Rod: Got to keep remembering that I can't click on anything else during the jingle. Everybody's got to wait it out. Okay, good evening, everybody. My name is Rod Escayola and I'm your condominium lawyer with Gowling WLG. Welcome to the November edition of our monthly condoadvisor webinar. This time around, again, we were planning on not talking about the pandemic and focusing on different things, different topics, but of course the Province had a different plan for us. Just like clockwork, yesterday they came up with a brand new plan. They've changed the rules on us and so at least this time we had 24 hours to get ready for it. So that's a bit better than last time. So we're going to divide this webinar in two. We will get our COVID update, led by Graeme, and then after that we will focus on the virtual AGM and electronic sort of voting topics.
As usual I've called upon our trusted leaders to join us tonight. Although Sean Cornish is taking a week off but fear not. I have managed to find an amazing guest to sit in tonight. So wait for it. You're not going to be disappointed. Now keeping with tradition I thought that we would be looking for a theme to introduce our panelists and so we felt that it would be fitting today to use Presidents as the theme today. If we don't quite know who's going to sit in the seat South of the border, I can tell you this, I've got a couple of Presidents around this table. You won't be disappointed. So, without further ado, from Crossbridge, speaking on behalf of ACMO, a hero for the condo industry. Having emancipated the owner/occupiers and famous for having said, "I don't destroy my enemies if I make friends of them", Katherine 'Lincoln' Gow. Hi, Katherine.
Katherine: Oh very good. Welcome. Thanks for having me back again, Rod. Great to be here.
Rod: From Lash Condo Law, famous for having drafted the Declaration of all declaration, famous for having said, "Never put till tomorrow a will which can be enforced today", Denise 'Jefferson' Lash.
Denise: Ah, love it. Thanks, Rod. Great to be here.
Rod: Now, he's not quite in the room yet but we'll introduce him anyway and hopefully he's going to join.
Graeme: No, we've got him. We've got him.
Rod: Just in the nick of time so hopefully he's going to be able to turn his mic on. From the National Life Safety Group, famous for having said, "Those who give up safety to purchase liberty deserve neither", Jason 'Roosevelt' Reid. Let me just get the picture here.
Jason: Thanks for having me, everybody.
Rod: Thanks for joining. Now, our special guest today. We found someone to fill in Sean Cornish's shoes but only if he wears cowboy boots because she does. The most senior property manager in Ottawa. Now being the first and original one, famous for having said, "It's better to offer no excuse than a bad one", we have here with us Josee 'Washington' Deslongchamps. Hi, Josee.
Josee: Hello. Thanks for having me.
Rod: Josee is truly the most senior property manager in Ottawa. That's kind of impossible. You must have started when you were 12 or something.
Josee: I was two.
Rod: Two. Oh yeah, so sorry about that. Gee. Okay, so thanks for joining us Josee. Hopefully you'll enjoy the ride. And now of course, finally, our very own condo twins. So one is famous for having said, "I think we agree that the past is over", and the other one is famous for having said, "Tenants and owners can cohabitate peacefully", I introduce Graeme MacPherson and David Plotkin.
<laughter>
Graeme: I guess I'll be the younger one then.
David: I guess I'm senior.
Graeme: I'll be W. You be H.W.
Rod: So, everybody, thanks for being here tonight with us. The chat line is open. Keep it alive. Feel free to exchange with each other and to ask questions if you have them. If you want to put a question in the Q&A it's got more chances of being seen by us and, of course, we're going to start with the usual sort of housekeeping before we join in. The disclaimer. My favourite part. So for those of you watching this webinar please remember the following. First, when we refer to legislation we refer to Ontario legislation and second of all, we do our very best to provide accurate information. It's really only valid as of today's date, November 4th, 2020. It's also important to keep in mind that the information we provide tonight is general in nature so it may not necessarily apply to your specific situation. It's important for you to go and seek professional advice tailored to the very specific facts of your very specific situation. The freebies are tonight but really you only sort of get what you pay for. Finally, I don't know why I have to say that but I probably do, this session is recorded. We will upload it eventually to our website, the condoadvisor.ca. You'll be able to view it at your pleasure over and over and over again. These jokes just don't get old. Okay. Oh, a last thing I'd like to sort of bring my last announcement is this. You don't want to miss next week's webinar. It's going to be super fun. The first half is going to be dedicated to the serious business of preparing for the holidays. The second half is where we need you. During the second half we will have our very own Jeopardy webinar game. So if you want to test our condo knowledge, if you feel you've got what it takes, drop us a line. We need probably 3 contestants I guess. Whether you're an owner, a tenant, a manager, a lawyer, we want you, the specialists out there, the condo specialists to come and test your knowledge of the industry. So send us a line.
Now, Graeme, I'm going to start with you. This is the COVID update now. We were just getting nicely used to how Ontario was sort of attacking this. Stage 1 and then we moved to Stage 2, then we moved to Stage 3, then when this became too comfortable then we rolled back to the modified Stage 2, and when that became a bit boring then we came up with special precaution areas. So just when you thought you had figured it out Doug Ford took out his crayons and came up with a colour code. So, Graeme, can you sort of walk us through this? What's the new lay of the land here?
