It'll be interesting to see if they can ever manage to enforce it. I haven't heard of any cases yet since Microsoft challenged them and won.
https://www.oiq.qc.ca/en/media/pressReleases/Pages/default.a...
INAL; it seems, to me, difficult to enforce. You're not allowed to call yourself an engineer but you can still practice as one as long as you call yourself a developer. What's the difference? In practice... very little.
Most developers I know do all the things professional engineers do.
Unless the government wants to step in and say that you're not allowed to release software without a professional software engineer at the helm I think it's trivial. Unless a company pays the insurance of an engineer and faces severe penalties for disregarding their direction I don't see the point of hiring a professional software engineer. Companies will simply hire developers rather than deal with trifling matters like liability.
And we'll continue to see avoidable security breaches in the wild for ever and onward because of it. The financial incentives are behind "move fast and break things," rather than "protect the public interest."
(Mind you I think we should have more of the latter and I'm all for liability for the things we create as long as we're in control of our future... I'll take the exam if I can be brought in with my 20+ years of experience)
"Microsoft Corporation announced in May 2001 its intention to stop using the term engineer in Canada in the title Microsoft Certified System Engineers - MCSE."
Going against the individual professionals for using the tittle might have been harder. Some are probably real engineers or have received the certification but don't necessarily advertise themselves as engineers...
Where this falls apart is that "Software Engineering" is a real discipline recognized by the organization that handles engineering programs in Canada, however there are no "reserved tasks" so a lot of Software Developers have a Software Engineering degree but can't call themselves that because they (rightfully in my opinion but still) refuse to pay the annual membership fees (about 600$) since their professional order is actually not equipped to audit software engineering work.
Hopefully that helps a little.
It's bit like... being able to practice law as long as you don't call yourself a lawyer. You're a legal assistant instead. In a similar fashion developers are practising software engineering without calling themselves, "engineers."
I don't think we all need to be licensed in order to work -- but companies should be required to hire X number of licensed engineers per Y number of developers. They should be required to pay for the liability insurance to hire those licensed engineers. And there should be repercussions if the company goes against the engineers' direction.
I am not a lawyer (mech engineer), but that's the message that the OIQ has been sending lately. It's unclear when and how they plan to start applying these new regulations.