The Gravity Well Podcast, hosted by Jenny Yeremiy, delves into the implications of legislative changes in Alberta, specifically Bill 40, which affects professional governance. The episode features a discussion with Zac Trolley, a professional engineer and member of The Professional Association of Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA), about how the bill shifts authority from professional bodies to political entities, impacting engineers, geoscientists, and 21 other professions. Key concerns include the potential for political discretion, specifically the Minister of Advanced Education, and MLA for Calgary-Fish Creek, Myles McDougall (formerly Rajan Sawhney after Demetrios Nicolaides) to override professional standards, the inability of associations to act as bargaining agents (aka the teachers & staff), and the threat to public safety and professional integrity. The conversation highlights the importance of solidarity among professional organizations and the need for collective action to protect constitutional rights and maintain professional standards. The episode calls for awareness and action against these legislative changes, emphasizing the broader implications for all working-class individuals in Alberta.
Jenny
Welcome to the Gravity Well Podcast with me, Jenny Yeremiy. I host The Gravity Well to celebrate and share the stories of people looking to empower others with the knowledge and skills required to reestablish stability in our communities. My mission is to work through heavy issues in conversation and process in order to lighten the load. I acknowledge that I live on the traditional territories of Treaty seven and Metis districts five and six. The treaties and self-governance agreements established by indigenous peoples are created to honour the laws of the land, maintain balance with nature, and give back to uphold reciprocal relationships. This knowledge and intention are what guide the Gravity Well conversations. I ask for genuine dialogue, real hearts, and openness to different perspectives. This is your invitation to find common ground with me. Positions taken by participants either individually or collectively do not necessarily represent those of the gravity well. This podcast is dedicated to the natural world, our children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and all future generations. The Gravity Well is on YouTube and streaming wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you see and hear, remember to like and subscribe.
Jenny:
Good morning, Zac. Sorry, a little bit fumbly there. It’s been a while since. How are you doing today?
Zac:
I’m doing pretty good. All things considered.
Jenny:
Awesome. Thank you so much for being with me. Welcome back to The Gravity. Well everyone, I’m done with the Calgary Environmental Roundtable (CERT) efforts that I did over the municipal election, and glad to be just slipping in one podcast in between the Water podcast series that’s going to come up here. But we needed to talk about something that is very relevant in the news right now and very much related to something you have been helping me understand over the last few months here around APEGA and what’s been happening to our delegated authority. I’m really glad to be walking through that with you today, Zac. Let me just give a little bit of background on Zac. Zac is a professional engineer. He’s a father and a space enthusiast. He has a diploma from SAIT and dual degrees in engineering and professional ethics from Lakehead University. He’s worked across industries and has worked on the shop floor in coal mines, oil, sand sites, and even more on movie sets. What a tremendous range you have in your background, Zac.
Zac:
I’ve been, I like to say I’ve taken a long way around in my experience. I’ve done a lot of things, worn a lot of hats.
Jenny:
Yeah, I think you and I are very similar this way. I think this is why we work together so well. Thank you for that. Okay, today Zac and I are going to unpack the legislative changes that were made with Bill 40 beginning in March of this year with respect to professional governance in Alberta. His analysis is that it’s apparent that these changes transfer authority from professionals to politicians. Zac will be outlining the impacts of these changes to our professional body. Both Zac and I are members of the Association of Professionals for Engineers and Geoscientists for Alberta, APEGA for short. We want to compare this to what’s happening right now with teachers and the notwithstanding clause. There are two main concerns we want to cover. Firstly, Bill 40 allows for political discretion to override professional obligations, and secondly, it bans our association from acting on our behalf as a bargaining agent. This ultimately impacts our ability to uphold and defend public safety standards as APEGA members. And in the case of teachers, it means their ability to defend quality public education.
Lastly, we’re going to touch on the importance of being in solidarity with other professional organizations when their professions are in direct threat. Is that a good outline of what we’re going to cover today, Zac?
Zac:
Yeah, let’s hit all those points and see where we end up. There’s a lot going on at the moment.
What did “self-governance” look like before Bill 40?
Jenny (04:01):
Yeah, thank you so much. Okay, let’s start from the beginning. Can you back up and explain for people what did self-governance look like for APEGA members before Bill 40 was put in place? Thank you.
