On-demand webinar
CondoVirus episode 11: Your first virtual AGM
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Rod: Hi everybody. My name is Rod Escayola and I'm your condo lawyer with Gowling WLG. Welcome to Condovirus Episode 11 and tonight we will cover your first virtual AGM. Today we're going to do things a bit differently than what we've done so far. For the last 10 weeks or so you've seen how we've done it. We've called upon key industry experts to answer some of your questions and week after week they generously accept to take the hot seat and answer our questions. But today we're going to do things a bit differently. What we're going to do today, we're going to run a virtual AGM from the beginning to the end. Now before we dive in I wanted to clarify how we're going to tackle this. Now, virtual meetings and electronic voting's are two distant processes and for that reason we will tackle them separately. Today, we're just going to tackle the meeting. The format of the meeting. How does it work? How does it unfold? How do you invite motions? How do you get people to vote on the motion? And so on and so forth. In another episode, see how I manage to keep you? In another episode we will cover electronic voting. So today is not about electronic voting. Today is really about the format and the meeting itself. We're going to run through the AGM, as I said, from beginning to end. After the mock AGM, what we're going to do, we're going to do a postmortem. Basically we're going to go over this exercise together and we'll identify various challenges that we've encountered while we were preparing this virtual AGM. We've sort of identified a few pitfalls that we want you to be aware of and we want to try to see what kind of solutions are out there. After the postmortem, if time permits, we'll open the floor for questions. So that's how we'll tackle it. So, again, today the exercise will be tackled in two phases. Today is the meeting phase. Now, we're using the Zoom platform tonight, but it's one of many. There are many others out there. There's GoToMeeting. There's WebEx. I think there's one called Google Duo. Microsoft has it's own platform. We're using this one today, the Zoom platform, because we're used to it and those of you who have been attending our webinars, you're also used to it. So that's the one we're using. But today is not an endorsement of this specific platform and it's not either a bashing session. You'll see later on, when we get to the postmortem, you'll see that we've identified a few shortfalls, a few challenges. Not so much with the technical platform but with how it can be used in the context of an AGM. Don't take that as a criticism specifically of this platform. We're not going to be able to answer your IT questions. We're not your IT support desk so if you're struggling with the mic, or your struggling with what buttons to press, you're probably going to have to do a bit of research on your own here. Now finally, the last warning before I dive into my usual disclaimers. We have to say this. Tonight we're approaching this as a self-serve virtual AGM. Imagine the exercise as if a corporation decided not to retain a third party service provider such as CondoVoter or GetQuorum or other. So imagine a corporation that says, "You know what? We're going to do it ourselves and we're going to go on Zoom. We'll call our own meeting." So that's what I've tried to do. Just to see how it worked. Kids, don't try this at home. While for some smaller corporations this may work, and they may be attracted by the idea of running their own AGM on their own platform in order to save a dime or two, and there's nothing wrong with that. This doesn't really work well for bigger corporations, and even for small ones, using your own self-serve sort of platform presents all sorts of shortfalls. For instance, going through the motions we realized that there's some questions of reliability and record keeping, and privacy and transparency, and we're trying to sort of balance all of these things. We'll identify these when we go into the postmortem phase of the exercise. But some of these issues you'll see we're able to sort of work around and some are difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. So I guess my point is this, don't leave the meeting tonight thinking that we're telling you self-serve, do your own AGM's, do it on FaceTime or Facebook, we're not saying that. There's all sorts of requirements and safeguards that you need to keep in mind if you're going to do the exercise properly. Chat is open but I don't need to tell you that because I see that it's being nuts already with all sorts of people joining in. That's great. We've also opened the Q&A functionality and we've put it in such a way that you all can see every question that's being asked. Anyway, we'll cover that when we talk about the postmortem and the mechanics. My usual disclaimer. First, keep in mind that when we talk about legislation tonight we talk about the Ontario legislation. Keep in mind that to the best of our ability the information we provide tonight is accurate as of today. We are the 27th of May. For those of you who will watch this later on, because we post it on Condo Advisor, you can view on demand our webinars. So keep that in mind if you watch it, as rebroadcast, things may have changed. Also, keep in mind that the information we provide you tonight is general in nature. It does not necessarily apply to your situation. It doesn't necessarily answer your specific problems. You need to seek advice from professionals, be them lawyers, managers, auditors, engineers to get answers to your specific problems. Finally, I must tell you all that this session is recorded and, as I said, we upload it on Condo Advisor site. Do me a favour. Don't write to me asking me when it's going to be uploaded. It's now a full-time job answering that specific email. We do our best. It's going to take maybe 5, 6 days before we can upload it. We also upload the chat. I go through it to make sure you people behaved but then we upload the chat as well because a lot of people have asked for that. Okay. That's about it. Folks at home, put your seatbelts on, fasten your seatbelts and put the table and seat in the upright position because it's about to get a bit bumpy here. We start the exercise now.
Dear neighbours, dear friends, welcome to Gowling Landings AGM. Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy schedules to participate to this AGM. It's a very important meeting every year. Now this year we're doing things differently as you've noticed. We'll conduct the AGM remotely. This AGM can be held remotely this year, even though we don't have a bylaw for it, because we're doing this pursuant to an order in council that was adopted on April 24th, 2020. Exceptionally for the duration of this pandemic we're able to do that electronically. That's how we're doing it. I hope you were all able to register today easily, and by the number of you that I see, clearly you were able to register. Maybe it's because we promised a door prize this year. Sorry. We're not going to provide those. Thanks so much for tuning in. As I've done every year we will follow the agenda that you see on the screen which was sent also to you. You were able to print it at home and download it. Let me introduce the board to you and everybody that we have here as a special guest. Of course you have me, Rod Escayola, your lifetime President. Thanks for your trust. We have Katherine Gow, our Treasurer. We have Jason Reid. He's our Secretary but he's also the building Safety and Operations Director. Now as you know, last year you elected David Plotkin and Graeme MacPherson to the board, but they're not at the head table today because they didn't play along very nicely with us. We actually had them walk the plank at our first board meeting and so they're no longer part of the board. Now we have Sean Cornish as your Property Manager. You know him. You recognize him and we've invited, of course, your auditor, Brian Antman from Adams & Miles. He's going to go over the financials with you. Finally we are very lucky to have your condo lawyer, Denise Lash. She'll present the electronic bylaw tonight and guide us before we vote on it.