Graeme: Yeah, so it's like you said, Rod. We've done it by number. We've done it by area. Now we're going to do it be colour. We'll see if that proves to be less confusing then everything else has so far. But by way of update, since October 10 in Ottawa, Peel and Toronto, within Ontario, these are the kind of hotspots that have been identified by the government for the virus. The gathering limits were lowered to 10 people indoors and 25 people outdoors and there have been many other closures that we've seen, including gyms and fitness centers, being most relevant to condominiums. These measures that were put in place in these hotspots were to be temporary in nature and were only to last until November 7. The question is what happens next? What happens after November 7? That's this Saturday. The answer to that is that we're going to be moving to the new colour coding system. So you'll see that on the next slide there. Again, everything I'm about to say is the kind of proposed system that has been put forward, and it's not quite official yet. But I expect that if there are any changes that are made to what's been proposed they'll be minor. So I think we can probably rely on this to be pretty close if not exactly on with what the official restrictions end up being. What we can see here is that now how it's going to work is that different public health unit regions are going to be classified by colour depending on the severity of the situation in that area. The green being the broadest allowance of Stage 3 activities. So pretty much the restrictions being quite limited. Yellow being more enhanced targeted enforcement. There'll be fines and different education mechanisms that'll be put in place to make sure that the measures to protect everyone's health are being followed. The orange is the kind of more enhanced measures. These are restrictions and enforcement without full closure. This is what the hotspots I identified earlier are in now is orange and we'll get to that in a second. Then beyond orange are going to be the red zones, which are more severe restrictions. Before the wide scale massive closures and that wide scale closure and lockdown is the gray zone, which hopefully we don't have to enter into again. But time will tell.
Rod: A fact for you, Graeme.
Graeme: I love fun facts.
Rod: Code gray, I'm being told in Ontario hospitals, is the code to announce a system or infrastructure failure.
Graeme: Oooo.
Rod: So this is serious stuff when you get into gray. It's not that they ran out of colour.
Graeme: No. Everything has a purpose. Right now what we can see, if you just go back to that slide quickly, the one you were just on.
Rod: I'm not sure I know how to do that. Okay, there it is.
Graeme: Okay. So as you can see in this slide this is breaking down which health units are currently in which zone. So as we can see in the orange, most restrictive, that any Ontario health units are in right now. We've got Eastern Ontario, Ottawa, Peel and Toronto and York. Then in the yellow we've got Brant, Hamilton, Durham and Halton and everybody else is in green. So congratulations to everybody else. Hopefully the rest of us are able to work our way to you shortly. So we can just move forward now. What we can do now is go into what these measures mean for particular businesses or activities that are more relevant to condominiums. We can make available on the condoadvisor website the link to the full description of all of these measures and how they apply to condominiums and beyond. So we'll be able to make that available for you too. But for the purposes of this webinar we're just going to focus on the highlights for condos and I think it's no surprise to anyone that one of the most relevant topics on this front is gyms. For those of us who are in the orange setting, how the restrictions work are that if you're in orange all the restrictions from yellow and green apply to you, and so do the orange ones. And similarly if you were to move to red you would continue with all of the restrictions from behind and whatever the new red restrictions are. For those of us in orange, which are currently the most restricted health units in Ontario.
Rod: Toronto, Peel, Ottawa, Eastern Ontario.
Graeme: Yeah. Yeah. So the gym restrictions right now are there have to be 50 people maximum in the facility. All patrons have to be screened and provide their contact information. You need an appointment to attend. Masks are going to be required except when you're exercising. You're only going to be allowed to be in there for 60 minutes at a time. There can't be any spectators there except for parents or guardians with children. There has to be 3 meters of spacing between patrons when there's fitness classes or machines being used. Indoor programs have to be limited to 10 people. The music has to be quiet. I think the thought there is to stop people from shouting and spreading the virus more. There has to be a safety plan available upon request. The main point of going over all these is because as we can see there's more to it than just simply requiring masks or requiring extra cleaning and calling it a day. This is the bare minimum that the Province has set out for gyms with professional staff there all the time to make sure that these things area being enforced. The question's going to be for condominiums, and it's the kind of mantra that we've repeated on this webinar several times is, just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should. I think Jason's going to talk about the things to keep in mind if you are going to open your amenities. But something to always remember in the back of your head is just because you can do the bare minimum of what the government is mandating for professional gyms doesn't necessarily mean that it's safe to open your gym. Again, that's something that we're going to get into more with Jason. But moving forward the other item that the government has provided us an update on, that was more relevant to condominiums, were the coding for meeting spaces. So if you can go to the next slide.
Rod: Okay.
Graeme: There's the list of everything I listed for the orange area gyms.
Rod: That's the slide you get mon ami. After that we move forward.
Graeme: Oh, that's it?
Rod: You done?
Graeme: Well, I can tell you then if you want to hear about meeting spaces, quickly, the limit for meeting spaces for public gatherings is now 50 people maximum inside, if you're in an orange restricted area, the ones we said before. The restrictions on these are that the meetings can't go past 10:00pm. There can be no booze after 9:00pm so watch out for that. In these gatherings there can only be
Rod: So your AGMs have to be DayGMs then if you want booze.
Graeme: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean they can be night GMs too as long as you're punctual. There can be only 4 people maximum sitting together at these events and, again, all patrons have to be screened and provide contact information and safety plans have to be available upon request.
Rod: And that ties into the next topic. I'm going to turn to you, Jason. Those safety plans. It's almost as if they finally sort of started to listen to you, Jason. Document, document, document and make sure that you leave a trace and a document is good to make a plan and it's good to leave a trace. I'm going to turn to you, Jason, and folks at home, believe it or not. Jason actually is about to share with you one of those plans. For free. That's the door prize for being here today. So, Jason, I'm going to put some excerpts of these plans and maybe you can tell us how they work and what do you do with them. How does that work exactly?
Jason: Listen, we've been saying since day 1 that plans are going to be required because they all revolve around the same kind of benchmarks, if you will, and all of the requirements you're seeing that Graeme just mentioned on all the different colour codes, this two page document was developed over about a two and half hour period, with the board of directors and the building manager, and we identified and put a plan in place to open a single amenity. This two page document addresses a couple of different things. So what we did was, first of all, we reviewed demographics of the building. We reviewed what's the objectives to reopen the amenity and then we reviewed a bunch of things that we had to do to safely open that amenity. Number one, we wanted to document in this two page document what we're doing for building staff. Well, we've communicated the risk to all building staff. We've communicated the risk to all building residents. Building service providers, we instituted a bunch of rules and requirements for them. Then the board communicated all those rules and requirements. They implemented online booking and screening for use of the outdoor amenity. They did that through building ... You can do that through any system that you'd like. But it allows you to have a two page document that allows you, and your board and your building manager, to kind of review all the things that you should be doing as a due diligent building manager, reopen these. Now some of the assessments, or some of the reopening protocols, do you have another page?
