Condovirus Episode 5: Implementing the new normal

Condovirus episode 5 webinar

Rod: Good evening or good afternoon everyone. My name is Rod Escayola and I'm a condominium lawyer with Gowling WLG. Welcome to episode 5 of our webinar series. This week the episode named "Implementing the New Normal" because it seems like we're in this for a little while longer with Ontario having extended by at least 28 days the emergency measures that have been implemented a while back. Now for those of you joining us for the first time tonight, we've been holding these on a weekly basis. This is week 5, obviously, and week after week what we do, we try to do our very best to provide you real practical answers to ever changing challenges that we never even knew existed. The agenda keeps changing almost on a daily basis, because as we prepare and as we gather information, new questions come up. Now again, this week, we have gathered some key industry experts and you'll recognize some of them. I'll just go around the table very quickly and test our microphones. Sandy Foulds, from Wilson Blanchard Management, speaking also on behalf of CCI. Good evening, Sandy. Hello? Have we lost her? Graeme, are you controlling the muting?

Graeme: I am not. But hold on.

Rod: Let's just see here.

Graeme: No. She's not muted.

Rod: Sandy, are you there?

Katherine: We can see her lips moving but we can't here you speaking.

Rod: So you'll have to play with that. We'll get back to you in a minute. How about you, Katherine, we heard you. Katherine Gow, speaking on behalf of ACMO. Good evening, Katherine.

Katherine: Hello everyone.

Rod: Okay. Denise Lash, from the Land Condo Law and also speaking on behalf of the Community Association Institute, Canadian chapter. Hello Denise.

Denise: Hello. Good evening everyone.

Rod: Good evening. Graeme MacPherson, from Gowling WLG. Graeme.

Graeme: Hi everybody.

Rod: Hello. And David Plotkin, also from Gowling WLG, there.

David: Good evening everyone.

Rod: Hello. So if anyone of you is wondering how long we've been locked down and stuck with this, just have a look at David's beard. So this is our way of measuring how deep into this crisis we are. We also have Jason Reid, from the National Life Safety Group. Jason, are you there?

Jason: Good evening everyone.

Rod: Hi, good evening, Jason. And finally, these ones you all recognize from last week but this week we're very lucky to have with us Christian Cadieux, an infection preventionist and environmental epidemiologist. Christian works with Crime Scene Cleaners. Hello Christian. How are you?

Christian: Hello. Good evening everyone.

Rod: Good evening. So back to Sandy.

Sandy: She's back.

Rod: Wonderful. Perfect.

Sandy: Hello.

Rod: So we have a full agenda tonight as we always do and hopefully we won't spill over too much into the next hour. As we have in the past we've been inundated with hundreds of questions from our viewers and actually we won't be able to answer all of your questions. We'll do our best to hit the more recurring questions. Keeping in mind that some of your questions have been answered in past episodes and now we're uploading our episodes on the condoadvisor.ca website and so feel free if you want to see what David's beard looked like last week, or if you want to hear what we spoke about, you can do that. Now we have the chat channel, some of you have discovered it already, and feel free to access it and ask questions and chat amongst yourselves but do keep in mind, the show is here on your screen. Because sometimes you're asking questions that we've answered already. But to me, I love seeing the exchanges we see on the side here. Now, most importantly, and this is the weekly disclaimer. You're used to it by now. While we do our best to provide you with accurate information you have to keep the following in mind. When we refer to legislation we refer to Ontario legislation. So if you're tuning in from elsewhere you'll have to adapt what we say to your jurisdiction. Please note also that the information we provide is accurate as of the date of this broadcast. Today is April 14^th. So if you're watching this as a repeat, later on on our website, you'll have to keep in mind that the information may have changed since then. Also keep in mind that the information we're providing you tonight is general in nature and it doesn't necessarily apply to the very specific of your situation. It's important for you to seek professional advice to get information that's applicable to your situation, because what we're giving you here is good, but not necessarily good for everybody. Finally, I have to advise you that this session is being recorded and as I said already, we'll upload it on our website, but it takes me about 10 days to figure out how to upload it so there's no point in writing to me and asking me, tomorrow, where it is. It's not up there yet. One of the reason why it's taking so long is that we need to transcribe the content of our webinars. Okay. Let's dive in now.

We're going to start by revisiting a question that keeps, and somebody has to remind me to change the slides, so these are the speakers, of course, and that's the agenda. We're going to start today by revisiting a question pertaining to the essential services. That's a question that keeps recurring. We're flooded with this question. In part, perhaps, because the definition of essential services keeps changing, but also I would say in part because everybody's trying to find an exception. Everybody's trying to find a reason why their car wash should be open and why. Their unit should be painted and why. Their gym should be open just for them. The plan behind what we're going through is to try to flatten the curve by getting people to stay home. Right? If everybody's trying to find an exception it's not working. But that's a question that we keep hearing. This recurring question has to do, and I keep saying it, is because Canadians have forgotten what it is to put collective needs in front of their own desire. This is something we haven't done in about 75 years. We'll have to just try to get used to that. Graeme, I'm going to turn the microphone to you now and can you give us maybe a bit of a recap on the essential services, and emphasize maybe this time how it applies to various recurring services or contractors that corporations need to have onsite.

Graeme: Yeah, so, I think by way of backdrop, we need to be careful with the word "need". What the emergency order tells us is that any maintenance, repair and property management services that are strictly necessary to manage and maintain safety, security and sanitation and essential operations of the building are essential. In other words, very, very restrictively, what needs to be happening to maintain safety, security and sanitation.

Rod: Right. This is, I think, were the rubber hits the road in the sense that you have to ask yourselves, always, is this strictly necessary and is it essential to the operations of the building. One of the questions that we have heard a lot this week, Sandy, had to do with landscaping and whether or not landscaping is either strictly necessary or somehow essential to the operations of a building. What's your take on that? I know we've talked about but it's worth repeating here.

Sandy: It is. Whoever thought landscaping would be such a hot topic. Landscape Ontario, on their website, still clearly says, states to their members, we recommend you stop working unless you are confident you fit under the updated essential workplace list. The general consensus from all the lawyers involved in today's panel, and several other blogs and publicized opinions we've read over the last few days, say that landscaping and other esthetic services are not essential services. The key that Graeme mentioned in the new government definition is what is strictly necessary to manage and maintain the safety. Only work that's truly urgent should be undertaken and everything else should be postponed. However, we have many landscapers that are continuing to work in the industry. They say they're doing it carefully and they're exercising social distancing. From their point of view they feel that spring cleanups are being done for the safety of residences and security of the property, which they feel does fall under the definition. For this to be valid there must be a real risk and the contractor must be able to justify

Katherine: Justify or substantiate the reason why it's an essential service. I'm just going to pick up because, of course, in preparing for tonight's webinar we had had some conversations previously. I'm not entirely sure what happened with your audio, Sandy, but

Rod: Are you back on Sandy?

