[MUSIC PLAYING] RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Here it is. Here's the jingle. OK. Well, good evening, everybody, and welcome to a new season, a new episode of The Condo Adviser Webinars.
Tonight the first episode of 2023, we got the whole gang back. And it's going to be a good one. My name is Rod Escayola, and I'm your condominium lawyer with Gowling WLG.
So the topic tonight is Life and Safety in Condos. And this time, though, we're going to tackle it from inside. How to make your condominium safer from within when the danger, when the risk is within your walls?
It's a very difficult topic. In light of the horrific tragedy that took place last December, which shook everybody to the core. And I have to tell you.
I've hesitated long and hard. And I thought about it for a long time whether to even cover this topic. I didn't want to monetize it.
I didn't want to oversimplify it. I didn't want to be seen as looking in the very unforgiving rearview mirror. This is not going to be an analysis of what took place. We're never going to make that better.
And so I really thought a long and hard before I decided that we would tackle it. And you'll see we haven't even blogged about that. And as I said, I don't want to simplify the situation. I don't want us to get desensitized to what took place.
And also, I don't want this to be an analysis. And it won't be an analysis of what took place just before Christmas. No one could have predicted what took place.
And I hate to say it. I don't think anybody could have prevented it. And so still, at the end of the day, it's a very important topic, and it's one that we have to tackle head on, and it's one that we haven't maybe given it all the attention that it needs.
And so for that reason, I've invited a couple of experts. You'll recognize them. In fact, about a year ago, they were here.
And so at this time, I'm going to introduce the two twins before because we actually have two sets of twins. We have, of course, David Plotkin from gowling WLG. Hi, David. How's it going?
DAVID PLOTKIN: Hey. All right. Everyone. Nice to see everyone back after the break.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: And we have, of course, the other twin Graeme MacPherson with me with gowling WLG. Hey, Graeme.
GRAEME MACPHERSON: Hi, everybody.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: OK. So that's the first set of twins. We have two more twins. And they were here about a year ago.
And so we have from the National Life and Safety Group, Jason Reid. Hi, Jason.
JASON REID: Good evening, Rod. And thanks for having me.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Thank you for coming on such short notice. And also, a recurring guest here tonight is from 3D Security Response Services. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT HILL: Hi, Rod. Hello, everybody. Thrilled to be here today.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: And so in the past, I think it's David that coined Jason Reid condo lands hockey coach, and he is the hockey coach. But Scott is the football coach, who has joined us in the past, and has done quite a few of these webinars with the condo directors group in Ottawa. So thank you everybody for being here.
Before we dive in, I guess, the usual housekeeping. So I think the chat line is open. I think Graeme has just opened it before we turn the webinar on. So feel free to comment, and interact, and share tips.
Also, keep in mind that what we are presenting tonight is there's a couple of things to keep in mind. It's based on interior legislation to the extent that we may or may not refer to legislation. It is accurate as much as possible as of February 1, 2023.
So if you watch this later on, just keep in mind that things may change. Keep in mind also that we don't have a magic formula here. We don't have a solution for every problem and we won't even claim to have.
And so if you need guidance, if you need advice, if you have a problem to tackle, you absolutely must seek the support of your professionals, of your service providers to implement solutions that work for you. And finally, I have to say that this webinar is being recorded for whatever reason.
We will post it. It usually takes me about a week to be able to post it on the Condo Adviser website. So please be patient with me.
So before I dive in, or I should have removed the slides while I was introducing the two coaches, before we dive in, I want to say this, and that's going to be the last part of the introduction, there is no magic formula. There is no easy solution. And I would hate for this webinar to be a webinar, where we just repeat the same old, well, people shouldn't harass you. And if you feel threatened, you should call the police, and keep an eye out for mental illnesses.
And I mean, this is all true. But how do we make our communities safer? And practicality, what can we do now that we see the world that we're living in?
So I'm going to start with each of you, Jason and Scott. You get one minute to answer the following three questions. And I'm going to time you.
After one minute, I'm buzzing you out because we got so much ground to cover. So why have we not talked about this before, or why don't we talk about it enough? I don't know who wants to tackle this first. If it's going to be, let's say maybe Jason.
JASON REID: Yeah, absolutely. I think we really haven't seen injuries or fatalities within the workplace, within the condominium environment previously. And I think that's a major driving factor of why this discussion hasn't happened.
However, with one caveat, over the last 18 months, we've seen some serious violent incidents within the condominium, or vertical communities, our residential buildings. We've seen barricaded individuals. We've seen active violence. We've seen kidnappings in underground parking garages.
They have impacted, specifically, people within the building, but not involving the workplace if that makes sense. And I'm not simplifying things. But I think that's why we're not having that discussion, or we haven't had this major discussion in the past.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. And Scott, either the same question. Why have we not talked about that before? Or a slightly different question. Are people talking about it more now?
SCOTT HILL: I think, yes. Thank you. I think that going along with what Jason is saying, that part of the reason why we haven't talked about it before is it's just not on anybody's radar. The first thing you do when you look at a security audit or something like that, the first thing is, well, we've never had to talked about this in the past. So why do we need to talk about it going forward?
