In Canada you cannot call a software developer engineer unless he/she is an actual engineer
In other cases, they look at your academic and work history, and may ask you to take FE and/or PE exams and/or an ethics exam and may ask you to complete specific engineering courses. It's actually possible to obtain accreditation through work experience alone (10 years IIRC).
You can even take the FE and PE exams in Canada for this purpose (and for Canadian grads that want to work in the US). Note that if you get an engineering degree in Canada, you don't have to take the FE exam or equivalent to start as an engineer in training, because the engineering schools themselves are accredited with very similar curriculum.
Personal anecdote: I have a Canadian engineering degree but I personally had no problem using work experience abroad as part of my four years experience towards my P. Eng.
I'd encourage you not to discount professional bodies as irrelevant, or incapable of becoming more relevant, our industry could benefit from it in many ways - perhaps most frequently on-topic on HN is the ethical and whistle-blowing aspect. Also plenty of professional development and networking, and that only improves as more people that get involved from different (or rather one's own specific) areas.
One Canadian university's Comp Sci dept. started offering Software Engineering program one time and it ended up in a lawsuit the outcome of which is... complicated.
Canada is, I feel, very... lot of red tape.
The traditional term "engineer" isn't even a very good description of software dev anyway.
Software dev people should just make a new word up and abandon "Engineer".
[0] - https://www.canadianbusiness.com/lists-and-rankings/best-job...
For engineering disciplines in the railroad industry such as structural, mechanical and electrical, a P. Eng. is indeed required.
Sure, you have to have minimum a bachelor's from an accredited Canadian university, pass an ethics exam, and have supervised experience (or prove that you obtained the equivalent) to join in the first place, but if you don't pay the yearly fee you can only call yourself a "holder of an engineering degree".
I studied a degree called "Software Engineering", that was 4 years with first class honors. It is accredited by, and I'm a member of the Australian Institute of Engineers.
The only way for me to get accredited in Canada it 2 years of relevant work experience with an accredited Engineer in my field.
There are no Software Engineers in Canada.
The entire Google Canada workforce just had our titles changed from 'software engineer' to 'software developer' and were asked to update linkedin profiles to reflect this, as well.
Protected titles seem to have differing meanings in many places. Doctor is a pretty universally understood one; yet we throw around "Architect" pretty willy nilly and it's a protected title in many more countries than Canada.
Yet somehow Canada gets special consideration and other countries do not.
For context: I work for a French company, and we have many Architects despite that being a protected term. But we do not have Engineers in Canada (even if they have MSc CompSci engineering degrees).
You know, not that long ago in Alberta, you could use "Software Engineer" without a P.Eng license.
Then the engineering society (APEGA) sued someone (Raymond Merhej) who did that [2]. But Raymond won in the courts.
So APEGA appealed. But Raymond won the appeal in the courts too.
So APEGA lobbied the Alberta Government to change the laws.
And APEGA won.
[1] An example from Quebec: SNC-Lavalin affair (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair ).
And from Alberta: "Kenney’s United Conservatives were elected last April on a promise to focus on oil and gas and bring jobs back to Alberta by reducing the corporate income tax rate and red tape" (Alberta government files red ink budget with focus on oil and gas, https://canada.constructconnect.com/joc/news/government/2020... )
[2] https://www.itbusiness.ca/news/it-industry-wins-round-in-eng...
Back in the 90s I ended up having to come out here to Ontario to get work in software development; not just because there wasn't any work in Edmonton really but because companies there really weren't even going to look at someone without a CS or engineering degree. Every once in a while I muse about moving back there and I take a look around at job postings and I think even with my 8 years as a SWE at Google (and a 20 year career in dev generally) I might have a hard time landing a job there; lots of postings heavily emphasizing the academic angle and obviously trying to pull people straight out of the university.
It's a more conservative business culture in some ways.
This is absolutely false. For example, please review the "Software Engineering Experience Review Guideline" for Saskatchewan [0]. This was approved back in 2014.
[0] https://www.apegs.ca/Portal/Sites-Management/FileDownload/Da...
The vast majority of us (definitely > 90% of my class) have moved to the US after graduation where we pretty much can use whatever role we want (eg. my official title is software engineer at my company), but from what I know of the few people left in Canada, their roles are officially "programmer" or "developer". I've actually heard stories of P.Engs on messaging people in my program on LinkedIn to change their job titles to not include the word engineer. I'm not really sure what the repercussions are.
Just for completeness: it’s OK to use the title “B. Eng.”, which means you have a Bachelor’s in engineering, without implying anything about being a professional engineer.