Rod: Yeah, I do. There it is. Is that it?
Jason: Yeah. I mean we had to consider reopening times. We had to consider when are we cleaning. We had to identify what the occupancy load is of the amenity in order to identify what is 25% of that occupancy load. We had to identify how the residents are going to register to use it. What are the amount of time they're allowed to use it so we can be fair to everybody else. Then we had to think about how we're going to clean the washroom. Then the board says, "Well, we wanted a waiver included in this." Then we had to attach how are we going to clean it and what are we going to clean. We listed this. We, in fact, added all of the touch points that we're going to complete and clean including the time schedules. Why is this important? Well, this two page document, if you can go to the next page. This two page document, once it's done and we had to identify all the new condo terrace amenity rules. There was almost 13 new rules implemented or adjusted.
Rod: That section about the rules, actually, I find it interesting. It's sort of integrated the screening questions as well.
Jason: Absolutely. You're no longer allowed to use our amenities anymore if you have contravened or if you can't comply with the public health screenings. So, we've integrated absolutely everything in a two page document, and why I like this is, is because once everybody agrees on it, the board signs it and they post it at the front entrance to the amenity and they send a copy to every single resident in the building. Why is this important? Number one, the feedback we've received from this due diligent corporation was that everybody loved it and they were astonished that they were only cleaning those touchpoints 3 times a day. Allowing residents to make informed decisions on whether they're going to touch those or whether they're going to use hand sanitizer themselves and carry it in their pocket. The other thing we did was we had an emergency plan in the event that we identify an outbreak. What's the board going to do and how are they going to communicate that to residents? Then finally, we took their floor plan and actually plotted out where we're going to put the signage, required by public health. We are we going to put the social distancing markers? Where are we going to put the chairs? We are we going to put the barbeques? So we structured it all in a three page document that is now approved by the board and it can be shared. On average this takes no more than about 4 to 5 hours per room.
Rod: That's fantastic and I think you were telling us yesterday that some people, some corporations, actually have a plan. They just haven't put it down on paper. When you start digging you realize that they got the good reactions, the good reflexes, but it's all about documenting it and putting it together and formalizing it.
Jason: Well said, Rod. I guarantee you if you were go to and spend 2 hours of your email, searching all these communications, searching all these new rules you've implemented, dropping it into a two page Word document, you've already got your program made. And you've got your program already developed.
Rod: Wonderful. So I've actually put the link to the National Life Safety Group for people at home. If you are looking for Jason you can find that. Now that brings me to the next topic, David. I hear a lot of directors and managers getting a bit nervous. There's all these rules. The rules are changing. The colours are changing and 100% of your owners want all the amenities open and 100% of your owners want them all closed because they're afraid they're going to catch COVID. So we're stuck in the middle of all of that and a lot of people are getting nervous. They fear that maybe they'll drop the ball and maybe they're exposing themselves. What can you tell us about that.
David: For sure. That's a large chunk of our practice is helping with the risk management and with trying to foresee future liability issues. So recently the Provincial Government kind of floated this trial balloon a few months ago about providing some sort of limited liability waiver, essentially, to certain industry groups and it was discussed for a while and a lot of different sort of lobbying efforts certainly got in there. In October they put forward Bill-218, the Supporting Ontario's Recovery Act, and if passed what this does is essentially provides a good faith effort exception to liability. So if any person of those who are listed here, and I'll get to it on the next slide, makes a good faith effort to act in accordance with the public health guidance, or with any law or regulation relating to COVID, and does not act to the degree of gross negligence, so in law we have regular negligence and gross negligence, normally the standard of law is just negligence so this almost raises it to a higher level, then they would benefited from that protection. More specifically, the legislation talks of health care workers, so that makes sense for our health professionals who are really kind of doing this on the fly, for frontline workers, a whole list of people but what's important for us here is that non-profit organizations, which we believe would cover condo corps and its directors, so again the directors would benefit from this almost barrier to legal liability by making good faith efforts to act in accordance with public health guidance and laws and those who are trying to kind of be cute and work around the rules and try and find exceptions and be a little creative and loopholes, you're likely not to benefit from that protection, because that would likely be viewed as a not good faith effort to act in accordance with the guidelines. So that really does kind of set the framework for directors and their decision making when they're trying to make risk assessment decisions for opening up amenities and really for just dealing with compliance issues with the owners as well. This is the framework we should be thinking of.
Rod: Right and if this legislation is adopted, in fact, it's going to offer a tremendous level of protection in a sense that a lawsuit would actually be a non-starter and would not be able to continue. But as you said, David, you need to put forward a good faith effort to comply with these regulations. This is, of course, in addition to the protection already in place under the Condominium Act for directors to act honestly, in good faith, diligently and so on and so forth. An additional level of protection. That's good to hear. Am I out of slides already? What's the next topic? Oh my goodness. Well, okay. Well, fear not folks at home.
Graeme: We'll do it live.
