President’s Message

Robert R. G. King SLS, P. Surv., ALS President

President’s Message to the Membership

As parents, we often find ourselves getting a different view of Saskatchewan then some.  With the fall and winter season upon us and the kids back in their winter activities, I have found myself to be like most parents, striving for the taxi driver of the year award.  My travels so far have taken me to “The Heart of the Wheat Belt”, to a town that claims “New York is big, but this is Biggar”, and of course to a city with so many river crossings it can often be nicknamed “Bridge City”.  I have found that all this travel and downtime is prefect for reflecting on my term as the president of the association and catching up on writing my Corner Post article.

Most of you may have noticed there wasn’t a publication of the summer Corner Post, so forgive me if I jump back a little and reflect on my first article that wasn’t published.  I would like to thank the membership for the opportunity to serve as your president and consider it an honor and a privilege to do so.  Over the next year, I plan on representing our fine province and association with dignity and respect.  I look forward to the challenges that this position may present, and the knowledge and experience I can bring back to our association from our sister associations and their current dealings.

I would like to once again thank the outgoing council members, Malcome Vanstone, Prakhar Shirvastava and Ryan Maloney, their hard work and dedication to the association over the past years truly was an asset to our association.  I also would like to welcome our new council members, Lee Andersen, Jared Adams, and Ryan Baete, I look forward to the new insights they all may bring to our council meetings.

It was good to see a strong attendance at our Fall meeting and the Meet the MLA reception event.  I would like to thank the government relations committee for once again getting us the opportunity to meet with the MLA’s.  It is always a benefit to the association and our members when we can get recognition for our association and the messages we wish to share.  I encourage our members to reach out to your MLA if they weren’t present at the event, and continue to pass on our messages of accretion in Saskatchewan, and encourage consultation with our association on upcoming legislative topics which may affect our association and the public we serve.

After the discussion session of the joint ISC/Controller of Surveys/Practice Committee panel, I see that council now has a couple more talking points to address in our upcoming meetings.  Council will break each of these discussion points down and look into investigating a couple more of these issues.  As members, I encourage you to continue to bring these topics of concern to the attention of council.

There have been two sister association meetings since our AGM in June.  I have had the opportunity to attend the Association of Manitoba Land Surveyors AGM in September, and the Association of Nova Scotia Land Surveyors AGM in October.  One topic of concern arising from the presidential forum meetings has been maintaining a self-governing status and the requirements of each province to meet these requirements.  Recently due to the number of internal disputes and discipline cases, the Province of Quebec has taken over the Order of Engineers.  And in a similar fashion, the British Columbia real estate industry has lost their self-governing status due to the faulty discipline and complaint processes in the Vancouver area.  As our association is looking into our current Continuing Education Period (CEP) process, and the way we handle Professional Development Credits (PDC), we must understand and realize that counting PDC points means nothing if the actual practice of the members is not monitored and regulated properly.  Will our current CEP process and our audit process meet the current requirements of us maintaining our self-governing status?  Currently we have a heavy focus on a plan checking system and we have an overall consistency in the quality of our survey plans, yet we have very little on the practice review and survey review of our practicing members.  We need to have a look at our current system and determine whether or not an outside body would feel that we are doing enough with our PDC’s and plan checking to ensure that we are providing the proper level of protection to the public.