Recent Labour and Education Trends Regarding Geoscientists and Geological Engineers in Canada

This article explores the relationship between commodity price cycles and the US business cycle. Commodity price cycles are known to foster capricious macroeconomic activity, and understanding their behaviour offers valuable economic insight. The US business cycle is a key indicator of the broader economic conditions, reflecting changes in economic activity, consumer spending, and overall market conditions. By examining the dynamics and interplay between these two cycles, this study provides insights into the potential synchronisation, lag, or lead between commodity price cycles and the US business cycle. The study employs a Fourier analysis of commodity price cycles and the US business cycle. In addition, the same empirical method will be used to analyse historical rainfall patterns in the US as a means of furthering the role of historical rainfall patterns in shaping agricultural productivity and subsequent price movements. Results show dominant cycles of 14.2 years throughout the commodity price dataset, 3.8 years within the US business cycle, and 14.2 years in US historical rainfall patterns. The study also identifies several factors that influence the relationship between these two cycles, including global demand, trade policies, and financial market fluctuations.

The registration and licensing of professional engineers, including geological engineers in Canada, is under the jurisdiction of the provincial and territorial governments, through self-regulating professional associations. Each association (Ordre in Quebec) through boards and committees, examines and admits qualified engineers to the association. Membership in an association permits practice of a professional engineer in the given province or territory. An applicant for membership in a professional engineering association/Ordre, is considered academically qualified if the applicant has graduated from an accredited Canadian engineering program. Accreditation of the programs is undertaken on a regular basis by the Canadian Accreditation Board (CAB) of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers (CCPE), a national federation of the 12 provincial and territorial associations. Applicants are also considered to be academically qualified if they are graduates of programs subject to an accreditation process equivalent to that of the CAB, and approved by the CAB. This includes through bilateral agreement, U.S. programs accredited by the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET). Those applicants who are not graduates of accredited programs, are generally assigned confirmatory or qualifying examinations. The CCPE provides a Uniform Syllabus of Examinations used by all the constitutent associations for these examinations. Registration requirements also include a specified two year period of North American and/or Canadian experience. Special provisions permit limited practice by non-residents. The accreditation process facilitates the mobility of professional engineers in Canada.

A review of geological engineering education in Canada was conducted in order to assess the effectiveness of current undergraduate university curricula by e-mailing a survey to geological engineering students and to practising geological engineers across the country. The lists of courses taught by each of the eight universities currently offering geological engineering in Canada were appraised for content and it was found that there are three "pillars" related to earth materials: Soil, Water and Rock. Although only 25% or less of each university's curriculum was focused on these, they were judged by the survey respondents to be the most useful courses and the subject of the top five job categories.

Do Canada and the United States Differ in Prevalence of Depression and Utilization of Services?

To assess a possible explanation for persistent gender inequalities in engineering, this study examines gender differences in recent Bachelor of Engineering graduates’ intention to look for another engineering job three years after graduation. Applying organizational commitment theories, we examined gender differences in job and family characteristics, and feelings of these graduates towards their jobs to understand what underlying factors make these graduates look for a job with another employer. Based on logistic regression analyses of the National Graduates Survey 2013 (Statistics Canada, 2013), we found no statistically significant gender differences in intentions to leave. This indicates that job commitment is unlikely to be the reason for women’s underrepresentation in the occupation. However, women are more likely to look for a job with another employer when they feel overqualified for the work they are doing, are supervising someone at a job, are a visible minority, or when they have children. Moreover, significantly more visible minority men than white men are looking for a new job. These results have implications for the existing retention initiatives for women and visible minority engineers in Canada

A current trend is the requirement for complex civil engineering projects to be carried out to very short time-scales. These projects often involve difficult and protracted planning consultations. This leads to increased pressure on all the professionals involved to work at a very fast, though erratic, pace that is dictated by others. This is particularly the case with the collection and utilization of information about the ground that is required for the design and construction phases of projects. Large changes in scope and detail often occur due to a wide range of environmental, technical, financial and other external factors. The engineering geologist plays a crucial part in the management of projects that are to be completed successfully to time and within budget. This paper discusses key areas in which engineering geologists can significantly affect the outcome of a project and also factors that may influence the professional development of engineering geologists in future years.

