CCPE Chair Pierre Desjardins Outlines Changes to CCPE Structure

Pierre Desjardins, ing., Chair of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, attended the APEGGA Council meeting on April 16 and reported on progress to implement a new governance structure for the national engineering body.

Some of these changes will depend on revisions to the CCPE Letters Patent and Bylaws. (These changes were ratified by APEGGA Council at its April16 meeting.)

Mr. Desjardins noted that the new structure changes a system of weighted voting within the CCPE which gave greater voting power to the largest CCPE constituent associations. Each member of the Board of Directors now will have one vote but the number of directors will change.

With the changes, the size of the assessment levied on a constituent association would be reflected in the number of directors each association is able to appoint (Ontario and Quebec would each appoint three, Alberta and B.C. two each, and the other constituent association one each). According to the CCPE Chair it is: "a case of no taxation without representation." A five-member Executive Committee would be elected from the CCPE Board which would also elect the chair of the Executive Committee. The CCPE Board would report at least once a year to "members", in effect a "shareholders" meeting consisting of one elected member from each constituent association. It would, Mr. Desjardins noted, be the role of the "members" to approve CCPE’s strategic plan and budget, or to terminate a constituent association’s participation in CCPE, on a one-member-one-vote basis.

"We have a board of directors which is accountable to members and the directors are appointed by the associations as they used to be." Mr. Desjardins also touched on a number of other matters on CCPE’s agenda. They include:

• pursuing the issue of software engineering;
• communications initiative that will see a more proactive effort in this area, with eventual CCPE spending of up to $1 million a year;
• the environment — CCPE has decided to terminate its current memorandum of agreement with Canadian Council for Human Resources in the Environment Industry;
• international affairs — an agreement will go to the CCPE International Affairs Committee for full mutual recognition of French engineers. Similar discussions have taken place with the federation representing European engineers.

"We have a lot of things on the plate and it will take a lot of resources to work these things out," said the CCPE Chair. There is also a proposal on the table for an "APEC engineer". Some difficulties exist in gauging the many educational institutions within the countries that make up the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation group.