Zac:
Absolutely. The idea of self-governance is that the technical authorities are in charge of the rules and ruling for those professions. For APEGA, engineers are looking at engineering rules. Geoscientists know their own craft and they propose the rules to operate for the rest of their profession. Think of it like it’s like an apprenticeship, right? You learn how to become an electrician from other electricians and APEGA worked the same way. Across Canada, all the universities need to be accredited, meaning whether you go to school in Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, you’re all getting basically the same course material and then once you graduate, you’re able to become an EIT engineer in training. Then it’s another four years of work under an engineer in order to become your full professional engineering status and APEGA managed all that. Oh, well, engineers Canada was above it. APEGA is obviously the Albertan branch, but what that means is for engineers, when you stamp something, when you sign something, that stamp and signature is backed by the association that has accredited you, that reviews you, that makes sure you’re up to date on the standards. And what Bill 40 does is shift that from APEGA to the Minister of Advanced Education, which is a huge change in how this used to work.
Who Holds the Power to Use Bill 40?
Jenny (05:42):
Yeah, that’s wild. Sorry. The Minister of Advanced Education?
Zac:
That’s the minister that’s overseeing this, and the startling thing is it’s not just APEGA. There are 21 other associations in this bill. You have engineers, geoscientists, accountants, veterinarians, land surveyors, a wide, wide array of technical fields that all falls under a single minister.
Jenny:
That’s wild. This is why I hear people talking about the notwithstanding clause and thinking that this is just an issue in education. No, this bill impacts all of us, and this is just the first public view of how we can be stripped from our ability to both defend the public in the case of engineers and geoscientists, but also be able to defend our professional obligations from any organization.
Zac:
Absolutely. Back in March when this bill had its first reading, it was brought out as a way to modernize the professions because a lot of these professions had their own act and their own laws. We did as well. It was E 11 that was our own law that we were lawfully allowed to operate as engineers and it brought them all under one. There was a bit of red tape reduction in that manner. It did do that. However, there were lots of sections that were added in that were not in the engineering regulations and I can’t find them anywhere else. These are things that were put in a 200 page document that was rushed through the legislation in two months. I don’t think anybody ever really sat down and read through it and digested what it really means.
Jenny:
Just to back up, for people who aren’t APEGA members, our main objective as APEGA members under Act 11, which was the original governing documents for us is public safety. Public safety and health for the environment are of primary obligation. And that means it was over and above our obligation to our companies. Correct?
Zac:
Correct. It was in law that our code of ethics were to be followed, meaning that if we had an employer and they were deciding between two options, A and B, and A was expensive and safe, and B was cheap and very risky, we as engineers had a legal obligation to point them towards option A to say, this is safer and although B saves you money, it goes below the bar of public safety that we’re allowed to stamp and verify. And then that project needed to bring himself back up to those safety standards before he can get built. We had the authority to say this is unsafe and we cannot build it.
Jenny:
Right. Yeah. Okay. First step was, I understand there were three stages of this bill. This has happened over several months where it was rolled out in March of this year, and there have been changes made to it all the way through to June of this year, I believe. It started with stage one, which I understand to be minister, can you speak a little, you’ve just sort of explained this, you had the ability to uphold these safety standards. What can the minister do?
Zac:
There are three stages of power that the minister has increasing in severity. And again, we’re talking about APEGA here, but this applies to all the associations. What they can do is APEGA’s code of conduct and rules and standards obviously say that we need to protect the public, but the minister can reach to these associations and just strike a rule and saying this rule, you no longer need to follow. And they don’t need to have a technical reason. They don’t need to have a debate. It’s not like it’s brought to a vote. They just say, do not follow this rule. And with a little bit of imagination, you can see how that can be abused very quickly.
Jenny:
We think about these changes that are happening to potentially to expedite federal projects. For example, if there was a safety standard on a pipeline that as you were highlighting the minister has the Minister of Education, not the minister of Environment or the Minister of Energy has the right to strike down those recommendations. That’s stage one. Then there is a mandatory rewrite option that’s section 202 of subsection one. Can you outline that a bit for us please?
