Islands Trust Council regular meeting, November 3, 2025

[0:00:00] Voice 9: And I'll start the recording, and we are now recording, and we're now recording and on live streaming.

[0:00:12] Voice 7: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Barlow, for setting up the technical, and thank you, Director Marler, for putting up the agenda.

[0:00:19] Voice 7: I'll call this meeting to order. It's 10 a.m. on November the 3rd.

[0:00:24] Voice 7: This is a regular meeting of the Governance Committee.

[0:00:27] Voice 7: On the screen is our agenda for today.

[0:00:30] Voice 7: I'd like to start the meeting in a good way with the land acknowledgement.

[0:00:36] Voice 7: So I'm living and working on the Qualicum, Bowen Island, and we're having a very windy morning, but it's not raining.

[0:00:45] Voice 7: It's threatening, but nothing much happening.

[0:00:48] Voice 7: And I'm always very pleased and lucky to be living here in this part of the world.

[0:00:57] Voice 7: So I think that the stewardship is important to all of us and has been important to the Squamish people in my area.

[0:01:08] Voice 7: And I'm very pleased for all of the efforts to keep it green and wonderful.

[0:01:15] Voice 7: So with that, if we can turn to the agenda, I have a late item that I would like the group to consider.

[0:01:25] Voice 7: or is there any other items that need to be new items

[0:01:30] Voice 7: or reordering for the agenda?

[0:01:36] Voice 7: Not seeing any hands up.

[0:01:38] Voice 7: I'll introduce mine.

[0:01:39] Voice 7: I sent an email out to the committee at 9.30 this morning,

[0:01:43] Voice 7: and I'd been working on the work matrix that this group has been using,

[0:01:51] Voice 7: which is item number 10 at the very end of our meeting and page 37.

[0:01:56] Voice 7: So I'm trying to do basically an update to take into consideration the kinds of things we're going to be discussing today.

[0:02:04] Voice 7: So once we get to that, we'll see whether or not that update that I'm suggesting is helpful and works and whether or not we need to adjust that.

[0:02:14] Voice 7: that. But for the time being, are there any other changes to the agenda? Not seeing any, then can we

[0:02:24] Voice 7: move the agenda approved with that addition of the work matrix? Not seeing any hands up. Let's

[0:02:36] Voice 7: do that by consent. And if there's no hands up in opposition to that, then we'll pass the agenda by

[0:02:45] Voice 7: consent. All right. So anybody here for public comment? Mr. Barlow? You're mute. Thanks.

[0:02:59] Voice 9: No, there are no members of the public present.

[0:03:02] Voice 7: Thank you. All right. So then there's no public comment, no delegations, no correspondence. We'll

[0:03:09] Voice 7: get right into the administrative coordination. We've got draft minutes from August the 13th,

[0:03:16] Voice 7: no resolutions without meeting and a follow-up action list that was included in the agenda

[0:03:24] Voice 7: basically for information are there any amendments concerns issues with any of those

[0:03:32] Voice 7: coordination items again not seeing any hands raised i'm going to suggest that we pass those

[0:03:42] Voice 7: by consent. Is there anybody opposed to a consent acceptance of all of those items?

[0:03:52] Voice 7: Again, not seeing any hand raised, then we'll pass those by consent. So then we

[0:03:57] Voice 7: get into item number seven, the work program items. And starting with the

[0:04:04] Voice 7: direction of following our discussion at the last Trust Council meeting, was our

[0:04:12] Voice 7: um briefing with respect to page 11 of the agenda thank you it's up um so this is the

[0:04:22] Voice 7: um direction that we got from trust council in terms of what the priorities are

[0:04:27] Voice 7: sorry trustee peterson yeah

[0:04:30] Voice 11: sorry chair i had a question around the um follow-up action list

[0:04:38] Voice 11: um just i didn't realize we were um gonna consent through all of that section all at once um

[0:04:45] Voice 11: Just in relation to item one, and the way it's printed at this point,

[0:04:55] Voice 11: it says the policy will be prepared and ready for trust counsel for September 2025.

[0:05:01] Voice 11: If that item is not a resolution, I think it would be good to change it for the next meeting

[0:05:14] Voice 11: the next meeting so that the which page

[0:05:17] Voice 11: are you referring to there's several ones under different

[0:05:21] Voice 11: days sorry page eight the other very first one under april 9th and this is just uh an issue of

[0:05:33] Voice 11: we have a date a target date um listed there that has gone by um march 26th uh no it's the

[0:05:47] Voice 11: oh ready for consideration

[0:05:49] Voice 7: i okay in the actual um description of the activity right

[0:05:55] Voice 7: all right so then the um the date

[0:06:03] Voice 1: that's later is

[0:06:04] Voice 7: march the 15th 26th so should we change that to

[0:06:07] Voice 7: march of 26 so that's the note that's in brackets it's just starting we'll be ready for march 26

[0:06:19] Voice 7: what are you suggesting trustee peterson oh

[0:06:22] Voice 11: i just uh and members of committees that i'm on

[0:06:27] Voice 11: will be familiar with i i have a i take a little bit of a peeve when we when we have dates on our

[0:06:32] Voice 11: agendas that are passed and i just like to um make sure that those get amended for our next um

[0:06:40] Voice 11: for our next agenda all

[0:06:43] Voice 7: right yes thank you yes

[0:06:47] Voice 1: yeah um i'd have to check but i think that the

[0:06:51] Voice 1: wording of that um statement where it says in consideration september 2025 is probably from

[0:06:59] Voice 1: a resolution that you passed uh so that's why in brackets it says this is just starting we'll be

[0:07:04] Voice 1: ready for march 2026 so i can certainly change it if you want but it's just being true to the

[0:07:11] Voice 1: original request and we do have an update on this verbal update later on in the meeting okay i thank

[0:07:18] Voice 11: you and and i did preface by saying if it's if that's not the word of a resolution um then let's

[0:07:25] Voice 11: change it if it is the word of our resolution obviously we can't change the resolution at this

[0:07:30] Voice 11: time but thank you all

[0:07:33] Voice 7: right so can we leave that then for uh director marler to sort out whether

[0:07:38] Voice 7: whether or not it's a resolution of council and just leave it as with the

[0:07:43] Voice 7: bracketed notation.

[0:07:46] Voice 11: Yeah, I'm content. Thank you.

[0:07:47] Voice 7: Thank you.

[0:07:51] Voice 7: All right.

[0:07:52] Voice 7: So this is the briefing that's on page 11 of the agenda.

[0:07:57] Voice 7: And this is the prior.

[0:08:01] Voice 7: These are the priorities that we discussed at the last trust council

[0:08:05] Voice 7: meeting.

[0:08:07] Voice 7: Any comment on that? I think we're, this is our,

[0:08:11] Voice 7: these were our marching orders.

[0:08:15] Voice 7: And that's the amendments that I'm suggesting to the work matrix later.

[0:08:21] Voice 7: There's an interesting notation on page 12 with respect to election of the trust council leadership and helping trustees fulfill their role could be considered time sensitive.

[0:08:35] Voice 7: Both of those.

[0:08:37] Voice 7: So I think we need to keep that in mind when we talk about the work plan and the work matrix.

[0:08:48] Voice 7: but I'm not sure we need to do anything about

[0:08:50] Voice 7: it at this point.

[0:08:52] Voice 7: Director Marler.

[0:08:54] Voice 7: Yeah, thank you.

[0:08:56] Voice 1: Yeah, the three, I think the ones to focus on are the three at the very top here,

[0:09:02] Voice 1: which is what council has asked the governance committee to focus on.

[0:09:07] Voice 1: And I think this would be, maybe not right now,

[0:09:11] Voice 1: but when you come to the work program,

[0:09:13] Voice 1: maybe think about how you want to change the work program

[0:09:16] Voice 1: so you can focus on these three items.

[0:09:18] Voice 1: To help you, provided that commentary at the bottom of those three paragraphs,

[0:09:23] Voice 1: it just gives you an idea of what these are.

[0:09:26] Voice 1: The first one, Election of Trust Council Leadership,

[0:09:30] Voice 1: and this third one, Recommendation 7, Helping Trustees Fulfill the Role.

[0:09:36] Voice 1: We've got a year until the election,

[0:09:40] Voice 1: and I know the CAO has, through, I think it's Executive Committee,

[0:09:45] Voice 1: established, or council, I can't remember,

[0:09:49] Voice 1: established a working group of trustees to help identify.

[0:09:53] Voice 1: So some of these things are going to get done anyway.

[0:09:57] Voice 1: And maybe a discussion of how the government's committee

[0:10:00] Voice 1: would be involved in that, if at all,

[0:10:03] Voice 1: like monitoring it because you've been asked to do this kind of work.

[0:10:06] Voice 1: And then the comprehensive multi-applying document

[0:10:08] Voice 1: is something else that is underway as part of the corporate plan.

[0:10:13] Voice 1: So the CEO might be able to provide a little bit more insight into those, but it would be really good if the governance committee could figure out its role and how you want us to prioritize it and do that. Thank you.

[0:10:30] Voice 7: Oh, sorry. Turning my audio

[0:10:36] Voice 7: off for a second.

[0:10:41] Voice 7: CEO Bruni,

[0:10:43] Voice 13: nice and loud.

[0:10:44] Voice 13: Thank you, Chair. Yeah, just to build on Director Marler's comments there on two of these items, the planning piece, the corporate planning piece, I'd already proposed that we re-engage the working group that have been doing that.

[0:11:02] Voice 13: And that's my plan to do that probably early in the new calendar year to pick up that draft planning process.

[0:11:11] Voice 13: I suspect I'm just finalizing my operational review report as well that's coming to Trust Council in December.

[0:11:17] Voice 13: And I suspect I'll have a recommendation in there that relates to the corporate planning process as well.

[0:11:22] Voice 13: So I don't know that there's a need for governance committee to do anything on that in the short term.

[0:11:26] Voice 13: I think the next logical step is to dust off that draft planning process and come back to Trust Council and discuss that.

[0:11:35] Voice 13: On the Recommendation 7, helping trustees fulfill their roles, yes, we've just confirmed the membership for the working group to inform planning for the election.

[0:11:46] Voice 13: and how we develop materials to prepare incoming trustees and onboarding and orientation is going

[0:11:55] Voice 13: to be the focus of that working group's efforts. And four of the five members of that working group

[0:12:01] Voice 13: are actually a part of governance committee. So that may kind of cover off the relationship to

[0:12:08] Voice 13: governance committee there, but certainly happy to bring that work to this committee as well as

[0:12:13] Voice 13: to executive committee as it advances

[0:12:15] Voice 13: and keep the whole committee informed

[0:12:17] Voice 13: of where that work is at as well.

[0:12:29] Voice 7: Sorry, I was mute.

[0:12:30] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo?

[0:12:32] Voice 5: Thank you.

[0:12:35] Voice 5: I'm pleased to hear the perspective

[0:12:37] Voice 5: of the CAO on the prioritization.

[0:12:43] Voice 5: It is what it is.

[0:12:45] Voice 5: This is what the staff is,

[0:12:46] Voice 5: or sorry, what Trust Council is directed us to do.

[0:12:49] Voice 5: With respect to the corporate planning piece of it

[0:12:52] Voice 5: and also the business of what we can do to improve the orientation of trustees and fulfilling their roles.

[0:13:05] Voice 5: I think it makes terrific sense, if I understand the CEO correctly,

[0:13:09] Voice 5: for us to act more as a sounding board for the work that the CEO and the rest of the staff are doing on both of those items.

[0:13:22] Voice 5: in particular the corporate planning issue that's i'm not quite sure what the right term is it but

[0:13:28] Voice 5: that's an operationally very detailed sort of thing this committee isn't going to figure out

[0:13:33] Voice 5: the the details of that sort of stuff at most i think we have a capacity to exercise a kind of

[0:13:43] Voice 5: overall assessment function to do a preliminary assessment of of what the plan actually is after

[0:13:51] Voice 5: the CEO working group and staff have developed something we might have some suggestions and

[0:13:55] Voice 5: thoughts but we can provide a preliminary assessment and I think that would be our main

[0:14:00] Voice 5: work that that assessment is what would then go together with the planning document to trust

[0:14:06] Voice 5: council at some point so I see us doing a light touch on that I think this the same kind of

[0:14:13] Voice 5: reasoning would apply to the trustees fulfilling their roles aspect of it again there's a lot of

[0:14:19] Voice 5: moving parts to things like that that engage operational issues i don't think we have to

[0:14:24] Voice 5: wade into it you know with a full on with boots and everything i think we can do the perform that

[0:14:31] Voice 5: oversight slash assessment role the other item the election of trust council leadership i think

[0:14:37] Voice 5: that's a much trickier issue um i think we should be able to dispense with that pretty quickly

[0:14:44] Voice 5: because we're very limited in the options of what we can do there we've heard of you know we've

[0:14:49] Voice 5: discussed that with staff before i mean the law is what it is the question is what can we do within

[0:14:55] Voice 5: the framework of the law um to um uh tweak it make it a bit um uh you know more congenial or more

[0:15:06] Voice 5: effective we may want to go down the path of creating some kind of voluntary structure i

[0:15:11] Voice 5: don't know but i think that's that's probably the priority item that would require um this

[0:15:16] Voice 5: this committee to do more uh direct work thank you anybody

[0:15:24] Voice 7: else all right so then um i would

[0:15:32] Voice 7: suggest that at this point oh trustee peterson yeah

[0:15:37] Voice 11: i was just curious um the report in terms

[0:15:41] Voice 11: of the election of the uh executive committee um talks about how the timing during the meeting

[0:15:50] Voice 11: could be tweaked and um i think it was trustee fast who had uh sent uh i think sent to a couple

[0:16:01] Voice 11: members of executive committee at any rate a a little description of how the um leadership

[0:16:09] Voice 11: uh election process goes up in the northwest territory um so i'm just wondering in terms of

[0:16:22] Voice 11: potential tweaks um what the director if the director had any thoughts or or is that something

[0:16:29] Voice 11: we should be trying to muddle through can

[0:16:33] Voice 7: we leave this um sort of deep let's i'm going to

[0:16:37] Voice 7: suggest that we take this um rfd at this point uh no sorry this is a briefing uh for information and

[0:16:45] Voice 7: then once we get to the point where we're talking about our actual work um process and what we're

[0:16:52] Voice 7: going to um focus on that um then we can get into some deep dives on some of this

[0:17:00] Voice 7: that make sense to people all right um so can we take this um briefing uh

[0:17:16] Voice 7: accept it for information at this point well

[0:17:22] Voice 5: if i can jump in i think we'd have to do more than

[0:17:25] Voice 5: accept it for information um i think we have to simply acknowledge on the record that

[0:17:30] Voice 5: that we've been given this direction from trust council and trust council has set our priority

[0:17:35] Voice 5: for us and those three those are the priorities and that will inform the discussion we have later

[0:17:40] Voice 5: all

[0:17:42] Voice 7: right so when then um what would you suggest how do we do that uh

[0:17:50] Voice 5: that we just put that on the

[0:17:51] Voice 5: record we acknowledge that trust council has given us these marching orders and we're going to

[0:17:55] Voice 5: fulfill them that's all i mean i don't think that needs a resolution just as an operating

[0:18:02] Voice 5: function of us as a group just that we acknowledge that to ourselves and all

[0:18:06] Voice 7: right so then let's

[0:18:07] Voice 7: acknowledge the um briefing the information that's in the briefing uh that has been provided to us

[0:18:14] Voice 7: that's dated october the 27th 2025 yep trustee birthright uh

[0:18:23] Voice 3: just that director marler was

[0:18:24] Voice 3: raising his hand during that conversation so he may want to speak

[0:18:27] Voice 7: i don't know why okay i'm sorry

[0:18:28] Voice 7: He

[0:18:29] Voice 3: didn't raise his digital hand, so that's why.

[0:18:32] Voice 7: Oh, that's why.

[0:18:33] Voice 7: Okay.

[0:18:35] Voice 7: Director Marler.

[0:18:37] Voice 1: Yeah, thank you.

[0:18:38] Voice 1: First of all, because I'm sharing screen,

[0:18:41] Voice 1: Zoom doesn't give me the option of raising my hand.

[0:18:43] Voice 1: I guess it figures I'm in control, so I don't need to.

[0:18:47] Voice 1: So that's the only way I can get your attention

[0:18:48] Voice 1: is you say something and put my hand up.

[0:18:51] Voice 1: Okay.

[0:18:52] Voice 1: So that's one thing.

[0:18:53] Voice 1: Yeah, no, I was actually just going to say what you said,

[0:18:56] Voice 1: I'd just ask that the minutes note that you've acknowledged that

[0:19:01] Voice 1: and the wording that you said there is totally fine.

[0:19:04] Voice 1: And then when you get down to your work program at the end of the agenda,

[0:19:07] Voice 1: you may want to come back to these three items

[0:19:09] Voice 1: and consider how you get them onto your work program.

[0:19:12] Voice 1: And then that would show council that you are following the direction.

[0:19:17] Voice 1: Thanks.

[0:19:19] Voice 7: All right.

[0:19:20] Voice 7: So I take it that we've done that.

[0:19:24] Voice 7: Thank you.

[0:19:25] Voice 7: And the next item of business then would be the Trust Policy 7.2.1 with respect to remuneration.

[0:19:32] Voice 7: And that was going to be a verbal update.

[0:19:35] Voice 7: Is Director Mums on this?

[0:19:39] Voice 7: I don't see her as part of this group.

[0:19:43] Voice 7: No, I

[0:19:44] Voice 7: can do that.

[0:19:45] Voice 7: Director Marler?

[0:19:46] Voice 7: Okay, thank you.

[0:19:47] Voice 1: Yeah.

[0:19:48] Voice 1: Yeah.

[0:19:49] Voice 1: So I just want to let you know that we are on the way getting the procurement out.

[0:19:55] Voice 1: So last week, Director Mobs and I went through and developed a request for a decision.