Last Hired, First Fired? Black-White Unemployment and the Business Cycle

The counterpart to the economic cycle is the policy cycle. Whenever there is a downturn in the Alberta economy because of slumping oil and gas prices, politicians of all persuasions, from Peter Lougheed to Rachel Notley, have called for policies to diversify the economy, on the assumption that expanding other sectors of the economy will insulate Alberta’s economy against volatile oil and gas prices. However, just because a sector is not directly part of the oil and gas extraction sector, does not necessarily make it counter-cyclical. In fact, the sectors that have been promoted in the name of diversification are often linked to the oil and gas extraction sector and follow the same boom-bust cycle.In other words, the government’s attempts to subsidize certain sectors in the name of “diversification” do not insulate the provincial economy from fluctuations in oil and gas prices and may even exacerbate the economic cycle. Missing in the discussion is an appreciation of how changes in the structure of the Alberta economy have affected output and income volatility. In the last 20 years, sectoral output shares have become more diversified in Alberta, and this has contributed to a 21 per cent reduction in aggregate output volatility over that period. Successive governments have tried promoting manufacturing as a way to diversify the economy, but manufacturing is the third most volatile sector, and its volatility is linked closely with the boom-bust cycles of the oil and gas extraction sector. So, increasing manufacturing, including petrochemical manufacturing, will actually make output volatility worse, not better. In fact, a one standard deviation increase in average per capita output in the oil and gas extraction sector is associated with in a 9.45-per cent increase in average per capita output in the chemical manufacturing subsector, suggesting the same boom-and-bust relationship between the two sectors. It is not the only sector like that: 16 other sectors in Alberta are linked to the same boom-bust cycle as the oil and gas sector. The more important diversification issue in the province is not output volatility, but the volatility of labour income. In the last 20 years, labour income has become increasingly concentrated in Alberta’s two most volatile sectors, oil and gas extraction and construction. As a result, volatility of aggregate labour income in Alberta increased by 40 per cent during that period. Rather than trying to change Alberta’s industrial mix by subsidizing industries that may only contribute to more volatility of economic output, a more sensible government approach would be to adopt policies that address the problem of labourincome volatility. That would include finding ways to expand unemployment insurance for Alberta workers, as the current federal government policy actually provides fewer supports to unemployed Albertans than it does to residents of other regions. Average weekly earnings of Albertans were 20 per cent higher than national average weekly earnings over the 2012 to 2016 period. However, maximum annual insurable earnings under EI are determined based on national average weekly earnings. Higherwage earners should have the opportunity to enrol in a voluntary supplemental EI program, and if the federal government does not want to provide it, the provincial government could. Additionally, the government can promote self-insurance among workers by expanding tax-sheltered savings products, like tax-free savings accounts, so workers can accumulate back-up funds when labour incomes are high, to help sustain them during downturns. Finally, the provincial government needs to abandon its procyclical spending patterns. That means spending less money when oil revenues are high, to avoid exacerbating labour and material shortages, and maintaining spending, rather than forced cutbacks, during downturns in the economy. That, of course, would require a great deal more political discipline than the easier and more fashionable attempts to subsidize output diversification.

Studies have tested the claim that blacks are the last hired during periods of economic growth and the first fired in recessions by examining the movement of relative unemployment rates over the business cycle. Any conclusion drawn from this type of analysis must be viewed as tentative because cyclical movements in the underlying transitions into and out of unemployment are not examined. Using Current Population Survey data matched across adjacent months from 1989-2004, this article provides the first detailed examination of labor market transitions for prime-age black and white men to test the last hired, first fired hypothesis. Considerable evidence is presented that blacks are the first fired as the business cycle weakens. However no evidence is found that blacks are the last hired. Instead, blacks appear to be initially hired from the ranks of the unemployed early in the business cycle and later are drawn from nonparticipation. The narrowing of the racial unemployment gap near the peak of the business cycle is driven by a reduction in the rate of job loss for blacks rather than increases in hiring.

An important component of asset allocation decisions is the future correlation structure of equity returns. Other studies have found that correlations change through time. Examination of the changing cross-country correlations in the G-7 countries provides clues as to why they change. Equity cross-correlations are related to the coherence between business cycles in the respective countries. Correlations are higher during recessions than during growth periods. Correlations are low when two countries' business cycles are out of phase. A semicorrelation metric differentiates equity comovements in bull and bear markets and provides a method for forecasting multiperiod equity correlations. Two applications are investigated: out-of-sample global portfolio allocation and derivative instruments.

