Becomng a P.Geo.
Geoscientists are professionals like architects, doctors, lawyers, foresters and engineers. You wouldn’t hire an unlicensed lawyer or accountant to be your advisor or allow an unlicensed surgeon to operate on you, so why would you hire an unlicensed geoscientist to work for you? Part of the drive to regulate the profession of geoscience came in the wake of the Bre-X gold mining fraud and the Walkerton groundwater contamination incident; two examples where better public governance of geoscientific practice in Canada could have provided greater protection of the public and prevented loss of reputation about the work of geoscientists.
About the Bre-X gold mining fraud:
The magnitude of the tampering with core samples that we believe has occurred, and resulting falsification of assay values at Busang, is of a scale and over a period of time and with a precision that, to our knowledge, is without precedent in the history of mining anywhere in the world,” Strathcona Mineral Services Limited, Busang Project – Audit Report: – quoted in the book “Bre-X: gold today, gone tomorrow: anatomy of the Busang swindle“ by Vivian Danielson, James Whyte, published by Northern Miner, 1997.
Excerpt from the Part One Report of the Walkerton Inquiry quoting Mr. Justice Dennis O’Connor, January 2002:
More significantly, this water was drawn from an area of highly fractured bedrock. This fracturing, and the geological nature of the surrounding bedrock, made it possible for surface bacteria to quickly enter into fractured rock channels and proceed directly to Well 5. Raw water contamination by coliforms and fecal coliforms was indicated in the initial pump tests in 1978 and continued to May 2000.”