Rod: We'll do it live. We're going to talk about virtual AGMs and electronic voting. We wanted to cover that because so far last spring we were talking about this, the virtual AGMs. We were talking about electronic voting. We were talking a bit in the future kind of thing. It was almost like a Star Trek episode. Like what it's going to be? What are we building? Right? But now we're right in the swing of things. There's been tons of AGMs leading up to October 22 which was the deadline to hold your AGM if it had been postponed due to the pandemic and now we're in the second sort of wave of AGMs leading to the November 22 deadline which is the deadline to hold your AGM. If your AGM would have otherwise fell within the last 30 days after the end of the pandemic. All this to say that there's a big jam pack. All the AGMs are like sort of being held right now and a lot of people are sometimes timidly attempting the virtual format. Other people embrace it. Having done quite a few, and by a few I mean a ton, having done a ton of them now every one of them makes me think about something else. Same with the two twins. I mean after every one of them we talk to each other, we go, "Oh gee. Have you thought of that?" So we sort of need to rethink a bit maybe how we do things. So as part of this presentation here we're going to go over various topics; notices, proxies, registration, types of meeting. But I also wanted all my friends around the table to have a critical discussion about these things because in the past we've been doing things the same way because that's how they've been done and we've just kept repeating that. So now we're attempting to adapt this past method of operation into this new world and maybe we don't need to keep all of the dust and all of the crap that we had in the old world. Maybe we don't need to bring all of that into this new format. I'm not sure so we'll see what our leaders have to say about that. I'm going to first turn to Denise and Josee for the first topic. The first topic's going to be about notices. 3 years ago you were doing your notices the old way which was everybody was making their own and then in 2017 notices were formalized. We came forward with the preliminary notice, 35 days before. The general notice, 15 days before and then there we are, suddenly we turn into virtual mode. Are people adapting their forms and how so? So maybe I'll start with you, Denise, what kind of problems are you encountering with notices?
Denise: Well, I always thought that, even before virtual meetings, a lot of these notice packages that condominium corporations had, and a lot had to do with the management companies, were just way too large. There was too much information. Owners don't read them. But now that we've gone the virtual way it's a real opportunity for management companies to now re-do their entire packages. I actually did a blog post on what are the essential items in a notice package. What I am finding is if our clients give us a notice package to review there's a lot of errors. I think it's because they're using the old package without making it virtual. So now it's a virtual meeting but it takes more than just putting a virtual meeting notation in it. You have to think about registration. There's no more, depending on which service provider that you use. it's not a half an hour before the meeting that you register. It could be 2 weeks ahead of time. So those are the items that you have to look at and also how do you handle proxies? Again, depending on how you're doing your meeting, you have to think about registration of proxies. Are they handled, directed, undirected, when do you register them? Something to really think about.
Rod: Right, right, right. In fact I think that even the proxy you may want to ask yourself the question of whether or not you want to even put one in the package. Maybe proxies are a creature of the past. Maybe we don't want them in this new world. I'm not sure. Well, maybe we never wanted them to begin with but that's a different story.
Denise: That's a great point, Rod, because a lot of managers say, "Don't you have to put a proxy in your package?" No, you don't. It's not in the Condominium Act. You have to accept a proxy but you do not have to put in your package.
Rod: Right. Now I'm going to turn to Josee but in the meantime, Denise, if you want to put in the chat line the link to your blog, about what to include, because I was looking for it but I couldn't quite find it. I was doing two things at once. So, Josee, what's your experience? Are corporations embracing virtual meetings and, if so, what kind of sort of changes do you have to sort of implement, mainly with respect to notices.
Josee: Yeah, I do think that for the most part people are embracing the concept. Some of them are tentative, for sure. People who are more used to the social aspect of an AGM, enjoyed coming to the venue, either to the party room or to the meeting hall where it was being held. That kind of stuff is gone but for the most part it seems to be going well. What I found is you have to, and it speaks to what Denise was saying, the manager's kneejerk reaction when you've been somewhere for several years is to pull out the package from last year, change the dates, make sure the venues in the same location and off you go. You add your reports. Change your directors and away you go. You can't do that this year. It's not the same package at all. The notices are different. The information is different. Certainly there's a lot of stuff that used to be in the package that has to be there now. You have to comfort your owners and let them know that they will be able to register, and how they're going to register, and where that link is going to come from and how they're going to vote. All that information, you have to kind of manage expectations and give them this information, at least this year in a way that is more fulsome that you might in the future. Definitely I think there's still a use for proxies. But gone are the days where you want to staple that proxy as the last page of your package so that they can tear it off and hand it in. You don't want to do that. If you make it that easy to hand in a proxy they certainly will. If it's between handing in a physical proxy, that they understand, and the new world of registering online and doing that kind of stuff, they're not going to. So you're shooting yourself in the foot if you make the proxy too easy to access.
Rod: Right.
Josee: But I do think you do have to have it where there's an honest to goodness need and the inability for this person to participate, online or by telephone, for a variety of reasons.
Rod: Right. You raise a very good point that if you make it too easy for people to go back to their old ways nobody will come and transition to the new way. No one will do it. So you kind of have to tempt them a bit. So, for instance, something that I've seen you've done recently is when somebody has a kneejerk reaction, asks you for a proxy, you sort of tempted them with the electronic ballot first. Give it a try and you kind of cajole them and explain it to them and, more often than not, I would suspect that they would find the ballot far easier than the proxy.
Josee: It's an educational process. If you coach them through it without telling them how to fill out the ballot, of course, but if you help them register and they become more secure and more confident in their skill to do that, then the need for the proxy kind of eases.
Rod: Right, right, right. Something else that you've done that I find works very well is that you don't just limit your communication to the prelim and the general notice that either comes out through a service provider, you actually between these and leading up to the AGM, I've seen you send emails where you sort of get the troops all excited about it. You remind them about the meeting. You send them again that link to register, if there's a link, because the link is otherwise lost in the paperwork. You usually get a good turnout when you do that. I've noticed that.
