Professional law: the proposed Règlement sur l'inspection professionnelle des ingénieurs du Québec

On December 5^th, 2018, the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec`s board of directors informed its members that it intended to bring certain modifications to the Règlement sur l’inspection professionnelles des ingénieurs. This proposed legislation follows a number of claims brought by engineers before the Superior Court of Québec asking that the written exams and guided interviews imposed by the Professional Inspection Committee be declared illegal.

On June 29^th, 2018, the Superior Court ordered a stay and prohibited the Ordre des ingénieurs du Québec’s Professional Inspection Committee from proceeding to impose a written exam or guided interview to a member until the final judgement deciding on the legality of said exams was rendered.

THE PROPOSED MODIFICATIONS

The Board of directors proposes the following main changes:

1. Within the context of a professional inspection, the inspector or expert can interrogate the engineer in order to test his knowledge of the subject matter or interrogate a person with whom the engineer collaborates.
    
2. Within the context of a professional inspection, and without the need for the inspection to be qualified as an inspection concerning the engineer’s competence within the meaning of the Règlement, the inspector or expert can proceed in imposing an exam or another type of questionnaire that aims to evaluate the engineer’s abilities.
    
3. The means and methods used to conduct a professional inspection are chosen by the inspector or expert.  
    
4. An inspection concerning the competence does not need to be preceded by a first inspection.

In light of the judgement to be rendered by the Superior Court of Québec at a later date, it is possible that all the exams imposed by the Professional Inspection Committee to this day be deemed illegal, because contrary to the regulation currently in place. In addition, it remains possible that certain modifications proposed by the draft Règlement, as it currently exists, be later invalidated or that the exams imposed under the new regulation be declared illegal. The judgement to be rendered may offer some answers to these questions, even though the Court’s decision will only discuss the regulation currently in force Dubé Légal inc., Montréal professional law lawyers.