So with all the changes for condominiums since 2018, there just doesn't seem to be a lot of time on people's plate, or a lot of appetite to be proactive, and start looking for the solutions. And I also think that in the industry, there is a lack of available information on what is an actual emergency response, and how to go about planning out for it. And like webinars, such as this goes a long way to helping people, at least get an idea, have that starting point of the conversation, and start moving it forward.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: I thought I would have to stop, Jason. But Scott, you just like tipped over the one minute limit. That's great. OK.
SCOTT HILL: I got 59 seconds. I don't know. I got my stopwatch.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Great. So let me ask you then another question here. And somebody in the chat actually raises a good point. He says, well, you can't control things around you all the time. And that's quite true.
And so that leads me to the next question. I mean, there isn't an easy solution. So why is there that we don't have an easy solution? Why is there that we can't just say, well, pass a bylaw, or pass a rule? You know what I mean?
At the source of this challenge, I don't know who wants to tackle that. Then I have an answer in my head. But let's see if you've studied, Scott.
SCOTT HILL: Sorry. You said Scott?
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Yeah.
SCOTT HILL: Yeah. I think there's no easy solution for the reason that it came up in the chat. Like everybody has different depending on your location, depending on what's going on, everybody's going to have a different threat level, or different threats that they could be exposed to. And they'll also have different resources that are available to deal with that threat.
So you can talk about an all hazards response, or you can talk about a detailed response. But I mean, it comes down to some planning. And you have to envision on what could happen as opposed to what has happened.
So you have to step outside of your comfort zone, or your box to think OK, sure, it's never happened before. But what could happen, and how would we address it if it did happen? And that's your basic starting point.
So there's going to be multiple solutions. As I've said before, no security widget, which can solve every problem that'll ever come up.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. What are you, Jason? Anything to add to the complexity of these issues?
JASON REID: Yeah. Real quickly, I mean, I think Mary makes a very solid and founded point. But there's also a big step of making a condominium safe is called a risk assessment. And that risk assessment would identify that risk through a bunch of factors that I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later.
And I think that might be tying into question number 1, why haven't we talked about this before? Because, quite simply, the risk hasn't been high enough in residential, or vertical communities. In commercial buildings, shopping centers, the risk has been significantly there for years.
And in fact, shopping centers, commercial office towers, and banks, and schools have had rigorous programs because the risk was identified within that risk assessment. So I'm sure we're going to get into that a little bit.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. Right. And I think there's also an ever changing landscape. And every corporation is faced with an ever changing landscape. And I think as Scott indicated.
I mean, an Ottawa condo versus a Toronto condo, and a townhouse complex versus a high rise complex. And one that has resource is one that has a security guard versus one that doesn't have a security guard. One that doesn't even have a superintendent, right?
So all of these, and to your point that, Jason, one that is physically right beside a bank or a school, versus one that is not very close to another source of risk. So OK. I'm going to skip the next question because that's going to be the next 50 minutes. How to make your condo safe from within?
And so we're going to start with you, Jason. But actually, maybe before I do that, somebody came up with something on chat that actually is chilling actually. The question that's been asked by Erin is, how is it that the CEO still has the name of every director of every condo corporation listed on the registry available to anybody?
I mean, at one point, it made sense to put these names out there. That was a reason I get it. But now suddenly, I mean, the question is a fair one. Do we need to revisit that, right?
I mean, especially someone that has an uncommon last name like me, if you look me up, or if you look at my corporation up, you'll see, well, there it is this is the guy I'm looking for. He's a troublemaker, right? So there's something there.
And something else actually maybe in line with that that gets me more and more sort of uncomfortable is the concept of stating your unit number at meetings. And I mean, if you're Scott, stating your unit number is not an issue because nobody's going to go and knock on your door.
But I mean, there are some people that are more vulnerable, more concerned. And so especially now with the online AGMs, your name appears and it says unit 401, I mean, we may need to revisit some of these things. That may be the segue into the emergency response plan and risk assessment, Jason.
So do you want me to share the super tool you sent us? Is that a good time to do it?
JASON REID: Yeah. Yes, please, sir.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: OK. Folks, don't panic. There's a lot of words. But you're going to get a copy of it. We're going to post it on the Condo Adviser. You'll be able to download it, and you can keep it under your pillow. Go ahead, Jason.
JASON REID: So ladies and gentlemen, Rod asked us to, Scott and I to come up with some information that would be of high value to everybody here today. And that's something we wanted to do. So, I develop this one-page document that allowed me to have my speaking topics in line.
And allow me to explain it from left to right. We've identified four areas of legislation that really come into play and drive what keeps us in our workplace violence and harassment program.
Legislation number 1, we all know it's the Occupiers Liability Act. We're responsible for the common elements. Number 2, the Human Rights Code. We're required to maintain an environment free of harassment.
Number 3, the Occupational Health and Safety Act. While the OHSA doesn't apply to directors, because they're not compensated, it does apply because every condominium is a workplace. And finally, item number 4, which may surprise a lot of people, the Criminal Code of Canada. Everyone who undertakes, or has the authority to direct how another person works, or performs a task has a legal duty to make sure and prevent bodily harm.
