As President-elect of Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO), Catherine Karakatsanis, B.E.SC., M.E.SC., P.Eng., was pleased to participate in the 39th Annual Professional Engineer’s Day in North Bay ON. Organized by the North Bay Chapter of PEO, the event recognizes and celebrates the many contributions of engineers to society and promotes public awareness.
Catherine is also Senior Vice President of the Buildings and Facilities Division of Morrison Hershfield. Her article “Bringing an Engineer’s Outlook to Government”, as published in the local North Bay newspaper, is reproduced below.
Bringing an Engineer's Outlook to Government
by Catherine Karakatsanis
Many of you are familiar with the role of Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) as the regulator of engineering in Ontario; how it is our mandate to assure the public that licensed practitioners are competent to practice in their chosen discipline, and that they are taking responsibility for the outcomes of their work.
What you may not be as familiar with, however, are the efforts of our 36 chapters across the province, including the nearly 400 members in the North Bay Chapter, to increase the local influence of the profession through PEO's Government Liaison Program.
While engineering has historically taken a back seat to medicine and law when it comes to being vocal about our professional interests, we see our Government Liaison Program (GLP) opening doors so we are, increasingly, being invited to the decision-making tables.
Our goal is to have government view PEO as a partner, and understand and support our policy direction, so that it continues to recognize our regulatory mandate, in particular our contributions to maintaining the highest level of professionalism among engineers working in the public interest.
Launched in 2005 as a six-month pilot project, the program was born out of a meeting with Michael Bryant, the Attorney General and our responsible minister at the time.
During the meeting, we voiced our frustration at what we viewed as incursions into PEO's regulatory jurisdiction by his cabinet colleagues. Minister Bryant's message to us was simple - it was up to us to educate legislators about the value of our self-regulation.