Ashereng: Ontario has a Certificate of Authorization system of engineering licensure, permitting business entities to engage in the practice of providing engineering services. Under such a Certificate of Authorization, a licensed professional engineer or engineers agree to take professional responsibility for the professional engineering work done under that Certificate, regardless who actually does the work. So if the firm has a C of A, the firm is free to choose any person- licensed or unlicensed, engineer or non-engineer- it feels is capable of doing the work required. The signatory P.Eng. is then in the position of having to review and accept, or reject, the professional engineering work these people do, accepting career-terminating professional responsibility for anything errors they miss... Despite the fact that it sounds like a very thankless job, there is no shortage of P.Eng.s who are signatories to Cs of A. In fact, there are some who are signatory to more than ONE C of A, which is yet another matter!
Ontario also has an exception from licensure for engineering work done by employees on the means of production of their employers. Though the exception in the Act is actually quite narrow, it is broadly interpreted. Ontario borders several US states with general exemptions from licensure for virtually all engineers working in manufacturing or other industrial settings. In practice, Ontario's "industrial exception" from licensure is viewed as a de-facto "exemption" from licensure for virtually any engineer whose makes products rather than generating drawings and specifications- even if those products are "engineered products"!
Most Canadian provinces have similar systems.
An engineering graduate without a license is restricted from using the term "Professional Engineer" or its abbreviation P.Eng. in any way. They are also restricted from using the term "engineer" in any way which might mislead the public into believing that they have a license, including calling themselves a "consulting engineer" etc. And they may not provide engineering services directly to the public- they may not "hang up their shingle" and go to work for themselves as engineers. But nobody can stop you from putting "B.A.Sc., XXXX engineering" on your business card, resume etc. if you in fact posess this qualification. So the restriction in terms of using the title "engineer" is a bit of a paper tiger as well.
Accordingly, the only person the average engineer in Canada needs to convince of their engineering skill and credentials is their boss, or perhaps occasionally their customer. A license is viewed as nice, but not really necessary. Perhaps that explains why less than 25% of Ontario engineering graduates bother to go on to get a P.Eng. license.
There are rare exceptions to this rule, generally associated with civil/structural work and a few other areas where a P.Eng. stamp is required by certain other pieces of provincial legislation (i.e. the TSSA Act or Building Code Act etc.). The rest of us continue to pay money for an engineering license which means precious little in terms of providing an exclusive right to practice. Some of the very best Ontario engineers I know have renounced their licenses as a worthless yearly expense.
Foreign-trained engineers seeking employment in Canada often wrongly focus on the licensure process as the source of their problems. The media, in their ignorance, propagate this mythology because they love an "underdog" story. The fact of the matter is, we could hand out licenses to all comers and it wouldn't get most of these poor b@stards out of their taxicabs or factory jobs. The only thing which will solve the problem for them is to provide a better match between the supply of engineers and their marketplace demand on a regional and discipline-specific basis.