And these are the four types of legislation, or at least for this discussion, that we utilize to come up with a workplace violence and harassment program. The very first step is that HIRA. And that HIRA is the risk assessment. And that risk assessment allows a corporation in control of a facility, or a workplace to actually assess the hazards.
So as if I could ask you to just scroll down a little bit, we're asking you to identify community-based risks. Am I close to a school? Do I have a ground floor retail tenant, such as a bank? Do I have a daycare?
Take a look at my high risk interactions. This is required under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, suite entry inspections, evictions, board meetings. It doesn't go into all of these. But we wanted to tie this into a document that made sense to everybody here today.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. And when we're going to talk later on about the red flags, or the moving target of risk assessment, later on, we're going to talk about well. So it's not necessarily static. But I mean, there may be triggering points that would require us to ask ourselves the question, has the risk changed?
We have a hearing tomorrow scheduled to evict someone. Has the risk level changed? You know what I mean? So we'll talk about that a bit later.
So it's not necessarily a static you're beside a bank. And yesterday, when you gave us an example beside the school, I mean, it made sense when you've explained it. That if the school has a lockdown, or has an active shooter incident, well, I mean, there's movement. People are moving around. And if you're right beside it, well, are you an easy place to hide or run through, right?
JASON REID: Well, absolutely. Absolutely. In fact, I mean, these are in play right now with shelter in place orders probably one a week happening in the GTA. So if I can just ask you to zoom out a little bit, once that HIRA is done, that's the start of your program. And then you build the program in response to the legislation, and your specific HIRA.
As Rod mentioned, we have a specific duty under those that legislation to complete that HIRA, and build the program and that program needs to have buy in, and authority, and approval from the president of the corporation. It's not the property manager driving this, it's the president of the corporation. And under prevention, as you scroll down, you'll see all of the policies and procedures that you need to have in place existing today under the workplace violence and harassment.
You need to identify how your staff are going to report it, how you're going to conduct investigations, how you're going to protect employees from violence and harassment, how you're going to consider mental health options. And finally, you're going to build this program. And as Rod mentioned, you're going to get a copy of this.
But as you scroll through preparedness, mitigation, and response, at the end of this little process of using this document, you've actually, as a corporation, you've done the assessment, you have implemented things to prepare for, to mitigate, and respond. And as Rod mentioned, this is an annual review of your risk assessment because your demographics change, maybe you have a needle exchange facility that just opened up three doors down from your condominium. That risk assessment needs to be re reviewed every 12 months.
And as Rod alluded to, when you have an incident, and when you have multiple incidents, it may be a trigger point for lack of a better word to trigger a special risk assessment. And that special risk assessment brings in really an expert third-party to document, and review the risks afterwards, or after you have a series of events that gives you some guidance on how to deal with that, if that makes sense.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: So Jason, let me ask you. Once you've gone through this exercise, what does the final product look like? Is it a binder? Is it training? What does it look like?
JASON REID: It's encompassing both. As an example, the first one you would have is a policy statement. That policy statement would be signed by your president, and it would be posted on your joint occupational health and safety board for your employees to see.
Number 2, it probably includes a eight or nine-page program. And that program details now what is acceptable in the workplace, what is not acceptable. It details how you will take it seriously, it details how you will investigate it, the timelines typically within 90 days. You'll maintain everything in a confidential manner. These are things that are actually spelled out in the legislation.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. There's a valid question that came up. Somebody says, why have you just referred to the president having a special responsibility or something special to do? And maybe the reference should have been to the board at large. Or is there something that I'm missing?
JASON REID: So your policy, your workplace policy for workplace violence and harassment is not initiated at the property manager level.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right.
JASON REID: The corporation or the president of the corporation shall approve that policy, and program, and implement it. Are they going to the board going to implement it? No. But they're certainly going to approve it, and then they're going to task the management to implement that program. But it's not done at the property management level.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. Right. Because I was going to ask you this. So just to close that loop here, it's not the president, versus the secretary, versus whoever. It's really a board obligation to look into that. And they trigger it.
So I think all the president's on the line right now, just have that big sigh of relief knowing that they're not especially on the hook for that. But certainly, people need to be leaders behind that, and be the ones moving it forward.
So let me ask you this, Jason, and then we're going to go to Scott in a minute. Who developed these? Because I'm on my board, and I don't think I have either time, or the knowledge to develop that.
And I suspect my property manager has a million things to do. And that seems it's a lot of work. So who developed these? Do we retain someone? How does that work?
JASON REID: So I mean, listen, depending on your resources that your corporation, and your risks. But unfortunately, you can't identify your risk. And so unless you start tackling this process.
So to simplify a difficult conversation is the condominium corporation is already required under the Occupational Health and Safety Act to have this program in place. Can a board of directors, or a property manager do that hazard risk assessment for workplace violence? There are some free templates in Canada on some websites that you could probably find.
But what I suggest that this is a task that's taken on behalf of a board member, or the property manager. Absolutely not your workplace violence and harassment program is 1/20 of your occupational health and safety program.
