Episode 27: A Conversation with Engineers Canada's CEO Gerard McDonald

Host Jerome James discusses a wide range of topics with Engineers Canada's CEO Gerard McDonald, including the value of the P.Eng license, the need for licensing in emerging engineering fields, and the role the regulator can play in helping internationally trained engineers enter the workforce.

Transcript

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Jerome James  00:18

Welcome to Engineering The Future, a podcast presented by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers. I'm your host, Jerome James. Today is a special episode of Engineering The Future. We're recording live on site in the heart of downtown Ottawa at OSPE's Engineering Conference 2022. I'm joined today by Gerard McDonald, P.Eng and CEO of Engineers Canada. Gerard has been CEO of Engineers Canada since 2018. Previously, he spent over three decades in the public sector, including as Executive Director at the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, and Assistant Deputy Minister of safety and security at Transport Canada. He also served as Registrar at Professional Engineers Ontario. Thank you Gerard, for joining us today.

Gerard McDonald  01:12

Thank you very much, Jerome. It's my great pleasure to be here.

Jerome James  01:14

Absolutely. So to start things off, I thought we would start off with an easy question. Most of our listeners are very familiar with OSPE and PEO and other provincial bodies. But many may not be so familiar with Engineers Canada. Can you give us an overview of exactly what the role of Engineers Canada is and how your role as CEO kind of pushes that forward?

Gerard McDonald  01:44

Sure. It's not surprising that a lot of engineers don't understand who we are and what we do. And that's because we don't really have a public facing interface. We essentially, are a construct of the twelve Provincial regulators, such as PEO, APEGA, EGBC, OIQ, what have you, and they are what we call our members, or our shareholders. And we, our objective is to bring them together, and to work to harmonize and collaborate engineering across the country. So really, our main role is to deal with the regulators. We have a number of core purposes. That includes we accredit all the engineering schools across the country on behalf of the regulators. We have the Canadian Engineering Qualification Board that we support. And they develop guidelines that some regulators would be too small to produce, to help promote the profession. We bring together the regulator's, whether it be through meetings of the CEOs, meetings of officials, meeting of the regulator presidents. We offer national programs, we do insurance for participating organizations across the country, we advocate to the federal government on national issues relating to the profession, and as well as international issues. We support international mobility. So we have a number of bilateral agreements with a number of countries around the world, as well as belong to a number of multilateral agreements regarding either engineering, education, or professional standards around the world. We promote the profession. We support equity and diversity in the profession, and then more about namely, we protect the trademark of engineering and the titles of engineering and professional engineering.

Jerome James  03:41

That's interesting that you have a role to play within the engineering profession nationwide, as well as internationally, which a lot of people wouldn't have known.

Gerard McDonald  03:49

No, a lot of people wouldn't be aware of that. But it's a big issue for us. You know, how do we assure ourselves that people educated internationally, are qualified to practice in Canada? And how do we promote Canadian Engineers wanting to work elsewhere in the world?

Jerome James  04:06

Excellent. I'd like to pivot to talk about the present and future of our profession. OSPE recently commissioned a study on the state of engineering in the work force in Ontario, and it showed that engineering graduates are working outside of traditional core fields like civil and mechanical engineering. Many graduates also see the P.Eng as less relevant to their careers currently. Why do you think fewer engineering graduates are pursuing the P. Eng license today?

Gerard McDonald  04:41

I'm not sure that there's fewer engineering graduates pursuing the profession on a numbers basis. But what you have is a couple of things. Number one, there's more people going through engineering school. So I think the number of people going into engineering school, or graduating from engineering school is rising faster than the number of engineering graduates taking up licensure. Number two, engineering more and more is becoming a springboard degree. In that people will take engineering to keep their options open. One might be to one option might be to become an engineer. But we see many engineers going into medicine, or as a springboard to going into law or a springboard going into finance. And I think that says a lot about the engineering education that we have in Canada. It's seen as a very rigorous, and marketable degree. 

Jerome James  05:43

It's a good foundation. 

Gerard McDonald  05:44

So students can use it for many other things besides engineering. Back when a dinosaur like I was going to school it was you went to engineering school, you became an engineer. Now, that's not always the option.

Jerome James  05:56

Right? I mean, that leads right into my next question. A lot of engineering graduates are expanding into different fields, not necessarily other professional fields like law and medicine, but there's emerging new types of emerging fields out there such as AI Tech. Do you think that there should be new types of regulation or new licensing for these emerging technical fields. 

Gerard McDonald  06:23

Excellent question, and it's one we're struggling with, we actually have one of our strategic priorities is investigating emergent areas in the engineering field, and one of the conundrums you have is that in order to get a license, there has to be someone there to verify that you're doing the work of an engineer, and it's being done properly. If it's a new field, or if you're an entrepreneur, there's no one there to do that verification for you. So how do you get the experience to get the license? We got a chicken and egg type of thing. And is it something that actually does require the license? So it's an area I don't unfortunately have a pat answer for. We're working with the regulators to try and find a solution to it. But certainly, it's something we're aware of. And it's something that's not going to go away. If anything, the application of engineering is going to expand and probably expand faster than the regulators can keep up with it.