[0:20:04] Voice 1: It's now posted on BCBid.

[0:20:07] Voice 1: It went up on Friday, I believe.

[0:20:10] Voice 1: It'll stay open for three weeks.

[0:20:12] Voice 1: That's the standard for provincial procurements.

[0:20:15] Voice 1: And it has a price range in there up to the maximum dollars that you have allocated.

[0:20:22] Voice 1: With the scope to review the methodology, review the actual numbers, and come back with

[0:20:33] Voice 1: options and recommendations.

[0:20:35] Voice 1: So it's a pretty tight timeline for them.

[0:20:38] Voice 1: By the time the bid closes, we've had a chance to assess the bids and then issue the contract

[0:20:49] Voice 1: to the winning bid, they'll have, we're hoping,

[0:20:53] Voice 1: clear out all of December and most of January to do the work.

[0:20:59] Voice 1: It's mostly desk work, looking at what other local governments

[0:21:04] Voice 1: are doing from methodology to actual amounts

[0:21:07] Voice 1: and also ask them to survey all of the trustees

[0:21:11] Voice 1: to obviously gather more information

[0:21:15] Voice 1: about what the day-to-day work and duties are

[0:21:19] Voice 1: that the trustees are seeing

[0:21:21] Voice 1: to help them come back with some recommendations.

[0:21:24] Voice 1: And then they will provide a final report

[0:21:26] Voice 1: to a governance committee.

[0:21:30] Voice 1: They're not going to make your next meeting deadline,

[0:21:33] Voice 1: so what we've suggested in the RFD

[0:21:37] Voice 1: is that we call a special meeting

[0:21:39] Voice 1: of the governance committee

[0:21:42] Voice 1: kind of halfway to Trust Council

[0:21:45] Voice 1: between your regular meeting and council so that you can at least review it

[0:21:52] Voice 1: and then suggest any amendments that you might want to recommend

[0:21:56] Voice 1: or you might not like the option that's being recommended

[0:22:00] Voice 1: and want to take one of the other options, and that's fine.

[0:22:03] Voice 1: And then Director Mums would then take that through to Trust Council in March.

[0:22:10] Voice 1: So, we need it to go to council in March because it will help to inform the budget for the

[0:22:18] Voice 1: next fiscal because any increases in remuneration or benefits would take effect with the incoming

[0:22:26] Voice 1: council which is in the next fiscal year.

[0:22:28] Voice 1: So, we have to account for that from October to March of 2026.

[0:22:34] Voice 1: So, yeah, so that's where it's at and I just wanted to give you a verbal update on behalf

[0:22:39] Voice 1: half are direct to MOPS, just so you're aware of where it's at. Thank you.

[0:22:44] Voice 7: So it has to be a special meeting because it wouldn't be ready

[0:22:48] Voice 7: for a January 28th meeting and the April 29th is too late

[0:22:51] Voice 7: for the budget. Correct.

[0:22:56] Voice 1: So it'd just be one item. It could be a short one-hour meeting or

[0:23:00] Voice 1: less, depends how much discussion you want on the actual

[0:23:05] Voice 1: thing. In the RFDP

[0:23:08] Voice 1: request for proposal, we have put in there

[0:23:11] Voice 1: that the proponents would do a presentation to the

[0:23:15] Voice 1: Governance Committee, so they will be there to answer any questions about the methodology

[0:23:19] Voice 1: and the recommendation.

[0:23:22] Voice 7: All right. Any thoughts, comments?

[0:23:27] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo?

[0:23:28] Voice 5: A question for Director Marler.

[0:23:32] Voice 5: I think you may have mentioned this, but

[0:23:35] Voice 5: I'm not quite sure I heard it right. So from what I heard,

[0:23:41] Voice 5: My understanding is that the idea is that whichever consultant we end up engaging, that person is going to do more than just stay in their cubicle and look at the current policy and look at what everybody else does.

[0:23:55] Voice 5: There's going to be a certain amount of engagement with trustees.

[0:23:57] Voice 5: Is that right?

[0:23:59] Voice 1: Yes.

[0:24:00] Voice 1: Yes, and what we've recommended in the RFP is to use a survey system,

[0:24:06] Voice 1: so maybe develop an online survey that will be sent out to all the trustees to solicit feedback.

[0:24:16] Voice 5: I'd suggest that you also leave open, I mean, the survey is a good idea.

[0:24:19] Voice 5: I think it's an efficient way of doing it, but some of us, some of the trustees are less fulsome,

[0:24:27] Voice 5: to use the dreaded word, less fulsome in their filling out of comments and that sort of thing.

[0:24:32] Voice 5: So I think leaving the option open for trustees to just simply talk to somebody,

[0:24:38] Voice 5: if they prefer to do it that way, I think that might be a good way to go.

[0:24:42] Voice 1: Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

[0:24:44] Voice 5: Thanks.

[0:24:45] Voice 7: What's the time allotment for this consultant?

[0:24:51] Voice 1: Well, we'd like to get them going as soon as possible.

[0:24:55] Voice 1: It's going to be probably the second week of December.

[0:24:57] Voice 1: and then they have Christmas.

[0:24:59] Voice 7: I get that,

[0:24:59] Voice 7: but I'm sorry.

[0:25:01] Voice 1: Yeah.

[0:25:01] Voice 7: I didn't mean to interrupt.

[0:25:02] Voice 1: I meant how

[0:25:03] Voice 7: much time would they, on an hourly basis,

[0:25:07] Voice 7: how much time would they be paid for?

[0:25:12] Voice 1: I don't have a specific number of hours.

[0:25:16] Voice 1: It's more the way the RFP is written is the maximum amount

[0:25:19] Voice 1: that we're willing to go to.

[0:25:21] Voice 1: So they'll come back with what they can provide us

[0:25:24] Voice 1: within those dollars.

[0:25:25] Voice 1: and we've given them the deliverables that we would like to get.

[0:25:29] Voice 1: So they're going to figure out the most cost-effective way,

[0:25:32] Voice 1: first of all, whether or not they can deliver

[0:25:34] Voice 1: based on the dollars that we've given them,

[0:25:37] Voice 1: and then if they can, the most cost-effective way.

[0:25:40] Voice 7: Okay. If I can put myself on the speaker's list,

[0:25:43] Voice 7: the thing that I was concerned about was that this is a very different

[0:25:48] Voice 7: set of activities that the trustees get into

[0:25:52] Voice 7: as opposed to other municipal councils.

[0:25:55] Voice 7: So if I compare Bowen Municipality to any of the work that I've done on trust, there's no travel involved, or very, very little. And, you know, there's no, I don't know, the work just seems to be different in the requirements on the trustees. It's all the same in terms of everybody talking in the grocery store and, you know, in the library and all the rest of it.

[0:26:17] Voice 7: but I think that some of the other items.

[0:26:21] Voice 7: So is there anything that we can do as trustees to help the process

[0:26:25] Voice 7: in terms of maybe providing a list of all the differences

[0:26:29] Voice 7: that the consultant should be considering?

[0:26:35] Voice 1: I mean, yeah, you could provide that to staff,

[0:26:39] Voice 1: and we can certainly incorporate that,

[0:26:42] Voice 1: provide it to their consultants when they're putting it together.

[0:26:46] Voice 1: And that's the whole point of the survey,

[0:26:48] Voice 1: is to gather that information or the discussion.

[0:26:52] Voice 1: There will be discussion with staff as well,

[0:26:54] Voice 1: so it won't just be me and myself probably

[0:26:57] Voice 1: and Director Mobs and the CEO on what we see.

[0:27:01] Voice 1: Yeah, you're right.

[0:27:03] Voice 1: When you're trying to benchmark anything at the Allen's Trust,

[0:27:07] Voice 1: there isn't really anything comparable,

[0:27:10] Voice 1: so you tend to have to kind of extract a little bit

[0:27:14] Voice 1: from what you're seeing around you and say,

[0:27:17] Voice 1: well how does that apply in the trust we have the same issue when we're trying to

[0:27:24] Voice 1: evaluate um the work that our planners do for example and you know i mean we don't get a say

[0:27:30] Voice 1: in how much they get paid but the province does and knowing what's going on in the local

[0:27:35] Voice 1: governments helps us to uh helps us there too and how we handle that in recruitment

[0:27:40] Voice 1: So, same for the trustees, it is a different job.

[0:27:45] Voice 1: We will provide them with the report that was done by the previous consultants because

[0:27:53] Voice 1: it addressed exactly the same problem and lays out a methodology, so we would like them

[0:27:59] Voice 1: to look at that methodology as a starting point and, you know, from the assessment.

[0:28:05] Voice 1: But the bigger part of the methodology is how remuneration is assessed and whether that

[0:28:14] Voice 1: still makes sense going forward.

[0:28:16] Voice 1: Because in the original, it's assessed on the basis of population because there's more

[0:28:25] Voice 1: work on the bigger islands than there are on the smaller islands, at least that's the

[0:28:28] Voice 1: assumption.

[0:28:29] Voice 1: And they set a baseline amount, saying X thousand dollars, and then islands that have a higher

[0:28:37] Voice 1: population will get more based on this formula.

[0:28:41] Voice 1: And then they also considered whether or not trustees should be remunerated for things

[0:28:49] Voice 1: like committee meetings or even council meetings.

[0:28:53] Voice 1: So we don't do the council meetings, I don't believe, but maybe we do.

[0:28:57] Voice 1: But we do remuneration for council committee meetings and things like that.

[0:29:06] Voice 1: But you might want to reconsider, you know, how much of the remuneration is tied to that

[0:29:12] Voice 1: basis, just what you get paid out, right?

[0:29:15] Voice 1: And then the other one was benefits.

[0:29:17] Voice 1: That was a recommendation of the previous consultant.

[0:29:21] Voice 1: So there's maybe some thought about expanding those benefits.

[0:29:28] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo?

[0:29:30] Voice 5: Yes, I just wanted to comment that I think Trustee Getty has or Chair Getty has identified, I think, the key thing that we would want the consultant to have at the forefront of their reasoning on this, that the trustee work, that the consultant has to be very careful not to make too easy a comparison between municipalities and regional districts, because we're actually

[0:30:00] Voice 5: work is kind of nothing like either it's a it's a peculiar hybrid um that um the whole population

[0:30:09] Voice 5: thing the difference between it's true uh um local trust committees that cover a larger population

[0:30:17] Voice 5: have a wider scope of work and more work to do uh but what seems to be getting lost now is the

[0:30:24] Voice 5: full scale of the time commitment and the character of the effort required of all trustees

[0:30:28] Voice 5: and just drawing that distinction you know just that the consultant really needs to have the

[0:30:34] Voice 5: forefront of their mind that municipalities and regional districts are limited value in terms of

[0:30:42] Voice 5: not low value but there's just a limit to how far we can rely on those as a comparators as

[0:30:48] Voice 5: comparators and I and I think if if this committee does anything useful in this process I think it

[0:30:56] Voice 5: it would be to follow through on Chair Getty's point and emphasize that.

[0:31:00] Voice 5: Thank you.

[0:31:05] Voice 7: Director Marlowe, you mentioned the previous consultant's report

[0:31:08] Voice 7: and their methodology.

[0:31:10] Voice 7: Is there any way that that can be shared with this committee?

[0:31:13] Voice 7: And it seems to me that a follow-up would be that if we've got any suggestions

[0:31:18] Voice 7: that we could – we've got a verbal report coming up at the December meeting.

[0:31:23] Voice 7: Maybe we could include an ask of the trustees or have some sort of an input

[0:31:28] Voice 7: put in terms of what you're considering for the survey or just some feedback and ideas with

[0:31:34] Voice 7: respect to the previous report. Anybody else interested in getting

[0:31:40] Voice 7: that? Should that be a

[0:31:40] Voice 7: general sharing? Yes, I think

[0:31:44] Voice 5: that would be helpful.

[0:31:46] Voice 7: Sorry, yeah. Director Marler?

[0:31:49] Voice 1: Yeah, I was going to say,

[0:31:51] Voice 1: yeah, I can certainly share the original consultant's report with you. That way you can see

[0:31:57] Voice 1: what was assessed, what was recommended, and the methodology.

[0:32:01] Voice 1: And I just want to reiterate that, yeah, we are aware

[0:32:04] Voice 1: when Director Mubbs and I were drafting the RFD,

[0:32:09] Voice 1: we were talking about how we are going to be scoring them.

[0:32:14] Voice 1: We're definitely aware of the uniqueness.

[0:32:17] Voice 1: Definitely, we will be having a kickoff meeting with the consultants,

[0:32:21] Voice 1: and we'll be definitely communicating with them about that.

[0:32:27] Voice 1: So the idea is just to, you know, figure out a way for the consultants to come back with some recommendations that make sense for the island strip.

[0:32:38] Voice 1: So, yeah, they're not going to go and say, well, this is done in these municipalities, so you need to do it the same way.

[0:32:43] Voice 1: But when you think about it, we have kind of like recruiting for jobs.

[0:32:49] Voice 1: We've got people that are interested in running as a trustee, maybe interested in running as a regional director, maybe a municipal councillor on there.

[0:33:01] Voice 1: So it's just good to know what each municipality is paying in the area to see whether or not we're competitive with that, because you're not going to attract them if there's a lot of work.

[0:33:13] Voice 1: And let's say, you know, the work here is completely different. And even on a smaller island, you're doing a ton of work. I know it's busy. Gambier, our planners on Gambier, for example, are quite busy because even though you have a lot of population, there's a lot of issues because of the mandate of the trust.

[0:33:33] Voice 1: And I think that is the key piece to think about is, you know, it's not just about population.

[0:33:40] Voice 1: It's about the mandate, and we have to look at all of the different pieces,

[0:33:45] Voice 1: and that pulls the trustees in all sorts of directions on all the islands.

[0:33:49] Voice 1: So, yeah, we're definitely aware of it, and we'll make sure that we make sure the consultant is aware of it.

[0:33:56] Voice 1: And we'll be looking for a consultant that gets that.

[0:33:58] Voice 1: So that's what we're looking for through the request for proposal process.

[0:34:05] Voice 1: It's not just about the dollars.

[0:34:06] Voice 1: It's about how well they're going to be able to deliver what we're asking for.

[0:34:12] Voice 1: But, yeah, I can definitely provide that consultant report to you.

[0:34:17] Voice 7: Trustee Bernard, oh, hands up.

[0:34:19] Voice 1: No, yeah, I'm…

[0:34:20] Voice 7: Okay.

[0:34:21] Voice 7: Trustee Peterson?

[0:34:25] Voice 5: Sorry about that.

[0:34:26] Voice 5: I actually accidentally hit the button too soon.

[0:34:31] Voice 5: I do have my comment.

[0:34:32] Voice 5: Did you have another comment?

[0:34:34] Voice 5: I have a question, actually, for Director Marler.

[0:34:38] Voice 5: I'm wondering, I'd like to hear from Director Marler about his thoughts about the usefulness of this idea, and its feasibility.

[0:34:47] Voice 5: But I'm wondering if doing if staff did a straightforward preliminary survey now, I'm wondering whether that might be something useful, because once we do have the consultant, that would have some that would be some data we could give to the consultant that would allow the consultant develop an initial sense of what the trustee perspective is.

[0:35:10] Voice 5: I would anticipate the consultant would do its own outreach and survey stuff, but that having that preliminary perspective might help the consultant come up with more granular or more focused questions for its survey.

[0:35:26] Voice 5: So your thoughts, Director Marler, on that idea?

[0:35:29] Voice 5: you

[0:35:30] Voice 1: yeah um i would say we had more time maybe i think my concern right now would be that we don't

[0:35:41] Voice 1: have the resources to really think about what that would be and what kind of questions we'd ask

[0:35:49] Voice 1: and i think if we did that the questions they might be biased if it's just me and say director

[0:35:55] Voice 1: and mobs and putting them together and I just don't see how we can do a good job of putting

[0:36:02] Voice 1: that together and providing something that's worthwhile it wasn't really sculpting the whole

[0:36:07] Voice 1: point of hiring a consultant is to take the work away and they're the professionals and they would

[0:36:13] Voice 1: know the types of questions they should be asking and we will obviously will be there to guide them

[0:36:18] Voice 1: around the object of the trust to make sure that they're not just going to use generic questions

[0:36:23] Voice 1: that they ask every local government,

[0:36:25] Voice 1: but they're going to tailor them to what we need.

[0:36:27] Voice 1: So I'd say, you know,

[0:36:30] Voice 1: if we were just starting thinking about this process

[0:36:33] Voice 1: and how you would like it to be done a year or two from now,

[0:36:36] Voice 1: then, yeah, I think we could probably work out a project

[0:36:40] Voice 1: to get some staff time to do that.

[0:36:42] Voice 1: But at this stage,

[0:36:44] Voice 1: to try and turn something around in the next couple of weeks,

[0:36:47] Voice 1: I think would just be impossible from a resource and fairness perspective.

[0:36:53] Voice 1: But thanks.

[0:36:53] Voice 1: right well thank you for your frankness director murray

[0:36:56] Voice 11: trustee peterson yeah thank you chair um

[0:37:01] Voice 11: just noting that the there's a pretty substantial reporting about 50 odd pages or so in the january

[0:37:10] Voice 11: uh 15th 2024 governance committee agenda that i was reviewing so that might be something

[0:37:17] Voice 11: um that members of this committee might want to go back and look at just for reference there's

[0:37:23] Voice 11: There's quite a bit of stuff there.

[0:37:26] Voice 11: And if anyone doesn't have it handy, I have the PDF I could email.

[0:37:32] Voice 7: All right.

[0:37:33] Voice 7: I think we can go back in WebDAV probably.

[0:37:35] Voice 7: Trustee Borthwick.

[0:37:37] Voice 3: I was just going to say that I was not on the committee at that time,

[0:37:40] Voice 3: so I don't have that agenda.

[0:37:41] Voice 3: But if Tim would send it to me, that would be wonderful.

