The Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO) will now be able to force every manufacturing business to use their members. The new "Open for Business Act, 2010", recently passed by the Ontario government and currently waiting royal assent. brings every manufacturing job of a technical nature under the jurisdiction of the PEO. The following is example of what every manufacturing job in Ontario is going to face. The result will be increased fees collected by PEO, loss of jobs and no net benefit to make Ontario more attractive to industry.

Every factory of any size, down to 1 person operations, will be forced to review all positions with the following 3 questions, and replace the person doing the work currently with a member of the PEO if the answers are in the affirmative. The criteria in the questions are so broad, that pretty well all technical jobs will qualify for enforcement.

(From Engineering Dimensions, PEO publication Jan/Feb 2012 as presented to the Canadian Tooling & Machining Association to advise them of the new requirements, and coming soon to every manufacturing operation in Ontario.)

"Employees unsure if the work they are doing might involve professional engineering should ask themselves three questions.

-Do your actions involve the planning, designing, composing, evaluation, advising, reporting, directing, supervising or managing of the work?

-Do your actions require you to apply engineering principles to the work? "(This will include anything to do with calculations, chemistry, physics, electricity, etc. starting at the high school level)

-"Do your actions concern the safeguarding of life, health, property, economic interests, public welfare or the environment?" (This will include any product or service that most manufacturers provide. Notice the catch-all words, "economic interests" and "public welfare".) "Anyone answering yes to all three should understand they are doing professional engineering work. As such, these individuals should either seek to become licensed or ensure an engineer takes responsibility for the work they are doing."

Most community college graduates, technologists, trades people, industry trained technicians and managers in manufacturing will have to answer yes to all three questions and have to have a PEO member hired to oversee them or simply replace them.

This will increase costs for all companies and make an incredibly large number of workers of all ages no longer able to hold their jobs.

Chuck Suikki