The first thing I need to do is confirm quorum. As you know, we need to have 25%25 of you to participate in this meeting to be able to hold the meeting. So we have 400, well, I'm going to have to change that now because we have more participants than we have units. I think we've added a couple of floors actually, at the top. So, we have 100%25 attendance, really. That's what I'm saying. We have 535 attendees, presently, so this is a record actually. This is second only to that time I actually annexed a rooftop terrace to my unit, if you recall that. We had great attendance that year at the AGM. So thanks for being there. We can proceed now that we have 100%25 of our units present. I want to confirm the notices as well. So we sent you the preliminary notice last Friday. By my count that's 35 days ago. I'm still using a Julian calendar so we sent that Friday. You were able to download that. I just want to remind you that the purpose of the preliminary notice is to allow you to mark your calendar but it's also your opportunity to put your name forward if you want to run for the board. It's your opportunity also to make a suggestion if you'd like us to consider another auditor. It's also your opportunity to ask if you wanted to have extra materials put forth in the package. We did get two candidates, and to my chagrin, and we'll talk about those in a minute. After the preliminary notice we've sent on Monday, that's 15 days ago, we sent the general notice. So you were able to download that as well. Now if I could maybe get a motion from the floor to dispense with the reading of the Minutes. If I could get that. Let me just see. Raise your hand, panelists. So Shal Kahoun moved and is seconded by Jennifer Dickinson. Thank you very much and so now you should see the vote on your screen. So if you could just vote in favour of dispensing with the reading of the Minutes, we'll give it a couple of seconds here.
Katherine: Rod has paused until formally welcome Scarlett Guy, of course, who is our minute taker for this evening's Annual General Meeting. So thanks very much for reminding us that we hadn't introduced her formally.
Rod: Thank you so very much, Katherine. Sorry, Scarlett. I forgot about that.
Katherine: It's actually very typical of any President's welcome to an Annual General Meeting. We had to welcome Scarlett a little bit later.
Rod: Okay. So I'm going to share the results. The vast majority of you actually supported this motion and so that's great. So we are going to dispense with the reading. By the way, you'll see that I'm going to ask for motions different ways tonight. So that's on the ways is to do it with a poll like this. I have, ahead of time, prepared my procedural poll. Now, if we could approve the Minutes, last year's Minutes. So I'm going to put them on the screen here if I can. I hope that everybody, at home, you were able to review these Minutes and you had an opportunity to have a look at them. If anything's missing, if there's any corrections that you would like us to make, you should seem them now on your screen. Let me stop sharing the results of the poll. I'm going to bring you to the Minutes.
Scarlett: Rod? Can I just interject one second? Could I have suite numbers or are there no suite numbers? Just names here today.
Rod: Katherine is going to give you the suite numbers because I don't have them handy right now. So she's just going to slip the paper to you, if you don't mind. Folks at home, you will see that we will talk about this suite number issue in a minute when we do the postmortem. Any comments about the minutes from last year? Any comments or corrections or omissions that you'd like to bring to our attention? I'm waiting to see if we're going to get anybody. I think two people are sleeping at the switch here. Okay, well, we're going to go off script here for a minute and we are going to, okay, I see that Graeme has a question about the Minutes. Let me see if I can find him.
Katherine: The Minutes were circulated as part of the Annual General Meeting package. It was available for download from the Gowlings Condo Advisor website. You should see on your screen, currently, a copy of the Minutes here in front of you, and those were those that were circulated.
Graeme: Yes, I have a question.
Rod: Okay. Thank you. So, Graeme, of the Penthouse. What is your question or comment or omission?
Graeme: Yes, I would just like to point out that these minutes don't reflect my extensive complaints last year about the smell in my unit.
Rod: Right. You may recall Mr. MacPherson and we explain this to you every year. Two things. The Minutes are not a verbatim transcription of every thing that was discussed, but most importantly, the AGM is not about you. Things are not always about you. The AGM is about issues that are really relevant to the rest of the corporation. So that's why, if you recall, we've asked you to talk to the Property Manager about that. If I recall correctly, he did attend your unit, only to realize that you were the source of the smell. We would ask you to please stop bringing the issue. Any other omissions or problems with the Minutes? I don't see any so let me just see here. I'm going to then ask for a motion from the floor to approve the Minutes as presented. We have Becky Aiken who moved, seconded by Edward Brain who is seconding the motion. So this second way of asking for a motion, this is how I'm going to do it, I'm going to lower all your hands and then those in favour of approving the Minutes the way they were presented, please raise your hands now. Okay. So the count is going up. I see that we have more than the majority so I could even stop it now if I wanted. We have 331 that voted in favour. I'm going to lower your hands. Who is opposed? So I'm lowering your hands. Stop raising your hands, people at home. Now I'm going to ask the same question. If you could raise your hand if you oppose approving the Minutes as presented. Okay. So I see that we have 331 approved against 17. So motion carried. Very good. Now the next portion of our AGM is we are now going to turn the microphone to Brian Antman, who's going to present the audit. Brian, I'm going to put it on the screen for you. Is your mic on, Brian?
Brian: Yes it is.
Rod: Okay, perfect.
Brian: We will start on page 6. Rod, if you could go to page 6 for me, which is the Statement of Revenue and Expenditures.
Rod: Perfect. Let me just get to that page. There it is. Is that the one you're looking for?
Brian: Yes. Yup, exactly.
Rod: Perfect. Go ahead.
Brian: Okay. Just in lieu of time, my comments tonight are going to be a little bit briefer than I normally would present at an AGM, but we want to do this break out at the end so I'm just going to take a few minutes and run through the financial statements. At the end of that any of the owners can ask me questions related to the audit or the financial statements. So just starting off with the financial statements. The year under the corporation was December 31st, 2019. You'll see we've presented the budgeted amounts that were determined at the beginning of the fiscal year. The actual results in the middle column and for compare purposes the results from 2018. When the budget was set at the beginning of the year, total revenue was forecasted to be just over $2.5 million dollars, $2,527,000.00, and there's really two different types of costs the corporation incurs. There's a reserve fund allocations and the payments on the super suite mortgage that totaled $527,000.00 and the operating costs of just over $2,030,000.00. The budgeted forecast for the year was a deficit of $30,000.00. That was done in order to keep fees as low an increase as they can, but utilize some of the accumulated operating surplus that the corporation has developed over the last number of years, and I'll get to that in a minute. As far as the actual results, the middle column, you'll see there was a surplus of $83,000.00. So that's an improvement of $118,000.00 and there's really two components of that. First of all, on the revenue side you'll see interest and other income, came in about $21,000.00 higher than was budgeted. Mainly because the revenue on party room and guest suites was higher than was forecasted. As far as the reserve fund allocations and the payments on the mortgage, those were pretty much on budget. But the other reason for the variance and the surplus this year is in the operating costs. All of the operating costs you'll see on the bottom part of the page, under expenditures, came in lower than budget. Like I said the budget was $2,030,000.00. The actual costs came in at $1,937,000.00. The details of these expenses are all on page 7 and 8. I'm not going to get into them at this point. I'll take to you the operations.
