October 2005 ISSUE

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COMPLIANCE

Are You Helping Us Enforce Right-to-Title?

Are you doing what you can to preserve the integrity of your professions? One important way you can help is by reporting compliance violations.

The Compliance Department's job is to enforce the right-to-practice and right-to-title provisions of the EGGP Act Part 1. The Compliance Department's focus, therefore, is on individuals and companies that are not members — those that may be, inadvertently or otherwise, holding themselves out as members or practicing the professions illegally.

The majority of our cases are identified by the Compliance staff sorting through various publications, business directories and other informational sources.

The department’s goal, however, is to balance our caseload between proactive and reactive cases by encouraging APEGGA members to take the initiative to report violations. To support this endeavor, the department recently called on APEGGA’s Communications Department for assistance.

Communications’ first initiative was to develop a handout brochure containing details on how to identify and report violations.

The brochure can be reached from the home page of APEGGA’s website, www.apegga.org. We encourage all APEGGA members to download copies or order them from the Compliance Department for distribution to the public. This is to increase awareness of the potential for being misled by non-registered individuals or companies.

ACTIVITY REPORT

Editor’s Note: The following statistics track this year’s Compliance Department activity from Jan. 1 to May 31.

*Note: Other files were resolved for various reasons, among them confirmation that an individual or company is already registered with APEGGA, verification that an individual contacted is not living or working in Alberta, clarification that a company is actually a trade name of a member.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION

Q. If I submit a complaint to APEGGA regarding an unlicensed individual or company using a restricted title and/or practicing engineering, geology or geopysics in Alberta, may I remain anonymous or am I required to get involved?

A. Because we are dealing with non-registered individuals or companies, the source of the complaint is not revealed. The Compliance department will pursue the issue based on the information submitted, provided that it is factual. If, on the rare occasion the case should require legal action, the complainant may be called as a witness or to sign an affidavit. This rarely happens.