Female Voice  07:16

We hope you're enjoying this episode so far. At OSPE, we're here for you. Making sure government, media and the public are listening to the voice of engineers. You can learn more at OSPE.on.ca

Jerome James  07:30

Let's move to the immediate future. Many engineers who work in the core fields such as civil and mechanical, are approaching retirement age. There will be a lot of vacancies in the next 10 years. And some employers are worried about whether or not there'll be enough young engineers to fill those spots. What can our profession do to fill those gaps?

Gerard McDonald  07:55

I think there's a couple of things. And that go back to maybe your first question. And that is about the number of engineering graduates getting the licensure. I think what we're going to see in the in the coming years is engineering companies becoming a lot more competitive in recruiting those graduates into the engineering field. They know they're there. They know some of them are going elsewhere. It's not they always don't go somewhere else because they want to, it's basically because they couldn't find a job in engineering. So I think we're going to see a lot more stiff competition for the recruits coming out of school. So that gets you experience at the bottom. I think some of that more experienced engineers, what we're probably going to see is more use of immigration, and getting experienced engineers from elsewhere around the world. People are knocking at our doors, they want to come to Canada, they want to work in Canada. And many regulators are now looking at ways to expedite the licensure of international engineers coming into the country. And I think the demand will spur that on even more.

Jerome James  09:01

It's like you're reading my mind. We're just moving right into the next question. It is about international engineering graduates. Our study also showed that international engineering graduates face some challenges in Ontario. International grads bring a lot of talent and enthusiasm, but they also find a lot of their job opportunities being limited. They're less likely to pursue the P.Eng license because they don't see the value or it's just so unattainable in their mind that they find other ways of pursuing their career. How do we square that peg? And what kind of role can a regulator play in helping internationally trained engineers join the workforce? 

Gerard McDonald  09:53

I think there's a number of areas we have to look at. I think, partially we're a victim of the regulatory construct that we have of where it requires you to have an accredited engineering degree in Canada. That's easy. But if it's from an international school, how do you know that degree is accredited? We have a number of ways right now we belong to something called the Washington Accord, which recognizes some 23 countries around the world and their engineering degrees as being equivalent to those of Canada. And engineering regulators have to accept that equivalencies. We have to convince them to accept that. I can say someone belongs to the Washington Accord, I can't tell Pete you have to accept that as an equivalent degree. But I think more and more they're finding that this is something we have to do, because we can't resist it. There has to be more rigor put into the analysis of the engineering education for those who who come to Canada. And then finally, the big nut to crack is the experience. I talked about it earlier, with respect to getting licensure, and you need four years of experience, two of which have to be Canadian experience. The Canadian experience requirement, we're finding more and more is the biggest hurdle for an international engineer, to get that qualification to be able to be licensed. It again, we get back to, you know, you have someone coming with 20 years experience to Canada as an engineer, and has to come to Canada and work. Under someone who might have five years of experience as an engineer. It creates an atmosphere that is not conducive, or welcoming to the profession. And finally, I think we have to remove biases in the system, towards the approval of these people getting their license. I know PEO has done some work in this area, we do a lot of work on our diversity and inclusion initiatives to try and help regulators understand what unconscious biases in the system might be, and how we might overcome those in accepting these people into our profession. 

Jerome James  11:55

Interesting. This is the first time I'm hearing about the Washington Accord. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And some of the countries?

Gerard McDonald  12:03

Yeah, so the Washington Accord was actually Canada was one of its five founding members, probably about 28 to 30 years ago. And it brings together like I said, roughly 23 countries, some of the usual suspects, we've got the US the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, a number of the southeast East Asian countries, Korea, China. 

Jerome James  12:29

They said 23 countries, I thought 23 institutions that...

Gerard McDonald  12:32

No, no, no, no 23 countries. So Canada, we have 44 accredited institutions. US, I don't even know that I'm sure it's up in the hundreds of accredited institutions. The UK is a similar number. So anyone graduating from a country that has Washington Accord approval, their degree should be accepted in Canada as being equivalent. And what we have is we bring those countries together, we decide on what are the competencies required of engineering programs, and then we audit those countries. We audit each other's programs on a every six years to determine whether or not they're living up to the spirit of the agreement. And if they do, then they're considered a member of the Accord. And like I said, they're students graduating from accredited universities get should get full recognition in Canada. 

Jerome James  13:21

Excellent. Well, that's concludes what I have for questioning for you today. Is there anything else you'd like to add to the podcast?

Gerard McDonald  13:30

No. Well, I'd like to congratulate OSPE for another great conference in Ottawa. It's a great place to come to. I really appreciate being asked and congratulations on the podcast. I hear it's doing great things and keep up the good work.

Jerome James  13:42

Well, thank you so much for those kind words. And thank you, Gerard for coming in and giving us a little bit of an insight on what Engineers Canada is all about. Once again, Gerard McDonald is CEO of Engineers Canada, and I'm your host, Jerome James. This has been Engineering The Future live from the conference floor in downtown Ottawa. Thanks for listening.

Female Voice  14:14

From all of us at OSPE, the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, thanks for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.