Alberta premier Danielle Smith intends to review professional regulators and legislate limits. The union representing senior government engineers plan to remove members from Highway 413, Bradford Bypass projects. Students discover and publish proof for 2,000-year-old mathematical theory. These were the most-read stories in the Daily Media Report at the beginning of November.
Alberta premier to review professional regulators. Alberta premier Danielle Smith says Albertans need to be confident regulated professionals are competent and practise ethically, but those professionals should also have freedom to express their personal views, especially outside their jobs. The review is to look at whether oversight is going beyond professional competence and conduct when it comes to freedom of belief, opinion and expression, mandatory training not related to professional competence, and vexatious and bad-faith complaints.
Ontario engineers to be removed from highway projects. The Professional Engineers Government of Ontario union, which represents engineers who work on oversight and management of government projects and regulations, say they are planning to begin pulling their members from work related to Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass, two key government projects. The union recently began work to rule action, after almost two years without a contract. A subsequent negotiation with the Ford government on Oct. 18 yielded no progress, according to the union, leading to the escalation.
Students discover and publish proof for 2,000-year-old mathematical theory. Ne’Kiya Jackson, currently studying environmental engineering and Calcea Johnson, pursuing a doctoral degree in pharmacy, discovered a new way to prove the 2000-year-old Pythagorean theorem. They published an academic paper detailing their original proof plus nine more. Many mathematicians over the years have explained why the theorem works using algebra and geometry. In contrast, Jackson and Johnson were able to prove it using trigonometry, which was a first.
