Letters to the Editor OSC proposal offends engineer

You recently reported (T.N.M., Feb. 12/90) on the intent of the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) to regulate professionals. As a professional engineer, I find the desire of the OSC to extend its powers in the regulation of my profession is offensive and wasteful. There is a wholly appropriate mechanism in place for the regulation of engineers who may be asked to act in matters that are subject to the various securities acts.

The Professional Engineers Act in most of the provinces of Canada organizes that regulation in a manner that requires the Ontario Securities Commission or any other security commission in Canada operate through the appropriate provincial professional engineers association to discipline members. By furthering this relationship, we will see better policing of the work carried out by professional engineers without large additional administrative costs. Those additional costs will translate immediately into higher compliance costs to support more unnecessary bureaucracy and expansionism.

Canadian venture capital markets have thrived because they have been fairly regulated and not suffocated by bureaucracy.

Perhaps the OSC has some staff members who are trying to justify larger salaries or longer tenure by proposing such silly double regulation. If the OSC wishes to try to make a professional engineer pay costs for an investigation that should have been carried out by another jurisdiction, it might find the pickings lean. If the OSC wishes to deny a professional engineer the right to work, as is indicated in your article, it could become very expensive for that sometimes august body to co-exist. Ben Ainsworth President Metamin Enterprises Inc. Vancouver, B.C.