Rod: Okay, thank you very much, Brian. Thanks for the audit. I'm just going to keep moving. Okay?
Brian: No problem.
Rod: Because you charge by the hour.
Brian: Right.
Rod: So I'm just going to cut you off now. Thank you so much. We're not going to open the floor to questions either but so you saw how we would turn the questions. Actually we do have a question from David Plotkin. I'm sorry.
David: Yes, yes. Thank you. I do have a question for the auditor. I just wanted to make sure how much money we're spending on professionals this past year. I was very concerned with how much we spent on professionals in the prior fiscal year.
Rod: Do you have it there somewhere, Brian? Sorry, your microphone's off, Brian.
Brian: The amount spent on professional fees came in less than budget. The budgeted amount for legal and auditing was about $15,000.00. The actual came in at $7,100.00.
David: Perfect. Thank you very much for the clarification.
Rod: Okay. Thank you. Very good. So now if we keep moving along I am now going to ask for a motion. By the way, I'm just going to take a stop for a second. I'm going to stop for a second because there's some people at home, I see in the Q&A's and the chat, there's some people that are concerned that they're not seeing the show of hands. I sort of get a sense that I'm not being trusted when I'm counting the show of hands. We will talk about that later but what we're going to do to make sure that we provide you at home with more transparency I'm going to ask for two scrutineers from the floor. Raise your hands if you want to be a scrutineer and we'll appoint you and we will promote you to a panelists. You'll get to see. Okay, so John Rescendes, hopefully I pronounced this well. And Denise Stinson. Denise Stinson. I thought she was in Florida. Okay. So these are the two that were the first to raise their hands. I'm going to lower all of your hands and now I'm going to put the question to you people at home, do you approve the use of John Rescendes and Denise Stinson as your scrutineers? Raise your hands if you approve of them. We're going to promote them in a minute. They will be your eyes. They will then see the raise of hands and they'll see how many people are raising their hands when we do one of these polls. Fear not, we're going to talk about this. This is one of the shortfalls we wanted to talk to you about. 289 people are approving. That's great. So, Graeme, can you promote these people?
Graeme: I already did.
Rod: You did? Okay. Very good. Let me see how you guys are now with us. You get to see the expensive caviar and all that good stuff that we have. Okay, very good. So from this point forward Denise and John will be your eyes and they will be able to count the show of hands for you folks. Next, is the appointment of the auditor for next year. So we haven't received from anyone of you any sort of suggestions or recommendations that you'd like us to consider. So what we're going to do is the board has opted to, again, put forth the same firm, Adams & Miles. I mean, they're very familiar with our affairs. They've been doing our audit for many, many, many years. Their price is always very competitive and so if I could get a motion from the floor to appoint Adams & Miles LLP for another year, with a compensation to be set by the board. Christine Shannon moved first and then Kevin Edwards was the second to move for this. I'm going to lower all of your hands now. Those in favour of appointing Adams & Miles for another year raise your hands now. John and Denise, keep your eyes on the attendees. You would get to see them, if you're looking for it, you can click on participants. Then you will see how many people are attending, and then you'll see to the right side, you'll see a column, that's attendees. So by my count we are at 244 in favour. Anybody opposed? Let me lower your hands. Those that are opposed?
David: Mr. Chair, I just have a quick question if you'd allow.
Rod: Go ahead, Mr. Plotkin.
David: Yes, I just want to make sure that the scrutineers are properly seeing what it is that you are saying. I'm a little wary of the Chair and I just want to make sure the scrutineers are indeed seeing. Perhaps you could ask. Unmute one of the scrutineers and ask them if they are seeing the hands being raised.
Rod: Okay. Very good. So I'm going to go to Denise. Denise, I'm going to unmute your microphone. If you allow me. I don't know if she is has a microphone. Yes. Hi, Denise.
Denise S.: Hi.
Rod: How are you?
Denise S.: I'm good. How are you?
Rod: I'm well. Are you able to see the numbers that we're talking about?
Denise S.: I can.
Rod: Okay. I'm going to go to John, if I can find John, in a minute here. Hello, John. How's it going?
John R.: Not bad. How about you?
Rod: I am well. Are you able to see the numbers that we're talking about when people raise their hands?
John R.: I was multi-tasking if that answers your question. So what part of the screen should I be looking at?
Rod: If you hover over the participant icon. If you click on that you're able to see the panelists on the left side.
John R.: I see you. I see the other panelists.'
Rod: Do you see the attendees on the right side? So that's what you have to keep your eyes on when people raise their hands. Right now we have one hand, two hands, one hand that's up. Do you see it?
John R.: No.
Katherine: If you go to the bottom strip, John, where you see number of participants. The total number you see is probably 550. Click on that, right click your mouse.
John R.: Oh there it is. Okay, I did open up a window now.
Katherine: That's right. In that window now can you count the number of hands that you see raised?
John R.: 16, 17.
Rod: Right. Okay. Very good.
John R.: The only thing I noticed is that scrutineers cannot vote, cannot raise their hand. Or am I missing something?
Rod: No. No. You can and you can vote when we have the polls. But everybody at home, this, what's happening now is one of the main challenges we've encountered with the Zoom platform. We're going to continue with the exercise and we're going to talk about it later. But that is one of the main issues that we've encountered. So we'll talk about it. We knew about that when we went ahead. In fact, the greatest debate we've had since landscaping was whether or not to go through the exercise with Zoom platform. The panel was divided and that's how David and Graeme lost their job on the board. I've outvoted them. Okay, so let's keep going. So we've appointed the auditor. It was 243 in favour against 28 that were against the appointment of the auditor so that's great. We have an auditor next year. Now I'm going to turn to the next portion of the evening which is the board's report. I wonder, Sean, if you can just give us a quick 1 minute update on the re-opening of our facilities. Where are we at on that?
Sean: Yeah, absolutely, Rod. As all the residents will know, having walked through the building, we do not yet have any indoor facilities open. The pool remains closed. Party room, the gym, the theatre all are closed, currently, as they have been throughout the current situation, as we call it. We do have a plan. As you know, the board has been working very closely with me to determine a plan for re-opening, and we've decided on a gradual approach based on the recommendations of the public health authorities. We will be providing that information to the residents to keep them up to date. Sorry, Rod?
Rod: Okay. You were a bit garbled but I think we got the gist of it is that we're not re-opening anything. So you guys will just have to find another hobby at home. That's pretty much the sentiment here, I think. That's why I turned your video off, Sean, because at one point it was a bit garbled. I'm going to turn to Jason. Jason, I think you've installed a few new security features this year at Alcatraz. Can you tell us more about that?