Josee: I do. Well, if you've read my blog you know I always sign off as the den mother, and I honestly am the den mother for all of my owners, and I find it helpful if you send a reminder. People will get an email, they'll look at it, they'll go, "Yes, I'll do that this evening.", you set it aside, 27 other things come in, you forget about that. So you have to remind them. Keep making the information easy to find. If you can tell them to go back in an email from 20 days ago they're not going to find it. Give it to them again. Make sure they have the link. Tell them how they're doing. Tell them if you're doing well for quorum. Let them know. They want to be involved. They want to know this stuff. Make the information available.
Rod: Right, right, right. I realize, without wanting it, that we sort of are stealing David's and Katherine's thunder, with respect to the proxies. They were the ones to cover that in my notes and I can see David was just happy because we're dealing with it.
David: From my experience, I'll just one additional thought is that people are concerned about the loss of proxy because they feel it's disenfranchising them somehow. But when you explain, in my experience, that they're getting an electronic ballot in advance, they're voting, they get their vote locked in and they can actually pass that vote. They don't have to rely on someone else to cast a vote for them. Most of these substantive votes that are taking place on director elections or on passing of bylaws are being done by these advanced electronic votes. So the only thing that's happening at meetings for other votes are these procedural motions, the auditor and minutes and whatever, and we do that by the raise of hand on Zoom. It's really just an additional tool to empower owners to able to vote themselves.
Rod: Right, right. Katherine, maybe 10 days ago or so, the CAO actually issued a guide. I don't know if you were going to be talking about that or not. I don't want to put you on the spot, but the CAO actually addresses ways of regulating the proxies, because I guess in the old days somebody would show up at your registration desk with a hockey bag full of proxies. You'd be lucky if they did it 40 minutes ahead of time. They usually just spring it on you 2 minutes before the AGM. How do you ensure that your proxies are received in time, processed in time and so on and so forth? Have you changed your approach slightly?
Katherine: We have changed our approach slightly. As Josee had mentioned there will be the occasion where a paper proxy is required for some kind of a reason. In that case you want to be very clear from the get go that proxies and anything paper related needs to be processed, and typically the day before the meeting comes to be called, and that way you can ensure that they can be vetted properly, received properly, and the votes that are included on the paper form can be counted properly. One of the best experiences that I had a very large community in my portfolio, high school students still made volunteer hours in order to complete their diploma, and a couple of those kids volunteered to be assisticants, if you will, and help anybody who had trouble with the electronic ballots, voting, processes. It was frankly too large of a corporation to perhaps facilitate that within the office and that was a beautiful way for the community to get to know one another as well. That's another tip. You might be able to farm out a little bit of that process. The kids these days are super keen and very quick with that kind of technology and that worked out very well for us.
Rod: Okay. I'm going to talk about the kids these days and I'm going to talk about that in a minute because I find that what we've done, maybe unwillingly, what has happened with the electronic voting is that we've actually kind of gamified the process. It may have changed who shows up or who participates at the meeting, because you will have people now that may have been less interested in participating in the AGM with gray haired directors, but now look at that. They go online. It's on their phone. They press buttons. They submit. There's a dancing monkey that sort of claps their hands saying that your vote is in. So it may actually sort of have changed who participates. Not so much excluded the older generation, and I hate that I keep hearing, I see it in the chat. "Oh, this condo is a senior condo. We need proxies." I hate to limit it on age. I don't necessarily think that we're excluding, I'll call it the old guard, but I think we're including, maybe more so, the next generation who couldn't be bothered to show up at the AGM. I don't know. Turning to Josee and Graeme now about registration and specifically the challenges you may encounter when you have multi-unit owners, or when you have joint owners of a same unit. Well, let's break it with this. Let's talk about this. Graeme, I'm going to start with you. What kind of challenge do you encounter, do you feel we encounter when we're dealing with multi-unit owners or joint owners, if we're going to do vote electronically?
Graeme: If we're going to do the electronic vote, and I think as kind of a preface to what I'll say, I think these are challenges that were still experienced in normal times, expect that I think with the electronic voting and the kind of, I don't want to say overhaul, but kind of relook at the voting system we had in place that we're experiencing now, it's causing people to really double check and make sure that things are being done correctly. As you pointed out, some problems that you can run into are how can we make sure that if I own three units, that I get three votes in this electronic vote? Or similarly, if Josee and I both own a unit, it's not fair if we both tune into a virtual meeting and both vote because then our unit would have got two votes. Things like this and owners being in arrears, and that preventing them from voting, that all I think it's kind of like Josee said. It just requires that this year for AGMs we have to put a little more work in the front end to make sure that everything is more organized in advance, so that we can know before we send out notices, and before we sent out ballots, who's going to get how many ballots, where it's going to be sent to and whether or not they're eligible to vote. These are all things that are easy to deal with if you've got the organization in place. But it just requires you to kind of stop and before the kneejerk reaction of just sending out the notice, business as usual, it's like Josee said, exactly. You just need to kind of stop and pause and make sure that all the ducks are in a row this year, especially, because it's so new to everyone.
Rod: Right. Before I leave that topic, for usual I want to talk about owners in arrears and so on, but, Denise, what's your take on that?
Denise: I was just going to say I can speak to the systems that I know, and I know CondoVoter, and it's quite straightforward. A lot depends on the management's organization of the unit list and that unit list will list all the owners and their email addresses, if they have them, and the number of units that they own and whether they're an owner, occupant or whether they're in arrears. That is all entered into the system and, again, if somebody's in arrears they will not be able to vote electronically. If they pay 2 days before the meeting then their electronic ballot will be released and they could vote. If they own five units they will have a weighted ballot and when they click on their ballot, and I'm only speaking to the system that I know, it will indicate which units they own and they'll get a receipt and it will say you've just cast your vote for five units. So I think that's already in the systems that I've seen and it works very well. I don't see any issue. If you're doing it yourself, like coming to a meeting and doing the show of hands, that's a different situation. But if you're doing an electronic vote it's already taken care of in the system.
