Evidence of meeting #56 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was women.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:20 p.m.
President, Canadian Academy of Engineering
I will speak for my parish.
The generational gap is in universities as well. If a young person has graduated from engineering and has trouble finding a job—or in any area, whether you've graduated from business or anywhere—I'd simply say to get a master's and think about the possibility of a career as a university professor, because the generational gap is there too.
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
5:20 p.m.
Conservative
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me start by asking Ms. Carter something.
I think it was you who mentioned that regulators process 5,500 immigrant applications per year. How many are accepted?
5:20 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Engineers Canada
In excess of 90% actually meet the requirements. Some individuals are asked to write confirmatory exams. In Ontario, it's a small number of the applicants who end up actually writing confirmatory exams, because they will interview the individual. In the interview process, they'll really be able to assess whether or not they've got that knowledge in what appeared to be a gap in knowledge from their transcripts.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
The reputation, if I can put it that way, is that engineering societies have done a much better job with this than some of your professional counterparts—such as law societies, for example, one of which I belong to in Nova Scotia.
This is not really about engineering, but in terms of skills gaps and immigrants and so forth, what do the others need to do that you're doing right?
5:20 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Engineers Canada
Thank you to the federal government for the enormous amount of funding that we've had over the last 10 years on this. We were able to put a lot of work into getting the regulators to work together to come up with strong systems, support each other, and share best practices.
We belong to a network, the Canadian Network of National Associations of Regulators, and we regularly meet with them. We have a conference every year. Usually HRSDC and CIC have representatives there, and we share our best practices.
We've learned from them. Some of them do a few things better than we do, and we've tried to ferret out what those things are. We're always happy to share where we can, and we've worked very hard with CIC and HRSDC. We've been invited to present at the Canada-Australia round table in March on how to develop reciprocity agreements with other countries.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
Two and a half years ago, you entered into an agreement with the AFN to help promote aboriginals in engineering. I'm not expecting you to tell me that you've transformed everything in that two and a half years, because that's not very long, but what can you report in terms of positive results so far about that agreement?
February 7th, 2013 / 5:20 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Engineers Canada
What we can report is that there's certainly a heightened level of interest from the AFN. It's been taking us quite a while to be able to sit down and ferret out how we can help. Certainly the situation recently with Idle No More has taken much of their attention, and we've had a bit of a gap in communications. When that settles down, we'll get back to sitting down with them and trying to work it out.
What I understand is that a big part of their challenge is the diversity of their own communities, which means that what might be a solution in one area is not the solution in another area. We may have to work with them on numerous solutions and think about how we can do that.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Geoff Regan Liberal Halifax West, NS
When you said “numerous”, it reminded me, oddly enough, of the word “numeracy”. I want to ask you about the development of children between the ages of one and five in terms of their numeracy skills and what that means for engineering. How important is that, and what should the Government of Canada be doing about it?
I'll let anybody answer.
5:25 p.m.
Dean and Professor, Faculty of Engineering, University of Ottawa, As an Individual
If we want young people to move into careers that require this scientific and mathematical knowledge, this is something that is key. In my opinion, we have to expose all our children in Canada to mathematics, science, engineering, and technology from a very early age so that they're aware of all the opportunities that will present themselves and be available to them in the future.
When we neglect to some extent the mathematics and science component in our primary and secondary school system, we basically limit the future opportunities of those children, because we close doors that they will never be able to open. This is definitely key.
As a country, we can probably do better. We can probably look to what other countries are doing on that front. In some of the emerging countries we've talked about, such as China, India, and Brazil, this issue is taken a lot more seriously at both the primary and secondary school level to prepare children to enter into those professions. I think we need to do the same thing.
5:25 p.m.
President, Canadian Academy of Engineering
Dr. Laguë is absolutely right. I'd simply add that between the ages of zero and five, children love mathematics. We manage to kill that love when they get to school.
5:25 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
5:25 p.m.
President, Association of Consulting Engineering Companies - Canada
If I can offer a quick corollary, language skills, communication skills, and soft skills are barriers to a lot of recent graduates ability to enter our industry, because that's a premium. We actually swung the pendulum too far one way.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you very much to the witnesses.
I wrote down two things here, and I'm glad Mr. Regan surfaced one that I wanted to cover, which the credential recognition directorate. It sounds as though you have a very good relationship. That's extraordinarily good news, really, for all of us, because all of us have dealt with many constituents who have professional credentials in the jurisdictions they come from. It's nice to know there's one discipline now in which we're seeing some results, so thank you for that.
There is another thing I wanted to ask you. Are you able to get good possibilities for future engineers out of the Canadian Forces, with the engineers who are developed there in the minor ranks—the sappers, etc.? Do you find there's a good stream of retiring Canadian Forces folks who are young enough to go into an engineering career?
5:25 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Engineers Canada
I can speak for at least one individual who was just hired recently as the chief executive officer of the Alberta professional engineering and geoscientists association. As we're in Ottawa, we do have quite a few of them around, so from the Ottawa chapter we see a number of these folks, and they do seem to be able to transition in.
From my limited knowledge of them, they tend toward the industry that supports DND, because they have that basic knowledge.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Sure. They'd have that familiarity, as well as expertise. It's good that we're putting out a good product from the Canadian Forces as well.
Thank you very much. Thank you to my colleagues, and thank you to the witnesses for some great information.
The meeting is adjourned.