[0:37:45] Voice 7: I think all of the meetings,

[0:37:48] Voice 7: if you go into the committee meetings in the WebDAV,

[0:37:52] Voice 7: that it would be there.

[0:37:53] Voice 7: but if you've got any problems then tim obviously has it handy all right so um we've got this verbal

[0:38:02] Voice 7: update it's carrying on and um we'll get the previous consultant's report with methodology

[0:38:09] Voice 7: and any i we can suggest that this is the survey is going to be coming to in the verbal report to

[0:38:17] Voice 7: the trust council we can say that this the consultant is in part going to be creating a

[0:38:22] Voice 7: survey and that'll be coming and we want people to participate as much as possible and i suppose

[0:38:28] Voice 7: if there's um will the person be hired by then if there's a possibility of having one-on-one

[0:38:33] Voice 7: conversations that that could be um indicated as well possibly if that's within the realm of

[0:38:41] Voice 7: possibilities at that point and we'll check closer to the meeting all right all right so

[0:38:48] Voice 7: So that finishes our business work program items for now.

[0:38:55] Voice 7: The briefing is something we're going to reconsider a little bit later.

[0:38:59] Voice 7: We're on to item number eight, other business.

[0:39:02] Voice 7: So we've got a budget request, 8.1, page 13 of the agenda.

[0:39:09] Voice 7: If you've all had a chance to read this,

[0:39:11] Voice 7: I have one question for clarification.

[0:39:14] Voice 7: application um the allocation or the request is for six thousand dollars to continue

[0:39:20] Voice 7: the policy review project on page 14 under response options um the governance committee

[0:39:28] Voice 7: recommended trust council the following budget request and that was for

[0:39:32] Voice 7: six thousand four hundred

[0:39:33] Voice 7: that

[0:39:36] Voice 1: is a typo my apologies okay be the same as the original recommendation all

[0:39:41] Voice 7: right the other

[0:39:43] Voice 7: question that I had was when we're talking about the other options in terms of somewhere in this

[0:39:56] Voice 7: report there's in the next business short business case the other options on page 17

[0:40:08] Voice 7: if the work is undertaken by staff for trust counsel option one option two it's undertaken

[0:40:14] Voice 7: taken by a consultant. There's an additional $2,000 included

[0:40:17] Voice 7: for legal review. Is that

[0:40:22] Voice 7: something that we have to put into the budget request, or is that

[0:40:25] Voice 7: going to be absorbed from the general legal budget?

[0:40:30] Voice 1: Yeah, as I may, the $6,000

[0:40:34] Voice 1: in option one is made up of about $2,000 for legal and $4,000

[0:40:38] Voice 1: for administration, so it's all built in more.

[0:40:40] Voice 1: yeah so for the option two you'd be looking at seventeen thousand dollars for that oh i see

[0:40:47] Voice 7: all right all right so any other comments questions trustee patrick or sorry direct

[0:40:56] Voice 7: chair patrick

[0:40:58] Trustee Patrick: whatever i am yeah hi um i do have a couple questions um in the business case it does

[0:41:06] Trustee Patrick: talk about um on deliverables that you know that there has never been a systemic review of the

[0:41:16] Trustee Patrick: policies and that um this methodology is supposed to create a criteria for prioritizing the policies

[0:41:26] Trustee Patrick: to be reviewed a criteria for new policies and establishes a schedule for review and update

[0:41:32] Trustee Patrick: data policies. My only concern is we've got 91 policies. If we talk about one of our new

[0:41:40] Trustee Patrick: priorities, which is helping trustees fulfill their role, having policies that function and

[0:41:47] Trustee Patrick: are easy to understand and work together is probably top of the list for helping trustees

[0:41:54] Trustee Patrick: function in their role. I did a quick search, as I always do, as to what's going on out in

[0:42:00] Trustee Patrick: municipalities and most of them have policy development policy of some form or another

[0:42:06] Trustee Patrick: that outlines and defines what policies are because we have different kinds of policy

[0:42:11] Trustee Patrick: council policy administrative policy ltc policies there's all these different policies

[0:42:16] Trustee Patrick: but it also establishes how a new policy you know so there's a policy that does lay out

[0:42:22] Trustee Patrick: when and why a new policy is created and it also establishes that once a term that there will be a

[0:42:30] Trustee Patrick: a comprehensive review of all policies and that a report comes to council to tell them

[0:42:38] Trustee Patrick: what needs to be done. So the way this reads, it's sort of a one-time, let's try to update this.

[0:42:44] Trustee Patrick: I get it. We've got to update. 91 policies are out of date, but we should never have 91 policies

[0:42:50] Trustee Patrick: out of date again. And do we even need 91 policies? So I think we need another piece to this,

[0:42:57] Trustee Patrick: and that is to develop sort of an overall approach to policies or a policy for policies or whatever

[0:43:03] Trustee Patrick: we want to call it um that makes sure we don't get into this condition again that you know it's not

[0:43:08] Trustee Patrick: just a schedule to update a policy there should be things that trigger a policy to be updated

[0:43:13] Trustee Patrick: and it just happens so just wanted to raise that i've got lots of examples happy to share

[0:43:20] Trustee Patrick: Trustee

[0:43:26] Voice 5: Bernardo? I'm really glad that Chair Patrick brought that point up. I think she's right

[0:43:32] Voice 5: on in identifying the revision and consolidation of policies as more than just an efficiency

[0:43:44] Voice 5: measure that would make it easier for staff and everybody else to do the work. I think

[0:43:52] Voice 5: that's the general way of looking at it but in terms of really helping trustees to fulfill their

[0:43:58] Voice 5: duties and responsibilities it's getting oriented about how the whole system here works at the trust

[0:44:06] Voice 5: is no small task it's very hard in large part because of the sheer volume of policies that

[0:44:13] Voice 5: we have to deal with that are constantly being invoked meeting after another but and what has

[0:44:19] Voice 5: emerged certainly in my experience and i think this is something to think about when we're dealing

[0:44:23] Voice 5: with orienting and helping trustees do the job their job is um we have an accessibility and

[0:44:31] Voice 5: intelligibility problem with the policies 91 policies is too many and um to be honest a lot

[0:44:42] Voice 5: of them are written in uh language that is uh frankly ambiguous and it's not clear what the

[0:44:49] Voice 5: policy actually is it leaves too much open for interpretation um all of those things i i think

[0:44:56] Voice 5: need to be addressed i think chair patrick is right to identify a constant uh not constant but um

[0:45:05] Voice 5: regular uh review of policies um is a wise feature to work into it but i also think that

[0:45:13] Voice 5: that's something that can emerge that recommendation if it ends up being one

[0:45:17] Voice 5: is something that can emerge with our work in the course of our work with staff as the staff

[0:45:24] Voice 5: starts undergoing this process or continuing the process from consolidating them somewhere when we

[0:45:29] Voice 5: get a little closer to the end of the piece i think that's where this committee can start

[0:45:34] Voice 5: adding some value by putting in that type of recommendation thank you um

[0:45:40] Voice 7: just a comment

[0:45:41] Voice 7: the that first bullet point uh says establish a schedule for review and update but um sorry cao

[0:45:48] Voice 7: obroni thank you through

[0:45:51] Voice 13: the chair yeah i i i agree with uh with chair patrick and trustee

[0:45:56] Voice 13: bernardo in terms of the value of setting out a framework for how we manage and maintain

[0:46:01] Voice 13: policies in the island's trust i think it's a bit of a chicken and an egg scenario though at this

[0:46:06] Voice 13: stage if we were to go ahead with developing that kind of framework as a policy in itself

[0:46:12] Voice 13: we would then be implementing a policy that we would actually be really challenged probably to

[0:46:16] Voice 13: be in compliance with until we have completed this round of reviews and updates um so i think trustee

[0:46:22] Voice 13: bernardo's solution of yes as a part of this project one of the outcomes should be as we work

[0:46:28] Voice 13: through updating the policies and get closer to that then kind of the next step would be

[0:46:32] Voice 13: implementing a framework that would more regularly guide that into the future i think i think that

[0:46:39] Voice 13: that's a good sort of logistical sequencing but i think the the suggestion from chair patrick is a

[0:46:44] Voice 13: a very valid one that we should aim to get to um as a conclusion of this work for sure so we're

[0:46:51] Voice 7: talking about eating the elephant all right so um if we can just scroll up a little bit um on the

[0:46:59] Voice 7: same page mr barlow to the background and that list of policies um the work that we're doing

[0:47:09] Voice 7: Moving later on in this agenda with respect to the first meeting, the next briefing that we've got in terms of looking at the two policies for requests for decisions and council meeting preparation.

[0:47:27] Voice 7: Where do those fall in this list of existing policies?

[0:47:36] Voice 7: Director Barnum?

[0:47:37] Voice 1: Oh, sorry, the

[0:47:37] Voice 1: one, yeah, so the one, yeah.

[0:47:41] Voice 1: They fall mostly on the Trust Council and its committees.

[0:47:44] Voice 1: That's the area that guides how Trust Council operates.

[0:47:48] Voice 1: So that was the focus that we recommended for taxing some of these policies initially.

[0:47:56] Voice 1: And then obviously I want to work through the rest of those at some point.

[0:48:00] Voice 1: And we'll come back to that.

[0:48:03] Voice 7: So that's under the second bullet, Trust Council and its committees?

[0:48:07] Voice 1: Yeah.

[0:48:07] Voice 1: Under the

[0:48:08] Voice 7: 23 policies?

[0:48:09] Voice 7: All right.

[0:48:09] Voice 7: Right. So then this it seemed the question that we had on our work matrix before and what we had originally talked about in terms of it being a recommendation of the governance review was the bylaw.

[0:48:29] Voice 7: what was it? Number one, meeting process

[0:48:40] Voice 7: bylaw 101 and related policies. So is that

[0:48:46] Voice 7: translated into this work

[0:48:50] Voice 7: on the next briefing, the trust

[0:48:56] Voice 7: council policy and request for decisions and that falls into this second

[0:49:01] Voice 7: bullet yeah

[0:49:03] Voice 1: that's correct so the work that we're doing currently that the governance committee

[0:49:08] Voice 1: has asked us to do is from that recommendation of the um the governance report and the trust

[0:49:16] Voice 1: councillors committees are the ones that um are tied closest to the meeting procedures bylaw that

[0:49:22] Voice 1: you have so the meeting procedures bylaw is the bylaw sets out how you're meeting for unwhite

[0:49:27] Voice 1: on what the rules are.

[0:49:28] Voice 1: And then council has 23 policies

[0:49:31] Voice 1: around how council and committees operate.

[0:49:34] Voice 1: So that's what we're looking at initially

[0:49:37] Voice 1: based on what the governance committee is recommending.

[0:49:41] Voice 7: Okay.

[0:49:43] Voice 7: Does everybody understand that slightly convoluted idea map?

[0:49:51] Voice 7: So I think we have to reword that by 101 business

[0:49:59] Voice 7: that's in our work so that it corresponds to this assuming that we are

[0:50:05] Voice 7: going to be accepting this work plan or this request then I think that it's a

[0:50:10] Voice 7: little bit confusing in terms of different language used for different

[0:50:13] Voice 7: items we're breaking it down into the 91 policies and we're slowly going to be

[0:50:19] Voice 7: going through that list director Marla would that be correct yes

[0:50:26] Voice 1: well that's a

[0:50:28] Voice 1: a good question. At what point

[0:50:31] Voice 1: do you want to go

[0:50:32] Voice 1: through all of them and clean them up

[0:50:34] Voice 1: and reduce it down to, say, 40 policies

[0:50:36] Voice 1: that are modern and make

[0:50:38] Voice 1: sense?

[0:50:40] Voice 1: The rest of the work that's indicated

[0:50:42] Voice 1: in this business case, which is the

[0:50:44] Voice 1: first bullet there, is establish

[0:50:46] Voice 1: the methodology. And also the last

[0:50:48] Voice 1: bullet, identifying gaps where policies

[0:50:50] Voice 1: should be in place, but there are no policies

[0:50:52] Voice 1: covering the issue.

[0:50:54] Voice 1: So that's a different piece of

[0:50:56] Voice 1: work. At what point

[0:50:58] Voice 1: would it make sense to do that so yeah because to do all these 91 policies it's going to take

[0:51:06] Voice 1: more than just one year for example it's not going to be all completed by the time the election

[0:51:14] Voice 1: happens it's going to have to continue and so we need to think about that methodology piece at some

[0:51:22] Voice 1: point and how you get that in there so i don't really have a good answer for you i think you

[0:51:28] Voice 1: We can probably think it through.

[0:51:29] Voice 1: And if the government's committee wanted us to,

[0:51:32] Voice 1: staff could come back with some thoughts around that methodology

[0:51:36] Voice 1: and some recommendations.

[0:51:38] Voice 1: So keep that in mind, given the time that we have.

[0:51:42] Voice 1: I just can't tell you off the top of my head right now,

[0:51:45] Voice 1: what is the best approach.

[0:51:47] Voice 1: Yep. Complicated.

[0:51:50] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo.

[0:51:58] Voice 5: Sorry about that.

[0:52:00] Voice 5: I was called away for something.

[0:52:02] Voice 5: We're getting a little, what's before us?

[0:52:05] Voice 5: first of all is is this request for a decision and i guess we should work our way down that path

[0:52:12] Voice 11: and

[0:52:13] Voice 5: and deal with that and i would say that um in terms of an actual decision of this committee for

[0:52:20] Voice 5: today that's very straightforward it seems to me that we really do need to simply get on with it

[0:52:27] Voice 5: and sort of uh and i don't mean to abbreviate this discussion because i think it is useful to

[0:52:32] Voice 5: talk about the nuts and bolts of of what of what the work is going to be like and we have the time

[0:52:37] Voice 5: for it but i i personally would certainly uh i certainly support the um you know the request

[0:52:45] Voice 5: for decision uh and uh i would add in terms of the getting a bit more granular about this uh i

[0:52:53] Voice 5: i do think it makes sense the current priority that we've put on addressing trust council and

[0:52:58] Voice 5: committee policies in terms of examining those first I think those are very important for us

[0:53:03] Voice 5: as a committee to get involved in as well as the second third tranche of policies that are

[0:53:09] Voice 5: identified the 12 that relate to local trust committees and other committees I think those

[0:53:14] Voice 5: are the two categories where I think as a committee we can add the most value in terms of input

[0:53:21] Voice 5: but when I look at all the remaining policies other than the ones that the one that relates

[0:53:27] Voice 5: Islands Trust, those really are, you know, operational in terms of, I'm not sure there's

[0:53:39] Voice 5: a terrific amount that we as a committee can add to in terms of adding value to an assessment of

[0:53:45] Voice 5: what works and what doesn't work as a policy. And I would like to emphasize that in respect

[0:53:49] Voice 5: of those policies, I would like to think it might be possible for staff to work in parallel,

[0:53:56] Voice 5: LL, not just Director Marler, but other staff members who want to see changes, that we give

[0:54:05] Voice 5: room to staff to show some initiative in terms of rewriting all of those things so that they

[0:54:11] Voice 5: actually fit for purpose. Because it's really staff is in the best position to assess what

[0:54:18] Voice 5: works and doesn't work, for example, for land use planning bylaws, or not bylaws, but land use

[0:54:24] Voice 5: planning operational issues which is what the policy should be dealing with and the other

[0:54:30] Voice 5: operational issues thanks sorry

[0:54:46] Voice 7: i'm mute trustee middleton i

[0:54:48] Voice 5: saw director marler had his hand up

[0:54:50] Voice 5: by the way oh

[0:54:50] Voice 7: sorry director marler can you put a yellow glove on

[0:54:56] Voice 1: i'll try um yeah i just wanted

[0:55:02] Voice 1: to say that all the because these are policies of council we can't make any changes without

[0:55:07] Voice 1: council's approval so we have to work with with one of the political bodies to make recommendations

[0:55:14] Voice 1: and that recommendation might be that we don't need the policy like some of the operational

[0:55:19] Voice 1: ones might be better off as management policies and councils like yeah we don't need to see that

[0:55:24] Voice 1: but we need to have that discussion with you or and then get some recommendations to go to council

[0:55:30] Voice 1: So, yeah, we can certainly have ideas, but we can't make changes without counsel.

[0:55:40] Voice 5: Well, just to clarify, Director Marlowe, that was my point, which is in respect of those operational things, I think we should be looking to the staff to take the lead at the idea level.

[0:55:52] Voice 5: But your point, of course, is understood that at the end of the day, we have to go through the process.

[0:56:00] Voice 7: Then it seems to me that with respect to deliverables, if we're clarifying the differences between operational guidelines that would be more administrative and policies that would be the purview of council, that that's one of the, that I don't see that included in this list of deliverables.

[0:56:22] Voice 7: And I think that's an important distinction.

[0:56:27] Voice 7: Can we add that at some point?

[0:56:31] Voice 7: Director Marler?

[0:56:33] Voice 1: Is it

[0:56:34] Voice 7: in there somewhere?

[0:56:34] Voice 1: Yeah, if I may, this is your business case.

[0:56:38] Voice 1: So if you want me to add something in, just ask for a resolution

[0:56:42] Voice 1: so I know exactly what I'm putting in there.

[0:56:45] Voice 1: That'd be good. Thanks.

[0:56:48] Voice 7: Well, if we're done.

[0:56:56] Voice 7: Okay, so Director Bernardo, could you maybe work on a resolution

[0:57:01] Voice 7: for something to add as a deliverable?

[0:57:06] Voice 7: respect to

[0:57:07] Voice 7: the distinction between operational and management i

[0:57:12] Voice 5: first i appreciate the promotion

[0:57:14] Voice 5: to director but i'm just interested uh i um if you could please chair uh clarify i'm happy to

[0:57:22] Voice 5: sort of try to scribble something out but could you um repeat the point i'm not quite sure is it

[0:57:29] Voice 5: the point i just made that that should be oh okay all right thank you christy middleton

[0:57:36] Voice 7: Thank

[0:57:40] Trustee Middleton: you, Chair. Can you hear me OK? Yes.