Zac:
Yeah. And this is where the idea of public interest comes about. The minister can argue that it’s in the public interest to follow a certain path and to reflect on what just happened yesterday with the teachers, you can imagine the UCP argument being it’s in the public’s best interest for kids to be in school. Therefore, we are not going to update the teacher’s working conditions. We’re pushing everybody back to school. In the same vein, we can imagine, like you said, there’s all these federal projects coming up. They want to be fast tracked. They could say it’s in the public interest for these things to be built as fast as possible. And under section 202, not only in section 201, they’re allowed to strike a rule in section 202, they’re allowed to rewrite a rule. They could go into this and they can rewrite your standards of practice, your competency requirements, who can become an engineer, who can become an accountant and your code of ethics. They can say, we need a thousand more engineers, we are going to lower the competency requirements to become an engineer and we’re going to hire a thousand more engineers and they will just rewrite that rule. And that is the new rule that we have to follow.
Jenny:
And I want to highlight how that directly impacts Act 11, our original, yes, Act 11. In that our governing body, it was required that we had at least 17 professional members in a 20 person body. That limited those public seats from being a minority, that professionals were governing professionals. What this does is it allows them not only to have more people at the table that aren’t necessarily even accredited professionals and geoscientists professional engineers and geoscientists, but it also allows those people to make decisions that are potentially not, again, upholding public safety, for example.
Zac:
Absolutely. The APEGA Council always had public members on them and they were brought from the public and with the government’s involvement in there to make sure that we had some public voices on there, that little bit of a balance. But in Bill 40, under section 373, the Minister can appoint any number of public members to that body or committee. Imagine if there’s a disciplinary committee for a member, they built a bridge that fell down, the minister can go in and appoint 10 20 public members of their choosing to that committee and then vote in favor or not of disciplinary measures. And again, that’s up to their decision. There’s no mechanism. It just happens.
Jenny:
And I understand too that they can also appoint professional governance officer. Can you outline that a bit for us?
Zac:
And this is when things start to get really dicey. There’s always a give and take with any engineering project, any project really your balancing cost and safety, we can never make anything a hundred percent safe. It’s just not possible. There’s always a balance. And if APEGA starts pushing back and says, let’s take it a ridiculous example, we’re going to make a pipeline out of cardboard, and they say this, this is the greatest new cardboard technology, here we go. And APEGA says, we cannot do that, that’s unsafe under section 197. They can just take over the association. If the minister believes the association is not acting in the public’s interest, however they define that they can just install their own administrators. The elected board and council that is currently sitting there, they’ll disappoint a single administrator and fire the whole board. And then that administrator takes over the association and we lose control of the association that’s directly in Bill for you.
Jenny:
I’m just going to back up and repeat all of this for everyone. We have minister has the ability to disallow safety standards that we as professionals know can put the public at risk. Then they have the ability to rewrite what we would put down as our code of conduct or anything that we are trying to use to uphold those safety standards. They can also make changes to the board. They can put different people on the board that aren’t professionals, and lastly, they can also just overwrite the board altogether. Is that a good summary, Zac?
Zac:
That’s it. I mean it sounds very extreme and I was really surprised when I dug into the details myself and I stress anybody listening to open up Bill 40 and read these sections for yourself, it’s pretty amazing.
Jenny:
And also what’s interesting is we look at what’s happening with the teachers right now. Could engineers and geoscientists strike based on Bill 40?
Can Engineers or Geoscientists Strike with Bill 40?
Zac (15:59):
That’s the other part of this. Let’s use it a little bit more of a realistic scenario. Let’s say due to tariffs and everything else that’s going around in the world, we can’t find the same quality of steel that we would normally use inside a building. Let’s just say that. Bill 40 again touches more than just engineers. It’s supply chain, it’s accounting, and they can go in and tweak these rules. They say, here’s some lower grade steel, let’s use this. I’ve allowed it all through the supply chain. It’s allowed. And if the engineers say, no, we will not build this, we refuse and do what the teachers did and say, we’re going on strike until this is fixed, we’re not going to work. We actually legally can’t do that. Section 23, paragraph one prohibits us.
Jenny:
Okay, welcome back. Thank you so much, Zac, for getting yourself back in the studio. Really appreciate
Zac:
Yeah, sorry about that. I’m now on my phone. My internet kicked off and I think it’s serendipitous it happened at that point just to show how important these systems are. We all rely on a massive communication network, let alone the sanitation network, our roads. There’s a lot of stuff that needs maintaining and there’s a lot of people involved in this maintaining all this infrastructure.
