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this page President's Perspective: An Update On APGO's Progress - Good News About Professional Liability Insurance and Other Developments! By Maureen C. Jensen, P.Geo.As I was contemplating the subject for this article I realized that, like all of us, I generally focus on the issue of the day or the current APGO issue and do not step back to look at the significant progress we make as the months fly by. It is important to note that a great deal of progress on big strategic issues is made one-step at a time! On December 13th, 2006, I had the privilege of presenting an update on APGO progress at the Ontario Exploration and Geoscience Symposium 2006, entitled, Open Minds: Open Mines. It was a good conference that was attended by a record crowd and the presentations covered updates on many of the larger exploration projects in Ontario and several of the exciting new deposits discovered in the past few years. It was good to see so many busy APGO members and to hear comments and concerns about their practices. APGO was pleased to be a sponsor of this event and I want to say thank you to the Ontario Prospectors Association and all of those involved for a great event. In my presentation I spoke of the progress APGO has made in the past five years and I presented APGO's goals for the future. I covered the mobility issues we all face and several other professional practice issues we have been working on in the past few years. However, I will not go into detail on those here because they have been covered in earlier issues of this newsletter (e.g., National Mobility, Professionalism and Professional Practice workshops). Many in attendance were surprised that APGO membership continues to grow as more and more graduating geoscientists recognize the core value and necessity of membership. APGO membership has grown to nearly 1300 members with more than 130 Certificates of Authorization (C of A) issued to suitably qualified entities offering and providing geoscientific services directly to the Ontario public. So, APGO membership continues to grow and with recent APGO's activities around mentorship and educational outreach to students, we believe membership will expand at a rate of more than the projected 10 new members per month. I also discussed our 2006-2007 focus on continuing to identify illegal practice and that we have budgeted for increased efforts in this area in the coming year. I outlined the progress we have made on the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program and that it is now mandatory for all members, effective January 1, 2006, to report these activities. Each of you will have either received or will soon receive confirmation of your 2007 membership, payment of your dues, and the reminder about filing your CPD declaration for 2006 activities. This is an important part of maintaining our professional licence. I encourage you to go to the website and download the information and the form for this filing because so much of what you do on an ongoing basis in your volunteer and continuing education pursuits are applicable to satisfying the CPD requirements. As you are all aware, we have finally received confirmation that the APGO regulation has been amended with regard to the need for professional liability insurance for our C or A holders. On January 5, 2007, APGO announced that three recent amendments have been made to the Association of Professional Geoscientists of Ontario's Registration Regulation, under the Professional Geoscientists Act, 2000. The first amendment provides for an exemption from professional liability insurance (PLI) requirements for APGO's C of A holders. This provision is similar to an exemption for engineering C of A holders, provided for under the Ontario Professional Engineers Act. This long-awaited amendment allows practitioners to manage their practice and the associated risk, while protecting the public, and also levels the playing field for APGO and PEO C of A holders. Many of our sole practitioner C of A holders have found that PLI premiums are a significant financial burden, while others have had great difficulty obtaining adequate coverage. The other two amendments are of a "housekeeping" nature. One allows for an increase in the number of times an applicant can sit the Professional Practice and Ethics (PPE) Examination and the other will enable APGO to determine the acceptability of an international referee for an APGO applicant. You may be aware that there is great interest among international geoscience practitioners to become licensed APGO members and that there are an increasing number of experienced internationally trained geoscientists who have immigrated to this province over the past few years and are now seeking APGO licensure. These changes will now allow APGO to recognize an international referee who is a member of an overseas geoscience organization that is similar to the APGO. In summary, we continue to make progress on so many fronts: grow our membership, build our core regulatory functions and invest in providing information on professional issues to our members. APGO continues to make great strides one-step at a time because of the hardworking staff and a committed group of able volunteers on both the Council and on many committees. Thank you to all. |
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