Sandy: Yup.

Rod: Okay, we just missed the very end but Katherine caught up. You guys are like Siamese twins. Reading each other's minds. That's great. Some of the question that people are asking so what about cutting grass, Sandy, is that essential?

Sandy: Well, cutting grass is not. But something like spring cleanups, making sure catch basins are clear, branches and twigs and anything that's dead is removed, walkways, paths so that there's no trip or slip hazards on there, those are essential. But day to day cutting of your lawn, right now, it's not. Nor is getting your sprinkler system open.

Rod: Right. And that is what took 27 minutes of our time yesterday when we were discussing that. What about that? What about sprinkler systems? I guess the answer is it is likely not strictly necessary for security, safety, sanitation or the essential operations of the building. I do realize that if this lasts long time, and you don't have your sprinkler system on, well you know, your grass and flowerbeds and so on will likely not survive. Well, look on the upside I guess, is that you won't need to cut the grass. I'm sorry about that's sort of how it is.

Sandy: Ultimately, it is the board members decisions on how to proceed but they should involve their solicitors if they're letting their landscapers work on their properties.

Rod: Right. So that leads to the next question. I'm going to turn the microphone to David. The next question is, well wait a second, so if I don't get to pay my landscapist, if he or she doesn't come here to do that work, must I pay them? That's a question we hear a lot. David, what's the answer to that?

David: I just want to address, very quickly, force majeure. This word is being thrown around quite a bit because, colloquially, we all often talk about an act of God or force majeure. In contract terms, force majeure means something's very specific. You must have a force majeure clause in your contract to be able to invoke force majeure. If you do not have a force majeure clause you cannot invoke, either party, saying, "I don't have to pay." or, "I don't have to do the work." The first step, you absolutely must look at each contract that you have, with each of your contractors, individually, review the terms of your force majeure clause. Because they will say vastly different things. A standard force majeure clause might say something like the parties agree to provide 14 days notice, one to the other, in the event of the following events. Things like acts of God, things like civil strife, war, a number of different things, and I personally have not seen a force majeure clause that expressly states a health pandemic. So a lot of this will be based on interpretation so it's very important to address, especially if there's a lot of money at issue, to address this with council to try and figure out what you're obligations and rights are. The only way to get out of a contract otherwise is on the back end, through what's known as the doctrine of frustration. So this is, if you don't have a force majeure clause but the essential nature of your contract can no longer be fulfilled, it's impossible or illegal to be able to fulfill it, you might have a defense, after the fact, so you have to be sued for those amounts, and then you state, "The purpose of the contract was frustrated. It was impossible. I therefore should not be liable." So those are really the only two ways to get out of it. So if someone just comes to you and says, "Force majeure. You have to keep paying me." or, "Force majeure. You don't have to pay me." or, "Force majeure. I don't have to work.", the answer is always you have to look at what your contract says, and your contract may not be explicitly clear, so you should really be sure about what the obligations are before you agree to the colloquially force majeure that everybody's throwing around these days.

Rod: Right. So before you cut the cheque to your landscapist that hasn't shown up, for sure have somebody have review your contract and sort of guide you through that. Now let me go back to closing of amenities. This keeps coming back up because, as I said, I got an email this week saying, "Can you believe they closed the car wash at the condo? What can I do to force them reopen it? What are your thoughts?", they said. My thoughts, two words, Word Pandemic, buddy. Those are my thoughts. So, let's cover a bit about closing the amenities. Graeme, we have some survey results on this, do we not?

Graeme: Yes, we do and they're appearing in front of us now. So, for the most part we're seeing that our respondents are closing their amenities. What these results you're seeing here are, are the percent of our respondents who have kept them open. We're seeing things like the fitness room, the pools, the party rooms, very low amounts of people of respondents are keeping this open. The items that are tending to remain open, you can kind of see more in the middle, and these ones make sense. More than things like pools and fitness rooms, in terms of their essential nature, stuff like the garbage chute, and visitor parking, and the garbage rooms. Then to a lesser extent, laundry rooms.

Rod: Right. You know you're living the life when your amenity is a garbage chute. This is amazing.

Graeme: With a bonus trip the laundry room.

Rod: That's right. Okay, so, Katherine, can you remind us of maybe municipal guidance on these amenities?

Katherine: The City of Toronto's been very clear and I happen to work, of course, in the City of Toronto so I'm most abreast of what is present there. But the restrictions on gatherings is across Ontario. So they have sought for all multi-residential dwellings to close all of their amenities and that includes exterior amenities as well. It's of course why you see public parks, school yards, all of the equipment cordoned off so that folks aren't using it. It is an encouraging additional touch and it's to help keep sanitary. That's what it's all about.

Rod: Right. I think there's a lot of, and I'm going to turn to you Jason, because you made a good point yesterday, you need sometimes to explain to your owners why we're closing the amenities. There's maybe two elements to that answer. One of the element is what we've talked so far which is the Province is telling us to shutdown all non-essential services. The gym is not an essential services. The car wash is not an essential service. For the corporation to continue to provide these services, your putting yourself at risk. The corporation is at risk. The directors may be at risk of a fine. That's the hard sort of answer. But there's something to be said about educating owners. Jason, do you want to sort of tell us how you'd approach that?

Jason: Yeah. I think that's one explanation as to why you would close the amenities. I think the other reason, and a justifiable one from a financial aspect, is the amount of cleaning that will be required to maintain those amenities. It's just not in a budget and the manpower's not there. For example, most buildings have one cleaner or two cleaners. They work from 8 to 4, or 9 to 5, and they do their cleaning. But if amenities are open who is going to do that cleaning? And how often are they going to do that cleaning? Quite simply, from the sea sweep, if you were to take it from an organization perspective, we can't afford to keep those amenities open because of the manpower and the cleaning requirements would be too significantly harsh. You'd have to maintain those.

