Professional Engineers…

Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) is mandated under the Professional Engineers Act to regulate the practice of professional engineering and govern the engineering profession in Ontario to serve and protect the public interest.  
 
On Mon 2023-08-21, we provided comments to the Ministry on its initial proposal, particularly the qualified persons for the different parts of the Mine Rehabilitation Code in Schedule 1 of Ontario Regulation 240/00 (Advanced Exploration, Mine Development and Closure Under Part VII of the Act).  

Regarding the September 8, 2023, proposal, we offer the following comments:  

1. The Ministry has proposed (page 8) to remove the certification requirement for the Mine Rehabilitation Code from the Regulation to a referenced policy.  With the introduction of the certification regime without Ministry oversight, we would recommend keeping the regulation as is, and monitoring the impacts before moving the Code to policy.  

2.The inclusion of “engineering” in the “university degree in science or engineering from a post-secondary institution” for qualified persons in Parts 5, 6 and 9 of the Mine Rehabilitation Code (page 6) is concerning for PEO.  A qualified person should either be a licensed professional, who is accountable to the public through their respective regulator, or someone with a university degree plus some experience. Including “or engineering” in the “university degree” requirement would allow unlicensed individuals who had a degree in engineering but who were not licensed by PEO to potentially practice professional engineering, which would violate the Professional Engineers Act.   

3.In the definition section of O.Reg. 240/00, we would prefer to replace “professional engineer” with “licensed engineering practitioner,” which means a person who holds a licence, limited licence or temporary licence under the Professional Engineers Act. This definition includes limited licence holders who can practice engineering within a limited scope, and is consistent with other legislation and regulations. 

As a co-regulator we are ready to review the regulation changes in confidence to ensure that it does not conflict with our Act or Regulations.