[0:57:43] Trustee Middleton: Great. Yeah, I think I've just sort of been listening to everybody here. And frankly, I was a little confused by the agenda items and how they were presented.

[0:57:53] Trustee Middleton: And I wasn't really seeing the thread back to any kind of recommendation from the governance review report.

[0:58:06] Trustee Middleton: And I think I've seen now why, what my issue is.

[0:58:09] Trustee Middleton: And I think Chair Patrick pointed out, given we're at a somewhat momentous juncture in terms of we're going to be receiving some fairly high-level insight into the processes and the operational aspects of the organization from our CAO, that I would anticipate is actionable information.

[0:58:29] Trustee Middleton: information, it does seem to me that a pause and then a dive into a methodology and a selection

[0:58:39] Trustee Middleton: of policies to, well, first of all, a way of revising policies in some of the ways you

[0:58:49] Trustee Middleton: both just or the past three speakers have talked about where staff are engaged or the

[0:58:54] Trustee Middleton: relevant knowledge holders are engaged, that we actually get some guidance in terms of

[0:58:59] Trustee Middleton: how policies are effectively written. And then secondly, what the priority is,

[0:59:07] Trustee Middleton: what a recommendation should be amalgamated, what new policy perhaps may be required,

[0:59:13] Trustee Middleton: and this actually be then created for the new council. I think otherwise it just feels a little

[0:59:21] Trustee Middleton: bit like we're editing on the fly here at a time when we are probably actually going to be required

[0:59:27] Trustee Middleton: to be a bit more strategic and a little bit more um hand on the tiller i i i would argue then

[0:59:35] Trustee Middleton: then i'm seeing we're being by by going through um you know these very sort of specific

[0:59:43] Trustee Middleton: asks of us at this point i think i think we need to think bigger at this at this juncture and

[0:59:49] Trustee Middleton: commission um a policy for how um our policies are both created who's involved in the creation

[0:59:56] Trustee Middleton: and what our recommendation is for revisions.

[1:00:00] Trustee Middleton: going going into the next term thank you all

[1:00:10] Voice 7: right so what we have in front of us is a budget

[1:00:13] Voice 7: business case um and we've got clarification that the legal review is included um that this is money

[1:00:26] Voice 7: for um extra staff to either backfill or um to do a lot of the um organizational work and

[1:00:38] Voice 7: And we've got an addition to the projected results and deliverables coming.

[1:00:46] Voice 7: And is there anything else?

[1:00:58] Voice 7: So I don't see any hands up.

[1:01:08] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo, how are your scribbles on the bullet point?

[1:01:15] Voice 5: I've got something maybe that might work, assuming I understand the assignment.

[1:01:24] Voice 5: Perhaps we could just put it up there before I actually make it as a motion so that we can put the language, you know, so we all can cobble together the language where we bumble into it.

[1:01:35] Voice 5: So where I'm coming from is that the second bullet of projected results and deliverables be amended by adding the following language to the end of the second bullet.

[1:01:52] Voice 5: comma with the current policies relating to trust council and committees being given initial

[1:01:58] Voice 5: priority with

[1:02:04] Voice 7: current policies

[1:02:05] Voice 1: for sorry director yeah through the chair could you repeat that

[1:02:14] Voice 1: slowly so i can record it and then put it up on the screen for you sure that

[1:02:18] Voice 5: the second bullet of

[1:02:19] Voice 5: of projected results slash deliverables

[1:02:23] Voice 5: in the RFD be amended

[1:02:27] Voice 5: with,

[1:02:33] Voice 5: also be amended, sorry,

[1:02:35] Voice 5: by the addition of the following language,

[1:02:40] Voice 5: quote, comma, with the current policies

[1:02:44] Voice 5: relating to trust counsel and committees

[1:02:48] Voice 5: being given initial priority,

[1:02:50] Voice 5: already, period, end quote.

[1:02:58] Voice 1: Thank you. I'll bring it up on the screen in a second.

[1:03:01] Voice 1: If

[1:03:05] Voice 13: I may, Chair, just to clarify, Trustee Broward, you said the second bullet

[1:03:09] Voice 13: in the RFD, but I believe you're meaning the business

[1:03:12] Voice 13: case. Is that correct? The project and results deliverables of the business case?

[1:03:16] Voice 5: Yes, that's right. I'm sorry. It's because the business comes to us

[1:03:22] Voice 5: as an RFD. I got myself mixed up there, but you're right. It's the business case.

[1:03:25] Voice 5: All

[1:03:36] Voice 7: right. That is the substance of the next point on our agenda with respect to this briefing on the actual work of the two policies, which is suggested as the work that we're going to engage in next.

[1:03:56] Voice 7: I understood there was a difference between some of these being operational guidelines that would be better under an administrative policy and decisions made by the CAO if there's going to be any changes and various directors, as opposed to more general policies other than operational that would be administrative,

[1:04:20] Voice 7: that would be discussed and amended by Trust Council,

[1:04:25] Voice 7: that there's a distinction between operational

[1:04:27] Voice 7: and that a lot of these 91 policies that we've got now

[1:04:31] Voice 7: are in part operational, either in part or wholly,

[1:04:39] Voice 7: and that they should not be or they would be better dealt with

[1:04:43] Voice 7: by the administration rather than anything

[1:04:48] Voice 7: Anything that the trustees have to necessarily be familiar with.

[1:04:54] Voice 7: Is that correct, that distinction between operation and management?

[1:04:58] Voice 7: Or maybe management's the wrong word, but CAO Broney or Director Marler?

[1:05:10] Voice 1: Yeah, I could speak to that.

[1:05:12] Voice 1: So the intent of policies is that they are the high-level direction, I guess,

[1:05:21] Voice 1: of trust counsel on certain issues.

[1:05:23] Voice 1: things that we would like council to take the ownership of and then the operations is how those

[1:05:32] Voice 1: things are actually implemented at the staff level and that would be a management thing that would

[1:05:39] Voice 1: just be maybe operations procedures that we have that are approved by management that enact the

[1:05:47] Voice 1: the policies. Now, a lot of our policies that council has currently actually have a mix

[1:05:52] Voice 1: of both in them. And it's difficult to determine at what level it makes sense to have that

[1:06:00] Voice 1: at what detail level. So, you know, having a policy, I guess, of council on policy development

[1:06:10] Voice 1: including, you know, when a policy would be reviewed, when it would be created, what it

[1:06:16] Voice 1: includes is probably a good thing to have because it would address some of those.

[1:06:22] Voice 1: So we've had this operational notion that the council policy is authorization and then

[1:06:30] Voice 1: the management procedure or policy is how we implement and do the work for Trust Council.

[1:06:40] Voice 1: So I think that's a way to look at it.

[1:06:42] Voice 1: I just got the resolution now.

[1:06:44] Voice 1: I'm just going to pull it up on the screen.

[1:06:48] Voice 7: Are we not trying to separate out a lot of operational policies that aren't necessary in the council business?

[1:07:02] Voice 1: Yeah, if I may, John.

[1:07:04] Voice 1: So, yeah, part of this process, and you'll see it when we go down and start looking at each policy, is identifying, does it make sense?

[1:07:14] Voice 1: Does council really need to get into this?

[1:07:16] Voice 8: Yes.

[1:07:17] Voice 1: Is it necessary?

[1:07:18] Voice 1: Some of the older policies the council's already deleted or got rid of really just repeated legislation.

[1:07:32] Voice 7: So if I circle back to the question that I asked at the beginning, is that included in any of these bullet points for projected results and deliverables, to separate them out, to make the distinction, to understand the differences?

[1:07:46] Voice 7: Oh,

[1:07:46] Voice 1: I see what you're saying. Yeah, I would capture that under the first bullet, which is the one to develop the methodology. If it's not clear, you could certainly add some language to make that clear. But that, to me, would establish what needs to go into policies, and then we can start looking at policies and pulling out the ones that do not meet that criteria and methodology.

[1:08:12] Voice 7: All right.

[1:08:15] Voice 5: Sorry.

[1:08:18] Voice 7: Yeah,

[1:08:20] Voice 5: I just wanted to jump in to point out that I find the language in the first bullet with respect to methodology sufficiently comprehensive to cover all of that.

[1:08:33] Voice 5: Because, I mean, right now, the distinction between operational things that might actually be better suited and being, frankly, put into a practices and procedures manual, there's a lot of stuff in the policies that could be excised.

[1:08:46] Voice 5: but i think we have to leave it to staff to come to us and say okay this is part of the methodology

[1:08:54] Voice 5: we'll carve these things out and i would hope staff would take away from the brief discussion

[1:08:59] Voice 5: we're having about that today uh some strong encouragement that they should indeed uh

[1:09:04] Voice 5: put that into the methodology um uh and and frankly i think it might make terrific sense

[1:09:12] Voice 5: um if when um when it comes to it uh if we do adopt that methodology we probably will

[1:09:19] Voice 5: that um one approach could be that the management practice and procedures manual gets developed in

[1:09:28] Voice 5: draft form and comes to this committee as a proposal that everything in that thing is going

[1:09:34] Voice 5: to replace either a whole bunch of policies or a bunch of sections of policies you know and we

[1:09:39] Voice 5: could we could do a whole bunch of policies all at once but i'm getting ahead of ourselves we're

[1:09:42] Voice 5: getting to the methodology thing yeah uh

[1:09:44] Voice 5: but the thing that's in front of us here um looks

[1:09:49] Voice 5: looks right except that the word then in the middle of this uh in the middle of the resolution

[1:09:56] Voice 5: should be the

[1:10:01] Voice 8: end

[1:10:02] Voice 5: yeah to not to the to then end uh i've

[1:10:09] Voice 1: got it thank you right there

[1:10:10] Voice 5: all right so

[1:10:11] Voice 5: So unless anybody's got any objections to it, I'm prepared to move it.

[1:10:16] Voice 7: Well, let's listen to Trustee Middleton first, please.

[1:10:18] Voice 7: He's got his hand up.

[1:10:20] Trustee Middleton: Trustee Middleton.

[1:10:21] Trustee Middleton: Thank you.

[1:10:22] Trustee Middleton: Excuse me.

[1:10:25] Trustee Middleton: So this is a budgetary business case asked for $6,000.

[1:10:29] Trustee Middleton: You look at the projected results and deliverables, there's far more than could possibly be done for $6,000 there.

[1:10:36] Trustee Middleton: it seems to me that if we stopped we'd have a fighting chance if we stopped at the first

[1:10:42] Trustee Middleton: bullet or potentially the second bullet which was identification of policies um and then engaged as

[1:10:49] Trustee Middleton: a governance committee rather than seeking it seems to me to be coming back after the work of

[1:10:55] Trustee Middleton: revision is already done which i don't think this this the scope within this business case to do

[1:11:01] Trustee Middleton: that um and i think we we need to look at there's clearly confusion this committee level which is uh

[1:11:09] Trustee Middleton: illuminating that we're the governance committee about what the role of a um of a policy is how it

[1:11:15] Trustee Middleton: intersects with operational uh matters uh a policy should clearly be the the governance direction

[1:11:24] Trustee Middleton: for the for for the organization at the policy setting level i eat the trustees

[1:11:29] Trustee Middleton: I obviously, it seems to me we need to have a further conversation about what those policies should do, what we want to see changed, and that's a conversation that should most definitely happen around here, and it's disingenuous of it to try to put this off onto staff.

[1:11:46] Trustee Middleton: I think the staff helped create a methodology with this business case and then pause at the end of bullet number two.

[1:11:55] Trustee Middleton: I think we're going somewhere, but to try to see that this whole request for funding would achieve a complete recommended revision of our policies, it's just that I don't think that's realistic at all.

[1:12:09] Trustee Middleton: all

[1:12:15] Voice 7: well um director marler there was the uh six thousand dollars in this budget and this is the

[1:12:22] Voice 7: six thousand dollars in the next budget um and uh if the work isn't done then i would assume there'd

[1:12:28] Voice 7: be another budget request um by the new council with respect to concluding the work but um i would

[1:12:37] Voice 7: would think that it may be unrealistic to expect all of this to happen, but this is the overall

[1:12:45] Voice 7: plan, is it not? Sorry, CAO Broney. Thank

[1:12:52] Voice 13: you, Chair, and Director Marder can correct me if I'm

[1:12:56] Voice 13: wrong, but essentially the business case allows for a small amount of money for legal review and

[1:13:02] Voice 13: $4,000 for administrative support, but that the bulk of the work of reviewing the policies

[1:13:08] Voice 13: and delivering on this broader project will be undertaken

[1:13:12] Voice 13: by Director Marler with some administrative staff support.

[1:13:17] Voice 13: And so whether or not it gets done is really dependent

[1:13:20] Voice 13: on Director Marler's assessment of his own capacity

[1:13:24] Voice 13: and whether or not there are other priorities that will take precedence.

[1:13:28] Voice 13: So the bulk of the work is going to be done by Director Marler himself

[1:13:32] Voice 13: with support as needed from other staff.

[1:13:34] Voice 13: And so, it may be challenging to do the complete review and bring forward a full set of recommendations by end of this council term, but the goal is to develop the methodology piece and identify those priority policies and priority amendments and updates. Thanks.

[1:13:54] Voice 7: Thank you.

[1:13:56] Voice 1: Yeah, could I add to that?

[1:13:58] Voice 1: Yes.

[1:14:00] Voice 1: Thank you.

[1:14:00] Voice 1: Yeah, absolutely. So this is a fairly broad business case, and I think it's up to the governance committee to focus where it would like the staff to do the work.

[1:14:14] Voice 1: So, so far, all I've been told to do is to do some of the prioritization work by consolidating and revising some of the policies.

[1:14:24] Voice 1: we haven't tackled that methodology piece

[1:14:28] Voice 1: and so that's what you would like to do

[1:14:31] Voice 1: that could be certainly the focus

[1:14:33] Voice 1: and that could be the next piece

[1:14:34] Voice 1: you could just put on hold

[1:14:36] Voice 1: or just say don't do any more policies right now

[1:14:39] Voice 1: let's just get this methodology sorted out

[1:14:41] Voice 1: and then maybe that will help you

[1:14:44] Voice 1: to set your priorities after the fact

[1:14:46] Voice 1: so it's really up to you

[1:14:48] Voice 1: how you want to proceed with this

[1:14:49] Voice 1: it's not all going to get done

[1:14:51] Voice 1: and I couldn't really give you a budget for what it would take to review 91,

[1:14:59] Voice 1: but the methodology could be something that we could do a deep dive into

[1:15:05] Voice 1: and come back with some recommendations

[1:15:07] Voice 1: and then a discussion at government committee to get that methodology sorted out.

[1:15:13] Voice 1: And then after that, you can start looking at your policies again.

[1:15:16] Voice 1: So there's different ways to do it.

[1:15:19] Voice 1: You know, we're at the stage now where we've got policies that are so out of date that getting them cleaned up is ideal.

[1:15:27] Voice 1: But on the other hand, you know, do you want to do that without a methodology or a set of criteria to help you along?

[1:15:34] Voice 1: So, yeah, it's up to you how you want to proceed.

[1:15:39] Voice 1: Either way works for me.

[1:15:40] Voice 1: I just need some direction and I'll follow it.

[1:15:43] Voice 8: Okay.

[1:15:45] Voice 7: Okay.

[1:15:45] Voice 7: Okay, Trustee Bernardo and Trustee Middleton, this is your second and third time speaking, so let's try and wrap this one up.

[1:15:53] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo?

[1:15:54] Voice 5: Yes, I want to, I take issue with some of the remarks from Trustee Middleton.

[1:16:00] Voice 5: You know, the $6,000 amount, I don't think it's open for us to say whether that's not enough.

[1:16:08] Voice 5: Now, if staffs come forward, that's the number staff is giving us in terms of what it anticipates the cash outlay of the work that it is, in fact, going to be doing.

[1:16:19] Voice 5: And I think it's fair enough to defer to its judgment as to what cash is required.

[1:16:24] Voice 5: The larger question about staff capacity, I think what we've heard from the CEO and Director Marler is just basic common sense,

[1:16:34] Voice 5: which I think addresses the concern that I thought I heard articulated by Trustee Middleton,

[1:16:42] Voice 5: that trustees need to be, we need to ensure trustees are in the driver's seat in respect

[1:16:47] Voice 5: of determining policies. That's a given. Let's not forget this is a business case

[1:16:54] Voice 5: to fund work that this committee is doing. If past experience tells us anything,

[1:17:00] Voice 5: thing we can be pretty confident staff's going to be coming back to us uh with every revision

[1:17:06] Voice 5: and suggestion to policies for us to debate and discuss that's where that gets done that's where

[1:17:11] Voice 5: the that's where our prioritization and input into into policies um comes in and i don't think we

[1:17:18] Voice 5: need to get super granular about that in the business case i like the fact that it is general

[1:17:23] Voice 5: general, because it gives both us and the staff room to set, you know, priorities in the course

[1:17:32] Voice 5: of doing the work. Thank you.

[1:17:35] Voice 7: Trustee Middleton.

[1:17:38] Trustee Middleton: Thank you. Yeah. So it seems based on those

[1:17:41] Trustee Middleton: commitments, eminently reasonable that we pause and look to give feedback and receive reportage

[1:17:48] Trustee Middleton: at the end of the second bullet point there in deliverables that following prioritized policies

[1:17:54] Trustee Middleton: for review and recommended update that it's at that point that we re-engage as a governance

[1:18:01] Trustee Middleton: committee and decide how best to proceed we'll have a methodology we'll have recommendation

[1:18:08] Trustee Middleton: from staff about what is so badly outdated it's not usable and where the priorities are

[1:18:13] Trustee Middleton: and and we can then uh basically take that in hand and give meaningful direction as to what

[1:18:19] Trustee Middleton: the next steps might be um so i don't know if that where that fits in terms of if we if we

[1:18:28] Trustee Middleton: need to modify the request for decision to accommodate that or not but i would just add

[1:18:35] Trustee Middleton: that we receive reportage at the end of that second bullet point of work and and that would

[1:18:40] Trustee Middleton: be the next um commissioning point for the committee right

[1:18:45] Voice 7: trustee harris thank

[1:18:49] Voice 12: you um

[1:18:50] Voice 12: Just a question for Trustee Bernardo. I heard him mention something about the trustees being in the driver's seat. Just if he could expand on that. It's my understanding we are not in the driver's seat. I'd just love to hear more on that point. Thank you.