Rod: Right. Right, right, right. Okay, so that's for essential services. Let's park that for a second and let's go on another topic, that we've brushed upon but I want to drill down on it, and it's owner's meetings. This is probably the second most common question we hear, about AGM's. Can we delay the AGM? For how long can we delay the AGM's or the owner's meetings? And what would happen, if for instance, my term was to expire, my director's term was to expire this AGM? Can I now just continue to act as a director until we hold our AGM, whenever that's going to be? I think part of the problem with this, so far the confusion is this, is that the Province has not suspended the requirement to hold condo AGM's. And that's a bit odd and a bit unfortunate because they have suspended the requirement to hold AGM's for not for profits. They have done that. It's probably been 15 to 20 days already. But they haven't adapted that requirement, or that suspension, to the condo world. On the one hand we don't have clear guidance that these meetings ought to be suspended but at the same time we have this very clear prohibition against meetings of more than five people. Unless your condo corp has five people or less, that's a problem. You can't possibly be holding your AGM or your owner's meeting the way we used to while maintaining social distancing. That's the issue. Now, I'm going to answer some questions, rapidly, but then I'm going to turn to Denise and we're going to do the 101, or maybe the 202, on owner's meetings, tonight. Just get that done with an move on.

Quick answers to questions, absolutely condo's can postpone their AGM's and you can postpone them past that 6 month period. So normally you have to hold your AGM within 6 months of the end of your fiscal year, right? Well, obviously you can't do this now. So you can postpone the AGM past that 6 month period, and while you'll be technically in breach of the Condominium Act, the reality is that there's a superseding order, which is the various orders in councils that have been adopted by the Province, preventing you from holding them, at least the traditional way.

The second question we have is for how long will these AGM's be delayed? I think, at the very least, for as long as these orders in council remain. To me, that's maybe the foreseeable future. Ontario has just extended by 28 days these emergency measures. We're in this for the long run. That leaves us with two questions.

What about meetings that cannot wait? And, can we hold virtual or online AGM's, and if so, how it's done? I know that recently the CAO posted on their website some information about how to hold these meetings, virtually and online, and what are the requirements. But I want to put some meat around that bone with Denise, if at all possible tonight. What would be the meetings that couldn't wait? I can't think of many. I think if the board loses quorum that may be a meeting that can't wait. I think if you want to adopt a bylaw to allow you to hold electronic meetings, and to vote electronically, that's probably a meeting that can't really wait. And arguably, maybe the turnover meeting. Even that I'm not sure how urgent that turnover does become. Let's deal with, now that we know that we can't have the traditional meeting, Denise from Lash Condo Law, now that we know we can't these traditional meetings, what are the other alternatives out there? Maybe start by giving us a bit of the background on the traditional meetings and then we'll move on to the other kind of meetings.

Denise: Okay. Thanks, Rod. I'll do the traditional, and then you'll go on to the proxy only meeting, and then I'll go onto the online.

Rod: Sure.

Denise: Let's look at what we've been doing prior to the pandemic. We all know that you can attend a meeting and vote in person by a paper ballot. And then of course we have the proxy method, which could be either directed, voted proxy, or a proxy that gives the proxy holder the right to vote for them. With proxies, the proxy holder has to show up to the meeting. So we have in person or showing up to the meeting. As of November 2017, there are some condominium corporations that have been doing electronic voting. They've been doing that because they passed the electronic voting bylaw, which we'll discuss shortly. Also since November 2017, and this is one where probably not a lot of people know about this, but you can pass a bylaw to allow absentee ballots, mail in ballots. That's something that we have not seen yet but it's in the legislation and it can be done. Your turn now, Rod.

Rod: Okay. Thank you so much. So, that's the traditional meetings and you see, as Denise just indicated, those quite a few alternatives and variations and options, and we'll speak about them a bit more in a minute. What I refer to as meeting by proxies only is this, if you must hold a meeting, for instance if you've lost quorum and Graeme will talk about that later, but if you must hold a meeting one of the options for you is to hold a meeting by proxy only. You could envision this, you could envision a situation where the president could be the chairperson, you'd call the meeting to be held at his unit, but nobody shows up. People are able to send in their proxies. You need to be very clear on how these proxies will be filled but if you have a one item agenda, we want to vote on adopting a bylaw to permit electronic voting, for instance. If you're note to the owners is very clear, that's that what you're going to be doing, you could do it in such a way where all the proxies are being sent to the chairperson. The chairperson is in his or her unit. He or she gathers all the proxies. You count the proxies and then that's it. You just had your meeting. Your meeting was held by proxy only. Again, it may require a lot of work with the owners. You need to explain what is it we're doing, and so on, but that is a possible way of holding a meeting. So nobody came within 2 meters of the chairperson and you can have that meeting that way. Now, if you want to add an extra layer of transparency, or entertainment, you could stream on the web the meeting. But that's not the meeting itself. The meeting is held by proxies, and people are just able to see what the president's kitchen table looks like, and he or she can explain and count the balance and so on and so forth. That would be what I would call a meeting by proxy only. I guess a third option, Denise, would be the online meetings. There's a lot of confusion surrounding that. There's a lot of questions as to how that's done. Can you walk us through that, maybe?

Denise: Sure. I've been getting a lot of questions, almost on a daily basis about this, and the confusion is online meetings versus electronic voting. This has all been very interesting because I think a lot of us are now really looking at the regulations in the Condominium Act, to see what we can do to make things safer for residents, and how can condominium corporations do things virtually. Online owner's meetings are not specifically provided for in the Condominium Actsimilar to director's meetings. So we don't have a provision dealing with the ability to have an online meeting. We have electronic voting but not online meetings. However, in the Condominium Act there is a provision that says that you can pass a bylaw for electronic voting, which we know, you can pass a bylaw to do mail in ballots but you can also a bylaw governing electronic attendance. I think this is where we are trying to extend what electronic attendance means to say that that will give a corporation the authority, if they put it in a bylaw, to have electronic attendance being considered an online meeting. What we are recommending at this point is if you can get a bylaw passed in the method that you were saying, Rod, do it through the proxy method, then you could get a bylaw that allows electronic voting, online attendance, which we're referring to it as electronic attendance which will be the online meeting, and mail in ballots. Proceeding by a bylaw to incorporate those three elements.

Rod: Right. So the bylaw that you need, if I understand you correctly, Denise, is you for sure need to have in your bylaw, at the very least, two elements. One of them is the element allowing for the meeting to take place virtually. Allowing it for people not to have to show up physically, and that's separate and apart from having the element that deals with electronic voting, you need both of these. Right?

Denise: Yes. Exactly. So a virtual attendance meeting is similar to what we're doing tonight. So you have, I don't know if you have a show of hands on this feature here, but that is not voting. Voting can only be done by a third party provider, somebody different, an electronic voting provider, that deals with the actual vote. Having a vote done by webinar here, so if everybody puts up their hands, that is not a proper vote.