Jason: We have, yes. We've worked in enhancing the safety and security of our community, and we've installed two new cameras covering the access points with high definition view ,and our staff have all been recently trained on how to use this. This is going to significantly address some gaps that we had in the building. It'd done. The project was done on time and on budget.
Rod: Wow. Wonderful. Did you have a chance to install that special fob I was asking to grant me priority access to the elevator? Was that done?
Jason: It wasn't. The requests have been overwhelming me, on my desk, but no, I haven't.
Rod: Okay. Thank you. The next point of the agenda is the election. As you know, we have one position on the board, actually. So we've asked for candidates and two came forward. David Plotkin and Graeme MacPherson, who we elected, you'll recall last year. Unsurprisingly they came forward this year again. I was kind of hoping for other candidates but that doesn't seem to have worked. Now's the time, for you at home, if one of you or some of you want to put your name forward for the election, that would be the time now. So you can either nominate yourself, or you can nominate a neighbour, if you want to lose a friend. I see that we have two candidates. We have Lisa Brough and we have James Varnava. Okay. Hope I pronounced this well. I think you're new to the building. Anybody else? Nobody else coming forward. What I'm going to do is I'm going to ask for a motion from the floor to close the nominations. Raise your hand if you want to close the nomination. Bruno Hammil is the mover to close the nomination process. Keith Rabideau is seconder. I'm going to lower all of your hands now. Stop pressing at home. Now we're going to ask all in favour of closing the nomination, at this stage, raise your hand. That would be the time now to raise your hand if you want to close the nomination process. So they're coming in. My two scrutineers, please keep an eye on the screen there. I think it's sort of levelled off. Now I'm going to lower the hands and I'm going to ask those opposed to closing the nomination process to raise your hand. Okay. So the numbers are coming in. My two scrutineers keep your eyes on the screen. It's sort of hovering around. Oh, there's a bit of a jump here. So the way I read it, it was 322 in favour and 22 against. So we're closing the nomination process. And now, if I can find, our two candidates. Lisa Brough, I'm going to turn your microphone on and you will have 20 seconds to give us your pitch as to why you should be elected. So let me just turn your mic on. I don't know if you were expecting that but that's what happens when you raise your hand.
Katherine: I don't know if we wanted to do so for the purpose of this meeting but we would probably also do director disclosures, particularly with respect to the candidates who have run from before for the election. I don't know if you wanted to have them speak first or if you wanted to handle that piece?
Rod: So, go ahead, Lisa. Your mic is on.
Lisa B.: My name is Lisa Brough, a property manager. I think I just would be able to offer up some experience to the board on the ins and outs of the day to day and looking forward to improving the quality of life at Gowling Landings.
Rod: Okay. Thank you so much. Now James. You also have 20 seconds. I'm going to turn your mic on and I think it should be on now. Don't know if you were expecting that but you should be able to speak right about now, James. If not, maybe turn your mic on.
James V.: Okay. I am still muted.
Rod: There you are. We can hear you.
James V.: Okay. Thanks. Yes, James Varnava. I was a director at a former condo building that I used to live at. I've recently moved over to Gowlings and I'm very interested in helping the board move further on with its extensive renovation plans.
Rod: Okay. Thank you very much. So that's James. How do you pronounce your last name?
James V.: Varnava.
Rod: Varnava. Okay. Thank you so much. Now the next one we have in line is David Plotkin.
David: Yes, thank you. So I'm running for this position because I think we need to ensure continuity of the board to ensure that things are being handled in a very difficult time that we're in. I promise communication, transparency and a willingness to consider refunds of some of your common expenses given that a lot of the amenities have not been used during these times. I will have to ask the advice of counsel for that though because I think I've been told we're not allowed to do that. But I'm going to promise that I will at least ask the lawyers to be able to refund some of your hard earned money. Thank you.
Rod: Thank you very much, Mr. Plotkin. Now Mr. MacPherson.
Graeme: Alright. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. My first order of business, when I'm elected, will be to appoint myself as the Supreme High Chancellor of this condo, immediately. My platform is largely based on big government. Under my unwaveringly leadership you will have no running, no jumping, no renovations, no gardening, no holidays, no pets, no horseplay and if you live in the unit above mine, no movement of any kind unless it's between 10:00 and 11:00am on Saturdays. Above all else, I promise you this, whatever the others have promised you I will deliver it better and bigger and more sincerely.
Rod: Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. MacPherson. Now just one thing before you turn your mic off, Mr. MacPherson. I noticed that you did not complete your disclosure form properly. I've put it on the screen now for all to see. You sort of did not complete the section pertaining to whether or not you, or your spouse, or your children, or your parents are involved in a law suit against the corporation. Could you please answer these questions for all of us?
Graeme: This is nothing more than a smear tactic, first of all. But second of all, I'll answer your questions, Mr. Chairman. What do I need to confirm?
Rod: Whether your spouse, a child of yours, a parent of yours, a child of your spouse, a parent of your spouse or the occupier of your unit is involved in a legal action which involves the corporation as a party.
Graeme: Not at this time, but we'll see, if I don't win this election.
Rod: Okay. Thank you so much. Okay, now folks. So what we're going to do is we're going to launch the election process. Let me just get the ballot on the screen. So you have the ballot on the screen now. You should be able to vote for your favourite candidate. So we have David, we have Graeme, we have Lisa, we have James.
I sort of get a sense that somebody was canvassing the last few weeks. <laughter> Okay. I'm going to give it a few extra seconds to see if the numbers level off. About 400 of you have voted. There's about 130 that are not voting. This is how we get me on the board. Is people not voting. Okay. Very good. So I'm going to end and share the results because the numbers have levelled off. I'm going to now share the results. Great news everybody. Lisa Brough has been elected to the 3 year position that we had on the board. Thank you, Lisa, for making sure that David and Graeme don't get elected. It was chaos at that first meeting that they showed up at. James, thank you so much. The good news for you is that you get to keep your evenings. You get to keep your weekends. You don't get to be harassed by the owners and you can continue to complain about everything that we do. Okay. So I'm going to stop sharing the results and I'm going to go now to the next and we're almost done with the agenda today. But the last point of the agenda is with Denise Lash, who is going to speak about this bylaw that we're presenting to you folks today. An e-meeting, an e-voting bylaw and so I'm going to put it on the screen maybe for people to see, Denise, but the mic is yours. Go ahead.
Denise: Thank you, Rod. You all received a copy of this bylaw with your package, your notice of meeting package had this bylaw. As you know, Rod mentioned, during this emergency period we have been able to do a virtual meeting and I hope that you can see this evening how easy it is. There's always some issues but it gives owners accessibility. So this bylaw, and the reason why your board has presented this to you, is this enables you, after the emergency period, to be able to hold virtual meetings. So you may even just want a hybrid meeting where you have part virtual and part in person. But at least if you have this bylaw, you'll be able to have the option of doing electronic voting, and also to have a virtual meeting. This bylaw is two pages. Rod, do you have?
