Professional

The 12 provincial and territorial professional engineering associations signed an agreement in June that means that engineers no longer have to be licensed for five consecutive years in one jurisdiction before they can move to another and become fully licensed. It also makes it easier for engineers to hold licenses concurrently in more than one province.

Professional engineering associations lost the first round in the battle with Memorial University of Newfoundland to stop it using “software engineering” to describe an undergraduate course which is not given by the engineering faculty. The university has obtained a registered trade mark on the term.

The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Newfoundland (APEGN) had threatened to stop accrediting the university’s engineering program in an effort to persuade it to give up the course name and the trademark. However, in June the Newfoundland Supreme Court ruled that the engineering association must accredit engineering programs at the university.

The bigger dispute over Memorial’s right to use the term “software engineering” goes to trial in October. The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada is backing Memorial by helping to fund most of the university’s legal costs, while the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE) is a co-plaintiff with APEGN.