CAPE at a glance
  •   CAPE is your collective voice
  •   CAPE provides supports in your struggle for meaningful employment
    • Why CAPE is needed?

    Check findings of the analysis of 3500 CAPE members:

  •   Highly Educated
  •   Very Experienced
  •   Very Under Utilized

    • What CAPE provides
  •   A suite of 7 employment support 65 tools
  •   Ground breaking real-time skills "gaps" trainings and reports
  •   Advocacy for Canada's largest Global Engineering Community
    • Highlights
  •   Media Release
        Petition Demands Fair Play for Foreign-Trained Engineers
  •   CAPE Campaign Online Meeting



    • CAPE

    Collective Voice

    Members are increasing calling upon CAPE to strengthen its advocacy, seek legal action and take collective action to address employment issues facing them. The main basis of our advocacy has been limited to regulation of our profession and in particular to the issues surrounding public documentation of what constitutes Canadian experience based on the following:

    In 2007 APEGBC was involved in a court case in which Dr. Serguei Tchou-San-Da, in Tchou-San-Da v. Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia (APEGBC) challenged the validity of the bylaw that set out the experience requirement for registration. The applicant called into question the validity of the bylaw upon which the decision to refuse his registration as a professional engineer was based, Bylaw 11(e)(2).

    Section 13(1)(c) of the Engineers and Geoscientists Act indicates that the APEGBC Council set the criteria for acceptable experience and articulated these requirements through the bylaws of the Association. Correspondingly, Bylaw 11(e)(2) stated that:

    “11 (e) Registration as a full member of the Association may be granted to a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada when Council is satisfied that the applicant is of good character and repute and: (2) has 4 years’ experience, training and development in engineering or geoscience satisfactory to the Council.”

    The presiding judge in the case ruled that Bylaw 11(e)(2) was invalid because it was not explicit enough in defining what kind, and how much experience was required. Section 13 (1)(c) of the Act noted that experience requirements were established by the bylaws, whereas the corresponding bylaw, Bylaw 11 (e)(2), noted that the 4 years’ experience requirement was at the discretion of Council, thus establishing a circular relationship between the Act and the bylaws.


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