So to answer this is, have we told our employees in our workplace how to work safely? And how do we answer that? There is only one way to do that. Develop policies and procedures that explain how our staff are to do job safely, and policies, and procedures that specifically address workplace violence and harassment.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. Right. Right. And I think I'm going to turn to Scott now. Scott wears many hats. There's one of the hats he wants to shed. But he's unable to shed it.
So I mean, in addition to being a security expert, he also was or is, but was certainly a manager for, I don't know how many decades. I don't want to give you or age away. So I mean, you've done it all.
But yesterday, you gave us a good example of a many risk assessment program, or protocol, that any time you send us a security guard somewhere, they have to go through that. So walk us through that. Because I want to demystify and simplify a bit the exercise.
SCOTT HILL: For sure. Yes. Many hats for sure. And yes, a few decades there. That's OK to say. But what we're referring to is when there's a security contract in place, and what should take place is the drafting of the post orders.
Now, the post orders is a, much like Jason was alluding to earlier, it's a living documentation. It's not something that gets done, and is never revised, or looked at again, but it details the expectations and the duties of a person when they are on the site. So that if somebody was to just walk on site, they can pick up this manual, and have a basic understanding of what they're there to do.
But it's much more encompassing than just stare at the cameras, check that the doors are locked. In these documentation, you'll see things like how to deal with the bomb threat, how to deal with an evacuation. And it goes quite a bit beyond that because we know that when an emergency incident occurs, people, the adrenaline kicks in.
We will actually list out the civic address in the post orders. Because when they're talking to 911, we've seen in the past, where people have given their home addresses instead of where they're currently working just by-- because they're so amped up.
And you want to really detail out the scripts that are there. And it goes A to Z on the different things that could be experienced while working security at that site. And this is much the HIRA. This is something that should be reviewed annually to make sure that you are looking at.
Because whenever there's an incident, there should be a full incident report submitted to the property manager and the board of directors that actually gets reviewed. And that becomes your lessons learned, or your after action report that you can implement changes into your documentation. I think I just read in the chat. You're not reinventing the wheel each time you go to a different place, or you see the different incidents taking place.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: And before we go to the response side of the equation, because so far, we dealt with preparedness, we're going to deal with response. And maybe actually, we're at that stage. And then we're going to deal with escalation.
I mean, when there's a real live situation. But so yesterday, and going back to Jason now, yesterday and in the past actually, you and I spoke just before Christmas when all of this tragedy unfolded. And you alluded to the fact that the condominium world is behind everybody else.
I mean shopping centers have emergency procedures, and lockdown protocols. Schools have that. Courtrooms have that. In addition to the security, or the airport type of security before, you go into the courthouse, they also have a protocol. And I know of an important national law firm that has in place a protocol that I have seen triggered, where there was-- it existed. It was break glass in case of emergency.
There was a risk was identified. And then the front door was locked, a security guard was posted at the entrance of the building. One at the entrance of the office. People were given directions to use different exit points and entry points as opposed to funneling through the lobby or the main entrance.
And the biggest possible lawyer was identified to accept service of any documents that would be served on us. We just went for the biggest one. And so tell me more about that, Jason, about the fact that it seems like we don't have these protocols. And what would they look like? Yesterday, you had very clear examples of instances, where somebody would get on the PA system with a pre-scripted message.
JASON REID: Yeah. I mean, the response side on an active violent incident in a facility, as you said Rod, has been applied and implemented at shopping centers globally, and places alike. In residential buildings, they're a little more-- they typically haven't been implemented.
If you take a look at your dusty binder at the front security desk, you're going to be able to see an emergency response plan. And most organizations have covered off the things that they should. What should I do in the event of an elevator entrapment?
What should I do in the event of a fire alarm? What should I do if CP24 says there's a train wreck, and it's only two blocks away, and it's an over gaseous cloud that's drifting into our building? Those are procedures that your security and building superintendent should already have. They really should.
Many organizations have templates that the management teams will customize at their building. And they're very proactive organizations. But to get specific on the active violence, the only response that I can see that would be of value in a high-rise vertical community are the same that are being applied in commercial offices.
When there is a report of five phone calls to the security guard, that there's gunshots, and in the building, security can have different response procedures, and they're typically thought out beforehand. But one of them is grounding the elevators, utilizing the emergency voice communication system to make an announcement, and obviously 911. 911 probably being the first one.
But my point is, and I think this would struck the conversation, was imagine the security guard saying, we've got a report of an active violent incident in the building. Please follow emergency procedures. And every resident going, what are those emergency procedures?
So to answer Murray's question from previous training is a vital component on those policies, and procedures, as well as the emergency response plans. Because I believe that while not every residential community requires an active lockdown procedure, I would suggest that there are many residential buildings in Toronto that are adjacent to some very high-risk facilities that should already have that program in place.
Their residents should already be aware that while we will never use this, If you hear this over the PA system, I need you to not answer your door, and be confident that we've called 911. And that's a really powerful discussion that we've never been forced to have before, if that makes sense.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Yeah. And I was going to say, I'm thinking that-- because now, of course, we're all thinking about the tragedy before Christmas. But I mean, there's been all sorts of other situations. I can think of a few even I'm thinking about Ottawa right now.