Rod: Yup. Here it is.
Denise: That's the bylaw?
Rod: Yup. That's the bylaw and the second page is here.
Denise: Oh. Okay. Yes. So this was one that we prepared that has all the details as to how you do a meeting, because there is no regulations or anything under the Condominium Act, that says how you hold these virtual meetings and how you do electronic voting. So there is a lot of time spent by your board in reviewing this. This bylaw, in order to pass it, is different than all those other bylaws that you passed. Like the standard unit bylaw, mediation and arbitration bylaw. This only requires a majority vote of those present. So it's a good thing we have 100%25 of the owners representing here this evening. So you need 51 owners to vote in favour of this bylaw.
Rod: Right. Okay. Any questions? Okay, so seeing no questions, we're going to launch the poll and vote on this. So now will be your chance to vote on this bylaw and I'm going to launch it now. So those in favour of this new bylaw, please check yes and if you're against it, please check no. For those that want to abstain you can abstain. I hope all of you at home brushed up on your Latin because this time around the bylaw is in that language. We thought that it was very classy. Okay, the votes are coming in. I'm actually curious for those who are chatting. Do you see the votes as they are being tallied or do you just see the results when I show them? You see nothing. Okay.
Katherine: We don't see the votes.
Rod: Yeah, okay. So I'm going to share the results. The results have sort of levelled off. The same way I guess you don't see the results in the box when you put it in a ballot box. You only see it when the scrutineers. Okay, I'm going to share the results. You should see the results now. Denise, great job with your bylaw. 74%25 of those participating today voted in favour of the bylaw so next year we'll be able to do the meeting virtually. We may change a few things. We'll do the post mortem in a minute and you'll see there's quite a few things that we would change to try to improve the experience. But I thank everybody at home for being so patient with us. It's the first time we do one of these and so I'd like to thank all of you for being so patient with us as we get used to the technology. Okay. Let me just go back to my notes here to make sure that I've covered everything. I got to tell you, it just feels like I'm trying to fly a plane here with all the things that I have going. So that's it. That's the end of the agenda, actually.
What we're going to do now, we're going to skip the Q&A because I want to do the postmortem and then I want to have Q&A's about what took place today. So let's just move on. Graeme is going to lead the charge on the pitfalls. So that's the end of the AGM. But as I said, I want to go over some of the issues, some of the challenges, we've encountered doing this exercise. Again, keep in mind that the way we've done it tonight, we did it the self-serve way in the sense that we did not retain CondoVoter or GetQuorum or any other provider to assist us with that, because a lot of people were asking us, "Well, we can do it ourselves? Can we do it on Zoom and how does that work?" and so on and so forth. So we thought let's give it a try and see how it goes. But you'll see, and some of you picked up on it already, it was all over the chat. There were some challenges with this. Graeme, up to you now.
Graeme: Yeah, so, as we did see in chat and as everybody kind of noticed throughout this presentation, there are a lot of issues with trying to home brew this and trying to do it yourself. One of the main concerns that pops up right at the registration stage is what do we do about owners who are in arrears? How do we authenticate that owners can count towards quorum? Another concern that I saw raised, and this is something that we were talking about before, and how do we deal with owners who own multiple units and they're vote should be weighed more heavily? On the opposite end of that question, what do we do with if a couple are both owners of one unit and there should only be one vote between them?
Rod: Right. So this is really an issue at the registration process. What we've done this time around, as you saw, we sent you a link to be able to register. You were all able to register. You've put in your name. You've put in your unit number. You put in your email address and then you got a unique ID, unique to you, in another email. You probably got it 6 times. So that is just yours. Now one of the issues is what if you share it with somebody else? For instance, today you may or may not have noticed that we had two Katherine Gow that were on the panel because we lost one of our URL's. So my point being that if your owners share that URL that you sent them then you may have more people attending. As Graeme just said, what do you do with someone that owns more than one unit? How do you get them more votes? What do you do with people in arrears? One of the work arounds with this, and we didn't use that today, Zoom allows you to add an extra layer where you get to approve all the owners. So you all registered. I get an email, or management gets an email, or whoever gets an email, that says, "These 500 people registered." So then you can vet it. You can go through the list and you can see, okay, this person actually is not an owner, for whatever reason. I don't know how he got on the list. You're able to prevent the system from sending them an invite. In a way, you could maybe use that to deal with people in arrears but that doesn't work because, people that are in arrears all they've lost is the ability to vote. They have the ability to attend. Just do know that there's an extra level of authentication that is offered by Zoom, and the other platforms, that allow you to sort of vet people before you send them the URL. But it doesn't address the issues that Graeme has identified dealing with owners that have more than one unit and units that have more than one owner. Same with the proxies. Graeme, what's the next step on your list?
Graeme: The next question was actually just that. How do we deal with the issue of, let's say proxies went out, and I fill in a proxy and I vote one way and then I come into this meeting and vote another way in the poll?
Rod: Right. So that's another problem that we've encountered in the sense that how do we deal with proxy? What you should do is you probably want to put a deadline to put in the proxy a bit earlier than you would normally do it. But then what do you do if Katherine gave a proxy and then at the last minute she joins in, for whatever reason, I need to be able to eliminate her vote. Zoom does not really allow for that flexibility. There is a work around and the work around is to go get the reports. But you saw already how sort of choppy the whole thing was and maybe we're going to get more fluid, eventually, but you saw how choppy it was and how you have to weight for people to vote and this and that. One of the options that you do have is you're able to go and pull the reports. It shows in an Excel format. But then you need to sort of cross reference this with those that are in arrears. Those that have more than one unit and those that gave a proxy. It's very, very cumbersome. It requires a lot of sort of work ahead of time and it's not easy.
Graeme: Which I think goes back to what we said at the beginning, as to why doing this yourself presents a lot of really difficult to overcome challenges, which are magnified almost immeasurably as the size of the corporation increases.
Rod: Right. Denise, at any point in time you have something to add, because I know you have a fair bit of expertise with electronic voting. As we move along, there's anything you want to add, please do jump in.
Denise: Yeah. You're expressing the concern and that's why you keep the voting platform separate from the attendance on the virtual meeting. So the motions are fine but when it comes to determining the vote, and whether it's one per unit or arrears, all of those are handled separately through a different platform. That's easily done that way.
Rod: Katherine, in the past you had raised another concern with having a manager so heavily involved with the voting, with the proxies, with managing all of that and maybe you want to elaborate on this?