Aim This study seeks to develop a diversity profile of the nursing workforce in Canada and its major cities. Background There is ample evidence of ethnic and linguistic segregation in the Canadian labour market. However, it is unknown if there is equitable representation of visible and linguistic minorities in nursing professions. Methods We cross-tabulated aggregate data from Statistics Canada's 2006 Census. Analyses examined the distribution of visible and linguistic minorities, including visible minority sub-groups, among health managers, head nurses, registered nurses, licensed nurses and nurse aides for Canada and major cities as well as by gender. Results In Canada and its major cities, a pyramidal structure was found whereby visible and linguistic minorities, women in particular, were under-represented in managerial positions and over-represented in lower ranking positions. Blacks and Filipinos were generally well represented across nursing professions; however, other visible minority sub-groups lacked representation. Conclusions Diversity initiatives at all levels can play a role in promoting better access to and quality of care for minority populations through the increased cultural and linguistic competence of care providers and organizations. Implications for Nursing Management Efforts to increase diversity in nursing need to be accompanied by commitment and resources to effectively manage diversity within organizations.

OBJECTIVE: Our research uses a regional summary indicator (IHPOLM) to measure the capacity of the health system to provide equitable access to health professionals for 2 million Official Language Minority Community (OLMC) members dispersed across 104 health regions in Canada. METHOD: The summary indicator IHPOLM compares the official language minority and the official language majority potential access to health professionals. The IHPOLM indicator uses 22 professional health care occupations, representing 79% of the health care workforce in Canada, who communicate directly with their clientele for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes (Statistics Canada, 2006). RESULTS: The IHPOLM indicator revealed that the OLMC population is at a disadvantage in potential access to health professionals capable of providing services in the minority language when compared to the majority language population in 10 of the 13 Canadian provinces/territories. OLMC members are disadvantaged in 13 out of 14 health regions in Ontario, in 16 out of 18 in Quebec and in 3 out of 7 in New Brunswick. CONCLUSION: The summary regional indicator IHPOLM identified OLMC health care access inequalities between the official language minority population and the majority language population in the health care system across the health regions in Canada. The more detailed analysis of IHPOLM for individual health occupations will further improve our knowledge of Official Language Minority Community health access inequalities.

Business cycle peaks and troughs cannot be identified immediately when they occur for two reasons. First, recessions and expansions are, by definition, recurring periods of either decline or growth. Second, the information that is needed to determine whether the economy has entered a recession or moved into an expansion phase is only available with a time lag. US business cycle peaks and troughs going back to the trough in December 1854 have been dated by the National Bureau of Economic Research. A business cycle represents fluctuations in the economy around full-employment output, but an economy's full-employment output, often called potential gross domestic product, can also change. A simple comparison of the duration of expansions and contractions does suggest the US economy has performed better in the post-World War II era. While the US economy has enjoyed two consecutive record expansions, a longer historical perspective does help to remind us that business cycles are unlikely to be gone for good.

This article considers whether the economic transformation in the United States during the 1990s included the reduction of poverty in metropolitan (metro) areas. The authors investigate poverty change over the last business cycle, a period of overall strong economic growth. Their analysis identifies evidence of both poverty reduction and persistence. Findings show a general decline in poverty, with decline greatest in the metro areas with the highest poverty rates at the beginning of the last business cycle. Yet the relatively strong economy did not move the metro areas with the highest poverty from their relative position. The article documents that the underlying factors affecting metro-area poverty will have to be changed to fundamentally address poverty in high-poverty-rate metro areas. Reliance on changes in the macro economy will not be sufficient.

The implementation of innovation strategies in SMEs is subjected to changes in the economic cycle. The reliability of economic trend indicators varies according to economic trends. The author deals with the relationship between selected business cycle survey indicators and time periods that correspond to the different phases of the economic cycle between the years 2003–2017. The aim of the article is to find out whether selected business cycle surveys indicators are equally reliable across the economic cycle. To solve the problem, first, the consensus of a selected business cycle surveys indicator and the performance of the mechanical engineering industry were evaluated, and then, the results were put into the context of the time period and tested with nonparametric ANOVA. The results show that the selected indicator was more reliable in periods of growth and less reliable in downturns, which is a signal for SMEs as to how to interpret the business cycle surveys. The use of future development assessments provides important information for businesses that make investment decisions and help them think over funding for innovation.