When we have the Freedom Rides, they go over the city. I think I'm going to get some negative reviews now because I use that expression. But when we had them take over the city last February, I mean, all the condos that are downtown, there are some precautions that should be taken. And there's got to be a way to communicating that.
And if you go back further back to 2014 when Nathan Cerullo was shot down at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, that was within blocks of two dozen condominium communities. And at that point in time, every commercial building was shutting down, every office had a protocol, they had a way to react, they did something about it, and they put in place whatever procedures they had. Shopping centers have been closed.
And then you're wondering, well, what about this condo? What do we do? Do we lock the door? What do we do?
In the case of the occupants last February, I just tweeted to Scott Hill, and said, help, send someone please quickly. And within 45 minutes, we had boots on the ground. But you don't want to be thinking about these things while people are knocking at your door.
Let's move on maybe-- Graeme, did you say there was a question out there, or are you answering them as you go?
GRAEME MACPHERSON: Well, there was a question. But I think it's one worth addressing out loud just for everybody. It was a question about, there has been some discussion of the corporation's responsibility for any employees, or contractors custodial staff, that type of thing.
And what if those staff are hired by the manager, Rod? What does that mean vis-a-vis the corporation's responsibility towards them?
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: What does that mean indeed? So what does it mean?
GRAEME MACPHERSON: Well, in my view-- and feel free to jump in. But the manager is acting as an agent for the corporation. And so usually, as part of the manager's role, they'll take on the role of hiring new staff. But that doesn't mean that the manager has now taken on the Occupational Health and Safety responsibilities. Those are the corporations.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Yeah. Well, absolutely. Ultimately, that's where the buck stops. It's with the corporation. And in certain cases, there's some legislation that attracts, that puts the blame or the liability squarely on the directors. But usually, not the manager. Unless the manager has not abided by their contractual terms, or has been negligent.
OK. So we dealt with the preparedness side. We're running out of time to cover the response side. Although we're talking about it now. So we're not too far off.
So maybe, Scott, now I'd like to hear from you about maybe the training? How do you envision the training? So we have this protocol, we've developed it, we have a plan behind the glass, we break the glass, and we'll implement that. So I mean, for that to be, I guess, to trigger muscle memory, you've got to have some training I assume.
SCOTT HILL: Yes. I mean, he stole my term muscle memory. I was just about to use that. Excellent.
Yeah. Without the training, your plan is just a binder, right? It's sitting there. And you have to walk your way through it.
So when you're talking about training, there's different types of training models. You can do something as simple as a Tabletop exercise, where you're sitting around a table and just saying, OK, this has happened. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? What resources do we have in place?
And you just talk your way through it. And that will only take you so far. Because eventually, you are going to have to get that muscle memory in place, and you're going to have to start saying, OK, who do we have that can respond? And what do we need to be done?
And I always say, begin with the end in mind. So when you're doing the debrief, or you're after action, or lessons learned after an incident, what do you want to be able to say? We handle this properly because we, and then you fill in the blanks, and you're able to work your way backwards.
And then you look at OK, this is how high the risk is. So as Jason was talking about, we're looking at the probability, we're looking at the impact. And that gives us the criticality of the event.
But what resources do we have? What resources do we have in the daytime? What resources do we have at the nighttime?
It doesn't do a whole bunch of good to do training when you're fully staffed, when your high-risk hours, if they're between 2000 and 0400. If those are your high-risk hours, and you only have one person in place, how do we do that?
A responder is basically anybody that is able to respond to an incident. And you want to pull in the resources that you have available, get the training. If you have a superintendent, if you have cleaners, do they understand what they need to do?
And I always say to my team, the most important thing, the golden rule is that the responder goes home at the end of the day. So you want to make sure that you're giving them the tools that they need to react safely. I mean, I think Jason was saying it earlier, if there's an active assailant situation taking place, we're not superheroes that are going to be charging into it.
Our job is to keep everybody else safe. And the biggest thing that's going to be is notification, getting everybody up there. On the other side, I think, sorry, jump in on what Jason says, if people have never heard an announcement like that before, you're going to freeze, your mind is going to vapor lock, and nobody's going to be thinking clearly.
Education is such a critical part of the response. And educating not only the responders, but the stakeholders. And it builds confidence.
So when you do training, it has a few different advantages. One, it will identify any weak areas of your plan. If you never run through it until an actual incident takes place, you're not going to know where the weaknesses are.
Two, it's going to build confidence in the responders. They're going to go through it, like you said, they're going to get there muscle memory. And three, solicits feedback. After the event, everybody gets together, talks about the training. You can also pull in the other stakeholders the residents of the condominium, and get involved there.
So the training, I think, is we used to say that if you have the plan without the training, you're just a motivated idiot. You're motivated to do it properly, but you won't do it in the event of an emergency.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. Right and I think you've touched upon a bit the awareness of the occupants. And I mean, everybody needs to know what needs to be done. But everybody else needs to know what others are going to be doing, kind of thing.
Because otherwise, everybody's going to try to sort of jump in and try to help out. And it's not overly useful. I know I'm repeating here risk assessment, Jason.