Rod: That's a good point to make is if you're using a service provider, like CondoVoter or others, hopefully if we provide you good information you're able to set it all up for us, and that's great. The issue is more, I'm thinking of those, because I'm hearing now of people doing these meetings on Zoom or, I don't know if some people are doing it on TikTok, I'm not sure, but it's more people that do it themselves that may be a problem. So, Josee, how do you sort of organize that information going forward?
Josee: I think it's important to communicate with the meeting moderator, and with the platforms that you're using, to make sure that you're going to provide the information in a way that they can use. There's really no sense in giving them a list in Word if that's not what they're going to be using. Generally I'm seeing the lists are required in Excel, to make sure that you have current information and proper information. Of course, if you're organized and you're already up to date on that kind of stuff, and you should be, it makes the process simpler. But you do have to watch out for units that are transacting during that period. I do have lists that change. People constantly change email addresses, right? They have two or three email addresses. They've given you one. They've cancelled it or you had their work email address and now they're not at work because it's pandemic. So they want to use a different one and they've not told you. So all that kind of stuff are the little bugaboos that are going to come and screw up your list a little bit. You have to make sure that you have the best information you can find to give to your service provider. Make sure that your arrears are up to date and be aware that, of course if there's a change in that arrears, if the person provides the information, you're going to have to be able to, in quick order, confirm with the service provider that this person may now vote. So really it comes down to good management, good practices and being organized.
Rod: Right, right. Gordon, we're going to talk about the scrutineers in a minute. I see the question on the chat. So, very quickly, I want to talk about hybrid meetings. The unicorn that everybody talks about and I think, Denise, you've spotted one actually. I think you participated.
Denise: Well, yes. So one I knew about and one I didn't know about. So nothing worse when you come to a meeting and all of a sudden you didn't realize that it was a hybrid meeting. Disastrous. If you want to do a hybrid meeting, first of all, it's going to be more expensive then just doing virtual meeting. Because now you really have a virtual meeting and then you have an in person meeting. The trick to making these work really well, and one that I saw was really well done, it was at a hall. They had top of the line AV equipment. So you've got to go to the expense of setting it up and really, what works, is if you have one person at the in person meeting, with the one computer, everybody else should be virtual except owners that may want to attend the meeting. If owners attend the meeting you need to have a good microphone system. But it's very important that you do not have like the disastrous one that I saw. Five people sitting in one room with one computer, or the ones that try to bring in their computers, the sound was terrible. People couldn't see hand raises. Those that were in front of the computer, the five different people, were raising their hands, making motions. So you really have to be very organized and think about going to the expense of having a hybrid meeting.
Rod: Right. Katherine, have you sort of had to deal with hybrid meetings? I think yesterday we were talking about how there's a risk of really having two meetings in parallels and really getting two disappointed crowds, both thinking that the other one's getting
Katherine: A better shake out of the deal and I think that's the reality of what's going to happen. As Denise had mentioned you won't be able to see hand raises. You won't be able to hear conversations appropriately. There'll be a bit of a battle, folks who can't see the people in the room who are waiting to answer questions, or ask questions and the folks are online trying to ask or answer questions. Some of the chat discussions have already voiced the fact that for the very few people truly cannot attend a Zoom meeting or a virtual meeting, AGM wise, they can connect by telephone and participate using a paper proxy. Perhaps they can team up with another owner or resident so that they can share a little bit of screen time and participate that way as well. The benefit of having everybody in the same virtual room is the fact that you can demonstrate, transparently, that you are attending to a meeting. Elsewise I think you end up with a polarization where you have two groups who are sharing the condominium and not sharing the meeting of important information.
Rod: Right, right, right. Okay. We're running out of time here. Very quickly, a third kind of meeting and I'm just going to mention it, is our proxy meetings. I know that for a while, and last spring, there was some discussion, can you have a purely solely proxy meeting? I think now what's accepted is that if you have a non-contentious meeting with a one ticket item, if all we're going to do is vote on the electronic bylaw for instance, why not do it by proxy meeting? Where you're sending the notices but you're not going to be bothered with a room, or a virtual room, this is the question we have for you, folks. This is the bylaw to vote on. Yes or no, do you want to vote this or that way? The CAO guide that came out about 10 days ago actually, specifically, addresses that and says, "Well, that may be actually a way of addressing simple one ticket items." Let me just see here.
Denise: Sorry, Rod, can I just mention something about that proxy. Think about nominations from the floor. I think that's why you don't want to do a proxy only meeting.
Rod: For an AGM.
Denise: For an AGM.
Rod: Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. I think you want to keep proxy meetings for the one ticket item that's non-contentious, as I said. I think the best example for that is if you're going to adopt a virtual meeting bylaw. There's the question. Here's the question, folks. Vote on it. Send us your proxies and that's it. We actually do it online. We have an online proxy for that sole purpose. So people just go in. They fill in their proxy. They press submit and then that's it. I think it's a quick and easy way to get to the finish line. Now, I want to talk quickly before we run out of time, about controlling the meetings. There's various ways. I was speaking to a good friend of mine here in Ottawa, who's talking about sort of the downside of the virtual meeting, which is it stems from the anonymity behind the participants. Joe Shmoe says they're from unit 1405 and then they go and the dump all sort of blisters on the board, well nobody really know who Joe Shmoe from 1405 is, and they may be more verbose now that they're sort of hiding behind their keyboard kind of thing. Something else that was brought up, and I think it makes a lot of sense is, as a board you're losing the visual support that you may have had otherwise when you're sort of under attack suddenly, for whatever reason, and in real life you'd be able to look around and see, okay, everybody's rolling their eyes so I sort of have their support and maybe I'll try to steer the conversation. So how do we control these meetings? When to mute and not to mute? David, what's your muting policy?
