I'm not Canadian, but a long time ago, before graduate school, I was on an engineering track. Most of my friends joined my path (physics) but several went on to advanced degrees in engineering, accreditation/licensing, etc. When I describe to them what "engineering" is like in this industry they snicker and guffaw. The two fields are quite far apart. Mainly this is because software "engineering" is still quite immature. "Real" engineering has been something humans have worked on for literally millennia, so in this sense it's hardly a fair comparison.

One thing that is especially hilarious is the interview process: the equivalent of the software world's interview process would be to grill an engineer by requiring him to, say, solve a projectile motion with air-resistance problem (fairly common in first-year calculus-based mechanics classes and as review in sophomore/junior year classical mechanics) on the whiteboard and using that as a way to gauge his ability to design whole systems. These interview processes aren't good at looking for engineers, they're good at looking for code monkeys with a high opinion of themselves.