Rod: Right. Just as you said that we saw all sorts of people raising their hands, including Craig and now there's 4 and 5 and there it is. Wildfire. There it is. Good. Can you walk us through though how to adopt an electronic, what I call, an electronic bylaw. Which is basically a bylaw that will allow you to have a remote meeting and that will allow you to vote. Because, obviously, we can't meet so how would we do it?

Denise: I'll take you step by step. First of all, if you're going to do an electronic voting bylaw, and this has all changed because we never thought of this before, you want to put all components in there. Even if you don't think you want a mail in ballot, or you don't want an online meeting, I would suggest just putting it all in there. You don't have to use it. Just make sure your bylaw is drafted with those three components. Then what would you do is, just like you were talking about the proxy meeting, you call a physical meeting at a place where the chair is located, and you advise the owners, of course, not to attend the meeting for the reasons that you just stated previously. Unit owners then will send in their directed proxies to the chair and, of course, the proxy holder has to be the chair, for now, because we don't have an online meeting yet until the bylaw's passed. So the chair will hold all the proxies, and then I just also want to mention there are some corporations that have already passed an electronic voting bylaw, and now they want to do electronic meetings. So they're going to go through this process too. Besides giving the chair all the proxies, owners can vote electronically if they already have an electronic voting bylaw, they're now going to vote for another bylaw to allow online meetings. I hope everyone's following that because it's a bit complicated. Then the chair will conduct the meeting and hopefully you'll get the required vote. Now, to pass this type of bylaw is one of the easy to pass bylaws. As long as you have 25%25 quorum, and that would be based on the proxies you have or the electronic votes, then all you need is a majority at the meeting to vote for that bylaw. So it's not a majority of all the units. It's a majority of those that are present at the meeting, present being either electronic votes or a proxy. The owners can view this so when we discussed before, Rod, when you were talking about the proxy method of calling a meeting, owners can still tune in and watch via webinar but that is not an official meeting, not until you pass this bylaw. So of course owners can view. I wouldn't take owner's comments and include it any minutes because it's not an official meeting until you pass the bylaw and are allowed to do online meetings.

The other point I wanted to raise is nowhere in the Condominium Act does it say that you have to appoint scrutineers, because people have asked that question. How can a chair being the one person that has all the proxies, and possibly the electronic votes and doing the entire meeting, how can they run the meeting? The Condominium Act doesn't say that you need scrutineers so the chair will act as a scrutineer and review the proxies, make sure they're valid, look at the electronic voting report, if there is electronic votes for that, and then report and minutes will be taken of that meeting.

Rod: Right. Some of the questions we here, and I see it online again, what about people that do want to show up at the meeting? And how do you deal with that? And what about, and I think it's a myth by the way, but what about senior citizens who are less versed in technology? And I do say it's a myth because I would suggest to you that a lot of them are better at it then I am. And there's a lot of people that do their online banking. We're not in the 80's anymore, I think. I think the answer to that is you really need to, so twofold. The first question is how do you deal with people that want to show up at the meeting? Well, you need to properly inform, as part of your meeting package, you need to advise the ownership, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it and this is how we're doing. The purpose of this meeting will be to adopt a bylaw that will allow us to hold these remote meetings, that would allow us to have these votes electronically, and you can't show up and this is how we're going to do it. By adding the stream, and by allowing people to see it online, it sort of maybe reassures them. As for those that either don't have a computer or don't want to do it remotely, they can always go back to the mail in ballots and you can always go back to the proxies. Would you agree with that, Denise?

Denise: Yeah, I would, but also there's a telephone option. So people can phone in and listen and I think most people have phones. I would hope they would. At least they can listen. They have the option of mailing in a ballot if you do the mail in ballot or a proxy.

Rod: Okay. So I hope that sort of answered many of the questions we were getting so far. You really were, Denise, very clear I think, about this step by step. If you follow this process, step by step, you can go from not having the required bylaw to now having it, and to do so safely, and in full compliance with the orders in council.

So let's apply this now to a real fact situation. Let's move on to the other question. Those kinds of meeting that can't wait. One of the meetings I've identified was what do you do when you lose quorum? First, let's deal with the first question which is whether or not, let me just see here. I'll get to you in a minute, Graeme. The first question would be this, keep in mind that the fact you've postponed the AGM has no impact on the term that would otherwise expire. If my term as a director was to expire this AGM, and this AGM was supposed to be last week, I can continue to act as a director until the next AGM. Until the election. That's already provided for in the Act and is usually provided for in most of the operating bylaws. You certainly want to have a look at to make sure that it is the case. That your bylaw somehow doesn't state otherwise. I'll tell you what we've done in certain cases. We've written to the owners. We've told them, "Listen, for these following reasons we can't hold the AGM. It's been postponed. We don't know to when but we'll keep on eye on things and we'll keep you apprised and informed of when this will take place.", and then this is what we add, we sort of said, "By the way, Andrew's term was set to be expired. We've asked Andrew to continue, if you would continue to act as a director until the next AGM. He's kindly accepted that." Sometimes what I do is I say, "Listen, if the majority of you are uncomfortable with that situation, just ask Andrew to step down. But we felt that it was better to have five people on the board rather than four people on the board." Right? That way you can show your ownership that this is not about Andrew hogging the power and wanting to stay on the chair. That's not what's taking place. But we have more people around the table that help us navigate through this difficult time. That's how we've done it in the past. Graeme, I'm going to turn to you now. I'm going to ask you how do you deal with vacancies on the board. I mean, Andrew may not want to stay on the board, right? So how do you deal with vacancies on the board?

Graeme: Yeah. In that scenario if, for example, it's a board of five and they've lost one and Andrew no longer wants the position, the board can appoint someone to replace Andrew until the next AGM takes place. And it's as simple as that. If they've kept quorum. Where we run into more trouble though is where, for whatever reason directors step down or unable to fulfil their duties anymore, and the board loses quorum. This is something that needs to be addressed quickly for a number of reasons. Number one, because the Condominium Act tells us that a meeting has to be held to fill that position within 30 days of having lost quorum. It's important for reason number two because the board, when it doesn't have quorum, can't act, can't take care of the condominium or the common elements or do anything. It needs to get moving fast. When the board loses quorum the first thing that has to go out is an ICU, the Information Certificate Update. That has to go out within 5 days to the owners. This ICU will tell all the recipients that they have 5 days to announce that they would like to run for the open position or positions. Then 15 days before the meeting takes place the general notice has to go out. This is a situation that's different from normal meetings where ordinarily we send out the preliminary notice, 35 days in advance, then the general notice, 15 days in advance. When we're dealing with a situation where the board loses quorum, the ICU sort of replaces the preliminary notice. When this general notice goes out it will likely, in our view it's a sensible way to do it, to have it contain very regimented proxies that are almost entirely already filled out, that will name the chair of the meeting and say when it's taking place and it will just leave open to the owner who they want to vote for to replace the missing positions. Like what's been said before, depending how you want to do this, if you don't have an electronic bylaw you can do it through in proxy only meeting, where the chair would act as the scrutineer and they could stream it so that people could watch if they want. And like as already been said, the any issues with well, that's a little sketchy, it's weird having this meeting take place alone in a room with one person, the proxies need to be kept for 90 days in any event. Likewise, if you do have the electronic bylaw in place, that has all the right bells and whistles, then you could hold this meeting totally virtually.