David: Basically my policy is you want to run it like Kristen Welker ran her debate and not how Chris Wallace ran his debate. The way I've been doing it, actually for the most part, its been going quite well. First, you're asking for people to raise their hands. That creates the same queue as you'd normally have in an in person meeting. Everyone sees the hand raised. You see you're in line. You unmute the person. They state their name and unit number. They ask their question. You mute them. You let whoever's going to answer, be it for the board or management, or if it's a legal question, answer the question. You then unmute the person again and say, "I hope that answered your question. Is there a follow up?" If there's a simple answer you just let it go and you get one follow up and then you mute them again and you say either, "The questions been answered. Thank you very much. We're going to move onto the next one." and that kind of keeps it moving. If that person then is going to raise their hand again, so be it, but they'll end up at the back of the line and more often than not, there hand will go down when they get bored of the meeting, anyway.
Rod: Okay. Denise, do you approach it differently or is that sort of your approach as well?
Denise: That is my exact approach although I thought yesterday David's approach was different. Or somebody said you should not mute the owner after they ask the question.
David: I changed my mind.
Denise: You changed your mind. Okay, I thought it was David.
David: I changed my mind because I had an AGM and it worked out not so great because the person kept interrupting.
Denise: Yeah, but the problem is that we know that owners being muted, they don't like it, and then what you end up seeing is they're chatting away, even though we say you cannot chat the chat is still there and they're chatting about you on mute. You muted me and I want to say my additional question. I agree that it works really well. The meeting flows smoothly and you get through the business within the 2 hour period.
Rod: Right. The way I do it, I actually leave their mic on for the duration of the question and the answer. In most cases, when you go back to them and say, "Okay, Sandra, does that answer your question?" Well, you may get a yes or a no but then they get that rebuttal but I kind of like to leave it open. For people to get a sense that they're not being sort of controlled and really limitized. That's how I do it and until it doesn't work well, I guess. So that maybe is a different approach. What goes in the chat and what doesn't go in the chat, Katherine?
Katherine: It's my preference to keep the chat and keep the question and answer area very strictly for technical issues. I kind of make that announcement to find the chair, or ask the moderator to do so, or the solicitor if I'm not actually chairing the meeting or in charge. What that does is two things, is it makes it very obvious how the moderator can assist somebody who's having technical issues and make a direct line there. The second thing that it does is that it ensures that everybody is attending to the single conversation that's happening. That's the business of the Annual General Meeting. The final thing that it does, is it does ensure that we are being fair and equitable to everybody who wants to raise a hand and a voice a question. They are all queued up and able to be taken in turn. Some people will, and for whatever reason, don't have a great microphone or something of that nature, throw something into the question and answer period and what we can do is wait until all the hands have gone away and then voice that question for that person. I try to be very diligent in that regard. It keeps everything on record in the formal part of the meeting and it also removes some of the distractions.
Rod: Sure. Graeme, we're running out of time so I'm going to give you my piece on the camera control. So you're on. So how do you deal with the camera? Do you have all the owners shown all at once? Do you promote to the candidates in such a way that they can be seen? Do you turn the cameras on for the people who ask questions? How do you do it?
Graeme: First of all, can you hear me okay? My headphones died in the middle of that.
Rod: Yup.
Graeme: Okay, great. How I do deal with the camera, and I think how most virtual AGMs are running, is that the owners will all be able to see the panelists, your chair, your manager, the board members, the auditor and the panelists won't be able to see or hear the owners for the most part. I think what's important is at the beginning of the meeting to explain to everyone, "Hi. Welcome to your AGM. Right now you can see us and you can hear us. We can't see you or hear you. That's normal. That's okay right now. There are going to be some periods during this AGM, periodically, where you are going to be able to raise your hand, and we'll be able to unmute you, and you'll be able to ask your question and be heard." Then similarly, for the purposes of camera, if for example it's an election and people are running from the floor, or there's owners who are running who aren't necessarily on the panel, I tend to think it's fair to allow them access to share their camera, if they want to, to give their speech. Just because if they're running against people who are already on the panel the panelists might have a bit of an edge if they can share their face and the owners can't. Again, I leave that choice up to the owners. But it is possible, at least with the Zoom platform, to give attendees the ability to share their camera for a period of time and then you can send them back to the attendees list. But, again, that's at the discretion of the owners. Part of the joy of virtual meetings is that you can wear your sweatpants to the meeting. So it may be that they don't want to necessarily share their face but I like to make sure that they at least have that option. I think the most important thing, and it just kind of goes to my kind of philosophy about these meetings as a whole, is that we try our best to replicate the in person experience and just make sure we can do whatever we can to make it as fair and equal for everyone as possible.
Rod: Right. Absolutely. We are really running out of time but that reminds me of Josee, this morning we got an email from someone who couldn't understand why we weren't answering his questions when he was raising his hand. The poor guy was actually physically raising his hand in front of his computer. He was speaking to the computer and walking around with his computer because he thought it was a signal problem. The reality is that he wasn't raising his hand virtually. So you've got to make it quite clear. I guess that's the kind of person that maybe speaks to the newscasts kind of thing. They think there's two people having a discussion. I'm not sure. We're running out of time. Denise, I absolutely want to talk about recording.
Denise: Oh, do you? Because I was going to say there's somebody waiting for an answer on scrutineers. So you may want to answer that.
Rod: Yeah. Yup. That's the last two topics we're going to deal with.
Denise: Okay. So recordings. Do we want to record?
Rod: Right. Do we want to record and if you record what do you do with this recording? Does it become a record of the corporation? How long do you keep it? Maybe in 25 seconds, Denise.