Katherine: The reason why I have such concern with respect to that whole issue and you all identified it very well and very orally for us, in Zoom, without us having to make mention of it. You make yourself wide open to criticism that you're not allowing everybody in the door who want to be allowed in the door. That you are preferentially counting the raised hands in favour of whatever drive you, as the board, is looking for. Specific to the Condominium Management Service Providers Act and the guidance by the CMRAO, condominium managers are supposed to completely have a hands off neutral approach to any of those voting tasks. Because of all of those authentication issues in this homemade version of a virtual meeting, I am extraordinarily concerned about it, and think it cannot or should not be done because of those issues. I want to make sure that we understand the difference between using Zoom with a third party host and addressing some of those issues in that way, with a voting platform that is attached to it, as opposed to this which was a do it yourself use of Zoom, or any of the other platforms, and there are many of them and they're quite different. So what we're talking about is not so much about Zoom as a platform, it's more about the ability of the host and the authentication practices that need to go into the planning of your virtual AGM.
Rod: Right. Now, in fairness to Zoom and the other platforms, they weren't designed for that. So you're sort of trying to import a very good platform, for all the purposes it's very good, and we're trying to import that and make it fit within the parameters of what we need to do under the Condominium Act. That's where you see these hiccups. That's for this. What Katherine just alluded to, and I think that's the solution, keep in mind that you can maybe tackle this in three different ways. Gold service, if I can call it that, if you're so inclined would be to use a service provider that will deal with both voting and managing the meeting for you. There's a cost to that but it's done and it's done quite well actually. Gold option, you delegate both the voting and the hosting of your meeting. Then you can focus on what's important. The content. Right? Silver, maybe, would be what Katherine just alluded to which is maybe you can host it, and maybe you're able to do the hosting part and the registration and all that, but at the very least push the voting element to a third party provider. CondoVoter, GetQuorum, there's others. Right? They take care of the authentication. They take care of all of that. They take care of weighing the votes and so on and so forth and you, to save money ore because you're good at it or because you want to do it, you could host your own meeting and focus on the content and the technology. Now the third level, maybe the bronze or maybe it's really wood, is what we've done today. Which is we're going to do the whole thing, and we're going to try to do this, and we're going to try to have the votes using the platform and using the polls and so on and so forth. It presents quite a few issues but I would say this, a very small condo corporation and I do mean very small, where no issues are controversial, you may be able to sort of pull it off. But, again, there's some issues. Back to you, Graeme. Quorum, I think. Did we cover quorum? Pretty much?
Graeme: Yeah, we did. Some other issues, and I think we kind of talked about them, are we have to be careful not to double count if somebody has already submitted a proxy, and we need to always be wary of what if I had sent the link to enter this meeting to my brother and we were both here.
Rod: Right. Right, right, right. That's for quorum. Now, scrutineers is an interesting issue because scrutineers are actually not required under the Act. But as you saw today, at one point, people needed the scrutineers because they couldn't see the hands being raised and they got all concerned with that, rightfully. We'll talk about raising hand in a minute. Scrutineers are not required. If you delegate the voting element to a service provider they, in essence, are the scrutineers. They're going to generate, the system generates a report, and that the results are what the scrutineers would do if they were to count the ballots. Do you sort of agree with that, Denise, or do you tackle it differently?
Denise: With the scrutineers?
Rod: Yeah.
Denise: Yeah. I think that all of this changes once you have an electronic voting report because then the scrutineers position really becomes moot because you have one report. Having that report and showing it to the Chair you don't really need the importance of having scrutineer's not really essential.
Rod: Right.
Katherine: I think it can even lend itself to greater transparency, a better option, and the reason why I say that or offer that is a third party provider has no skin in the game. So one of the other things, particularly in this environment where criticism could be levelled, is that Rod, who is behaving as our least favourite President in condo land, preferentially chose people who would kind of vote with him, side with him, in any of those types of matters. If you had a third party who was looking at those votes and affirming them to the Chair, in the role of the scrutineer, they're completely independent. They have no interest in anything but a smooth operating meeting.
Rod: Right. Now, to make sure we don't run out of time, Graeme, I'm going to make you jump to the motions and to the raising of hands and all that. Did you want to cover that a bit and then we can tie in what we did to sort of alleviate the problem.
Graeme: Yeah, certainly. This is something that everybody watching this meeting was acutely aware of, and justifiably so, without the scrutineers there the audience can't see who's is raising their hands. Like you kind of joked about in the meeting, you just have to put your trust in the Chair at that point I suppose, but it does remove a certain element of transparency that I think should be there. Then other issues, with respect to the hand raising and the polling for motions that we ran into, were that a lot of people noted that they were able to raise their hands, both for and against things. I guess in a real meeting you could do that to, but you can fly under the radar and get away with kind of chaotic behaviour like that, a lot easier in an online meeting.
Rod: Right. Similarly some people did say in the chat that they actually voted for more than one person. That's another limit of the Zoom platform. As many people are pointing out in the chat channel, right now, all the shortfalls, all the challenges we're identifying now are all addressed by these third party service providers. Or the very, very vast majority of them. That's why they do it. That's why they provide the service and that's why you pay for the service. Now, David's going to talk a bit more about the difference between meetings and webinars in a minute, but what we were not able to do in the context of a webinar, was allow all the attendees to see the hands being raised. That would be the simplest. If everybody was able to see all the hands being raised you'd be able to see that and we wouldn't need the scrutineers. But we were not able to do that. I searched high and low to try to figure out how to do it and I wasn't able to do it. Now you may be able to do that in a Zoom meeting. What we're doing tonight is a Zoom webinar. But I'm going to leave that to David in a couple of minutes. Anything else on this page, Graeme?
Graeme: I guess this sort of fits under the guise of chairing. The issue of transparency and the Chair's ability to ignore questions, potentially, is I think a concern worth noting here. Because if questions get raised in the chat, as we've seen today, the chat moves quick and it's easy for items to get lost in the sea of chat. If the Q&A is not set up at the front end to allow for everyone to see the questions, then that could mean it's possible for a question to be ignored, without anybody ever knowing about it.
Rod: Right. We're going to talk about the questions in a minute because that is a very important point that you are raising. Let me just change the screen here to questions. One interesting thing I want to point out as well as that, I actually found this tremendously difficult to Chair the meeting, to turn mics on, to turn them off and I had helpers in the background. I found it extremely distracting trying to go and follow the script, be able to present intelligent information and then go back and forth with the slides, and then the PDF document, and then promoting people to scrutineers and then turning microphones and so on. I actually found it far trickier than I thought it would be. With respect to the Q&A, what Graeme was just indicating is that, and this is a real problem, if you're going to do it yourself with a Zoom platform, or even if you do it with a service provider, sometimes you're given the option to make the questions only visible to the panelists. I think this is tremendously problematic. You want the questions to be visible by everybody because you don't want me to sort of filter out the questions I don't like. If you don't see all the questions then you won't see that I'm ignoring them or some of them. The way we've set it up was that everybody would get to see the questions and you would get to see whether I answer them or not. Then you could all gang up on me, I guess, if you see that I'm just ignoring Graeme, for instance. Minute taking. I'm going to turn to you, Scarlett. Any sort of different challenges when we're taking minutes virtually? Have you encountered that? Any challenges? Any different ways of doing things?