Rod: Right. I guess the lessons I take from this is that you have to act quickly. So if do lose quorum, and by that as an example, if you have five people on your board and somehow you fall below three, then you've lost quorum. So you have 5 days to send out the ICU. That ICU invites people to give their name if they want to run and you know, like me, that people push out the door, everybody wants to be on the board. The fame and the fortune that comes with it. So you have 5 days to send out the ICU then they have 5 days to tell you they want to run. Then when you send out the general notice all that information and people get to vote for whoever they want. For Denise, or David, or Jason. Right? That's how you fill these vacancies. Okay. Wonderful.

Let's switch topics now and let's talk about how to deal with liens and arrears and people falling behind in paying their condo fees. This is now sort of slowly but surely happening now. It's still early in the game. It's the first month. It's been 13 days since. I'm not sure how many people actually skipped April but sooner rather than later people are going to be facing difficulties in paying their common expenses. Maybe, Graeme, did you have some stats on this from our survey?

Graeme: Yeah, we do. There's the slide on it right there. We gave our respondents the option of three choices of how they could respond to this question of, "How are they going to deal with arrears this month and going forward?" At least as long as this pandemic continues. The potential options are, "If required, condos will register a lien." And that seems to be the mid-range of popularity. The other option was, "We don't intend on registering any liens and we want to work with owners." The response on this showed that it was of limited popularity and we tend to think that's safe and that makes sense to regard this second option with suspicion. Then the most popular response was, "Frankly, we don't know yet. We're going to have to wait and see how this shakes out."

Rod: Right, right. On the grounds, Sandy, in the trenches, are you seeing a lot of people falling in arrears as a result of this? Not your regular sort of frequent flyers but are you seeing a lot of an increase in people being unable to pay their fees?

Sandy: The good news, so far, is that we're just experiencing slightly higher than normal amount of returned payments for the April 1^st common element fees, which is great. That will probably change but we all sympathize with owners difficulties. But condo owners do have other avenues to turn to for financial assistance. The Condo Act just doesn't give us an option right now. Somehow has to pay the condo's necessary expenses during this crisis and in condo land that someone only is the owners.

Rod: Right. So I think the lessons to takeaway, folks at home, is the lien process has not changed. Our recommendation, and that seems to be pretty consistent across the board is, you have to lien if you get before the third month default. You have to lien to protect the corporation's ability to recover later. Because if someone is 3 months behind the situation is not going to get better. Their credit cards are going to be maxed out. There going to have problems with their mortgage. The purpose of the registration of the lien is to allow you to protect your ability to recover the arrears. With a lien that's properly registered in time you trump even a mortgage, on title. You've got to do that. Now, once you've put the lien on, if you want to sort of ease off on the gas pedal and not rush to sell the unit as a power of sale, that's a different story. But you at least got to put your foot in the door. You got to protect your ability to collect. That's enough of that. I know that for some it may be a bit repetition from last week but we're just answering questions that we're getting.

Now, next topic. This is a good one. How do we screen contractors? Contractors get onsite. They come and they do some essential work. How do we ensure that they're not bringing the virus with them? How do we ensure we don't put the community at risk? Katherine, do you want to tackle this one?

Katherine: Part of the reason why this comes up is because we have obligations in a workplace setting to ensure that folks aren't presented with hazards that are untoward and that you're also controlling for some of those risks. A number of companies have already circulated to the property managers and they have vetted their pandemic plans. I think one of the things that it behooves property managers to do, and site staff to do, is to ensure that folks are reminded and fairly repeatedly on what the guidance is from public health on going to different physical locations, and to ensure that folks are well and that they are staying home if they are not well. That can serve as very important reminder. That kind of screening also serves to document when you first became aware of certain circumstances and if there was, as I think Christian and Jason will discuss in greater detail in future, what, if any, actions need to be taken in order to preserve the workplace setting and to make sure that everybody is safe.

Rod: Okay. Jason, I think yesterday you were talking about approaching it. And maybe I missed that, Katherine. Did you talk about the kind of screening that you do on a regular basis? Did I just miss that?

Katherine: Yeah, I did. I made mention of the fact the individual service providers as well as the company. I think that both of those factors are important. I have seen a little bit of pushback from some of the unionized elevator firms, for instance, but at the end of the day, we are in new, unusual circumstances and what is best all the way around, always, is good communications, open dialogue and trying to make sure that folks are reminded on a constant basis of how they can protect each other, I think is important.

Rod: Sure. Jason, yesterday, during our prep talk you were talking about approaching it maybe at a more systematic level or something that would allow you to capture more of that information. Did you want to add anything to what Katherine just spoke about?

Jason: Absolutely. I think, quite simply, at a leadership level I think you have some national contracts, or Provincial contracts. If I have some contracts with some service providers I should have long time ago sent some communications and given them direction on the new procedures at our building. Meaning, restricting when and how people can access the building. Reminding them on social distancing and letting them know, some buildings have moved down to one entrance and eliminated the second entrance. Contractors need to know that. Service providers need to know that. The reason they're doing it is because they can focus their cleaning abilities on one entrance instead of segregating. So contractors and service providers need to know that at the leadership level and you can disseminate that to the president or vice-president of your service companies and ensure that gets filtered down and ensure that all the people coming to your building have been notified.

Rod: Right. Okay. Very good. So that's it for contractors. We're going to switch topics again. We're going to talk about visitors. That's another topic that keeps coming back up and whether or not we can prevent visitors. Whether or not we can prevent tenants and whether or not we can prevent move ins and so on and so forth. I think part of the confusion is this is that people at home, they're looking at how businesses handling it and how stores or companies or Federal buildings are clamping down on this kind of unnecessary traffic. But as we've said in the past, you have to keep in mind that condo corps are people's homes. You can't really tackle it the same way. As we've done for the last few topics, let's start with some stats, about how people will deal with visitors. Did you have a chance to put together a slide on this? Oh, there it is.

