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President’s Perspective: Changes to the APGO CPD Program and AIT Inception By Stephen Wilson, P.Geo. APGO President Since the inception of the APGO, it has been a firm belief of Council and the Association that members have a responsibility and an obligation to ensure that their skills and knowledge remain current. The Continuing Professional Development Program (CPD) was established to ensure that the knowledge and skills of members, both practicing and limited, remain current and continue to improve throughout their professional life. The APGO CPD program, which was modelled on those in other jurisdictions, has been a success in many respects. Nevertheless, APGO and the CPD Committee, as well as a number of members recognize that the program could be improved to serve the members and the public more efficiently. Problems have been experienced by both members and APGO staff, particularly with respect to the three year cycles and the carryover of hours to subsequent years. The CPD committee are therefore working on modifications to the program to serve the Association and its members in a more efficient and convenient manner. The proposed changes to the program must be finalized by the Committee and then approved by Council, so details of the forthcoming changes cannot be provided at this time, however, the following changes are being considered: • The number of categories of activity will be reduced, simplifying the reporting structure; • The category for professional practice |
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will likely be removed and the resultingnumber of required CPD hours reduced accordingly; • Members will be able to enter hours on-line throughout the CPD reporting year of January 1st to December 31st and up until the deadline to file. In other news, changes in the Labour Mobility section of the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) will come into force in August. These changes remove a number of barriers to mobility and means that fully licensed professionals with no discipline record in one Canadian jurisdiction will be granted registration in other Canadian jurisdictions. It is important to note that this agreement does not in any way create a national license to practice; professional licensure remains a provincial and territorial responsibility. A practitioner must still register with the appropriate regulator in any jurisdiction that they wish to practice, however, another jurisdiction will not be able to refuse to grant a license to practice except for a very few well defined exceptions. It is also important to note that this agreement applies, for the most part, only to full practicing members of the APGO. For further information, please contact the Association. Enjoy the rest of your summer, for those of you that are lucky enough to be somewhere that actually got a summer this year. For the rest of you, August has to be better than July. |
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APGO – OGQ Salary Survey Now Available By Andrea Waldie, P.Geo. Executive Director & Registrar, APGO The report for the APGO – OGQ Salary Survey conducted in late December 2008 is now available. An Executive Summary of the report is accessible for general viewing at http://www.apgo.net/salarysurvey.htm and is available in both English and French. A link to the documents may also be found under the “What’s New” section of the APGO website homepage (www.apgo.net). |
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1. Former president and CEO of mining issuer receives a lifetime ban. Vancouver – The British Columbia Securities Commission has settled with John Gregory Paterson, the former president and CEO of Southwestern Resources Corp., who admitted to fraud and illegal insider trading. In the BCSC settlement agreement, Paterson admitted that he committed fraud when he entered false assay results related to Southwestern’s Boka project in China into the company’s database. He also admitted to causing the false data about the gold mining operation to be reported in 24 news releases between March 7, 2003 and Feb. 21, 2007. 
2. The U.S. National Science Foundation's new publication on earth science literacy can be viewed at 
3. From CGen6: Downloadable as chapters and as a poster, Oxford Press has published the"Time Tree of Life," which they describe as "a public resource for knowledge on the timescale and evolutionary history of life." See more 
4. CCPG Press Release: Professional Geoscientists obtain funding to support the development of a collective framework for geoscience professional practice guidelines. The Canadian Council of Professional Geoscientists (“CCPG”) is pleased to announce that $95,000 in support funding has recently been made available from the Government of Canada to assist in work to be undertaken over the next 10 months on developing a collective framework for geoscience professional practice guidelines.
1. Hybrid Remotely Operated Vehicle “Nereus” Reaches Deepest Part of the Ocean Media Relations - New type of deep-sea robotic vehicle called Nereus has successfully reached the deepest part of the world’s ocean, reports a team of U.S. engineers and scientists aboard the research vessel Kilo Moana. The dive to 10,902 meters (6.8 miles) occurred on May 31, 2009, at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. The dive makes Nereus the world’s deepest-diving vehicle and the first vehicle to explore the Mariana Trench since 1998. Nereus’s unique hybrid-vehicle design makes it ideally suited to explore the ocean’s last frontiers. The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight, micro-thin, fiber-optic tether that allows Nereus to dive deep and be highly maneuverable. Nereus can also be switched into a free-swimming, autonomous vehicle. 
2. Drilling might be culprit behind Texas earthquakes Denver Post - By Jeff Carlton, Associated Press Writer - The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town's 140-year history—but not the last. There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving. The council's solution was to hire a geology consultant to try to answer the question on everyone's mind: Is natural gas drilling—which began in earnest here in 2001 and has brought great prosperity to Cleburne and other towns across North Texas—causing the quakes? 
3. Asbestos-coated Libby, Mont., gets federal cleanup The Seattle Times - Nicholas K. Geranios,Associated Press Writer - Yvonne Resch remembers thinking as a child that the vermiculite mine only added to the area's natural beauty - its lights on Zonolite Mountain looked like a castle. But the mine and its processing plants spewed asbestos over her town for more than 70 years, coating homes, schools and ball fields. Now her father, mother and two brothers are among many residents who suffer the coughing, hacking and wheezing of asbestos-related diseases, which have been blamed in more than 200 deaths since the late 1990s. 
4. Solar Eclipse Picture: Moon's Shadow Seen From Space - National Geographic - See it all 
5. Crystal Palace: Cavers in Mexico confront extreme conditions and find extraordinary beauty Neil Shea - National Geographic Staff - In a nearly empty cantina in a dark desert town, the short, drunk man makes his pitch. Beside him on the billiards table sits a chunk of rock the size of home plate. Dozens of purple and white crystals push up from it like shards of glass. "Yours for $300," he says. "No? One hundred. A steal!" The three or four other patrons glance past their beers, thinking it over: Should they offer their crystals too? Rock dust on the green felt, cowboy ballads on the jukebox. Above the bar, a sign reads, "Happy Hour: 8 a.m. to 9 p.m." This remote part of northern Mexico, an hour or so south of Chihuahua, is famous for crystals, and paychecks at the local lead and silver mine, where almost everyone works, are meager enough to inspire a black market. 
