Although all is still on track for a 1st June arrival, I found out today that HR at my company have had to change my job title for the HRDC application so that it does not include the word Engineer all because my 25 years of engineering experience in the Oil/Gas industry was not obtained in Canada.

So we have the ridiculous situation that I will be running a group of engineers, one of which with 15 years years less experience will have to be formally checking all my work.

Do the long Winters make them all barking mad in Alberta or whatt??????

Yes .... outside Alberta I can call myself a Certified Engineer - in Alberta, I'm a Certified Expert.

So, the common denominator is that you are definitely Certifiable!

It's a requirement to enjoy life in Alberta

I wish you wouldn't post things like that. It makes me so furious that people are so goddam ridiculous here!!!

Mind you - as I told my granddaughter when my son said they wanted her to be a flowergirl at their wedding and she said shouldn't it be called a junior bridesmaid -- who really cares what you are called so long as you are doing what you want to do!

But it is stupid!!!

But did you think she had a point? Titles are really important here even if they dont mean anything. Consider the {insert shop name} associate - in the uk the job title would be 'shop girl' or 'floor staff' - nothing as fancy as associate. Its the same job in the end.

Mrs G

I suspect there is more to this. Canadian experience wouldn't have been the determining factor for HRDC.

No, this is not the result of whatever form of lunacy Alberta winters may induce. The rationale behind it is distasteful, but it is sane. The engineers in Alberta are protecting their turf, and they are by no means the first professional group to have employed this tactic. Some other professions have implemented similar measures, but they did so earlier and more effectively than the engineers have done.

My husband was fortunate in that, when we immigrated to Canada from South Africa in the late 1970s, the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) accepted his degree, and required him to obtain only one year's Canadian experience before granting him admission to APEGGA. We know engineers from some countries who have been required to write exams in addition to obtaining Canadian experience before earning the designation of Professional Engineer.

I currently have a temporary job in the office of a factory in the southeast industrial area in Calgary. It's a very interesting window into a world that I don't see every day. The day before yesterday I sat across the lunch room table from one of the men who works on the factory floor. I told him I'd come from Africa originally, and asked him where he'd come from. He said he'd come here from China three years ago. I told him I was fascinated by the terracotta soldiers that had been discovered in Emperor Qin Shi Huang's tomb, and asked him if he'd ever seen them. He said he had, and he confirmed that they were indeed very impressive. Towards the end of the conversation, just as he got up from the table to return to the factory floor, he said he'd had over ten years of experience as a chemical engineer in China but, because of his limited command of English, he couldn't envisage a time when he would be able to work in the engineering field, much less work as an actual engineer, in Canada. Because he had to get back to work, we didn't have time to pursue this topic. At that point I felt guilty for having discussed something as trivial as the terracotta soldiers.

Isn't part of the reason the fact that 'engineer' is a resctricted title in Canada when it isn't in other countries such as the UK or Australia?

Canada is a signatory to the Washington and Sydney Accords, as is the UK, so anyone who is a UK engineer with certification there ought to visit http://www.engc.org.uk and see if these accords may be of assistance.

Jeremy

Not as clear cut as that. My Current (innacurate) job title is "design engineer". I have a BEng, but I'm not a member of the PEO or a canadian PEng. I have always been an "engineer" of one sort or another in my time in ontario, but never a professional engineer. I cannot legally sign off on machine safety start ups or drawing designs, I would have to be a PEng to do that. My work should be supervised by a PEng, but my boss was always the head honcho wherever he worked in Ontario, and never saw the point of PEO membership, so he had been chief engineer or engineering manager here for 25 years, for some of the time with a major multinational manufacturer, and all the time without PEng status. Now he reports to PEng 150+km away in Scarborough, which covers the legal side, although really its just a rubber stamp. Stupid really.

Sooner or later I will pull my finger out and jump through the PEng hoops, but there is no pressure from my employer to do so, in fact they will probably figure I'm only doing it to make it easier to leave and get another job. I suspect some industries are more sticky about PEng than others. When I was working in the automotive sector many of the engineers did not have PEng either, although I suspect at some point they were technically supervised by a PEng. Maybe its just an Alberta thing, who knows.

No, it's the same, if not worse in BC. The guy who fixes our photocopiers is from the Ukraine and has 20+ years experience in military nuclear engineering of some sort. I am afraid I don't know what exactly, but he was a fully certified nuclear engineer in the Ukraine and worked in power plants in the former Soviet Union. They don't even recognise this man's degree as being valid, nor will they give any equivalency for his experience.

I remember meeting a guy from eastern europe who had years of experience as a hardware designer ... the only job he could get in Calgary was rewinding vacuum cleaner motors ... after he completed a Canadian IT course, I think he managed to get an entry level job.

Makes me feel lucky and sick at the same time ... success here is all about finding or making the breaks ...

Got the HRDC approval yesterday afternoon.

I'm probably boring you all to tears harping on about this but Mr B has a BSc Hons from Birmingham, a BDS with merit from Cardiff (dental surgery) and 7yrs work experience as an NHS and private dentist...but Canada will not recognise any of his UK quals and he must do 2yrs "conversion" course at a cost of CAD 70,000 for tuition alone, not to mention the loss of income of 2yrs... The university even had the cheek to refuse his initial application because he hadn't done the english as a foreign language test (required when the candidate has completed high school outside of the US/Canada. We pointed out that the dean of the faculty was South African, and enquired if he had done the english test too .... at which point the application was accepted!

This is all no small sacrifice on Mr B's part, especially since he'd really rather go to Australia and I'm dragging him kicking and screaming to Canada instead.

I suspect I'm doing the washing-up for the next 20yrs

He wants to go somewhere warm & dry?

And you're moving where in Canada??