Graeme: Sure did. What we're seeing for the most part, by and far the most popular response is that while not outright banning people, because again, we've kind of taken the position over and over that you can't really do that, that most condominiums are encouraging owners not to have visitors but have not prohibited visitors all out. Some condominiums, 13%25 of them, and by some I do mean with respect only to our respondents, have reportedly banned all non-essential visits and 14%25 of our respondents are just continuing on normally.

Rod: Right. Less than 2 have actually banned all visitors, apparently.

Graeme: Mmhmm.

Rod: Okay, so, this is just indicative to some extent. This is the survey we sent all of you folks at home when you register for these webinars. We often say give us some information. We want to get a sense of where you stand on these things and those are the results of that survey. Katherine, what do you see on the ground?

Katherine: The reality of it is, is that every public health outlet has told us not to visit. I want to be very specific when I use that word because there's also a difference when folks are accepting people who are providing essential services, who are dropping off goods to family members who are self-isolating, those who are going to provide sanitation, cleaning apartments and things of that nature. I'm concerned if you were to say, "No, absolutely, only residents are allowed here." I think David will support the fact, we discussed it a couple of weeks ago now, that you're potentially opening yourself up to a human rights complaint. We have to be very conscientious of some of our competing obligations here. No visiting but essential services need to be delivered to people in their homes.

Rod: Okay. Very well. Jason, yesterday, you were talking about maybe the kinder, softer approach to try to dissuade people from visiting. What kind of tricks or suggestions do you have for our viewers?

Jason: I don't know I'd coin it as a trick but I think having that transparency and accountability and that exposure throughout the building. For example, one of the things that we've recommended is having a notification at the door that says where and when you can enter and what kind of circumstances the building is going through. I would put that notification on every floor. For the simple example is, when I go from my suite to the elevator lobby I'm going to see a notice that says, "As a reminder, please note that the cleaning of these elevator buttons on the 44 floors of my condo are only done twice a day. And they're only done twice a day within a period of an 8 to 4 shift." So that means that nobody's cleaning it after 4:00pm. I don't know if every condo has that general practice for cleaning but that's what I've come to understand. I think when I read that notice in the lobby I tend to discourage visitors from coming to see me. I understand that the building's being transparent and allowing me to make my own decision based on those facts. They're very clear. I think a lot of condo people are going to be surprised to see that cleaning is only happening twice. If you want to pay for another cleaner to wipe down every elevator station on 44 floors, or 22 floors, then go for it. I mean, I encourage it. But I don't know if that's being done. I think we need to talk about that or at least let the visitors know and allow them to make that decision.

Rod: So by providing more information to the owners were they see the actual limitations of our resources they may themselves sort of dissuade their own visitors. But also you were talking about the British Columbia survey. How would you approach that? Do you remember what I'm talking about?

Jason: I do. It was a tactic deployed in British Columbia where the RCMP teamed up with the community association, or a non-profit community group, and they established a checkpoint. The checkpoint was not to take a hard and fast approach on restricting travel but it was more of a welcoming approach where they explained the risks. Explained what was going on in the community. Explained the benefits that they can apply by turning around and what they found was that the majority of people who were visitors simply turned around.

Rod: Right. Right. The same approach has been taken here in Ottawa, the bridges between Ottawa and Quebec, and basically they have a police checkpoint. They're not really preventing you from crossing. One of the reasons is that they can't. Movement under the charter, every Canadian has the freedom of movement. But so what they do is they ask you questions and they make you realize that going to the Quebec side, for whatever reason, to go visit your cottage, may not be required at this stage. They make you think about it, right? Denise, one last point on visitors. What's your view? Can corporations actually all out ban all visitors?

Denise: I think my position hasn't changed since last week and I think I spoke to this last week. That until we see a directive from the government that visitors should be banned from buildings then my position is there's no legal basis to doing so. Katherine made a good point about human rights issues but there's also potential exposure to liability. If you're screening, well let's say you screen someone and then you shouldn't have let them in and you did, then there's potential liability. Why get into that and why adopt another role?

Rod: Right. Right, right, right. Okay. Next topic. This is an incredible topic actually. We're very lucky to have Christian Cadieux with us. He is going to help us sort of have a look at, and hopefully this is not going to happen very often, but the question that we were posed was, "How do you deal with a COVID related death in a unit? And whether or not you handle it differently than any other death in a unit." The way we've sort of approached when we're discussing this yesterday, I guess there's two elements to dealing with a fatality in a condo corp. There's an element that's the softer element which a pubic relation challenge maybe. How to manage the community? The example we were using is that if they see that there's a fire truck or there's a police or there's a coroner's office, with their vehicle parked right outside the main door for 5 hours, I mean, people are going to get all concerned, right? So there's the PR element and that I'm going to turn to, is it Katherine I think that's going to handle it.

Katherine: Sandy.

Rod: Sandy. Okay.

Sandy: Yup.

Rod: But there's also another element. The hard element which is any precautions that are required to be taken to ensure the safety and security flowing from this. So you have someone who passed away from a disease that is known to be infectious and how do we deal with that? Let's start maybe, Sandy, with the PR element. What kind of information you feel should be shared and to what extent and how would you tackle that?

Sandy: Sure. Condo corps, they're not obligated to communicate deaths for any reason, including COVID-19, to the residents. Managers and boards need to be very sensitive to, and respect the family's wishes at all times, in these cases. However, to reassure residents that there's no public safety hazard it can be communicated that the corporation has responded appropriately to a situation which occurred. They can state there was a medical emergency in the building. That the authorities and professionals were brought in to deal with the situation appropriately and all precautions were taken, as required, to deal with the emergency and any sanitation procedures needed are being undertaken. When in doubt, and due to sensitivity of this topic, involve your lawyers again.

Rod: Okay. So that's how you sort of manage the situation so the rumour mill doesn't go crazy and so people are sort of reassured that you're not at risk. We did what we had to do. So, now I'm going to turn the floor to Christian. Help us maybe understand how a COVID death in a unit may require additional or different sort of precautions or a different protocol. Any maybe divide this within unit and outside of the unit.