Scarlett: No, actually, the challenges are basically the same as attending in person. Having problems with not knowing who is making the motion or seconding the motions. If the Chair isn't doing a good job in making sure that the suite numbers are clear and there's a lot going on, on the screen as well. But other than that I find that it's the same with a regular AGM.
Rod: Right.
Scarlett: You still get a lot of people talking back and forth in the background but a minute taker, that's experienced, can just focus on what is actually happening in the meeting in terms of the business that's being transacted and summarizing the Q&A and the presentations. That is all the same but if the Chair isn't strong or all the points that people raised already. Not being able to see who's making the motion, seconding it, seeing the names, even the nominees, I wasn't able to get their spelling until you posted that poll.
Rod: Right. Right. Two very quick questions because we're running out of time. First question, do you attend them live or do you just get the recording to type your minutes?
Scarlett: We attend them live. That's preference. However, it is possible to do it from a recording but we believe that a virtual AGM should as closely mirror an in person meeting as possible. I'm sure that the owners would be appreciative of knowing that they have a minute taker present as part of their meeting.
Rod: Right. Tough question, and I'm not sure we have the answer, and I'm going to turn also to Denise on that one. What goes into minutes? What about the Q&A's? Do they go? If they're not being addressed, if they're not being spoken verbally, how do we tackle this because that's a new challenge we have. Does that go in the minutes?
Scarlett: No. Basically, in a public forum like this, it's only the questions that are actually verbalized and responded to that we would be summarizing. All the little chat and questions that are popping up on the screen, they would not be included because not everybody would be privy to that, right? It wouldn't actually be part of the actual meeting. It's just all these little comments being made that are popping up. That's not really what I would consider part of the minutes at all.
Rod: Sure. One of the questions that we will all have, lawyers, is whether or not these questions, because you can pull them out afterwards, you can get a report, whether that forms part of the records of the corporation. I'm not sure if anybody turned their mind to that. I don't know, Denise? For sure we're going to be challenged with this.
Denise: Well, I think you've got your Q&A, and if you tell the owners that if they have any questions to put in the Q&A rather than the chat, I think it's important for the Chair, if the owners can't see the Q&A, or even for the Chair to say the question. Say the question, "This is from suite 102 but it's not really an appropriate question for an AGM. It's a specific unit issue." But at least you say all the questions. Just like a real AGM.
Rod: Right. A lot of people are saying this, and it's true, that the chat is distracting. There's all sorts of information that's lost in the sea. There's a couple of options. One of the options, you could disable the chat and keep the Q&A's. That's one option. The other option is you could try to rein in the owners and tell them, "Listen. Use the chat for technical issues. For instance, if you have a problem with the volume, the sound or whatever. But don't start chattering." As you saw it's very difficult because everybody gets excited. Right? But you could try to do that and try to direct the traffic. What goes in the chat. What goes in the questions. But you could disable the chat altogether. Another point that I forgot to mention with respect to the Q&A's. I think proper etiquette. So ahead of time you should determine whether or not you're going to take the questions in writing, through the Q&A, or whether or not you're going to open mics. I'm not sure that there's really sort of a better or worse way of doing this. But I would say this, if you are going to open mics, proper etiquette if you ask me, would be that you open the mic for the question but you leave it open for the duration of the answer, to allow the person to say, "Wait. No. That's not my question." But at the same time you don't want that. It's just like an Italian wedding. You don't want the drunken uncle to keep the microphone. At one point you've got to move on. Right? So you just need to find the right balance between having the mic on and the mic off and whether you want questions in writing or not. That's for that. David, do you want to sort of very quickly, and this is not going to be a tech course on how to use Zoom, but there are distinctions to be made between a webinar with a Zoom and a meeting with Zoom, and all the other providers. WebEx has the same thing and GoToMeeting versus GoToWebinar. Do you want to help us with this a bit, David?
David: Sure, thank you for the caution. I am not an IT specialist. I am a lawyer. So this is based on experience working with these two different products that Zoom has. So what you were you doing right now is a webinar. You have more control over running the meeting. The host has more control. So less visibility. You weren't able to see all the show of hands. You're not able to necessarily see answers to all Q&A questions. The host is able to control your mics and cameras. In a meeting there's less control by the host. Everyone is able to see everyone but that also creates chaos if you're in a meeting of 500 people like we were here. There's differences as well in the range of the pan. Whether it's visible or not. Q&A polling and chat are available in webinar but there's no Q&A in a meeting so you would then have to decide by which mediums do we want owners to be able to ask questions. One really interesting difference is the breakout rooms. That is something, just like when you're in your live meeting, and you have the time where votes are cast and then everyone waits 15 minutes. The scrutineers are counting the ballots. You can do a similar sort of thing through a Zoom meeting, in that you have a breakout room for the scrutineers, who can then go in a separate virtual room and count the ballots. All of this leads to questions of transparency versus privacy and what information are we getting at the end of the day from the platform. The reports that are being able to be generated. This goes into a legal questions, also, of what information is required for the corporation to keep in its records and which reports are being created in which type of Zoom platform. These are just things to think about and I think the point, and the purpose, of this whole exercise was to see what works well, what doesn't work well and to start to thinking as corporations. What are the demographics of my corporation? What would work for us? What is in our budget? There's costs for each of the different levels of gold, silver and wood. You need to be considering all of these different options. I hope that this kind of brings to light some of the pros and cons of each of the different options that are available to corporations.
Rod: Right.
Katherine: I think, David, the functionality, and I'm becoming critical because notwithstanding the fact that there are some costs involved in gold, silver and wood, wood might be right off the table. I think for a lot folks who participated in the meeting tonight, knowing that there's an option that will resolve so much of what could create in this meeting, conflict amongst your owners, dispute over whether or not it was being held fairly. My question to you is why you would pursue an option that doesn't give you the kind of clarity, transparency and opportunity for proper discussion which is what you want out of an Annual General Meeting, when we know there's a better option. Which is plug for week 2 when we show you what the difference option looks like. One of the reasons, and I push very hard to show this somewhat of a disaster type of a meeting, is to be able to validate the fact that doing a do it yourself, brew it at home, without assistance type of an AGM, just using any webinar platform, doesn't satisfy the needs of the community and what we want to accomplish in the AGM.
