QUEBEC CITY – Quebec’s engineers association, the Ordre des ingenieurs du Quebec (OIQ), is recommending that the Quebec government considering expanding eligibility for the office of coroners in the province to include more professions including engineers.
The comments came as the OIQ presented its recommendations for improving Bill 45, an act dealing with the appointment and terms of the office of coroners and of the chief coroner, on Aug. 27.
“A significant number of coroners’ investigations and inquests involve engineering works, such as road infrastructure and buildings,” said OIQ president Kathy Baig in a statement. “Knowledge of engineering may be useful or even essential to conduct these types of inquests.
“Furthermore, engineers have presided over commissions of inquiry and scientific and technical commissions that had many similarities with the inquests that coroners have conducted.”
The OIQ’s brief also noted that no government to date has acted on the conclusions of the coroner who recommended in 2010 that the Architects Act and the Engineers Act be amended to make the supervision of building construction work mandatory.
The recommendation followed the death of a woman who had been crushed by a concrete panel that fell off a building wall, stated a release.
Quebec still has no form of mandatory work supervision, unlike several other Canadian provinces, it stated.
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