[1:19:06] Voice 7: What are you referencing?

[1:19:09] Voice 12: I'm referencing Trustee Bernardo's comment about this motion prior to Trustee Middleton just speaking, where he mentioned something about the trustees being in the driver's seat. And again, it's my understanding that we are not in the driver's seat. So I was just curious if you could expand on that and comment about the motion. Thank you.

[1:19:28] Voice 7: Okay.

[1:19:30] Voice 7: I can

[1:19:31] Voice 7: very briefly.

[1:19:32] Voice 5: go too far field

[1:19:33] Voice 7: sorry in terms of trying to get this item fast and this is a request for decision

[1:19:39] Voice 7: i

[1:19:41] Voice 5: can clarify chair if that's useful okay go ahead i was simply referring on some general sense

[1:19:48] Voice 5: or general thing about the role of trustees at the islands trust and you know those larger

[1:19:55] Voice 5: big picture i'm talking about this narrow issue about this this whole strategy that we have

[1:20:01] Voice 5: adopted already and that we're for, which is to review policies. We've worked with staff

[1:20:09] Voice 5: this year to do it. And as we've done that, every time staff has had a policy it wants tweaked or

[1:20:17] Voice 5: changed or repealed or whatever, every bit of that has come to this committee for preliminary

[1:20:25] Voice 5: review and approval before it goes to Trust Council. That's what I meant by being in the

[1:20:30] Voice 5: driver's seat. And what I had heard Trustee Middleton express, and maybe I was wrong in this,

[1:20:35] Voice 5: is some concern that somehow what's in the business case is too much, or it's not clear

[1:20:43] Voice 5: enough that trustees should be in charge of policy. And the point I was making before,

[1:20:47] Voice 5: it's a given that this committee is in the driver's seat with respect to what policies

[1:20:54] Voice 5: policies ultimately um policy recommendations go to trust council for revision and change

[1:21:01] Voice 5: uh because uh we're we're the first station of the cross for the staff to bring its work product to

[1:21:08] Voice 5: so it does the work product but we do the judgment over it and that's where we that's what i meant by

[1:21:15] Voice 5: us being in the driver's seat if we don't like something the staff has come up with with a policy

[1:21:19] Voice 5: review then you know we change it and uh let's just remember this is just a business case

[1:21:26] Voice 5: what we actually do with this it's like let's not anticipate what the actual work is

[1:21:31] Voice 5: we don't really know it's you know let's have some room in there in terms of developing stuff

[1:21:35] Voice 5: okay in

[1:21:36] Voice 5: any event i'm prepared to make this motion uh at any time the chair thinks it's

[1:21:40] Voice 5: appropriate thank you

[1:21:41] Voice 7: trustee harris your hand is still up well

[1:21:44] Voice 12: actually i put it back up i took

[1:21:45] Voice 12: it down and put it back up while i was listening to trustee bernardo speak um thank you trustee

[1:21:51] Voice 12: bernardo for explaining that and um i'm a little concerned um when i ask a question

[1:21:56] Voice 12: about clarification and i hear a groan come from the chair um not

[1:22:01] Voice 7: really sure what that's

[1:22:03] Voice 7: all about

[1:22:03] Voice 12: but um i have run into some great difficulty this whole term um with um with

[1:22:12] Voice 12: with reactions from people, from things that I say.

[1:22:14] Voice 12: That seemed like a pretty legitimate thing to ask there.

[1:22:17] Voice 12: And I just want to make that point.

[1:22:21] Voice 12: Thank you.

[1:22:23] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo.

[1:22:25] Voice 5: All right.

[1:22:27] Voice 5: I move that governance committee request staff

[1:22:30] Voice 5: amend the second bullet of projected results

[1:22:32] Voice 5: slash deliverable in the policy review of business case

[1:22:35] Voice 5: by adding the following words to the end of the sentence,

[1:22:38] Voice 5: quote, comma, with the current policies

[1:22:41] Voice 5: relating to trust council and committees

[1:22:42] Voice 5: is being given initial priority, period, end quote.

[1:22:50] Voice 7: Trustee Borthwick, seconding it.

[1:22:53] Voice 7: All right, any more discussion?

[1:22:58] Voice 7: All right, not seeing any.

[1:23:00] Voice 7: All those, oops, Trustee Middleton.

[1:23:03] Trustee Middleton: Yeah, just one, I don't know if this would be considered

[1:23:06] Trustee Middleton: a friendly amendment, but just to add at the end

[1:23:09] Trustee Middleton: that the committee would receive a report,

[1:23:14] Trustee Middleton: a progress report at that date or at that point.

[1:23:22] Voice 5: Well, I don't consider that a friendly amendment at all. And as we've heard time and again at committees and Trust Council, there's no such thing as a friendly amendment. This is what's before the committee.

[1:23:35] Voice 5: Trustee

[1:23:39] Voice 7: Marler, or Director Marler, by way of clarification, if this work is done, the methodology would include coming back to Governance Council, would it not? Governance Committee, would it not, automatically?

[1:23:58] Voice 1: Yes, I was just going to say at any time the governance committee could pass a resolution

[1:24:04] Voice 1: just to ask staff to bring back a report or something, whatever it is that you're looking

[1:24:10] Voice 1: for.

[1:24:11] Voice 1: This is a project that you're already working on.

[1:24:15] Voice 1: We have some policy work on the way, so when you get to that in the agenda, you could certainly

[1:24:22] Voice 1: pass that resolution.

[1:24:23] Voice 1: So, maybe not this meeting, it could be the next meeting where we bring back some information

[1:24:28] Voice 1: to you and you want to say, yeah, okay, do the next two and then after that pause and

[1:24:34] Voice 1: we'll give you some further directions.

[1:24:36] Voice 1: This is just about the business case, so I wouldn't pass to put that in here and I don't

[1:24:41] Voice 1: think you need to have that in the business case.

[1:24:44] Voice 1: That could be a separate decision of the governance committee at the time it's considering this

[1:24:50] Voice 1: actual project.

[1:24:51] Voice 1: Okay.

[1:24:52] Voice 7: So then, Trustee Middleton, hold that thought then until we finish or we're discussing the next briefing with respect to the priorities for work. Okay?

[1:25:05] Trustee Middleton: Well, I think I have to respond to the lack of collaborative spirit from Trustee Bernardo and accept his challenge to vote down this motion. So that's what I'll be doing.

[1:25:17] Voice 12: Trustee Harris?

[1:25:18] Voice 12: I was just going to say that honestly I'm opposed to this motion as well at this point

[1:25:28] Voice 12: I really find it very futile when I look at we're three years into this term and

[1:25:35] Voice 12: you know when you look at the dysfunction that we're dealing with you know it would be to me

[1:25:43] Voice 12: it's like we could save a lot of aggravation by just making a simple um emotion um you know

[1:25:52] Voice 12: recommending that future present and future trustees must drag any meaningful change to

[1:25:57] Voice 12: the dysfunctional structure of the island's trust out for a minimum of two full terms

[1:26:00] Voice 12: and ideally into perpetuity while continuing to increase the budget by a minimum of 10

[1:26:04] Voice 12: annually now that's sarcastic i know but you know it reminds me of a quote

[1:26:10] Voice 12: Quote, and some may take offense to this, quote, you can't polish a turd, end of quote.

[1:26:21] Voice 12: Now, with that, I'm opposed to this and probably pretty much everything else that's going to come down the line here.

[1:26:26] Voice 12: Thank you.

[1:26:30] Voice 7: Any more discussion?

[1:26:33] Voice 7: All right.

[1:26:34] Voice 7: All those in favor?

[1:26:43] Voice 1: I see three hands up.

[1:26:47] Voice 7: Opposed.

[1:26:50] Voice 7: Sorry, the other hands need to go down first.

[1:26:57] Voice 1: I see two opposed.

[1:27:00] Voice 7: So that is carried.

[1:27:07] Voice 7: All right. So...

[1:27:11] Voice 7: I

[1:27:14] Voice 5: think we now need to vote on the actual request for decision.

[1:27:25] Voice 7: Governance Committee recommend to Trust Council the following 26-27 budget request for inclusion in the draft 26-27 budget.

[1:27:33] Voice 7: $6,000 for continuation of the Trust Council Policies Review Project.

[1:27:39] Voice 7: Do we need to have that as a formal motion?

[1:27:43] Voice 7: Yes.

[1:27:44] Voice 7: All right. I'll put that as a motion on the floor.

[1:27:48] Voice 5: Seconded.

[1:27:51] Voice 7: Discussion?

[1:27:51] Voice 7: discussion not seeing any other hands raised i'll call the vote all those in favor all right

[1:28:09] Voice 7: um and those opposed i'm

[1:28:11] Voice 8: sorry put your hands down please and

[1:28:14] Voice 7: opposed or yes opposed

[1:28:17] Voice 7: so

[1:28:21] Voice 1: that

[1:28:23] Voice 7: is carrying okay um we've got uh 11 30 let's take a um five minute break and come back

[1:28:35] Voice 7: for another hour we'll break for lunch at 12 30 for half an hour that all right with everybody

[1:28:43] Voice 9: sure

[1:28:43] Voice 7: all right short break

[1:35:54] Voice 7: Mr. Barlow, are you there?

[1:36:00] Voice 9: Yes, I am here.

[1:36:01] Voice 7: Shall we start again?

[1:36:05] Voice 9: Yes.

[1:36:09] Voice 7: Thank you.

[1:36:11] Voice 7: All right.

[1:36:13] Voice 7: So we're up to 8.2 in our agenda.

[1:36:17] Voice 7: The consolidation of two trust council policies.

[1:36:23] Voice 7: This is...

[1:36:25] Voice 4: Chair, just wanted to check and see, do we know if we've got quorum yet?

[1:36:30] Voice 4: I think we do now.

[1:36:33] Voice 4: But yeah, because we need four.

[1:36:35] Voice 4: Okay, we're good.

[1:36:36] Voice 4: Never mind.

[1:36:37] Voice 7: Thanks.

[1:36:37] Voice 7: I could take

[1:36:46] Voice 1: you through this, if you like.

[1:36:48] Voice 7: Thank you.

[1:36:50] Voice 1: Okay.

[1:36:51] Voice 1: Yeah.

[1:36:52] Voice 1: So, this is the first of the four policies that the Governance Committee asked staff

[1:36:59] Voice 1: to work on.

[1:37:01] Voice 1: So, this is 2.2.1, request for decision RFD reports, and 2.2.2, council committee preparation.

[1:37:08] Voice 1: Now, I had hoped to have a draft policy for you with all of these questions that you'll

[1:37:17] Voice 1: see in a few minutes answered and a revised single policy, but due to the strike, we didn't

[1:37:24] Voice 1: have the capacity to do that for this meeting.

[1:37:27] Voice 1: So rather than not bring anything, what I have is just copies of the existing policies

[1:37:35] Voice 1: with some staff commentary in the margins

[1:37:38] Voice 1: as we've been starting to look at them.

[1:37:40] Voice 1: So I just wanted to take you through that

[1:37:42] Voice 1: and tell you that we will bring back

[1:37:45] Voice 1: for the next meeting

[1:37:47] Voice 1: a request for a decision on these

[1:37:50] Voice 1: with a revised policy

[1:37:53] Voice 1: that addresses all the issues

[1:37:54] Voice 1: that we're identifying and cleans it up.

[1:37:58] Voice 1: But this is just an opportunity

[1:38:00] Voice 1: for you to have a quick look at it

[1:38:02] Voice 1: and if you would like to provide feedback

[1:38:04] Voice 1: back either formally to the Governance Committee or just after this meeting, if you're looking

[1:38:10] Voice 1: at it, you want to provide some emails to me on what you're seeing, that's fine.

[1:38:14] Voice 1: I can certainly incorporate ideas back for the Governance Committee to consider at its

[1:38:20] Voice 1: next meeting for making changes to it.

[1:38:23] Voice 1: So to just go down, I'm just going to scroll down.

[1:38:27] Voice 1: The first one is the request for a decision.

[1:38:30] Voice 1: And I don't have any commentary on this one, at least not in writing.

[1:38:34] Voice 1: I do have some thoughts on it.

[1:38:36] Voice 1: You'll notice that it was approved on September 12th, 1992, and it hasn't been updated other

[1:38:43] Voice 1: than reformatted.

[1:38:44] Voice 1: It hasn't actually had any updates to it.

[1:38:46] Voice 1: And this just deals with how...

[1:38:51] Voice 1: Sorry,

[1:38:52] Voice 7: Director Marlowe, can I interrupt?

[1:38:55] Voice 7: Yeah.

[1:38:55] Voice 7: Sorry.

[1:38:56] Voice 7: All right.

[1:38:57] Voice 7: So this is the...

[1:38:59] Voice 7: This is a request that we made to staff back in August.

[1:39:03] Voice 7: and since then we had the trust council meeting in september and they basically changed the

[1:39:11] Voice 7: priorities on us and i'm wondering if rather than doing um a whole lot of work on this one at this

[1:39:18] Voice 7: point we need to focus on the second one which was with respect to executive committee terms of

[1:39:23] Voice 7: reference election legislative role and committee meeting preparation does that make sense i mean

[1:39:33] Voice 7: I mean,

[1:39:33] Voice 1: if you haven't done a whole ton of work

[1:39:35] Voice 8: on this one.

[1:39:36] Voice 1: No.

[1:39:37] Voice 1: No, if you want to

[1:39:38] Voice 1: change direction, no.

[1:39:40] Voice 1: No, if you want to, if the governance committee would like us to focus on something different,

[1:39:46] Voice 1: yeah, just pass a resolution that changes the priority to whatever it is they want.

[1:39:53] Voice 7: Yeah, this

[1:39:54] Voice 1: is just going up.

[1:39:56] Voice 7: Thank you.

[1:39:58] Voice 7: I'm throwing a spanner in the works.

[1:40:01] Voice 5: Yes, that

[1:40:02] Voice 5: was going to be my point, Chair, which is, one, I'd appreciate to hear from

[1:40:06] Voice 5: director marla let him finish his briefing the other part of it is i'm a bit bewildered by your

[1:40:13] Voice 5: comment because it seems to me uh request for decision uh what goes before the executive

[1:40:20] Voice 5: committee all that kind of stuff that that's all intimately related to the thing that

[1:40:24] Voice 5: the trust council wants us to prioritize which is um prioritizing trust council and um committee

[1:40:32] Voice 5: many things um and this seems to me it falls squarely right in there all

[1:40:44] Voice 7: right um i was just

[1:40:46] Voice 7: referring if i may back to page 11 of our agenda where it was the um priority of trust council

[1:40:54] Voice 7: uh to put recommendation one at the top of the list of items for us to work on which is the

[1:41:02] Voice 7: election of the trust council leadership and it seems to me that that's the work of the second

[1:41:08] Voice 7: bullet point in this briefing in terms of things to work on we can work i mean there's lots to work

[1:41:22] Voice 7: on anybody else

[1:41:30] Voice 1: okay

[1:41:36] Voice 7: you

[1:41:40] Voice 1: want me to continue or would you like to

[1:41:42] Voice 7: let's continue then

[1:41:44] Voice 1: okay thank

[1:41:46] Voice 1: you yeah so policy request for decisions this is the council established how it would like to

[1:41:54] Voice 1: receive decisions at trust counsel so it focused everything into request for decision format

[1:42:01] Voice 1: um so this policy is being followed generally there could be some tweaks to this and i haven't

[1:42:07] Voice 1: had a a real close look at this one one thing i will say that's missing or at least is not

[1:42:13] Voice 1: explicitly stated is how how we would handle requests for decisions coming from individual

[1:42:23] Voice 1: So, this is applied, that is, this is assuming that every RFD going to council, whether it's

[1:42:31] Voice 1: from staff or from trustees, would follow this format.

[1:42:37] Voice 1: The problem with trustees putting in requests for decisions is there's a section in the

[1:42:44] Voice 1: RFD that talks about implications to help council understand the implications of the

[1:42:50] Voice 1: recommendation.

[1:42:51] Voice 1: So without staff input, that's not always well known.

[1:42:57] Voice 1: And, you know, helping an individual trustee with an RFD that has no direction from political bodies, it can be quite time consuming.

[1:43:07] Voice 1: So there's a bit of a trade-off about how much time you want to spend, you know, once staff spending, helping trustees craft a really good resolution to council,

[1:43:16] Voice 1: council versus waiting to see if council wants to actually deal with this issue before allocating

[1:43:22] Voice 1: staff time to it. And I think that could be dealt with by policy. And I think this might be the

[1:43:27] Voice 1: place to do it. And I see some hands up. Maybe I'll stop there and just back to the chair. And

[1:43:33] Voice 1: I'll go into the next policy in a minute. Thanks. Thank you. Chair Patrick?

[1:43:40] Trustee Patrick: Well, thank you for

[1:43:41] Trustee Patrick: bringing this up, Director Merler. Again, in my little bit of research, I think some of the

[1:43:45] Trustee Patrick: solution to this is notice of motion that requests for decisions are the typical reports or staff

[1:43:50] Trustee Patrick: reports that staff bring forward and i think a notice of motion which again i find it very

[1:43:56] Trustee Patrick: numerous municipalities where they have there's there's a process so one is just getting your

[1:44:02] Trustee Patrick: your notice of motion up and then there's procedure or policy as to what now you know

[1:44:08] Trustee Patrick: in the next meeting when you bring your notice of motion back what it must you know contain so it's

[1:44:14] Trustee Patrick: It's not called a request for decision.