Rod: Right. Having said that, despite the hiccups that we've encountered today, I'm very confident that e-meetings and e-votings can be seamless. Can be very easy.
Katherine: Very much so.
Rod: Can be very easy to follow. Can meet all these requirements, all these needs that the community has. Now today was a bit choppy. You sort of witnessed me learning to drive standard with my eyes closed. There was a lot of back and forth here. As I said, when I do it again, I'm probably going to delegate the technical side to somebody else, if I do it the home brew kind of way. But there are providers out there. We've name them already, tons of time and there's others, and there's a reason why they are out there. They're providing a certain level of service that really allows you to have a seamless, smooth meeting and we'll do the test. If not next week maybe they week after. We will do again the same exercise but with a service provider. It provides you with the reliability you need. With the proper record keeping that you need. With the privacy and transparency that you need because you need to balance these two. We will do the exercise again. But the purpose today was two-fold and one of them was to go through the format and the content. The other one was to try to say, "Okay. Can we do this on our own?" I'm going to go around the table very quickly to thank all my panelists and see if they have anything to add to any of that. Let me just go, in no particular order, I'm going to start with you, Sean, because you always complain I keep you last. If you want to turn your mic on. Sean Cornish, from Apollo Property Management. Any sort of reactions to the exercise?
Sean: Actually, I think the chat captured it really well. There a lot of hiccups, a lot of bumps in the road. It is doable. I would not want to be doing this on my own, taking on your role, in a real situation with 400 owners or 200 owners. But I think we got to see the warts and pimples. It's a reality that we have to live with for now. So we better learn how to make it work.
Rod: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Sean, from Apollo Property Management. Denise Lash, from Condo Lash. Any sort of reactions or thoughts now that you've seen the train wreck unfold in front of your eyes?
Denise: No. I think you did a magnificent job, Rod. Everybody has to be patient their first time but I think you're going to grow to love it and just imagine life without proxies. Because I think that's where we're going.
Rod: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Scarlett Guy, thank you so much. Any sort of parting words?
Scarlett: No. I think this is a great way to start. It's new for everyone so the owners need to be kind as the managers and boards sort out this new technology. I'm so glad that people like you are on the leading edge to get this sorted out because I think is the way of the future. I really do.
Rod: Okay. So thank you very much and I guess you've offered to make minutes of this. You're going to put minutes of our AGM together and we're going to upload it to the Condo Advisor. So this is Scarlett Guy from minuteTakers. Thank you so much. Going down the list, Katherine Gow, from Crossbridge but also speaking on behalf of ACMO. Any sort of thoughts or reactions to the exercise?
Katherine: No. I thought it was wonderful in being able to demonstrate the number of balls that you're still juggling in the air and how it can be a little bit more difficult to juggle when everybody's remote. I thank everybody for participating in all of the different options that we had available. So through the chat, through the question and answer, raising of hands, trying to ask questions. It demonstrates that thought that has to go into how you're going to set it out, out of the gate, so that folks know what to expect and that way they can engage with you in a really positive way.
Rod: Wonderful. Thanks so much. Thank you, Brian Antman, our auditor extraordinaire from Adams & Miles. Any sort of reactions now that you've seen the exercise unfold? That's probably not your first one but any sort of reactions?
Brian: No. Like the others I think this technology is going to grow and be accepted. I guess my biggest concern, with any of the platforms that are being used, is transparency and that there's no thoughts that votes aren't being counted or hijacked, so that everybody sees what's going on throughout the whole meeting.
Rod: Right. Absolutely. Thanks so much. Jason Reid. You still there, Jason. I think we may have lost him. I don't see him on the list. Anyway, so you recognize Jason, our usual security, life and safety guy. I'm moving down the list now. Did I touch upon everybody? Oh, I'm missing the two condo twins. Okay, let's go to the condo twins. David Plotkin, from Gowling WLG.
David: I'm going to be a little more chipper just on one point. I actually really appreciate that when you're putting up the minutes, you're putting up the auditor's reports, you're actually forcing everyone present to look at the same thing that everyone else is looking at. Instead of in a live meeting where everyone has their package of papers and what are you looking? What we were talking about? You can put it right on screen and there's also highlighting tools and circling tools. I think there's some positives to think about, and some of these third party service providers, I've heard one that booked all the way for several months from now. You might be forced into other options. You can postpone, postpone but you might actually have to start considering some of these electronic options as well.
Rod: Right. Thank you so much, David. Graeme MacPherson, troublemaker.
Graeme: Yeah. So I guess two parting words. One, having been through this I'm looking forward to seeing how the technology continues to evolve and the new upgrades that we start to see in response to the concerns that we, and chat, have rightly pointed out. Number two, I just wish more people had voted for me.
Rod: I know.
Katherine: We're afraid of having you travel, with your smell, through the common elements.
Graeme: That was a bad opener.
Katherine: That was a bad opener. <laughter>
Rod: So everybody out there, I'm going to thank you, of course, but I'm going to tell you about our next webinar. Our next webinar is going to be June 3rd at 5:00pm, on Wednesday, as usual. The information will be posted on Condo Advisor. You know the drill. So the registration will be different from what we did this time around because this time around I wanted you to register to an AGM. But you can register by clicking on webinar, top right of the Condo Advisor website. It's going to bring you to a form. You can easily register. You can put in your questions if you have suggested topics for next week. If you have questions, if you have concerns, that's the way to do it. That's it. You can also use that tab to be able to see past webinars. We've posted all of them except I think last one. The last one is going to be posted maybe tomorrow, which is May 20th, but otherwise you can access past and future by just clicking on the webinar tab. I'd like to thank my panel. I'd like to thank my special guest today, including Scarlett. I'd like to thank all my volunteers. Those who ran for the board, those who became scrutineers and, most importantly, I'd like to thank all of you at home for taking the time out of your busy lives to try to learn, and improve ourselves, and help to move the industry and condo land in the right direction. So thank you so very much everybody. Have a great evening and we will see you next week, same channel, same time, same people. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye.
Everyone is talking about virtual AGMs being the way of the future. But how will these things work?
Fear not, Gowling Landings Towers (CC-007) called its first (mock) Virtual AGM on May 27. All owners (that's you) will be able to see, feel and try the process from beginning to end in this episode of CondoVirus.
Guest speakers:
- Brian Antman - Adams Miles LLP
- Sean Cornish - Apollo Property Management
- Katherine Gow - ACMO
- Scarlett Guy - Minute Takers
- Denise Lash - CAI / Lash Condo Law
- Jason Reid - Lash Condo Law
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