Jenny:
That’s right. What you were saying when you got cut off is I was asking you, can we strike, can you back up there and just outline for people what section 23 subsection one has done?
Zac:
Yeah. We’re outlining a scenario where there might be due to international trade and tariffs, et cetera, et cetera. We had to source lower quality steel in the building. And APEGA may say, no, we don’t want to do that. If the government feels that again, this is the most public interest to move forward, they can just appoint a administrator and if we decide to strike and say, no, we will not work. We have no legal protection, we are not covered. Section 231 removes our protection from the labour relations code. Meaning if you say this is unsafe and I don’t want to work on it, which is in all my experience working at site, working in the field, working anywhere, if you say this is unsafe, I don’t want to do it. It’s a stop work, right? Let’s make this safe and let’s figure it out. If you say this is unsafe and I don’t want to design it, they can say Thank you very much. You’re no longer an engineer. We will find someone who will. You have no protection.
Jenny:
This is basically taking us from a self-governing body to an individual governance. Correct?
Zac:
Correct. And I think the point to understand here is they don’t even have to use these sections for them to be effective. If I’m looking over some drawings and I see, hey, I see something that I don’t think is correct, but if I speak up, I could lose my licence, which previously of course that was you were supposed to speak up, you were supposed to bring it forward. It is common practice that we are checking each other’s work drawings have several review cycles. The client sees them, we see it, the vendor sees it, everyone looks it over, everyone marks it up, everyone’s checking for mistakes and issues.
That culture is basically circumvented by fear that if we put our hand up, that goes against the government policy that they’re pushing for our jobs can be taken away. And I can’t just go move to another engineering firm if they remove my licence to practice. I cannot be an engineer, I cannot hold employment and I don’t have a salary anymore. I mean you have engineers deciding, do I do what the government wants me to do and keep my job I can feed my family, or do I put my hand up and maybe face repercussions like the teachers are waking up and facing today, they’re now forced to go back to work. Do they say, do I go back to work to feed my family or do I fight this? That’s the question that’s happening right now in one profession. And this bill covers 22 professions,
Jenny:
Right? Yes. And this is the key is to understand this isn’t every worker, every professional strike. This is a strike down of our rights as these are constitutional rights, no different than what’s happening with the teachers. And the notwithstanding clause, this is stripping us of our ability to make sure that the work we are doing is both safe and effective. And it also makes me wonder about reporting standards as well because it certainly seems like the expectation is that the reporting standards will be made up by a political entity and not by a governing body. Yes.
Zac:
For anybody that’s ever put their stamp or their initial on something, right? There are check sheets. You are not, I’m an electrical engineer. I’m not allowed to touch anything civil or mechanical. That’s not my area of expertise.
That’s all now in the wind because they can change the rules to bring in someone else to just stamp this rubber, literally rubber stamp it and move it forward. The real terrifying thing, especially as we accelerate, because this is just sitting there, it doesn’t have to be enacted today. It could be five years, 10 years down the road with the push towards AI data centers, if an AI engineering company shows up and says, we will build you a road, a bridge, a building, a power plant, and we’ll engineer it for a 10th the cost using ai, the government can just reach it and say, AI is a valid engineering body and move forward. And I think anybody that’s used AI has run it to an instance where it failed spectacularly. We lose control over that. We have to be forward thinking here, not today. This law sits there until we change it and we need to change it.
Implications of APEGA Membership with Bill 40
Jenny (22:32):
Yes, thank you. And the other thing it makes me wonder is what does it mean for being an APEGA member? To me, this is basically saying this body no longer has the ability to protect me. This body no longer has the ability to defend me. Why am I a part of this body? That’s ultimately what the risk is to these professional organizations as well. I do want to talk a little bit, I started mentioning it, but I’ll let you expand on it, the mention of the Alberta Federation of Labour being in solidarity with the teachers. There is one opportunity that both you and I see you’ve helped me see it, I should say, is that there is an opportunity potentially to be in solidarity with other professional organizations. Can you elaborate on that for a sec?