And it's I think because in the response side of the equation, when we were discussing this yesterday, you had various examples. And I guess, this is where we would talk about the red flags, I guess, that we may see along the way.
And it's not always an active assailant. It could be a tornado. It could be a gas leak. It could be all of these things.
But of course, now the topic of the day has to do with danger from within. So help me understand how that such a protocol would work. What did you mean yesterday when you suggested, well, if you have red flags, then you can react to this or that. You what I mean?
JASON REID: Yeah. I've been listening to a lot of the social media of late. Specifically people discussing this tragic event. And a lot of it has been focused on, how could we plan for something like this? And I think it reverts back to, I see in the chat feature, a lot of people are talking about cost, resources, things like that.
And I think it's vitally important that this risk assessment identifies what you should reasonably look after. As an example, I've got a condominium that's 20 stories down on Lake Shore. It's in Lake shore. It's in Toronto.
There's nothing around it. There's some plazas. There risk is really low for active attacker. That means, you know what? What are we going to put in our workplace violence in program?
We've got a fully functioning access control system. We've got a property management office that does interviews, and appointments only. It's lockable. It's got a rear exit.
Our superintendent always announces him or herself before they enter a suite. They're aware of what it looks like. And they've been trained on what it looks like when somebody's clenching their teeth, and holding their fist tight to back away.
And it echoes on the training from Scott. My point here is I'm seeing a lot of items in the chat that this is expensive. How are we going to be doing this?
You already have this program pretty well in place. I think what you're looking for is to document and tie all those things together. Because you already have this program.
Do you have a CCTV system? Is it checked every day? Are the cameras working? Is it recording for a minimum of 45 days? Check.
Number 2. Our front doors, they're all exit only. Or our perimeter doors, they're exit only. When you open them, do they properly close and latch?
These are all efforts that property manager, superintendents, and security teams check every single day. It's a part of your program already is tying it back into this workplace in violence program. So that I can defend myself as a corporation after an incident, and say, we did what's reasonable, and we plan ahead for what's reasonable.
Let me throw this as 1/32 example. Right now, any condominium right now that doesn't have this emergency response plan is failing. Here it is. Did you know that there have been well over 100 defend in place orders issued by municipalities in the last 12 months in Ontario?
What that means is CP24 are saying there's a motor vehicle collision on the QAW, it's spewing hazardous materials, or there's a train derailment. Your building superintendent and your security guard, that is a reasonable expectation of an emergency that your facility should have to manage. What should your security guard do? Monitor CP24. What should your superintendent do? Be trained on how to shut down the building air intakes.
You name me right now one building superintendent that knows how to do that. I would suggest that is a reasonable step, that 95% of the facilities will already have planned to do in the event of that emergency. Is that a reasonable action? It is.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. Right. Right. And my reference here to Reality Check is what you're touching upon now, which is well, the cost of course, but also, the resources that are available. When you compare a condo that has a super one, that doesn't have a super.
I think as Scott said, I mean, don't do your risk assessment when you're fully staff. That's not your weakest point. Do your risk assessment considering also when you are not fully staffed? When in fact, you are in the darkest hours of the day.
And I think something that I wanted to touch upon before we switch topics was the red flags, or the risk assessment. I mean, we're dealing with very difficult situation at time. Some involving going to court, some involving evicting people.
And so there may be instances. We should identify ahead of time certain flags. If you get, I'm going to make stuff up now. Two, or three, or four incidents of harassment from someone, that is a different set of circumstances, a different situation than if you get only one.
If there's been a threat, even if the threat is not believable, that's another red flag. Do we have a hearing coming up? What's the outcome, the possible outcome of that hearing? Are we potentially evicting someone?
I mean, there's plenty of cases already that exists. There was this case, where they had two very big dogs. And I mean, he was just letting them loose, and they appear to be trained to actually run after the Sheriff that was there to post a note on the door.
And I mean, there's all sorts of red flags, where we know, OK, well, if we need to go knock on that door to tell them something that they will not want to hear, what precautions do we take? And I agree with all of you that there's a cost to all of this. But there's also some low hanging fruits. And the cost is always too much until it was not enough.
I mean, then there's some things that you can't fix after the fact. And so a very good set of suggestions from one of our very experienced managers on the line, whose name I'm not going to identify here, but he gets all the credit for it anyways. And so there's some low-hanging fruit.
And some of them may be ensuring, if at all possible, that your management office has a secondary means of egress. I mean, I know some management offices that are virtually in a closet. Do they have panic buttons? How about only having the owners meet with the manager on appointment only?
I mean, there's all sorts of different precautions that can be put in place. Ensure that you don't have a meeting one-on-one. I mean, that's basic. But some people forget that.
So there's all sorts of easy precautions I think that can be taken. Now, before we run out of time, and we're about to run out of time, I wanted to talk about the lines of communications. I don't have a slide for that. OK. How do we communicate?
SCOTT HILL: Your last point there, Rod.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: There it is at the bottom. Perfect. Thank goodness. My military training kicked in. Or maybe it was yesterday's rehearsal.
So how do we communicate with these people that there is an emergency? What's the way? So we, of course, we spoke about the PA system having pre-scripted scripts.