Christian: Okay. Those are great questions. Thank you very much for having me as your guest today. What I can tell you is essentially, with respect to concentrating on a unit first, everything inside the unit should for all intents and purposes be deemed, as it is in fact, contaminated with COVID-19. It would fall along the same principal as something which is known as universal precautions. In the United States or here in Canada, let alone Ontario, universal blood and bodily fluid for precautions, assuming that all bio-hazardous materials are in fact positive for a blood born pathogen. Now, if we take this concept and we apply it to inside a unit, assuming that everything is in fact, all surfaces I mean, ceilings, walls, floors, contents are in fact contaminated with COVID-19, it would be important, as well as the floor of course, it would be imperative to disperse a particular product, an agent to decontaminate all these surfaces prior to commencing work. Under normal circumstances, before the COVID-19 situation, that was not an actual protocol that we enforced internally when commencing any type of remedial or decontamination work. We would deal with the primary issue of contamination and any odour that may have distributed itself or found its way throughout the environment. So it certainly would be in everyone's best interest to take every precaution, reasonably necessary of course, decontaminate all surfaces within the environment. And furthermore, there's other matters that a lot of us, for example, may not take into consideration. Ultimately, no one will find out if in fact the deceased died from COVID until a death certificate is issued. That may be a few days. It would be in the best interest of everyone to quarantine that unit and ensure that nothing comes out of that unit, whether it's pets, and again, I want to be very careful how I say here and very sensitive. There are situations. Right now we don't know as the science on this particular virus is changing. Not just every day but every hour. Now, we don't know if a spread from a surface going into the common area from infestation, or perhaps from a pet in the environment, can in fact spread that. It's something that we need to take into consideration and factor the worse case scenario. That everything that's in that unit should stay in that unit, for as long as possible, until the necessary contractor has been vetted and is used in order to decontaminate, disinfect, sanitize all surfaces and contents within. Now, as we were speaking before, now you have the other issue. You have a common area. You have your first responders; fire, EMS, police, coroner's office, body removal company, they usually represent the coroner's office, the body removal people. They will be in the hallway with perhaps a stretcher and then they will go into the environment to recover the corpse into a body bag and then they would have to perform some level of minimizing the cross contamination factor. Whether it's leaving their booties inside the unit and then coming out with a fresh pair of booties or something else, then putting the corpse on the stretcher, and then moving the stretcher down. Which then opens up the door to another situation. What is the level of responsibility from the condominium corporation in the common area? Do you have someone who is shadowing the first responders to everywhere where they have stepped for anyone who has been inside that unit? And, on the common area, until that common area is treated, what do you do with the individuals who live on that floor? For example, somebody wants to take garbage to the garbage chute on that floor. Or leave for whatever reason. What can you do? You have someone that's coming into the common area, walking on the common area, possibly there's a cross contamination factor. That cross contamination factor might now enter into their unit. So what type of measures are responsible, or certainly in the best interest of everyone, to adhere to? Again, these are questions that are very difficult to answer as the science is continuously changing. It's a loaded question on what needs to be done and what can be done, of course, within the realm of reason.

Rod: Right. Right, right. And at the end of the day you can't make it entirely safe. There's a continuum from doing nothing, which is bad, to doing absolutely everything and maybe to an extent that's actually impossible. There's always going to be risks that linger behind. The question is what can you do to minimize that? Is that sort of how you approach it?

Christian: Absolutely. Because this breaks down to due diligence, even more so than that, you have a cross contamination. It's impossible to remove cross contamination or eliminate cross contamination. What we do is essentially we work in degrees and percentages in minimizing the cross contamination factor as best as we possibly can. If you're going to quarantine the unit I would certainly, something as simple as duct taping the door to the frame to the outsides of the hallway. Make sure, or ensure, that no, and again, forgive me. I don't want to be graphic here but any type of infestation may find it's way out through underneath the door or something as simple as that. Because, again, we don't know the science on this and what type of contamination may spread into common areas. Is it a fly? Is it an insect? I mean, entomology reports and studies have yet to be disclosed on what is possible and not possible. Sure, I might be stretching here but that's the industry that we're in and this is what we're trying to do, is we're trying to factor in the worst case situation and address it as best as we possibly can.

Rod: Right. Right. Keeping in mind that this is evolving and we're learning. There's new studies almost every day and even when you listen to what they say, and the various reports we get, is it airborne? It's not airborne? Is a mask okay? Is a mask required?

Christian: There's a question here and somebody said that corpses aren't breathing, sneezing or coughing. John Jeffs, whoever said that, I can tell you that you're absolutely right. However, this morning the first recorded case in Thailand of an individual contracting COVID-19 from a corpse is now documented. So what does that tell you? What does that tell you? The science is changing.

Rod: Right. Right. We're learning as we go here. Okay, very good. Can't thank you enough for this. Christian Cadieux, thank you very much. He's with the Crime Scene Cleaners and hopefully don't take offense to that, but I hopefully I'm not going to see you in my building.

Christian: You never want to see me professionally.

Rod: That's right. Thanks so much. This is very useful. Now, we get to the next topic and I regret that we always keep this for the end. The safety and security element is always kept for the end of the presentation and by the time we get there we're all exhausted. It seems like it's almost as if we're sort of tripping ourselves over governance matters, forgetting for a second that this crisis is mainly about safety and security and health. It's sort of odd that it almost comes as an afterthought. Jason, I had promised you a good segment and you were kind enough to provide us with a good segment, so here it is. I want to talk about the various sort of, let's first start maybe about risk management. Let's talk about when routine mismanagement is really not routine anymore. Help us out here.

Jason: So, COVID-19 makes risk management really non-routine and it's not because I think we've shifted operations. We've done so many changes in our operations. We've reduced tasks, we've added tasks, so it's a really great time to kind of sit down and have a look at the different emergencies that happen within your building. Property managers and building staff have long been experts at this. They manage and put out the proverbial fires on a daily basis. But right now let's take a look at fire. Right now you have an increased risk of fire in most high rise buildings. In condominiums. And why do you have that? You have a full populated building 24 hours a day. You have a full populated building cooking 3 times a day whereas 4 weeks ago they weren't cooking 3 times a day. In addition, you have the new procedures now for fire alarms and evacuations to add social distancing within those fire alarms and emergency procedures. That social distancing includes within the hallways, it includes within the stairwells and it includes, once you get outside the building and not re-entering the lobby, congregating within that lobby. I think it's important to also understand from a resident perspective that the handrails in the stairwells are typically not cleaned. I imagine every couple of months we go through and dust and make sure it's respectable. But those are touch points that are probably not in your cleaning protocols. I think that's really important. That's fire.