Zac
Absolutely. I mean, we’ve seen that and it is been popping up in conversations this week. If they can do this to teachers, if they’re willing to suspend their constitutional rights and say, if you don’t work, it’s against the law for you not to work. They will do this to anybody. And they’ve already put the framework in place for these 22 associations. They’ve said they’ve been completely showing they’re willing to use it. I don’t want to wait until they use it on APEGA or the chartered accountants or the forestry management. We don’t want to wait until that happens. We see it happening to one profession. We see it happening to one, and it can happen to all. We should stand together with all because this is a thread hanging over every single person. I mean, I think there’s 55,000 teachers in Alberta, and I think there’s about 70,000 engineers, and that doesn’t include all the other professions. Many hundreds of thousands of people. We’re talking a large chunk of the population this covers, and they could do this one by one or we can stand together and say, you are now looking at all of us because we know you’re threatening all of us.
Jenny:
There is talk about a general strike, and this is precisely what we need to think about when this is being said by a FL. It should not be just taken that it’s just AFL that’s in the position. Sorry, the Alberta Federations of Labour. It’s not just in their purview to do this is everyone of those 22 organizations, including APEGA, including the teachers that are impacted by this, and we believe we should be in solidarity with them and that we should consider going on a general strike with AFL. That’s fundamentally what.
Zac:
Absolutely. I was watching a clip with Gil when he was mentioning meeting with all the union heads, right? The associations should be getting together and talking amongst themselves and figuring out how are they going to act as one voice? How are we going to act together and stand in solidarity for everybody? This is important. What our kids get taught and how they’re brought up is important. How and where we build is important. Our agriculture is touched. What we grow and how we handle our livestock is important. This is vital to the province. This is our core. And the UCP government has shown that they are moving into control each and every one of these individual aspects, right?
Jenny:
Yeah. This is, thank you very much. This is from what I’ve taken from all the work you’ve done here, Zac, is that this is a threat to all working class people in the province that we need to look at increasing our solidarity to push back together rather than having one entity, for example, the teachers, let’s be specific, there’s a threat of them facing $500 daily fines and the organization facing a $500,000 daily fines if they were to go against this notwithstanding clause order of them back to work.
Zac:
And let’s just flip that view a little bit and shift it about how ridiculously absurd that is to say a teacher says, I can’t teach in my classroom. I need more resources. I’m a professional teacher. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I know what I’m doing. And the government says, if you don’t go to work, we’re going to fine you every day you’re not at work. Imagine a wastewater engineer going to work and saying, this water is unsafe to drink. We need to change something. We need to update our machinery to make sure that it’s safe to drink. And the government says, if you don’t operate as is, we will find you $500 a day. How absurd is this? It is absolute nonsense.
Jenny:
Absolute nonsense. And like you said, this is the future of our kids. This is the future of our province. This is public safety and environmental integrity. These are fundamental for all of us. And that’s what this means. This is the same for the teachers as it is for engineers and geoscientists as it is for any other professional body. Thank you so much, Zac. This has been fantastic. Is there anything that I missed in this that you want to highlight before we wrap?
Key Takeaways
Zac (27:41):
I think all of us have been watching the news and seeing around the world what’s happening. And I know myself, I’ve thought in the back of my head, well, why didn’t anybody stop them? How did it get this far? And this is our moment right here. This is the line that we cannot cross. If we cross this line, then we lose our power to fight again. If we don’t hold here, we lose. And this is it. This is our line.
Jenny:
Thank you. Yes. We’re basically saying we’re choosing not to fight for ourselves, fight for our futures, fight for our kids in just trying to uphold what we know to be true and to be safe and proper for the economy and the ecology and everything in between. Yeah. I’m going to get this message out, and I think we also need to alert some others to this, Zac, in our circle so that this becomes more of an understanding that this isn’t just about teachers, and this isn’t just about education.
Zac:
This is about everybody. And if for any professionals listening to this, I urge you, look at Bill 40 yourself. Read the text and then contact your association and ask them, what are we doing to fix this? What are we doing to put the line back where it was before, where we have a say in what goes on in this province?
Jenny:
Wonderful. Okay. And I know you and I will be working on that together. I know you’ve already reached out to our professional organization, and I’m going to put out some information for other APEGA members to do the same. Thank you for your leadership here. Zac. Thank you for taking the time to dive into this massive change that we’ve all just missed. That’s happened as we were fighting other fights in this province with this government. Okay. Thank you everyone for being here. I just want to remind you to please like and subscribe to the Gravity well, to get this message out for other people. Thank you very much, Zac. I hope you have a great rest of your day.
