The Alberta government has backed the province’s tech sector with a new proposal to allow software engineers to call themselves engineers, even if they are not trained and licensed as engineers.
The province’s tabled legislation, Bill 7, provides that individuals or firms who use the title “engineer” in combination with terms like “software” or similar phrases will not be taken to have represented that they are entitled to engage in the practice of engineering.
“This is obviously a huge win for the wider innovation community in Alberta,” said Jessica Sinclair, director of government affairs in Alberta for the Canadian Council of Innovators, a national business association. “It signals to us that there’s an appetite to take Alberta to the next level in terms of being a jurisdiction where startup companies can really scale up their operations.”
Three days after the proposed legislation was tabled, a provincial court ruled in favour of Jobber, an Edmonton-based software company, in a lawsuit brought by Alberta’s engineering regulator, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA). The regulator had sued Jobber after the company refused to stop posting job ads for software engineers and other software development engineering roles while not being an engineering services firm.
Alberta tech companies, like Jobber, had said they would struggle to compete for tech talent if the court ruled that they could only use the term “software engineer” to refer to individuals licensed as engineers, Canadian Affairs reported in July. People with a range of educational backgrounds and credentials, including software developers and software technicians, perform work in the software field.
APEGA and Canada’s other engineering regulators had said in a 2022 statement that individuals were prohibited from using any IT-related prefix in front of the term “engineer” unless the individual was licensed by a province’s engineering authority.
“Needless to say, APEGA is disappointed. We regulate the professions and we have done so for 103 years,” said Jay Nagendran, CEO of APEGA.
The proposed legislation could set a precedent for the rest of the country, encouraging other provincial governments to interfere in professional regulators’ jurisdiction.
“It could and should have a ripple effect, I would say in Canada,” said Sinclair. “In order to compete in the modern economy Canadian policymakers are gonna have to take a stand against onerous red tape like this.”
But Alberta’s engineering regulator says Bill 7, if passed, will make it harder to identify who is qualified to practice as a professional engineer.
“It will be harder for us to regulate… because if somebody uses the title, we wouldn’t be able to go ask them to verify, because they have a legal right to use the title whether they are qualified or not,” said Nagendran.
APEGA has oversight over 4,700 permit holders, many of whom are software engineers, says Nagendran. APEGA does not differentiate between software, civil, mechanical or other types of engineers, because the registration requirements are the same for every type of engineer.
“[It] puts an added onus on the public to be aware,” said Nagendran. “They might have to go to the APEGA website and check our registrar to make sure that this person has a P. Eng. or is qualified to call themselves a software engineer.”
Global job market
Bill 7 highlights the Alberta government’s desire to ease red tape for the province’s burgeoning tech industry.
“In Alberta history, this is the most prominent example of, I would say, a regulator pursuing this line of logic,” says Sinclair. “I haven’t seen anything like this in all my time in between government and private industry in Alberta.”
The number of Alberta technology companies has grown from 1,240 to 2,800 since 2019. Nearly 40 per cent of those companies have revenue greater than $1 million, the Alberta government said in a November press release.
“The proposed changes to the Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act will allow the technology sector to use the global industry-standard designation of software engineer when recruiting, making it easier for Alberta companies to compete in the global job market,” said Nate Glubish, Alberta’s minister of technology and innovation, in the release.
The government’s position echos a 2001 court case, where an Alberta judge ruled in favour of a tech employee using the term “engineer” within an IT-related job, writing the term was widely used in the IT industry and did “not indicate one is a professional engineer or the practice of engineering is being carried on.”
In APEGA’s case against Jobber, the judge ruled that IT specialists with the job title “software engineer” do not “represent to the public that they are licensed or permitted by APEGA to practice engineering.”
But these decisions break from previous court cases in other provinces.
For example, in 2005, a Quebec court judge ruled that Microsoft Canada Co. could not dub graduates of its internal software course “Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers.” The ruling prohibited Microsoft from using the engineer title to refer to any individuals who were not licensed members of l’Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec, the province’s engineering association.
Quebec’s engineering regulator responded to Alberta’s announcement about Bill 7 with a statement to Canadian Affairs saying it “intends to monitor the situation.”
Top talent
APEGA brought the lawsuit against Jobber when the company refused to stop using software and data engineer job titles at the company or have its workers register with APEGA.
The vast majority of companies, including tech giants like Microsoft and Google, have complied with the regulator’s requirements once they are contacted by the association, says Nagendran.
“It’s only about point one per cent that don’t comply, and then end up in the situation we did with Jobber,” said Nagendran.
Jobber co-founder and CEO Sam Pillar said in a statement that he is encouraged by Alberta’s proposed law.
”It is critical that companies like Jobber are able to compete on a level playing field for top talent. This much-needed clarification will go a long way to ensuring we can do that.”
Glubish, Alberta’s minister, said in a public post following the court’s decision that he hopes this “decision will help prevent future frivolous lawsuits.”
“This court decision and Bill 7 will make Alberta the most attractive place in Canada for tech talent to call home.”