Denise: Okay. Well what we're saying is, as a default, I think you'll find most service providers will record your meeting. You do not have to have it recorded. In fact, some clients have said, "We don't want it recorded." If you record it what I'm suggesting is that you say it's for the purposes of the minutes, the accuracy of the minutes. The minute taker. Once the minutes are drafted that the recording will be destroyed. I know, Rod, you suggested doing a motion. I think as soon as you ask the owners for a motion they're not going to approve the motion to destroy the recording. They'll want the recording and then you get into the issue as to whether it's record or not. But I want it to be a record. I don't think it should be a record. It never has been a record. So let's just deal with it that way.
Rod: Right, right, right. Just for the record, speaking of record, I wasn't suggesting we should ask for a motion. Somebody brought that up and I agree with you. In fact, if you ask for the motion you're not going to get the answer you want. So I think, in my view, should not be treated as a record and if you do treat it as a record, then you have to think of retention. You have to think of privacy issues. You have to think of all sorts of issues because people are going to want to watch that. Okay, so that's for that. The question about scrutineers. That's a good question. Graeme, that was yours I think.
Graeme: Yeah. I'll just, for the sake of time, give the quick answer. No, you don't need scrutineers. That's one of the many things that we're seeing, as we were talking about before, the re-evaluation of a lot of stuff we've been doing and saying to ourselves, "I wonder why we've been doing that for so long." Scrutineers are an example of that in that they're a time held tradition that makes sense when you're dealing with a whole lot of paper votes. I think it does make sense to have that. But there's nowhere in the Condominium Act, or its regulations, where that is required and for the purposes of online voting, given that if you've got a service provider, or even not, given that the votes are going to be tabulated by the person behind the curtain on the other end of the computer, in that circumstance scrutineers aren't really required. To all the owners out there who are saying, "But, Graeme, hold on. You don't know my condo. I don't trust this. I don't like this." The answer to that is that you can always request to see the ballots or the proxies, for the time period that they are still available, by putting in a records request for that. It's not as though you are left railroaded and without any options but the formal requirement for a scrutineer doesn't actually exist at law.
Rod: Right. Okay, wonderful. So we're running out of time. This was a lot of fun actually. I'm going to go around the table as I usually do to try to see if you have any parting words. Katherine Gow, from Crossbridge, speaking on behalf of ACMO, thank you so much for joining us again. You're one of the originals.
Katherine: Always a pleasure. A lot of extra patience and I think patience is wearing thin with all of us as COVID continues and it will continue for a good long time. Try to put on the best hat of thinking of the best of intentions coming from the other party because we're all a little short tempered these days.
Rod: Right. Denise Lash, of Lash Condo Law. Any parting words?
Denise: Well, I just want to say preparation. What I'm seeing is these meetings will go really smoothly if you're prepared. That may mean getting a lawyer to chair your meeting or somebody who's experienced. Seeing how it's done and then you take over next year.
Rod: Right. Wonderful. Graeme MacPherson of Gowling WLG, piece of advice for your next virtual AGM?
Graeme: Yeah, if you are trepidatious about this, and Denise kind of beat me to the punch there, but keep an open mind about it and if it's something that you don't know if it's going to work, or if it seems intimidating and like a lot of work, maybe this is the year to hire some help to do it. If you do it and see that, "Wow, that was actually pretty smooth. What did the hell did we pay this guy for?" then you can do it again yourself next year. I guess my advice would be keep an open mind to it because they really do work and I think you'll be surprised at how smoothly they go.
Rod: Wonderful. Thank you so much. David Plotkin, Gowling WLG, are condo twin. Advice for your next virtual AGM?
David: Yeah, keep an open mind, on the same theme and I'll slightly push back on Rod's point earlier. On behalf of the millennial generation, more attendance and participation in the democratic process is a good thing, on the whole. If you happen to have some misbehaving younger people that doesn't mean that the voices of the old guard are being drowned out. So just go with the flow and more attendance and participation is, on a whole, a good thing.
Rod: Count every vote. Josee Deslongchamps, DES Services, the senior manager in Ottawa. Advice for your next virtual AGM?
Josee: Absolutely. As a manager, stay organized, stay on top of stuff, communicate with people. They need your help. Cut them a ton of slack. They're not asking questions to make you squirrely or make you batty. They need your help. They don't know how. Teach them how. It's time well invested. If you show them how to do things this year you won't have to do it again next year. Keep our sense of humour. It's an odd time but do try to keep your sense of humour and cut yourself some slack.
Rod: I don't want to put you on the spot, Josee, but I've put a link to your blog in the chat box and I know that you're expanding so, people out there, if you're looking for a good property manager in Ottawa, that's something, there may be a window of opportunity here. Thank you very much, Josee. Jason, I almost forgot you, Jason. Parting words, Jason.
Jason: Yeah, my parting words are we've spoken due diligence for the last several months and most of us have already implemented a lot of that due diligence back in March. One simple step everybody can do is re-review what you've done in March and just make sure it's still applicable. That would be on the of the most basic single steps that I would recommend that should be done in the next 7 days.
Rod: Thank you so much, Jason. Okay, folks, another piece of public service announcement. In the weeks leading to Remembrance Day and normally you'd get to see our veterans at your corner shop, at your coffee shop, and you'd be able to give them a couple of toonies and get a poppy in exchange, it's more difficult for them this year to do that. So I encourage all of you to go and get your virtual poppy and to promote it on your social media. You can get your virtual poppy at www.mypoppy.ca. I really encourage you to think of different ways of supporting those who are making today possible. Next month, I said next week earlier on, next month is going to be, oh, look at that. It's December 4, our next webinar. Hopefully you will join us. It's going to be the jeopardy game show. So send us your name if you want to be one of the contestants. You will have to register, obviously, you can find more information about past webinars and future webinars by going to condoadvisor.ca, clicking the tab at the very top and you'll get more information about your next webinar and, as I said, I really want to see the real knowledgeable ones to come forward and to play with us next month. In the meantime, be safe everybody. Have a great evening and thank you so much for tuning in.