1951 - Desk-Pounding Responses       The provincial government, however, did not share that opinion. During 1950 it had begun to concern itself with the problems arising from the shortage of all species of professional personnel in Alberta, primarily because government departments had encountered great difficulty in obtaining enough medical officers, chartered accountants, nurses, lawyers, teachers and engineers, not to mention surveyors, to cope with the demands of rapid growth in public services and in the general development of the province at that time. The government had found itself forced to recruit many of its professional personnel outside the province, and although one of the chief causes of its difficulties was the still unattractive standard of civil service salaries, some members of the government had preferred to conclude that the main cause of the shortage was an inclination on the part of professional organizations to be unduly restrictive in admitting new entrants. Legislative action to "lower the bars" was therefore proposed, and the government at first indicated its intention of removing or reducing the statutory powers of the professional associations in connection with the admission of new members and to substitute a system of government licensing. This proposal naturally caused no little consternation throughout all the professions, and representations against it were promptly made by the more influential organizations, with the result that it was dropped early in 1951. Later that year, the government developed the policy that all examinations in those professions for which the University of Alberta provided academic courses should be under control of the General Faculty Council of the University, and that qualifications already possessed by the candidate which to any extent measured up to the standards required for professional practice in Alberta should, to that extent, exempt him from having to pass examinations or serve articled time in obtaining Alberta qualifications. Even these more modest proposals met with a number of objections from the professions, and during the latter part of 1951 their representatives had many interviews with the Hon. C.E. Gerhart, who as Provincial Secretary was responsible for the various professional acts. This gentleman, although himself a pharmacist by profession, was not the most diplomatic or best-informed minister who could have been chosen to conduct these negotiations, and since he was full of zeal about breaking the log-jam that seemed to be preventing the professions from expanding with the times and the needs of the economy, the interviews which representatives of the professional organizations had with him were sometimes a little rough. On behalf of the land surveyors, Messrs. R. McCutcheon, G.C. Hamilton and F.V. Seibert met with Mr. Gerhart on two occasions in the fall of 1951 for the main purpose of trying to convince him that casual field experience should not be substituted for articled training and to get his assurance that other qualificational standards were not to be reduced. Their arguments were met with desk-pounding responses on Mr. Gerhart's part, one of which was to the effect that he could take any man off the street and train him to be a competent surveyor in the space of three weeks. The atmosphere was thus not too conducive to rational discussion, but through the good offices of Dean Hardy who, with other University officials, had the task of working out the details of the University's role in what was to come, it was established that there would be no lowering of the standards of academic and technical training, even though something other than articled pupilage would have to be recognized as acceptable practical experience, at least until the current shortage of surveyors had been overcome. While these negotiations were going on at Edmonton, the situation became further embroiled by a statement publicly made by the Mayor of Lethbridge, at the annual meeting of the Union of Alberta Municipalities, to the effect that the Alberta Land Surveyors Association was a closed organization from which new members were being deliberately excluded so that those already in it might monopolize the field. This assertion was taken at face value by the Calgary Herald and a day or two later was the subject of an editorial article castigating the Association. Mr. McCutcheon and Mr. S.K. Pearce met with the editor of the Herald, who gave them a courteous and sympathetic hearing and afterwards made space on the editorial page for a detailed rebuttal of the Mayor's statements. The Association offered to meet with representatives of the Union in order to discuss what might be done to give the municipalities better survey services, but there the matter ended. This unpleasant windstorm came and vanished quickly, but while it lasted, it did nothing to help the Association in its negotiations with the government, and Mr. Gerhart, who happened also to be Minister of Municipal Affairs, made the most of it. Eventually, by the end of the year, new legislation was drafted, embodying the principles governing admission to the profession which the government had laid down. This consisted of an amendment of the University Act, requiring the recognition of comparable qualifications that candidates had obtained elsewhere, and an amendment of the Alberta Land Surveyors Act, exempting university graduates from articled service provided they had had comparable field experience on survey work. It had also been agreed that the University's Extension Department, in collaboration with the Association, would run a two-week course of lectures on survey law and legal survey practice in the spring of 1952, primarily for the benefit of engineering students in their final year who upon graduating might wish to become qualified as land surveyors under the new provisions of the Act; without articled training, they might thus be better equipped to attempt the final examinations. Meanwhile, the Association had gained eleven new members during 1951, who had come in with DLS or provincial commissions, and fifteen candidates who had passed the ALS preliminary examinations had entered into articled service.   Back - 1949-1950 - Preoccupied with Examinations Forward - 1952 - The Big Leap Forward