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this page The Canadian Council of Professional Geoscientists By Andrea Waldie, P.Geo., Executive Director & RegistrarThe Canadian Council of Professional Geoscientists (CCPG) is the national organization established in 1998 to assist and represent, nationally and internationally, the provincial and territorial associations that license professional geoscientists in Canada. At present, all provinces and territories, except Prince Edward Island and the Yukon, have legislated registration of professional geoscientists. CCPG has a membership of 10 Constituent Associations (CAs), which are the provincial and territorial self-regulating organizations. Most of the CAs are joint engineering/geoscience and three are geoscience only. Approximately 6,000 individual geoscientists pay dues through their professional associations to the CCPG, although CCPG actually receives about 9,000 contributions as a result of geoscientists holding memberships in multiple jurisdictions across Canada. Most of the Constituent Associations that make up CCPG are joint self-regulating organizations comprised of geoscientists and engineers, where there are approximately 6,000 registered geoscientists and 100,000 registered engineers. Due to the minority position of the geoscientists, CCPG has a very small influence on formulating national policies, which differ from that of the co-regulated engineering community. Essentially the majority of the member self-regulatory associations do not participate in CCPG decisions where policies differ between engineers and geoscientists. As a result, CCPG's scope of influence is limited to a large extent on setting experience and education requirements for licensure and granting geoscience awards. Much of the national harmonization policies required to facilitate fluid geoscience mobility must also be applied to the much larger engineering community and therefore must originate with Engineers Canada. Under the current unbalanced governance model, CCPG's ability to negotiate and implement mobility policies, which appropriately reflect the nature of Canadian geoscience practice, is quite challenging. Within this context, the principal goal of CCPG is to safeguard and promote the interests of the geoscience profession in Canada. The CCPG Board of Directors meets twice yearly to consider a wide range of national (inter-provincial) and international issues. Decisions taken by CCPG are advisory to its CAs for their guidance in forming policy. The year 2006 was a pivotal year for CCPG as one of the first recommendations arising from the 2005 strategic review was implemented: CCPG hired its first, full-time CEO, Mr. Oliver Bonham, P.Geo., in 2006. In March 2006, CCPG opened its own office in the APEGBC headquarters in Burnaby, BC. This position has already resulted in some significant initial steps in facilitating mobility on behalf of Canadian geoscientists. The Canadian Geoscience Standards Board (CGSB) is a standing committee of the CCPG. The CGSB provides guidance to the constituent associations of CCPG on matters relating to professional qualifications and practice. A major objective of the CGSB is to encourage the adoption of common standards for geoscience registration and to facilitate the seamless transfer of members of the Constituent Associations from one geoscience-licensing jurisdiction to another in Canada. In a recent Institute on Governance survey, Canadian geoscientists identified mobility as an important issue requiring action to remove the many barriers to mobile practice. The Inter-Association Mobility Agreement (IAMA) in place on January 1, 2006 was due to expire in mid-year. The CCPG has recognized that the IAMA required some significant changes that could only be acceptable to all CAs if there were updates to CGSB Knowledge Standards for Geoscience. Unlike the case for engineering, there is no formal accreditation of Geoscience programs at Canadian universities. Past discussions by the Canadian Geoscience Council (CGC) indicated that accreditation for geoscience faculties is neither appropriate nor acceptable to geoscientists. Therefore, the CGSB definition of Knowledge Standards is a critical step towards Canada wide mobile geoscience practice. The current IAMA was extended for two years to allow the necessary updates to the CGSB Knowledge Standards. The key items to be addressed to facilitate fluid national mobility are: common knowledge requirements, common experience requirements, Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with respect to discipline and enforcement of members working in other jurisdictions, development of a national database, development of a common registration form, common registration categories, harmonization of regulations, and common CPD requirements, to name a few. To facilitate addressing these issues CCPG applied for and received approval for federal funding. Recent achievements have included a decision to incorporate Canadian geoscientists into the Engineers Canada national database, developing a standard registration form and generating a draft Memorandum of Understanding on Discipline and Enforcement. |
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