What else, Scott? Any other suggestions? What else do we have that we can use to communicate with people?
SCOTT HILL: For sure. I just want to tie that back to your last point if I could, Rod, about communication. Also, when I was saying before about the binder without planning is critical like communication without people hearing it is also communicating. You're talking about red flags.
And I mean, if we have a superintendent, or a security guard in place, situational awareness teaches, that you look for a baseline, and you look for things that are outside the baseline. A lot of our superintendents, they know the residents, the security. They know them. They know them very, very well. They talk to them every day.
If they need to have a way to communicate any concerns, if they're starting to see something going off outside the baseline, they need to have those lines of communication to push it up the chain as it were to make sure that it activates an actual investigation or a plan. So I just say that, and then I'll move on to the different ways to communicate during response. There are many.
At our company, we use the pace acronym. So you have your primary, you have your alternate, you have your contingency, and you have your emergency. So the primary is if you have a PA system, that's obviously optimum.
I mean, it doesn't get used often, it's going to get everybody's attention. Unfortunately, what a go-to right now is email, blast out an email to everybody. But with the disconnect from work policies, and things like that, that sometimes gets in the way. A lot of people will say, no, I'm on my off time. I am not checking my emails.
So then we move to text messages. And text messages tend to get checked after hours a little bit more frequently than email. An email can get lost, an email can go into your spam folder. It can do anything.
I've had people respond to emails like a week later. So that's a risk that you run when you do it. And then there's also social media. I know of a couple of condominiums that have created, and I'm not even sure how this works, but a private Twitter account that they can actually, they get notifications through that, but it's a private group, or WhatsApp group.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: WhatsApp?
SCOTT HILL: Yeah. Not that I'm recommending that. But there are many different ways to do it. And I would say that to ask which one to use, I'd say all of them.
Because you want to make sure that the message is getting through to the person during the event and in a time that it is useful.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Anything to add, Jason?
JASON REID: Yeah. Real quickly. I mean, communications is key. And in your workplace violence and harassment program, corporations are required to document how you're going to communicate now.
So we're not figuring it out at the time of the emergency, and how we're going to communicate before, how we're going to speak with witnesses, how we're going to engage them. It spells all of that out in your document.
But if I could add one more thing, because I saw a really good question. And I want to address this. Commercial offices and shopping centers.
Do every landlord in the country of a commercial building has an emergency response plan for their ops team and their security team? And what every landlord commercially does is they develop an emergency preparedness program for residents. It's a 10, 12-page document, maybe a 15-page document.
But what it does is it allows residents or occupants of the building to understand what security will do, and what the resident is supposed to do during these top 15 emergencies. They may never happen. But my point is, and I think it's a very valid one, it tells your community that the board is looking at it. It tells the community that the board has reviewed this, and has put things in place to protect their community.
And it also educates the residents. Residents you send them an email, they don't read it. The best practice for emergency communications right now is technology.
I can have an emergency alert issued to every resident in the building in 30 seconds. If they don't answer their text message in two minutes, it rings their cell phone with an automated voice message. If they don't answer their cell phone, it goes to their home address, or their home phone.
There's tons of inexpensive technologies. And in fact, many condominiums have already deployed this type of technology. It's a great way to keep the group engaged
And we have a responsibility under the workplace violence program. That is required under OHSA, to communicate to our own employees of impending threat, or potential of violence. And that's something that we can't forget.
It's not just the occupants. We have a legal duty to inform our employees at the building that there is a potential risk for violence in the workplace. And again, that's why that program allows us to encompass everything in a document. Because there is quite a bit here.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. Right. Right. No, for sure. For sure. We've got 6 minutes to go. I see there's two questions with people with their hands up. I'll encourage you to actually type your question because that's our best way to tackle it, and to try to prioritize them as they come in because we don't have a lot of time left.
Back to the panic button, somebody said what about the panic button in the garage levels? And I mean, at bus stations, you see that at campuses and universities. So I think one thing is what you indicated, what you said, Scott, which is after an incident, and I'll take stock, have a look, what worked, what didn't work.
But also do that, even when faced with something that an impact you, following the tragedy in on, we should all have a look at how things would have, or could have unfolded at our condo corporation. Similarly, I think managers will ask themselves the question, how would they have unfolded had the manager been on site?
I mean, that question is on everyone's mind. And so the fact that thankfully, a manager, or staff were not involved, that's great. But how would things have unfolded otherwise? And what can we do to ensure that? Had this incident taken place on a weekday that we would not have had more casualties?
So don't just look at what has just happened, but think about what could have happened. So there's a tornado in Ottawa. Well, the GTA should think about it.
How would we have reacted? Had we been faced with a similar situation? Don't wait for catastrophe to knock on your door to start thinking about these things.
OK. Do I have anything else on my list here before I go around and ask people for their parting thoughts? I'm going to say this. And I think, again, I have too much on my agenda. Because I'd like to speak maybe next time about-- because we spoke about escalation, I'd like to speak about de-escalation maybe next time, and what's the role.
And maybe, Jason and Scott, you can tackle that. What is the role of a next of kins when we see that someone is going through a mental health crisis, when someone is losing connection with reality?
