I have seen it argued that because HN is founded by Americans everything should be assumed to apply to America unless otherwise stated.

As HN readership isn’t strictly American, I don’t see why specifying that engineer is a legally protected title in Canada is a bad thing...

From the article, Mat’s previous job was Geological engineering. “His firm was hired to analyze a block cave in British Columbia.”

Also from the article “In Canada you can’t even call yourself a “Software Engineer” unless you’re accredited!”

The article specifically mentions Canada.

I’m sorry if I’m not reading into the most generous possible phrasing of your comment, but I can’t figure out what point you’re trying to make.

To me this is similar to the comments of the form “found the x” on HN. In this case you could have said “found the Canadian” and I still wouldn’t know what point is being made.

So, to my point, HN has international readership, some of which is Canadian, having people on HN point out some of the specifics about practicing engineering in Canada (or any other country for that matter) seems to be a useful addition to the commentary. Some HN readership is still in high school or early into their college or university studies and not everyone has access to the same resources, mentors, or even knowledge of where to research answers to their questions. Sharing on HN is a great thing and can be beneficial to these people. I know I’ve personally benefitted a great deal from HN comments.

The point I am making is that in any Hacker news thread about "engineers" somebody will always bring up this Canadian thing. To the extent I have now read this fact at least a dozen times.

I provided a link as proof.