Advocacy Body FAQs

Engineers and Geoscientists BC’s first priority has always been public protection – but for most of the organization’s life, it has juggled a mandate and legislative structure that has pulled it in two directions: public protection, and registrants’ interests.  

The public and government expect professional regulators to maintain a clear and unwavering focus on public protection. The introduction of the Professional Governance Act and our new Strategic Plan created a need for us to review our activities to ensure our resources are focused on our core accountability of public protection. 

No. This work was initiated by Engineers and Geoscientists BC to align the organization’s resources to effectively deliver on the organization’s public protection mandate and its Strategic Plan and its vision of modern regulation for a resilient world. 

Each of the programs and activities we reviewed was measured against the organization’s core accountability as a regulator: public protection. Our responsibility to government and the public, who we are accountable to, is to ensure that our operations and resources remain focused on regulation. This led to an important but difficult decision to end some of these programs in the next year, while we intend to maintain others in the hopes of transferring them to the advocacy body. 

The first step is to establish a Steering Committee, which will select the advocacy body’s inaugural Board of Directors. The development of the advocacy body will proceed from there, but we estimate that the advocacy body will be operational by July 2025. 

We hope to transition some of our valued programming to the advocacy body – including the affinity program, career advertising service, and the branch program. Overall programs, services, and fees will be decided by the advocacy body once they are up and running. 

One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we have heard from registrants since the introduction of the Professional Governance Act has been a desire for our organization to do more to support registrants’ interests. While this is not allowable under the Professional Governance Act, we firmly believe that two separate organizations, each focused on a clear and distinct mandate, will best allow both regulation and advocacy for the professions to flourish. Engineers and Geoscientists BC is not able to dedicate resources to activities that promote the professions in the same way that an advocacy body can. 

No. Engineers and Geoscientists BC will be providing $250,000 in initial seed money to support the advocacy body in getting established, but these funds will be taken from revenues from the career advertising service and the affinity program, not from registrant licensing fees.