[1:44:17] Trustee Patrick: It's a notice of motion and the information that's associated with it.

[1:44:20] Trustee Patrick: And I think splitting those two processes would be useful.

[1:44:28] Voice 11: Trustee Peterson?

[1:44:31] Voice 11: Chair Patrick brought up the point I was also thinking about.

[1:44:36] Voice 11: I think process-wise, and we haven't really included notice of motion, I think, in this policy,

[1:44:46] Voice 11: But it's something to think about as a process for individual trustees to bring, you know, work to trust council.

[1:44:56] Voice 11: And then in terms of using staff resources to help craft RFDs, I think that if trust council shows, you know, some interest in pursuing a trustee sponsored decision,

[1:45:14] Voice 11: Decision then allocating staff time to help refine that RFD to come back to transit council could then sort of be approved through the body.

[1:45:24] Voice 11: And I think in terms of allocating our limited staff resources, that might be a good approach.

[1:45:30] Voice 11: Now, how we address putting notice of motion before trustee-sponsored RFDs in policy is something I haven't really clearly thought out, but I think that is kind of the way forward.

[1:45:49] Voice 7: Interesting. Good thoughts. Trustee Marler, or Director Marler, sorry.

[1:45:56] Voice 1: Yeah, thank you. That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. And we can certainly,

[1:46:02] Voice 1: in fact, the next policy with this one combined into it, it would actually make sense to include

[1:46:08] Voice 1: notice of motions and how they're to be used and the process around them. Just to finish this one

[1:46:14] Voice 1: up you'll see obviously we have a template for request for decision this is out of date it's a

[1:46:19] Voice 1: little bit different there and then at the bottom for some reason we've got this committee reports

[1:46:24] Voice 1: which i'm not no idea why it's here so that would be just be deleted the next policy that we look at

[1:46:33] Voice 1: is council meeting preparation and i think this actually can encompass request for decisions

[1:46:40] Voice 1: decisions and notice of motions in here as well. There's nothing in here, by the way,

[1:46:45] Voice 1: about notice of motions right now, so that's definitely something I would agree should

[1:46:50] Voice 1: go in there. So the commentary on this one is this policy has been updated. You'll see

[1:46:57] Voice 1: it was originally approved in 1994, updated in 2008 twice, once in June and once in September.

[1:47:07] Voice 1: those amendments actually were to address

[1:47:10] Voice 1: an upcoming referendum on South Spring Island

[1:47:14] Voice 1: where they were looking at adding two trustees that would be local trustees

[1:47:19] Voice 1: but they would not have any voting on trust council

[1:47:23] Voice 1: so this policy was amended and you'll see

[1:47:27] Voice 1: in it it says that agendas and

[1:47:31] Voice 1: pop actions and everything will be circulated to all trustees

[1:47:35] Voice 1: whether they're an adulting member of council or not.

[1:47:38] Voice 1: So that's why you see that in here.

[1:47:40] Voice 1: That referendum failed, so it never happened,

[1:47:43] Voice 1: but this policy was never updated.

[1:47:45] Voice 1: So there's quite a few things in here that need to be changed.

[1:47:48] Voice 1: You can see on the right-hand side there's some staff commentary.

[1:47:52] Voice 1: 1.3 deals with how the items going to council get to council,

[1:47:59] Voice 1: and it includes the executive committee's role in the 132 and 133.

[1:48:05] Voice 1: And you'll see it says, for example, staff have highlighted, it says reviewed by executive committee.

[1:48:10] Voice 1: So it's not approving, it's reviewing.

[1:48:13] Voice 1: And there's some question about, you know, is that appropriate language?

[1:48:17] Voice 1: Does that make sense?

[1:48:18] Voice 1: Is this how you want executive to continue to operate in approving council?

[1:48:24] Voice 1: So I think there's quite a bit here I think the governance committee could get into, if you want to,

[1:48:29] Voice 1: is looking at how the executive committee looks after the agenda for Trust Council.

[1:48:36] Voice 1: Just going down a bit further on the next page under 1.4,

[1:48:41] Voice 1: you'll see here it says about Trust Council endorsing its meeting program.

[1:48:49] Voice 1: And it's saying currently Council doesn't actually endorse it,

[1:48:52] Voice 1: the agenda rather receives it.

[1:48:54] Voice 1: So we're looking at whether or not we're actually following this policy

[1:48:59] Voice 1: and what the current practices are.

[1:49:01] Voice 1: So in a request for a decision

[1:49:03] Voice 1: that we'll bring back to the Governance Committee,

[1:49:06] Voice 1: we'll highlight these as some recommended language changes

[1:49:09] Voice 1: and some options.

[1:49:11] Voice 1: And if you want something different,

[1:49:12] Voice 1: obviously you can then, by resolution,

[1:49:15] Voice 1: ask us to make those changes.

[1:49:17] Voice 1: And then I suspect this might have to come back to you

[1:49:20] Voice 1: more than once because I think this is kind of fundamental

[1:49:23] Voice 1: to how transfer works in a lot of ways.

[1:49:28] Voice 1: the agenda package distribution remember this was written before the days of the worldwide web and

[1:49:34] Voice 1: internet so it was it was done by mail and by paper so we've got lead times that maybe don't

[1:49:42] Voice 1: make any sense anymore and you might want to reconsider those given that everything is instant

[1:49:47] Voice 1: it's sent out electronically now so we don't have to have to allow for the mail we used to allow for

[1:49:54] Voice 1: a week simply because it could take two to five days for the mail to arrive on the island and the

[1:50:00] Voice 1: idea was the trustee would have it at least a couple of days in advance of the meeting

[1:50:05] Voice 1: but now we still kept that one week but we're doing it by putting it onto webdab and giving

[1:50:10] Voice 1: you notice that it's there um 145 is really just um how we keep the records uh this is out of date

[1:50:20] Voice 1: We no longer keep paper copies in the boardroom.

[1:50:24] Voice 1: They're all kept electronically in the electronic document system that we have.

[1:50:30] Voice 1: So this, I think, definitely would need to be updated for that purpose.

[1:50:34] Voice 1: Yeah, I don't want to go through all of these.

[1:50:36] Voice 1: I just wanted to give you an overview of what we're looking at

[1:50:39] Voice 1: and why I think it's important that this one be done.

[1:50:43] Voice 1: Public notification.

[1:50:44] Voice 1: I don't think we need to change this,

[1:50:46] Voice 1: but NOSI is over close on the island where council meeting is being held.

[1:50:50] Voice 1: That actually was from the days when all council meetings were on the islands,

[1:50:54] Voice 1: except for December, which was in Victoria.

[1:50:57] Voice 1: Given that council is not meeting on the islands as much as it used to be,

[1:51:03] Voice 1: I might want to reconsider the wording on the public notification.

[1:51:10] Voice 1: Yeah, minutes, again, from the days before the internet,

[1:51:15] Voice 1: it, file action list, media action items used to be circulated to all the trustees who would

[1:51:23] Voice 1: send it out. In the older days, like back in the 90s, the trustees themselves found

[1:51:29] Voice 1: themselves on that list because they agreed to do something. But it was also more just

[1:51:34] Voice 1: to let them know that this is the decision you made at council, this is the action that

[1:51:40] Voice 1: that staff is going to take, and then that was just to make sure nothing was missed.

[1:51:46] Voice 1: There's a whole issue around pop action lists, and that will be a separate discussion

[1:51:50] Voice 1: when we get to that particular policy down the way, is how are we using pop action lists

[1:51:57] Voice 1: and are they becoming a de facto work program for committees and kind of replacing the work program?

[1:52:04] Voice 1: So we need to think that through as well.

[1:52:06] Voice 1: and then under meeting program principles

[1:52:13] Voice 1: you'll see obviously it says we'll hold three of its

[1:52:16] Voice 1: meetings on trust area islands and again that's

[1:52:20] Voice 1: not something we're doing so this policy probably needs to be updated

[1:52:23] Voice 1: recognize electronic meetings and maybe a different climate

[1:52:28] Voice 1: for how we meet and then 4.2

[1:52:32] Voice 1: and highlight there that's including those who are not built in

[1:52:36] Voice 1: members of the Trust Council. Again, that's an old reference that

[1:52:39] Voice 1: was to that referendum.

[1:52:44] Voice 1: I'll just leave it there. If you want to have a discussion now around this,

[1:52:48] Voice 1: that's totally fine. Robert will just capture some of your thoughts, and then

[1:52:52] Voice 1: that will help us to draft a request for a decision

[1:52:56] Voice 1: and a revised policy to bring back to you. Alternatively,

[1:53:00] Voice 1: you could leave it with me and Robert to work through

[1:53:04] Voice 1: these and come back with some recommendations and then have a discussion at your next meeting so

[1:53:09] Voice 1: either or or both is tough okay back to the chair thank you thank

[1:53:14] Voice 7: you trustee bernardo yeah

[1:53:19] Voice 5: i i i

[1:53:20] Voice 5: think this is a great opportunity and i really appreciate it that director marler has come to

[1:53:25] Voice 5: us and saying look this is you know this is his preliminary thinking with respect to a certain

[1:53:30] Voice 5: amount of work on this policy revision and you know this is exactly the kind of thing that i

[1:53:36] Voice 5: think addresses the concerns that were articulated by trustees middleton and harris earlier which is

[1:53:42] Voice 5: this an opportunity for input here uh you know we're not just receiving work product we're being

[1:53:48] Voice 5: asked to sort of you know muck in a little bit if we're if we have an appetite for it um and i do

[1:53:56] Voice 5: have a couple of observations one is i think uh today's a terrific opportunity to i think address

[1:54:02] Voice 5: address some key things that have been of some concern for some trustees during this term.

[1:54:14] Voice 5: One is the area we get into in terms of executive committee's role, specifically if you go back to

[1:54:23] Voice 5: 1.3.1 and 1.3.2. When I look at 1.3.1, and it's interesting to me, and this is kind of like a

[1:54:34] Voice 5: a little archaeological which is the language in a policy says it is suggested that committees etc

[1:54:40] Voice 5: forward reports and preliminary rfds basically for preliminary feedback to the exec you know

[1:54:48] Voice 5: go to the executive committee and sort of ask for its input that's kind of a theme throughout all

[1:54:55] Voice 5: of the policies that deal with trust council meetings and and operations at the at the

[1:54:59] Voice 5: committee level, which is taking the big picture of all of those 23 policies.

[1:55:10] Voice 5: Executive committee has given a tremendous amount of authority and discretion,

[1:55:15] Voice 5: as well as entrusted with being a traffic cop. I mean, it's pretty clear that these policies back

[1:55:21] Voice 5: in the 90s were designed to put the executive committee firmly in charge of what happens at

[1:55:26] Voice 5: trust council meetings and i don't think language like is suggested belongs in a in a policy you

[1:55:33] Voice 5: you you the policy should is clear one way or the other you either do a thing or you don't

[1:55:39] Voice 5: and then the hard point here and i really don't i'm not sure how to deal with it though is when

[1:55:47] Voice 5: you go to 1.3.2 it talks about how uh all written items submitted trust council wants to be submitted

[1:55:53] Voice 5: for review by executive committee and i think it's quite right the staff is commenting like

[1:55:57] Voice 5: well, it says review, it doesn't say approval. I think that's a fundamental question that we on

[1:56:02] Voice 5: this committee should get our heads around. And I think today's a good start, a good time to start

[1:56:06] Voice 5: doing it, which is, is that what we really want? Like, I don't know what an alternative, I mean,

[1:56:11] Voice 5: you do need to have some filtering process, I suppose, but I'm not actually sure about that.

[1:56:17] Voice 5: But do we want executive committee being the traffic cop that decides what goes before the

[1:56:21] Voice 5: trust council or doesn't? Because there have been plenty of frustrations by plenty of trustees

[1:56:27] Voice 5: who have come time and again with different um or the same kind of issue that they want to

[1:56:33] Voice 5: bring forward for trust council to consider and whether you know the story is either the time

[1:56:40] Voice 5: doesn't allow or executive committee doesn't think it's important enough or whatever but that's led

[1:56:46] Voice 5: to a certain amount of frustration in that uh individual trustees who have something that they

[1:56:51] Voice 5: want to get for trust council um are limited i don't want to overstate it but they're limited

[1:56:56] Voice 5: to some extent by this review process. As I say, I don't have firm views one way or another about

[1:57:03] Voice 5: it, but I think this is something that we ought to be discussing at the committee level.

[1:57:07] Voice 5: Another thing I think we need to be discussing at this committee level is something that I think

[1:57:12] Voice 5: that, you know, Director Marler mentioned, which is there are some aspects of this specific policy

[1:57:20] Voice 5: that are just not, don't seem that workable from staff's point of view, and I guess from

[1:57:26] Voice 5: past executive committees so the result is we're not actually observing some aspects of the meeting

[1:57:33] Voice 5: policy i can understand that from a pragmatic point of view but from a principal point of view

[1:57:38] Voice 5: uh it makes it very uneasy that somehow some aspects of these policies don't get observed

[1:57:46] Voice 5: because it's inconvenient and or they're just not workable but in other occasions when trustees are

[1:57:54] Voice 5: bringing forward some proposal what's the we're frequently told well the trustees say sorry the

[1:57:59] Voice 5: policies say you can't do that that's arbitrary you know and i understand there are practical

[1:58:05] Voice 5: issues here and and i don't have any great answers but i think we do need to address

[1:58:09] Voice 5: the fact that some policies some aspects of different policies get observed and are held

[1:58:16] Voice 5: to very strictly and trustees are said are told they're limited because of policy trust council

[1:58:20] Voice 5: policy says you must do a thing, A, B, and C. And then just by the by, there's other parts of

[1:58:27] Voice 5: policies that just get ignored. That has to come to an end somehow. Possibly revising the policy

[1:58:35] Voice 5: so they're truly intelligible might be a solution to that. But I don't think it's on once a policy

[1:58:41] Voice 5: has passed that somehow, whether it's executive committee or staff, just kind of lets it fall off

[1:58:48] Voice 5: the table that's got to come to an end so those are the two points i i hope we can discuss what

[1:58:53] Voice 5: is the role of executives committee executive committee in approving agendas uh and um or

[1:59:00] Voice 5: motions that individual trustees want to bring forward and what are we going to do about making

[1:59:06] Voice 5: sure these policies are actually observed thank you here patrick

[1:59:17] Voice 8: this

[1:59:18] Trustee Patrick: is where things get kind of complex as one is we have meeting procedure bylaws so we have

[1:59:22] Trustee Patrick: of a bylaw that steps out kind of how trust counsel meeting procedure falls out, who has

[1:59:28] Trustee Patrick: authority and what to put into the agenda. So I think sometimes we have to bring these two pieces

[1:59:33] Trustee Patrick: together. Where is policy needed to direct what that bylaw says? But you can't have the policy

[1:59:44] Trustee Patrick: bringing in things that really aren't authorized through the bylaw. So I think we just have to be

[1:59:49] Trustee Patrick: cautious and make sure we're looking at both parts in regards to the agenda i agree i think

[1:59:55] Trustee Patrick: we have overall issues as we look at the

[2:00:00] Trustee Patrick: You know, electing the leadership, we know we have an awful lot of authority that's been given through bylaw and policy to the executive committee. Do we look at that as its entirety, or do we just look at that under principle when we look at each policy that we're considering of, you know, what authority is being passed or delegated to the executive committee?

[2:00:24] Trustee Patrick: I think this whole topic of how information is brought or how trustees bring requests to Trust Council, I think, is a good area of conversation. This is sort of the notice of motion concept. I think it needs to be broad, looked at, developed, and it shouldn't be necessarily reviewed.

[2:00:49] Trustee Patrick: reviewed. I think a trustee, if they want to bring a notice of motion, there's a process to bring a

[2:00:53] Trustee Patrick: notice of motion that goes to trust counsel. Trust counsel decides, do we want to hear this? Do we

[2:00:58] Trustee Patrick: want to send it to a committee or do we want to send it to staff for more analysis? Or we don't

[2:01:05] Trustee Patrick: want to hear this again. Trust counsel makes that decision. And I think if we had a good

[2:01:10] Trustee Patrick: functioning notice of motion process, that would put the authority back on trust counsel to make

[2:01:15] Trustee Patrick: those decisions as to what to do with trustees ideas that they bring to the table trustee

[2:01:23] Voice 7: birthwick yeah

[2:01:26] Voice 4: i mean i wanted to echo a little bit of what uh trustee bernardo was saying in

[2:01:29] Voice 4: in that i think this is a this is a good uh time for us to sort of weigh in and i think this is

[2:01:35] Voice 4: appropriate that we're we're getting to weigh in here and yeah i share that uh concern around uh

[2:01:42] Voice 4: uh the like it's it's very easy to understand how we got to this point i think you know that's time

[2:01:50] Voice 4: and and neglect of policy you know maintenance is is what will lead to the situation that we're in

[2:01:56] Voice 4: where certain policies seem to be uh enforced on a discretional uh basis and others might be used

[2:02:04] Voice 4: to to defend actions you know quite rigorously um and i yeah i agree we should we should be

[2:02:11] Voice 4: making sure that the policies are, are number one, you know, that we're really aware of what

[2:02:16] Voice 4: they are, that they're being followed. If they're not being followed, if they're defunct, let's get

[2:02:20] Voice 4: rid of them. Let's trim, let's trim the, the, the dead wood for sure. Um, you know, and then make

[2:02:27] Voice 4: sure that, that actually those, those policies are, are proactive in improving how our systems

[2:02:33] Voice 4: work. Um, and yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm definitely glad to see that this is sort of something that's

[2:02:39] Voice 4: getting coming through and it's it's quite fascinating from a from a perspective of like

[2:02:46] Voice 4: oh yeah this makes sense as to why some of these things work in these somewhat arcane ways it's

[2:02:52] Voice 4: like oh yeah well we just haven't looked over things and in a hot minute um and uh yeah i mean

[2:02:58] Voice 4: i think it's really important and i think this is as you as you as trustee bernardo said like

[2:03:02] Voice 4: this is a really good time to apply that lens of like well where do we think that that uh

[2:03:08] Voice 4: uh, that those decisions should be made. What, where do we think the power should be

[2:03:12] Voice 4: flowing from the place to define that is through policy. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm grateful to be

[2:03:19] Voice 4: having this conversation and I wanted to just echo those points. Christy Peterson.

