CALGARY⁠ — One of Alberta’s largest tech companies says it will consider leaving the province if it cannot resolve a legal dispute with the province’s engineering association, arguing that severe regulatory “overreach” is hampering its ability to attract skilled workers.

Edmonton-based Jobber, a business management platform, has been locked in a lawsuit with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA), which alleges that Jobber wrongly used the term “software engineer” in job postings because those workers hadn’t received APEGA’s official engineering accreditation. 

The Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI), along with more than 30 tech executives, is also challenging APEGA’s stance on the professional designation. In an open letter sent Friday to Alberta’s new premier, Danielle Smith, it said the association’s “aggressive position” could seriously restrict the province’s ability to attract workers at a crucial moment for its burgeoning tech sector.

Jobber CEO Sam Pillar said APEGA’s position is “corrosive to a free business environment,” and that while he’d rather remain in Edmonton, his board of directors would consider relocating if the issue persists. 

“Everything is on the table,” he said in an interview. “Talent is the number one most important input for a business like ours.” 

The company, which employs around 550 people in Canada and in the U.S., said 69 of its workers are software engineers based in Alberta.

Pillar said APEGA reached out to Jobber about 18 months ago claiming that it had been wrongly using the engineer title. APEGA regulates professional engineering designations in the province under the Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act; the association has accreditation requirements like the need to complete at least two years of specialized post-secondary education and at least six years of professional-level work experience.

Tech representatives argue that APEGA’s requirements for traditional designations—like mechanical engineer or electrical engineer—do not seamlessly apply to newer occupations like software development.

After the two sides failed to reach an agreement in the dispute, APEGA filed a lawsuit against Jobber in December 2021 in the provincial Court of King’s Bench. 

CCI has been in discussions with the Alberta government since at least the spring in an effort to amend the act. In Friday’s letter, CCI argues tech companies would be “subject to onerous, restrictive, and unnecessary certification requirements” if APEGA’s claims were adhered to. 

Under former premier Jason Kenney, Alberta has prioritized attracting skilled labour, and recently launched a campaign to draw workers to the province from Toronto and Vancouver. Under Smith, tech companies are hoping for a similar emphasis on innovation and diversifying the province’s fossil fuel-dependent economy. 

“Talent is the most important input to our businesses, and the inability to compete for it is an existential threat,” CCI said in its letter to Smith. “If we cannot effectively compete for the best employees while headquartered in Alberta, we must seriously consider whether this is a place where our companies can succeed.”

APEGA did not immediately respond to The Logic’s request for comment. 

Jobber is one of the province’s fastest-growing companies, and has more than doubled its workforce since 2019. Early last year the company completed a US$60-million Series C funding round backed by major institutional investors including OMERS Ventures. 

Pillar argues that “software engineer” is a colloquial and broadly accepted term that need not fall under the scope of APEGA. Job candidates specifically search for “software engineer” on websites and other platforms, and removing the term reduces applicant numbers, Pillar said.

“The global standard term, or job description, for people who use software at all these companies is ‘software engineer,’” he said. “So when we’re out recruiting and trying to hire the best possible talent that we can, we’re doing so on a global playing field, and we’re playing against these big companies—and some medium-sized companies and small companies⁠—who use this globally accepted standard term.” 

After APEGA launched its lawsuit against Jobber, word began to spread quickly among tech executives, Pillar said, who were baffled by the association’s intervention.

“This is kind of a surprise to all of them. In fact, most were sort of dumbfounded,” he said. 

Nic Beique, the CEO of Calgary-based fintech Helcim, said the company began altering its job postings to exclude the word “engineer” to avoid regulatory spats similar to Jobber’s. 

“We had to change everything to try to appease a pretty petty, in my opinion, approach by APEGA,” he said. 

Helcim, a payments company that employs around 150 people, has managed to hire the talent it needed over the last year, Beique said, but the pool of interested applicants it was able to draw from has fallen by up to half. 

“We see a decline in applicants, in search, and in SEO, because these are such generic terms that even the provincial and federal governments use themselves to track that talent.” 

Pillar said he hopes the provincial government under Smith will heed the tech sector’s advice. While Alberta’s innovation sector has gained momentum in recent years, he warns that the province remains a young jurisdiction facing stiff competition from outside. 

“There’s a lot of promise, [Alberta] can do it. But it’s hard,” he said. “Adding headwinds that are unnecessary just makes it more difficult, adds more friction.”