I see it on quite a few of them. Every condo or many condos have that one unit owner that for whatever reason is not the way they used to be, and they're more aggressive, and they're more assertive. And so what's the role of the next of kin? What's the role of security personnel? What's the role of the police? Do you want to maybe tackle that a bit each of you one minute and a half? Scott?
SCOTT HILL: Sure. I think assuming that you have the access to the next of kin who they are, that is the first step to advise them, and pull them into working towards the solution. The de-escalation I think is critical. And we do a lot of tactical de-escalation and verbal judo with our guards. I think we offer it every two months.
Because just being able to keep in mind the five universal truths. And I actually encourage anybody to take it because I know there's a property management company in Toronto that brought a security company not ours. But them in, because they had instructors to do de-escalation with all their property managers. And it's time well spent.
I think just Rod, I think you can agree that EGMs can get a little heated sometimes, or special general meetings having some de-escalation techniques in your toolbox is very, very critical. So having the training with all the staff, it's just not security.
Because at the end of the day, everything we do we put the team acronym up together everybody accomplishes more, and being able to recognize that something's wrong, pull in the people to get it fixed, and work towards a solution, get the people, talk to them, and work, and I think you'll talk about this more, but document what's being done.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Yeah. And then unfortunately, we're out of time. But I'm going to say this. When I looked at what took place before Christmas, I reached a conclusion that at the end of the day, and I hate to be the Debbie Downer here, but I came to the conclusion that managers are not necessarily equipped to deal with this level of danger in this crisis. And directors are not equipped to deal with that.
But you know what? You're not alone. Police officers are not equipped to deal with that, in most cases. I mean, you see it all over the news.
And lawyers are not equipped to deal with that. There was a hearing the next day. And judges are not equipped to deal with that either, right?
So I mean, that's why you need to have in place really a very large net, and you need to have many, many tools in your toolbox to be able to minimize the risk, prepare for it, have a contingency plan, and have all of that in place to be able to react to, whatever curveball is being thrown your way.
We've got one minute left. And so I'm going to go around the table. I'm going to thank everybody for your insight.
I realize that the lawyers didn't really speak too much. Well, except this guy. This guy just can't shut up. It's like a drunken uncle at a wedding if you give them the microphone, they won't let go.
But the two twins were quiet taking notes. So Scott Hill, with 3D Security Response Services, thank you so much for taking the time to prepare this, and of course, to present it.
SCOTT HILL: Very welcome. Thank you very much.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: OK. Anytime. And of course our hockey coach, Jason Reid of the National Life and Safety Group, thanks so much. Any sort parting words maybe, Jason?
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Yeah. Listen, if I had one tidbit that's typically a gap, it's documents things. There was some chatter on the chat, where what if somebody makes a derogatory comment, or actually pushes somebody, or nudges somebody? We quite often overlook that. He was upset.
But those are the red flags that sometimes in a workplace are required to be documented. It is a workplace. It is a workplace. Therefore, the corporation is required to document it.
And then sometimes when you have one or two incidents, even if they're spread forward or apart, that's a pattern. And that's when you can do that special risk assessment perhaps on that individual, or on that workplace, focusing on that individual. And it gives you more ammunition to support you and your teams for a safe workplace.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. OK. The two kinds of twins, what do you take away from this webinar here? Maybe start with you, David.
DAVID PLOTKIN: Yeah. So I mean, I think this is still very raw for a lot of people. I mean, we dealt with a very unique situation that touched home for a lot of us, and what we do, or where we live. And I think just being prepared without being paranoid is the way to go forward, have the tools, have the policies in place, have those resources, reach out to the people you need to reach out to, and just know that there are resources there, and everyone's dealing with the same situation.
But they're in condos or not. And it's not it's not really going to help anyone to just stay up at night every day thinking about what could or couldn't happen, just have those things in place for potential eventualities.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Right. Right. Graeme, final parting words?
GRAEME MACPHERSON: Yeah. Building off of what David said, I think and as you opened up with, a lot of condos maybe weren't thinking of the types of policies or procedures they had to have in place. So this is just a good opportunity. And the point of this webinar is to get people thinking about what sorts of things can be in place, so that if anything does happen, you're not stuck, unsure of what to do.
RODRIGUE ESCAYOLA: Yeah, for sure. OK. So next webinar are March 1, apparently. Is that really the first of the month? The first Wednesday of the month? Let me just see here very quickly. Yes, perfect. OK.
And so March 1, you'll need to register again. The way to register for these webinars. As soon as we have the topic, we will post links.
This is the website. You go to webinars, you click on that, that brings you how to register and the topics. This is also where you will see the recording of this webinar, and all of our prior webinars.
So give me about 5 to 7 days. When you click on that, it's going to bring you to the page. Then you'll be able to click, and you will be able to download the document prepared, and presented by Jason today, and you'll be able to also watch on demand this webinar and prior webinars.
So I think that's it. Thank you very much, everybody, for listening for tackling it this important topic. Thank you to the speakers. And we will see you on March 1.
Thanks, everybody. Too late to wish you a Happy New Year because now we're in February. But happy New Year, everybody.
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