[2:03:26] Voice 11: Yeah. Thank you, chair. Um, lots of, lots of interesting points being made here. I think,

[2:03:31] Voice 11: One of them was around the need to align policy with when we actually have bylaws.

[2:03:40] Voice 11: Looking at this document at 1.2.1, it talks about late items receiving approval for majority of trust counsel, but I believe our bylaws has different.

[2:03:53] Voice 11: So there's just one example there.

[2:03:56] Voice 11: um the and and i think chair patrick makes a really good point um about delegation of authority

[2:04:08] Voice 11: to executive committee and i don't know that um i certainly don't recall any uh time in in the the

[2:04:19] Voice 11: i'm now in the last year of my my third term um where trust councils really sat down and had a

[2:04:27] Voice 11: a look at what are the authorities that trust council has delegated to executive committee

[2:04:32] Voice 11: over the year and perhaps that's uh something that this committee um should delve into preparatory to

[2:04:40] Voice 11: to putting it before trust council because there is there's a lot there and it's a lot of it's a

[2:04:47] Voice 11: sort of accretion over time and whether trust council um thinks that it's you know good and

[2:04:56] Voice 11: important to keep these these uh various things delegated to executive committee isn't really an

[2:05:03] Voice 11: informed um decision unless there's some discussion and some really laying some of those out so i

[2:05:09] Voice 11: think you know that's straying a bit from from this piece in in a sense but i think it's it's

[2:05:15] Voice 11: deeply related uh when i had one other oh yeah on the issue of 1.3.2 um so the review is definitely

[2:05:29] Voice 11: different than approval or adoption and i think it's also important to think about as we're

[2:05:36] Voice 11: talking about the um request for decisions notice of motion item of course there are always going to

[2:05:43] Voice 11: to be uh cases where there's uh time sensitive decisions um that trustees want to bring so we're

[2:05:50] Voice 11: going to have to make sure we work um a piece around that in and um and of course the other

[2:05:58] Voice 11: item is just that there's um there's other materials there's correspondence and such that

[2:06:05] Voice 11: that executive committee does review before it landing on a trust council agenda.

[2:06:15] Voice 11: So, yeah, great conversation so far.

[2:06:20] Voice 7: Anybody else?

[2:06:24] Voice 7: I'm just thinking that some of this discussion will help us with the previous item that we worked on in terms of looking at methodology,

[2:06:34] Voice 7: That there's more overlap from some other, this meeting bylaw, for instance, that's been brought up a couple of times, and maybe some other items with respect to this meeting procedures, plus this much larger issue with respect to the executive committee delegation.

[2:06:56] Voice 7: Sorry, Trustee Borthwick.

[2:06:59] Voice 7: Yeah,

[2:07:01] Voice 4: just very briefly, and Trustee Peterson and CAO Broney will remember me talking about this as we had lunch before the CBRD protocol meeting the other week.

[2:07:12] Voice 4: uh but one of the things that and this sort of highlights this again to me is that uh and this

[2:07:20] Voice 4: is sort of an auxiliary point but um broadly this organization has a uh i my experience has been

[2:07:29] Voice 4: that there's sort of a poor grasp of our institutional history uh beyond personal

[2:07:35] Voice 4: recollection of people who were there and thus we're very lucky to have david marler who's been

[2:07:40] Voice 4: with us for for a long time um but you know it there's an element of like we don't necessarily

[2:07:46] Voice 4: know where all the things have come through and where the layers of where the decisions came

[2:07:50] Voice 4: we don't always have a good record or a good understanding of why things are the way they are

[2:07:54] Voice 4: um that's certainly been my experience as a local trustee but it's interesting to see it here

[2:07:59] Voice 4: as well as this sense of like um uh yeah not necessarily having having a good institutional

[2:08:08] Voice 4: institutional understanding of of how things have come to be the way they are and just yeah

[2:08:12] Voice 4: i apologize it's a bit auxiliary but still

[2:08:15] Voice 7: trustee bernardo yeah

[2:08:18] Voice 5: um i just want to follow up on a

[2:08:20] Voice 5: couple of points that trustees have made one uh is from the chair getty's point which is

[2:08:26] Voice 5: that's what i've tried to get at actually uh with respect to the role of executive committee this is

[2:08:32] Voice 5: very much a methodology issue because the role of the executive committee you know as we go through

[2:08:40] Voice 5: these different policies and the staff does the work and brings it to us yeah the role of the

[2:08:44] Voice 5: executive committee can be dealt with on a kind of one-off one at a time sort of thing

[2:08:50] Voice 5: I think that would be a mistake I think when we start engaging these issues and this is an

[2:08:55] Voice 5: opportunity to have some preliminary commentary and maybe when the actual work product

[2:09:00] Voice 5: it for decision comes to us we'll drill into it probably deeper but i do think we probably should

[2:09:06] Voice 5: be working towards the direction of in keeping with the methodology idea of trying it if it's

[2:09:11] Voice 5: possible by us as a committee to start to try to develop at least for our own working purposes a

[2:09:17] Voice 5: conception in a larger sense of what the general role of executive executive committee should be

[2:09:23] Voice 5: and you know what the boundaries of that are you know and and what's the what's the balance between

[2:09:29] Voice 5: executive committee discretion versus trust council authorization. And I think having at

[2:09:37] Voice 5: some point a general discussion about how far that should go and how that should look like,

[2:09:42] Voice 5: I think to have that general discussion, I think we need some help. Certainly, I think from

[2:09:46] Voice 5: Director Marler and CO Ronnie to sort of frame it because it's a pretty wide-ranging discussion,

[2:09:53] Voice 5: but I do definitely think that's a methodology issue that needs to be examined.

[2:09:57] Voice 5: examined. And the other point I wanted to make is I appreciate Trustee Peterson's observation

[2:10:03] Voice 5: that one of the things Executive Committee does, it reviews written submissions from the public.

[2:10:09] Voice 5: Again, I'm not quite sure who should be doing the filtering, but it's a fair point that there

[2:10:17] Voice 5: is no language in there that says approval. And I do think we should be putting some thought into

[2:10:22] Voice 5: to filtering what type of material ends up in the agenda package that goes to trustees before

[2:10:30] Voice 5: a trust council meeting because you know I suppose at one level it's harmless but let's get real

[2:10:37] Voice 5: there's frequently material excuse me that is submitted by some group or some of the public

[2:10:43] Voice 5: it's very familiar we've seen that movie before we know that's all about we nod politely and then

[2:10:48] Voice 5: proceed to carry on. Even that little bit of exercise gobbles up meeting time. And I think

[2:10:55] Voice 5: we do have to ask ourselves some hard questions about what should trust counsel be dealing with

[2:11:00] Voice 5: at these meetings. Those meetings are quarterly, they're expensive, they ought to be sharply

[2:11:05] Voice 5: focused on adding value to the organization. I'm not sure tons of advocacy paper that we've seen

[2:11:13] Voice 5: before makes a difference. So I do think we need to have a kind of filtering function.

[2:11:20] Voice 5: And what Trustee Peterson's point makes me think is that we also need to distinguish between filtering submissions from the public versus those that come from trustees.

[2:11:33] Voice 5: Trustees are, you know, we have a statutory role to perform here.

[2:11:40] Voice 5: And our policies and bylaws should not interfere with the ability of trustees to be heard at trust council.

[2:11:48] Voice 5: Now, against that, obviously, efficiency is a thing. You can't have, you know, 14 people or how many people we have out there just, you know, soapboxing every favorite issue. We'd never get anything done. So, but I do think in terms of filtering what goes before trust counsel there in whichever body, whether it's executive meeting or somebody else does it, I do think the process has to be different for trustees than for the public. Thank you.

[2:12:18] Voice 13: Neil Broney?

[2:12:21] Voice 13: Thank you, Jared.

[2:12:22] Voice 13: Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack in this conversation, but I think it's exactly the

[2:12:25] Voice 13: kind of conversation that we would look to the committee to have as we bring forward

[2:12:30] Voice 13: these policies, right?

[2:12:31] Voice 13: So what is the intent of the policy and what is it that you hope that it achieves and how

[2:12:37] Voice 13: does it affect kind of actual process and practice?

[2:12:40] Voice 13: A couple of things.

[2:12:41] Voice 13: I think this is also a good example of how sometimes, and I, you know, I've only been here almost a year now, but I think the piece around, the reason staff, I think the comments flagged, interesting that it doesn't say approval, right?

[2:12:56] Voice 13: It says review is because I think there is, I would say for some trustees, but also for some staff, a perception that executive committee's role is to approve agenda packages, right?

[2:13:07] Voice 13: And so I think that's why it was noted by staff, whereas the review role, as you've noted, is different.

[2:13:12] Voice 13: My personal perspective is it probably should stay as review because I think, as has been noted, you don't necessarily want executive committee, nor I think would executive committee itself, in my experience, want to be in the position of having any sort of gatekeeping authority.

[2:13:27] Voice 13: authority, where I think that filtering can come in is potentially through things like Trust

[2:13:32] Voice 13: Council looking at its work plans and follow-up action lists and whether or not all of those

[2:13:36] Voice 13: things need to be coming forward or those are still priorities, but that's a broader conversation.

[2:13:42] Voice 13: But I think what this small example speaks to is that sometimes the understanding of the

[2:13:47] Voice 13: interpretation and application of a policy becomes something that kind of shapes perception and

[2:13:53] Voice 13: practice and it is valuable to go back and look at what the policy actually says and what does

[2:13:59] Voice 13: that actually mean um and this is an example i think where there's maybe a a bit of an understanding

[2:14:05] Voice 13: around what the role is that actually isn't upheld by policy um and so this is exactly the kind of

[2:14:11] Voice 13: nuance that comes out in some of this language and why it's important to consider um the exact

[2:14:15] Voice 13: wording of the policies thank you i'm

[2:14:20] Voice 7: assuming that will all be held to once we get some sort of

[2:14:24] Voice 7: corporate plan and priorities. Sorry, Director Marler.

[2:14:31] Voice 1: Yeah, thank you. I really appreciate the conversation. I do want to point out

[2:14:35] Voice 1: though, if you look at 132 where it says review and you look at 133, especially

[2:14:40] Voice 1: 1333, 1333 does suggest a gatekeeping

[2:14:45] Voice 1: function based on whether or not in the opinion of the executive committee

[2:14:49] Voice 1: the information is complete. So yeah, there is some kind of

[2:14:54] Voice 1: disconnect there that probably needs to be addressed as well. I was also going to

[2:14:58] Voice 1: say, and thank you for raising it, I should have said it earlier, yes we're

[2:15:02] Voice 1: definitely going to be taking a look at the bylaws with all these policies to

[2:15:06] Voice 1: make sure there is no conflict, to make sure it's not repeating the bylaw,

[2:15:11] Voice 1: and in places where there is a conflict or something that this is suggesting is

[2:15:18] Voice 1: not consistent with the bylaw, we'll bring that to your attention. And you have two

[2:15:23] Voice 1: few choices there. You can either just update the policy and let the bylaw live, or you could

[2:15:28] Voice 1: recommend to council that the bylaw also needs to be amended. So bring those two as well.

[2:15:33] Voice 1: In

[2:15:35] Voice 7: terms of methodology then, I've heard people say that it'd be really good to separate out

[2:15:42] Voice 7: when we're reviewing all of these different policies, anything that has to do with executive

[2:15:48] Voice 7: committees so that we've got some sort of a summary at some point where we look at all of

[2:15:54] Voice 7: that has been delegated. And then what you've just raised, Director Marler, in terms of keeping

[2:16:03] Voice 7: track of, and it's part of the, I think it's the RFD outline in terms of what are the other

[2:16:11] Voice 7: statutes or policies or bylaws that have been, are either implicated or are in conflict.

[2:16:21] Voice 7: so some sort of a section in terms of reporting out on all of this would maybe have a review of

[2:16:30] Voice 7: any of the other bylaws in particular with respect to EC I suppose but yeah so and the

[2:16:40] Voice 7: methodology it seems to me what we're talking about is that it comes to governance committee

[2:16:44] Voice 7: we have a general discussion it gets revised and then it comes back to governance committee before

[2:16:51] Voice 7: it goes to EC and Trust Council.

[2:16:54] Voice 7: Is all of that fairly accurate in terms of what we're talking about?

[2:17:03] Voice 7: Yes, correct.

[2:17:06] Voice 7: All right.

[2:17:07] Voice 7: So other than having this general kind of discussion at a meeting like this, how would

[2:17:18] Voice 7: the members of this committee make comments like the ones that are on the sidebar that

[2:17:25] Voice 7: have been done by staff

[2:17:27] Voice 1: yeah good question uh so there's two ways it could work you i would accept

[2:17:40] Voice 1: if individual trustees wanted to wanted to just provide me an email um with some of their thoughts

[2:17:47] Voice 1: on it that then we would include and bring back to the governance committee so you can all look at it

[2:17:54] Voice 1: I wouldn't take that as direction.

[2:17:56] Voice 1: So if I say one trustee says, oh, I think this should be changed to this, this, and this,

[2:18:02] Voice 1: that will be taken into consideration.

[2:18:04] Voice 1: But it would be up to the governance committee to ask for that change.

[2:18:07] Voice 1: So I might, if I agree, I might include it as a recommendation.

[2:18:12] Voice 1: If I don't agree, I might not include it.

[2:18:14] Voice 1: But I'd still keep the comment for the governance committee to look at,

[2:18:19] Voice 1: and then the governance committee by resolution could do it.

[2:18:24] Voice 1: The best way is to set time aside as a working session to go through it a little bit like

[2:18:30] Voice 1: you've done today, but maybe a little bit more preparation so that you're unprepared

[2:18:34] Voice 1: and made your own comments and thoughts and imagines, and then you can get them on the

[2:18:40] Voice 1: table.

[2:18:41] Voice 1: So I'm happy to just send this out by email to the trustees, and if those want to take

[2:18:49] Voice 1: themselves to provide some thoughts that we can use and we'll bring it back to the governance

[2:18:54] Voice 1: committee at the next meeting that's that's fine as well but it wouldn't be i would not take that

[2:18:59] Voice 1: direction that would just be an individual trustee's thoughts on a particular issue is it

[2:19:05] Voice 7: possible to get these documents um in a form that we can make comments like the staff have done

[2:19:12] Voice 7: and then we've got a document bank that we can all look at and that would you know be something

[2:19:19] Voice 7: that you could take into consideration with a revision and then we could you

[2:19:23] Voice 7: know go back to no I think it's important and I'd like to further discuss

[2:19:27] Voice 7: the comment that I made and blah blah blah yeah

[2:19:31] Voice 1: I put it up in Word document

[2:19:34] Voice 1: version so you just mark it up as you see fit okay

[2:19:41] Voice 7: so this is before us as a

[2:19:46] Voice 7: briefing provide governance committee with an update on existing policies in

[2:19:51] Voice 7: relation to requests for decisions and council meeting preparation so we don't

[2:19:55] Voice 7: have any kind of a resolution did you want us to other than having this

[2:20:03] Voice 7: general conversation did you want us to make any other update

[2:20:10] Voice 1: no yeah no I've

[2:20:13] Voice 1: taken notes so I'm going to incorporate the notice of motion into here I'm going

[2:20:19] Voice 1: to definitely take a look at the meeting procedures to make sure there's no

[2:20:23] Voice 1: conflicts. And a few other ideas that have been brought up here, we'll

[2:20:27] Voice 1: incorporate those into a draft that we'll bring back

[2:20:30] Voice 1: with a request for a decision. And yeah,

[2:20:35] Voice 1: if we get any further comments before then, I'll incorporate those

[2:20:39] Voice 1: in some way as well. So I'm not looking for a resolution at this stage.

[2:20:44] Voice 1: Okay.

[2:20:47] Voice 7: Possibly if we can get those

[2:20:49] Voice 7: two policies then as documents that we can

[2:20:53] Voice 7: then make comments. I've got some, of course,

[2:20:56] Voice 7: I've got a whole bunch of blue pencil editing nonsense,

[2:20:59] Voice 7: but I think the basic content has been discussed here.

[2:21:05] Voice 7: Anybody else? Yeah.

[2:21:11] Voice 7: All right. Not seeing any other hands raised.

[2:21:16] Voice 7: We've got 15 minutes. Let's,

[2:21:22] Voice 7: let's deal with the meeting schedule. So that is, oh, no, sorry.

[2:21:28] Voice 7: Sorry, there was another one, 8.3.

[2:21:30] Voice 7: It was a verbal report.

[2:21:34] Voice 7: Consolidation of three Trust Council policies in regards to resolutions without meeting?

[2:21:40] Voice 1: Yeah, I just wanted to just update you on something that we've been working on for a while, actually,

[2:21:46] Voice 1: just kind of off the side of the desk over the last couple of months and before we had any direction on prices.

[2:21:54] Voice 1: But this is the Trust Council policies in regards to resolutions without meetings.

[2:22:01] Voice 1: And there's several.

[2:22:02] Voice 1: I believe there's at least three.

[2:22:05] Voice 1: And they don't really reflect the legislation very well.

[2:22:12] Voice 1: And what we've found is internally that they're being done differently.

