February 25th marked just the second time students had been invited to the local PEO Chapter’s Government Liaison Program’s Conference. The event heard from local politicians and policy experts, and discussed the relationship engineers do play and can play in the political realm. The event was hosted in Cambridge; engineering students from Waterloo and Guelph were on hand to learn about the process and network with members of the PEO.
The day started with Mark Kealy, Chief Advocate at Kealy and Associates. Kealy shared his extensive experience working to advocate on behalf of pharmacists. It was clear their advocacy association is much more aggressive in pushing and shaping policy in Ontario and across Canada. However, he also brought a cautionary tale of the Chiropractory association which had campaigned too personally against individual politicians and had been burned badly by subsequent legislation.
Kealy intoned strongly that engineers can learn from Nursing, Physician and Pharmacy Associations which regularly comment and advocate not only on issues directly related to their own regulation, but of more general interest to their professions as community members and leaders. Especially in the context of the recent identity crisis between OSPE and PEO, it posed an especially poignant question for PEO, and engineers at large: while we are taught to become experts on our own specialty area, what role do we have in promoting and critiquing public policy more generally?
The next speaker, Elizabeth Wittmer, our local MPP, talked about the difficulty for politicians in getting the opinion of local constituents. She made it clear that input from constituents, either from an individual or organization (eg. PEO) is always welcome at town halls, Policy Advisory Councils and more informal mechanisms. In fact, she specifically mentioned that professional associations can generate useful ideas for amendments of various government bills. She painted a compelling image: a new bill released and her with just a few minutes to publicly respond. An organization with an opinion or critique would not be seen as a burden, but in fact a saviour – giving her, as a critic, ammunition to stimulate debate. Wittmer gave the distinct impression that with so few people willing to be engaged in the process, those who are capable of providing opinion, especially those which can be perceived as ‘expert’, can drastically influence the political process.
Next up, Howard Brown of the PEO spoke to issues that impact engineers and how they can engage politicians. PEO cited five main current issues for engineers in Ontario:
- The Ontario Building Code
- The role of OSPE
- Open for Business Act
- Green Energy Act
- The budget and economy at large
The Open for Business Act includes a provision to repeal the industrial exception, which currently allows industrial concerns to go without professional engineers, provided they agree to accept complete liability for their work. After decades of advocacy, the provision has been successfully repealed and it is now a matter of implementation. The last two issues are especially interesting as they are not regulatory issues per se, but, as Kealy suggested, warrant opinion from the engineering community. The discussion revealed the complex relationship between the PEO’s Government Liaison Program, which serves primarily to engage engineers in the political process on regulatory issues and OSPE’s Political Action Network, which serves to promote the issues of engineers within the province. Clearly the Green Energy Act and the budget both influence and are influenced by the actions of professional engineers and the question remains which forum to best project those concerns.
The next speaker was John Milloy, MPP for Kitchener-Centre and former Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. John firmly portrayed that it is not government’s role to create innovation, but to put the foundation for innovation in place. He then connected this idea to the need for engineers, with our unique knowledge and skills sets, to get involved rather than letting others run the show. While the PEO members seemed hesitant to move beyond the importance of a P.Eng in engineering work, John Milloy was adamant that engineers and those with engineering backgrounds can and should use their skills more broadly, as our education prepares us not only as engineers but as critical thinkers and analysts. This was particularly poignant to the engineering students present, in that our skills are valuable outside of the traditional realm of engineering. One of the main goals of GLP, in fact, is to promote the message that if engineers are not proactive in bringing our issues, as well as critical analysis to the debate, it will be left to others. The discussion came to the number of engineers who go on to license (apparently outnumbered by the number of foreign-trained engineers who license in Ontario), but it wasn’t entirely clear if the skills developed by engineering students (even without a P. Eng) would not still be valuable.
The final speaker was Diane Freeman, past President of PEO, City councillor in Waterloo and environmental engineer with Conestoga Rovers and Associates. Her speech really connected the value of engineers, not only as number crunchers, but those who serve the public. She reminded those present that our analytical decision-making, our comfort with collaboration and teamwork, our ability to work within constraints or “givens”, and our ability to use the language of technology cross-culturally will serve us well outside of the engineering realm. She talked about how her analytic ability made her better able to hold civic officials accountable. An important example she shared was how she was able to successfully hold firm on a decision by community planning officials to build a roundabout on the bases of cost, safety and convenience, despite public opposition. Though it was not her area of expertise, her engineering experience aided her in critically absorbing the report from the engineers and serving the interests of public safety, despite opposition.
This example and others spoke to the need of engineers to actively engage in public life – our unique skills and knowledge make us ideal candidates to make decisions rationally and for the greatest good to all stakeholders. Freeman’s success in navigating engineering and public office concurrently spoke to the possibility, and importance of what all present agreed: it is critically important for engineers to not only become knowledgeable, but take an active role in influencing political affairs.
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