The next one is leaks. Floods and leaks. Water damage is a major costly factor with regards to emergency preparedness in your building. So we need to take a look at our emergency sweep entry procedures, for number one. For number two, it is a great time to review with staff where those shut-off valves are and where the branch line isolation valves are. For example, we interviewed ten condominiums just yesterday. We found that both of those ten are operating, 25%25 of their staff are new. That means one or two security guards out of their 8 hour shifts, or their 24 hours shifts, are new guards. Those new guards have been working for about 12 hours this week and they may or may not be aware of those isolation valves and were those shut-off valves are. So if we can shut down those valves, 3 to 4 minutes faster than any other building, a blown sprinkler head releases 190 litres per minute. That's every 60 seconds. There's a lot of new risks and a lot of new liabilities that represent from the COVID-19. Power failures. We have an increased risk of fire during power failures because we have more family members within the building 24 hours a day and the use of candles are very real. For emergency lighting. So, again take a look at your normal routine of emergency management and make the tweaks and necessary adjustments based on those risks and liabilities. The City of Ottawa, Ottawa Police just announced that break and enters in their communities, in this one community in Ottawa, has increased 70%25 in the last 4 weeks. Again, risks and liabilities have increased based on the situation COVID-19 has put us into and I think that's really important. One more final point on that, Rod, is consider the new risks and exposures regarding staff training. So under the Ontario Fire Code, section 2.8, all of our building staff are required to be trained on the fire safety plan before being assigned roles and responsibilities. How are we getting training to the security guards and the replacement superintendents before they take roles and responsibilities? Let's remember, your security concierge is operating all of your life safety systems at 2 in the morning in your building. That includes the emergency voice communication system, how to shut down the HVAC system, how to manually start the generator, how are we adjusting our training programs, required by law, these are essential services so they're still required, how are we managing some of those things?

Rod: Okay. A question I often hear, and I'm not sure if you can, sorry I'm going to spring it on you, if there's going to be an evacuation, or a fire alarm, to what extent must we ensure social distancing and is it up to the corporation to provide gloves or masks? How do you tackle this?

Jason: Yeah, there's no gloves or masks that should be provided. I think that's a step takes it a little bit far but I think what we need to do, as a corporation is just what we're doing for our family of employees. We need to communicate to the residents. Number one that there are new considerations within the fire safety plan such as social distancing once I leave my suite, social distancing once I get into the stairwell and then social distancing once I get out of the building. I think that's critical and it's not only a liability. You have a requirement under the Fire Code to explain those new risks within your fire safety plan. I'm not suggesting you have to update and review your fire safety plan but I am suggesting that the condo corporation is required to update the residents of these new requirements, during an evacuation.

Rod: Right. Of course you have to communicate this ahead of time. There's no point in communicating as it happens, right? So that's it. I think we've covered it every topic that we had on the agenda here. So I'm going to do like I always. I'm going to do a one last roundtable, thanking you and seeing if you have anything else you want to add and then also I'm going to talk about next week's webinar. Which, by the way, we're going to go back to the Wednesday window. We did two Tuesdays in a row and that was mainly to accommodate the holy weeks and various religious celebrations but we're going to go back to Wednesday. But let me go around the table and start with you, Sandy Foulds, from Wilson Blanchard Management. Anything else to add before we part?

Sandy: No. Just back to the old stay home unless you're an essential service. We need to protect our vulnerable population and we all want to get back to a new normal, whatever that may be, as soon as possible.

Rod: Thanks so much. Katherine Gow, on behalf of ACMO. Parting words.

Katherine: They say that it takes 3 times and three different presentations in order to help folks to really absorb and understand information. So avail yourselves, if you're a property manager, if you're somebody who's responsible for communications. There are lots of resources from Public Health Agency of Canada, your municipality, there are lots of infographics, there are now some videos. Share them and share them frequently. One of my favourites, and as far outs to the outside most piece of your property, is traffic light type symbol in terms of yes, maybe, no. It will be good reminders for everybody coming onto your property as to what they should be doing from a physical distancing perspective, and whether or not they're visiting or only providing essential services.

Rod: Okay. Amazing. Thank you, Katherine. Denise Lash, from Lash Condo Law. Words of wisdom.

Denise: We're all in this together. I think boards should remember that communication is really key here. That residents need to feel that the board is keeping the common area safe. They need to keep their notices clear and consistent and help ease some of the anxiety that many of the residents are feeling right now.

Rod: Okay. Thanks so much, Denise. Graeme MacPherson, Gowling WLG.

Graeme: Yes. So I guess I'll just take this opportunity to thank everybody for tuning in and I'll just echo what's been said. Keep up the good work. Keep doing what you can to stay informed. Keep pressing elevator buttons with keys and keep social distancing.

Rod: Okay. David Plotkin, from Gowling WLG. Your turn. Thank you so much, David.

David: Why should I change my last minute thought, has always been every week, be reasonable. I'm just going to add that to be reasonable and be openminded to alternatives. I know a lot of us are kind of stuck in what we're used to and we're all having to adapt to a new reality. The alternative to this meeting or alternative to payment according to this schedule might be a little different than it normally is. We all just have to go with the flow and be as openminded and flexible as we can in the circumstances.

Rod: Thanks so much, David. Jason Reid, from the National Life Safety Group. Anything to add before we go?

Jason: Listen, thanks for having me. I think Richard Branson put this very eloquently last week, every success story is a tale of constant adaption and revision and change. It sounds like the industry's staying abreast and doing that on a day to day basis. So, well done everybody and keep up the good work.

Rod: Thanks so much. Christian Cadieux, thank you so much, especially on very short notice, for joining us. Any parting words?

Christian: Stay safe and don't touch your face.

Rod: Okay. Very good. Thanks so much. There it is folks. Next week's webinar, as I said, is on Wednesday, April 22^nd. It's at 5:00pm. Information will be posted on the condoadvisor. You will need to register again. You can register by accessing our blog using the webinar tab at the top. We encourage you to send us questions and topics that you want to have covered. Things that you need some help with. That's how we build our webinars so the earlier you send it, don't send me your question 45 minutes before the webinar. By then I've lined up all my speakers. Think about it. Send us your questions. We will be posting the Powerpoint slides on the webinar tab again and we will also be posting some of the resources that some of our speakers have referred to. For instance, a screening questionnaire for your contractors. We're going to be posting some of that. If some of you are generous enough that you want us to share your stuff, by all means, send it our way and we'll see what we can do and we'll consider it. So that's it for me. I thank you very, very much for having attended once more. A lot of you stayed on the line until the very end. Thank you very, very much. Be safe, be healthy, be happy, be good to one another and see you next week. Thanks so much. Take care everybody.