For the past year or so, Council has been considering a proposal to change the way PEO’s President is elected. The make-up of Council and the process for nomination and election of Councillors is set out in Sections 2 through 27 of Ontario Regulation 941 (“the Regs”) under the Professional Engineers Act (“the Act”). Under Section 7 of the Act, PEO Council has the power to make and amend regulations, subject to approval by Cabinet. Currently, the Regs provide that all PEO members vote for a President-Elect, who in the following year becomes President, and the year after that becomes Past President. So in effect, the President-Elect is elected to a three-year term on Council. The PEO President has been elected by members since PEO was established in 1922. In all other provincial and territorial engineering regulatory bodies except Quebec’s OIQ, members also elect their Presidents. In some other professional organizations, like OSPE for example, association members elect board members who, in turn, choose their Chair (the President) and other officers from among themselves.
The proposal is that PEO adopt a similar method of choosing its President and Vice-President(s) by, and from among, the members of Council. The offices of President-Elect, Vice President (elected), and Past President would be eliminated and replaced by elected Councillors-at-Large, to retain the same size of Council. This proposal stemmed from dissatisfaction by some Councillors with the conduct of certain past Presidents. It is based on the assertion that members of Council, who know each other and have to work together, are better able to choose a suitable President than are the members of the profession at large, many of whom do not know the candidates first-hand.
At its meeting on November 19th, 2010 Council passed a resolution that
At the first Council meeting immediately following the 2013 Annual General Meeting, Council shall elect from Council, the members to be President and Vice president(s).
Click here to see how they voted: How Council Voted.19Nov2010
Prior to that decision, the intention had been to hold a member referendum on this fundamental governance change. However, disagreement over the referendum question, and concerns that members would not ratify the proposed change, led a majority of Councillors to assert their authority to amend the Regs without membership approval.
I am categorically opposed to this resolution, and commmitted to seeing it reversed, for the following reasons:
1. Council may have the legal authority to [request the government to] amend the Regulations, but it does not have the moral authority to make such a fundamental change to PEO’s governance without the consent of the membership in a referendum.
2. I am unconvinced that simply changing who chooses the President will improve the “quality” or effectiveness of the President, or of Council. I believe there are number of other conditions that must be met in order for the relationship between Council and the President and the CEO/Registrar to work better, regardless of how the President is selected. These include:
* Reaching consensus on, and agreeing to enforce, the respective roles, responsibilities, authorities, and executive limitations of both the President and the CEO/Registrar;
* Making a serious commitment to leadership succession (see my President’s Message under the MESSAGES tab) and to nomination of excellent candidates for Council election;
* Avoiding politicizing of Council; and
* Providing better opportunities for PEO members to participate in agenda setting and issue resolution, and to get to know candidates for election and their platforms.
Why not work on addressing these shortcoming within the present election system, rather than making a wholesale change to it?
3. I believe the problem Council is trying to solve with this initiative has not been defined properly, nor the proposed solution thought through rationally. This leaves us with a “solution in search of a problem” – a very “un-engineering” approach that most of would not accept in our day-to-day engineering work, and one that many of us criticize governments for on a regular basis. So why should we suspend our engineering discipline and judgment when it comes to the governance of our own profession?
Here is an e-mail message I sent to all Councillors prior to their special meeting on December 21st to reconsider the November 19th decision. At that meeting, Councillors voted 12 to 8 to reconsider the November 19th motion; however the motion to reconsider failed because, under Council’s special rules of order, a 2/3 majority is required to reconsider or rescind a motion. E-mail to Councillors re Election of President.19Dec2010
Click here to see a flyer on this issue prepared by concerned PEO members: Town_Hall_handout_V5[1]
You can also find more background information on this important issue on the website of Ontario Engineers for Democracy on Council: http://www.ourprofession.ca