[2:22:17] Voice 1: So we're proposing, and what I'm going to bring to you through the Governance Committee,

[2:22:21] Voice 1: committee is a

[2:22:22] Voice 1: consolidation of all three into a single policy. It's pretty straightforward in

[2:22:27] Voice 1: that sense. But also to make sure that we're referencing the legislation correctly and that

[2:22:33] Voice 1: we are following the processes intended by the legislation when it comes to resolutions without

[2:22:40] Voice 1: meetings. So I plan to bring that one back to you also. It's pretty well written. It just wasn't

[2:22:46] Voice 1: ready to come to this meeting again due to the strike so we'll bring that one back along with

[2:22:52] Voice 1: policy 221 223 222 so it's kind of a bonus one it's one that's been in progress we might as well

[2:22:58] Voice 1: just do it get it out of the way and let you have a discussion and it will help staff any discussion

[2:23:17] Voice 7: all right let's move on then um 8.4 proposed meeting schedule

[2:23:35] Voice 1: The table that starts at the bottom of page 32 is the proposed meeting schedule for the

[2:23:42] Voice 1: Governance Committee.

[2:23:44] Voice 1: So management had a look at all of the different committees, we start with Trust Council because

[2:23:51] Voice 1: that's the big one and see how we can fit that in the year and this year because of

[2:23:56] Voice 1: the election we need to fit a council meeting in November and that has to occur after the first

[2:24:03] Voice 1: Boeing meeting because we need to know who the Boeing trustees are going to be before we can have

[2:24:09] Voice 1: the council meeting. So we know the date of the first Boeing meeting and we've slotted in council

[2:24:17] Voice 1: as soon after that as is possible so we can get that going. We also have a limit under the

[2:24:24] Voice 1: elections we have to have the swearing in by set number of days after the

[2:24:31] Voice 1: declaration by the chief returning officer of who is who is one so we try

[2:24:39] Voice 1: and go too far we can't wait till December November so once we get the

[2:24:46] Voice 1: council meetings we also look to executive and the other council

[2:24:50] Voice 1: committees including Governors Committee so this is the schedule that we came up

[2:24:55] Voice 1: up with, and you'll see that we go from June 3rd, sorry, April 29th and July 15th, and

[2:25:05] Voice 1: it shows you the executive committee meeting, which leads up to the council.

[2:25:10] Voice 1: So the idea of governance committee meeting dates is so that anything that the governance

[2:25:15] Voice 1: committee would like to advance to council can go to the next council meeting by going

[2:25:20] Voice 1: through the executive.

[2:25:21] Voice 1: So the April 29th will feed June 16th council, and the July 15th will feed the September 9th council.

[2:25:31] Voice 1: The October 8th would then be for the November 12th council meeting.

[2:25:37] Voice 1: Keep in mind the election is on October 17th, I believe it is.

[2:25:43] Voice 1: So this one will be in the election period.

[2:25:47] Voice 1: and whether or not you want to be meeting during that time, that's up to you.

[2:25:52] Voice 1: You can always schedule it and then cancel it if that becomes .

[2:25:58] Voice 1: And then you'll see we've got November 25th, and that one is, first of all,

[2:26:05] Voice 1: dependent on council electing a new governance committee at its November meeting.

[2:26:11] Voice 1: That's something it might decide not to do, and instead it kind of needs to have to decide not to hold elections.

[2:26:42] Voice 1: Wednesday, January 13th would be the date.

[2:27:01] Voice 1: That's there for adoption if you agree with those dates,

[2:27:03] Voice 1: and if not, you could check.

[2:27:17] Voice 1: Right.

[2:27:20] Voice 7: So we already have the January 28th, 26th meeting that's scheduled,

[2:27:25] Voice 7: so that would leave, if we keep the October 8th one,

[2:27:30] Voice 7: just before the election,

[2:27:32] Voice 7: that would keep us to trying to conclude our work in four meetings.

[2:27:40] Voice 7: So keep that in mind.

[2:27:42] Voice 7: I guess the big discussion is whether or not we want that October 8th date.

[2:27:50] Voice 7: How do people feel?

[2:27:51] Voice 7: That's nine days before the election.

[2:27:53] Voice 7: Trustee Borthwick?

[2:27:55] Voice 4: I mean, it may be relevant.

[2:27:57] Voice 4: I mean, I think as Director Marlowe was saying, we might as well schedule it for now.

[2:28:03] Voice 4: And then if we decide that it's not necessary, then cancel it.

[2:28:08] Voice 4: But there may be stuff that we want to make sure.

[2:28:11] Voice 4: Or we may want to clarify, you know, what we want to send forward to a future governance committee.

[2:28:17] Voice 4: And I think it might be useful to have a meeting for that purpose alone.

[2:28:22] Voice 4: And just to sort of like collect our thoughts as the committee and pass that along to the next set of trustees.

[2:28:31] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo?

[2:28:33] Voice 5: Yeah, I don't have a problem with the October 8th meeting.

[2:28:38] Voice 5: I think we should schedule it.

[2:28:39] Voice 5: And just as Trustee Borthwick says, we'll just see how it shakes out in practice.

[2:28:46] Voice 5: Just seeing this chart, though, does, and it also makes sense for some of the proposed dates that we have, at least with these proposed dates that we have them before, you know, they're structured so that we can make decisions about in time to get things to Trust Council if we want to do that.

[2:29:05] Voice 5: that um so i agree with that general strategy but i'm just wondering if if we're doing enough

[2:29:14] Voice 5: i mean over the past three years or so you know we get these formal meetings we try if we have

[2:29:21] Voice 5: all this housekeeping to do and you know in terms of actually having working meetings where we kind

[2:29:27] Voice 5: of get in there with the staff and sort of go at things to try to figure out you know um whether a

[2:29:35] Voice 5: policy or whatever um is suitable uh what i have in mind is i'm wondering you know we don't do a

[2:29:44] Voice 5: lot of that and i think we could do more and like and this policy revision you know my own personal

[2:29:50] Voice 5: view is the policy revision project is really important i mean there's policies and bylaws

[2:29:55] Voice 5: they drive the organization and the whole governance issue the the problems that

[2:29:59] Voice 5: I don't know.

[2:30:00] Voice 5: historically we've had governance. But those problems are a manifestation of how these

[2:30:05] Voice 5: policies and bylaws operate in practice. So I'm wondering whether or not we should be anticipating

[2:30:13] Voice 5: working in some working meetings, like we could approve these today. And I'd be interested in

[2:30:19] Voice 5: hearing from Director Marlar and the CEO about this, about whether we should also have some

[2:30:24] Voice 5: other dedicated working meetings that are simply dedicated to the single purpose of addressing a

[2:30:30] Voice 5: draft policy or revision that staff is proposing and that we can just go out at hammer and tongs

[2:30:37] Voice 5: and just treat it as a working document we can contribute and obviously in order for us to be

[2:30:43] Voice 5: constructive we can't just wing it we have to actually read the material before that meeting

[2:30:47] Voice 5: comes and and be prepared at the meeting to to engage in that actual work but it i i'm wondering

[2:30:55] Voice 5: if we had some more meetings working group meetings or not working groups but i mean

[2:30:59] Voice 5: working meetings of this committee on the narrow issue of looking at uh you know doing our

[2:31:05] Voice 5: contribution for the policy revision um i'm thinking that might accelerate uh the policy

[2:31:11] Voice 5: revision part of it thank you any

[2:31:18] Voice 7: staff want to cao brony thank

[2:31:23] Voice 13: you chair yeah i i appreciate

[2:31:24] Voice 13: trustee bernardo's comment um and desire to roll up his sleeves and get into the work and that's

[2:31:30] Voice 13: certainly something Director Marler and I can look at that. We can look

[2:31:34] Voice 13: at the broader meeting calendar because when we factor

[2:31:38] Voice 13: in all the committees, etc., it starts to become

[2:31:42] Voice 13: surprisingly tight over the course of a year, but we could identify some potential dates

[2:31:46] Voice 13: for additional, what I assume would be special meetings of

[2:31:50] Voice 13: this group, and then look at sequencing and timing

[2:31:54] Voice 13: for when we think we might have a draft, draft policies ready to

[2:31:58] Voice 13: go and look at and come back to this committee then with some some options for uh additional

[2:32:04] Voice 13: meetings um that might help fill that gap if if we're going to be able to advance the policy work

[2:32:10] Voice 13: in a way that lines up with that schedule i don't know if director mario had any additional comments

[2:32:14] Voice 13: but yeah we can take that away and and take a second look at it um

[2:32:22] Voice 7: i have a question for staff

[2:32:24] Voice 7: if we um if we did want to get something to trust council before the end of the term

[2:32:31] Voice 7: That would be the, I mean, the November 12th is the new council, right?

[2:32:39] Voice 7: So it would have to be, is there one between the September and November?

[2:32:46] Voice 1: No.

[2:32:46] Voice 1: No, September would be the last council meeting.

[2:32:48] Voice 7: All right.

[2:32:49] Voice 1: So then

[2:32:49] Voice 7: the September meeting is the last opportunity for this governance committee to get anything before council.

[2:32:56] Voice 7: So then the October 8th Governance Committee would be anything that we want to suggest or report out for the incoming. And it wouldn't get to them and it wouldn't get to anybody on this Trust Council. Is there even going to be an executive committee? Or is that the previous one that meets for the agenda, October 28th?

[2:33:27] Voice 7: yeah that's

[2:33:30] Voice 7: the previous committee

[2:33:31] Voice 13: yeah yeah all

[2:33:34] Voice 7: right so um then we've got three

[2:33:40] Voice 7: working meetings or three of these meetings to work on and uh if we want to get through any more

[2:33:46] Voice 7: any of this um there has to be some some sort of um additional meetings like trustee bernardo

[2:33:58] Voice 7: was suggesting working meetings all right so then um what how can we help what is it that

[2:34:04] Voice 7: you need suggestions in terms of the kinds of things that we could work on uh the whether it

[2:34:11] Voice 7: should be a working group whether um and a subgroup instead of the whole group meeting or

[2:34:17] Voice 7: what would be the most helpful these sending out are

[2:34:24] Voice 1: you asking staff or are you asking staff

[2:34:27] Voice 1: or the trustees? Say again?

[2:34:31] Voice 1: Sorry, are you asking staff or the trustees?

[2:34:34] Voice 7: Staff, I guess, first.

[2:34:39] Voice 1: Yeah, well, first of all, I think this is your regular meeting schedule, so

[2:34:43] Voice 1: first question is, is this appropriate and do you want to adopt it? The second now comes more

[2:34:50] Voice 1: to your work program items, so you might want to do those more on an item-by-item basis and say,

[2:34:57] Voice 1: Well, if you can carve out time in one of these regular meetings to spend a couple hours or even three hours on one particular issue and focus on it, that's an option.

[2:35:11] Voice 1: If you feel you need more time, then you could also schedule special meetings to do that.

[2:35:17] Voice 1: We can figure out with you the best timing for that.

[2:35:21] Voice 7: Right.

[2:35:23] Voice 7: Okay.

[2:35:23] Voice 7: Okay. Like today, we're almost finished, and in fact, we've got another two and a half hours scheduled.

[2:35:32] Voice 1: Yeah, correct. I mean, in future meetings, you could say we want to spend two hours on just working with staff,

[2:35:38] Voice 1: and we can develop it as a workshop with you, and go through and do what you do, roll your sleeves up.

[2:35:46] Voice 1: You do it at the trust committee level, and sit down and have a good discussion around what changes you'd like to see.

[2:35:54] Voice 1: so yeah we can certainly do that at the regular meetings as well and have special meetings if

[2:36:00] Voice 1: you feel you need more time in between to finish it off is

[2:36:04] Voice 7: it harder to figure out this um extra

[2:36:07] Voice 7: meetings uh closer to the event or now slot in some pencil in sometimes i

[2:36:17] Voice 1: think maybe identify

[2:36:19] Voice 1: what it is you want so if at the next meeting which is in january i think you would like to

[2:36:27] Voice 1: to say, let's put three hours aside for this one particular issue

[2:36:31] Voice 1: that we'd like to workshop with you.

[2:36:34] Voice 1: Then myself and the CEO can sit down with a chair

[2:36:37] Voice 1: to figure out what that day would look like

[2:36:40] Voice 1: or those three hours could be used and how it can be programmed.

[2:36:44] Voice 1: And then if at the end of that session you still want to do more,

[2:36:48] Voice 1: then at that time I think you can start looking at your calendar

[2:36:51] Voice 1: and saying, can we fit in another two to three hour special meeting

[2:36:55] Voice 1: anything because we want to keep going with this issue and we don't want to wait three months to

[2:37:01] Voice 1: do that. I think that's totally appropriate.

[2:37:03] Voice 7: Okay, so we can probably expand on that discussion when

[2:37:07] Voice 7: we have the work plan, which is the next on the last on the agenda. Trustee Bernardo? Yeah,

[2:37:17] Voice 5: I think if we're thinking around this issue of supplementary meetings or working meetings,

[2:37:24] Voice 5: things um the uh the three priorities trust council has asked us to look at

[2:37:34] Voice 5: um as i mentioned before the one dealing with the uh election issues i think that one should

[2:37:42] Voice 5: actually be fairly straight for us to deal straightforward for us to deal with and i

[2:37:46] Voice 5: think we should be able to i would hope we'd be able to deal with that pretty efficiently

[2:37:51] Voice 5: with staff's input because there are some like real legal constraints and we're probably going

[2:37:58] Voice 5: to head up in a position of saying look you have to have an election as soon as practicable you

[2:38:03] Voice 5: know you've got some slippage maybe it could be you know you've got a few weeks a month but you

[2:38:10] Voice 5: know you can't screw around with that you have to have to do it that's what the statute says so we

[2:38:13] Voice 5: must do it so that means that's when we're going to elect the executive committee and then so we've

[2:38:22] Voice 5: had this whole issue about whether that makes sense it probably doesn't but we also have the

[2:38:26] Voice 5: dilemma that we need to have an executive committee it's going to require a certain

[2:38:30] Voice 5: amount of creativity but we're going to be limited in what we can do there but the other

[2:38:34] Voice 5: but i do think we should be able to dispose of that pretty efficiently the other two issues

[2:38:39] Voice 5: the corporate planning side of it and helping trustees uh you know uh in their role i consider

[2:38:45] Voice 5: this whole policy revision issue a major component of facilitating trustees and doing their work

[2:38:53] Voice 5: It's core to that because trustee confusion about the policies has been a running theme throughout the whole term.

[2:38:59] Voice 5: But on both of those, we're heavily reliant on staff's capacity to do the work, their throughput.

[2:39:07] Voice 5: The point I'm trying to make is their throughput is what's going to, I think, dictate the need to have these meetings, extra meetings.

[2:39:17] Voice 5: What I would like to do today is, yes, we need to, as Director Marlowe correctly pointed out,

[2:39:21] Voice 5: out this is the regularly scheduled meeting proposal. As far as I'm interested, it makes

[2:39:26] Voice 5: sense. And yes, let's pass it. But in terms, I do think we probably do need to have extra

[2:39:33] Voice 5: working meetings. But I don't think it makes sense for us to attempt to actually schedule

[2:39:37] Voice 5: things at this juncture. I think to a large extent, we're in staff's hands. And what I

[2:39:43] Voice 5: would like to do is encourage staff, once they've got a chunk of work that they think

[2:39:48] Voice 5: is ready for us to look at that they they have their minds open to finding some room in there

[2:39:55] Voice 5: to sort of open up a working meeting uh setting that up so that we can address it so they're in

[2:40:02] Voice 5: a sense um their throughput is going to dictate our ability to have these working meetings

[2:40:07] Voice 5: thank you

[2:40:09] Voice 7: trustee birthwick um

[2:40:14] Voice 4: yeah um so i thought you'd like i largely agree with what

[2:40:18] Voice 4: what Trustee Bernard was just saying, like, I think this is a good, we've got to adopt these

[2:40:22] Voice 4: meetings. I'm happy to make that motion. That's going to be my second point. And I appreciate

[2:40:32] Voice 4: the sort of harking back to the priorities given to us by Trust Council. I think he's absolutely

[2:40:37] Voice 4: right. The election of EC is something that we can't, you know, logistically postpone. We might

[2:40:44] Voice 4: well be able to make some suggestions about what might happen later on. Do we want to do, you know,

[2:40:49] Voice 4: there's should there be a midpoint election should there be any of these other questions about the

[2:40:51] Voice 4: should should how that could be done differently my feeling is and and and my my suggestion and

[2:40:59] Voice 4: what i think i hear staff saying uh i feel like uh ceo brony said that that he and director marler

[2:41:06] Voice 4: you know on you know have heard this discussion and are can can look to work on you know creating

[2:41:12] Voice 4: some special meetings around that sort of stuff and that is something that certainly can happen

[2:41:16] Voice 4: although obviously we're dealing with staff capacity. But what I hear from David Marler

[2:41:22] Voice 4: is that perhaps some like direction on what that first sort of priority among those special

[2:41:27] Voice 4: meetings might be. And I would suggest, and I would like to potentially like have a bit of

[2:41:34] Voice 4: a discussion about this here with, and I'd like to hear from this committee. It seems to me like

[2:41:40] Voice 4: a good place to start and something that certainly has our conversations circled is what are the,

[2:41:45] Voice 4: the, what, what are the current policies, uh, that define and direct the roles and responsibilities

[2:41:52] Voice 4: of the EC and what do we think they ought to be? Like, do we have a philosophical, uh, mandate

[2:41:58] Voice 4: for, do we have a mandate for EC, uh, and do, and does that need to be addressed? Do we like,

[2:42:04] Voice 4: it would be good to get a bit more of an understanding of how it's come to be. And

[2:42:07] Voice 4: do we want to direct that in some way? So my, my proposal would be that if, if we ask director

[2:42:15] Voice 4: Director Marler, to, you know, if we were going to have a working meeting, which I think is

[2:42:22] Voice 4: definitely a good idea, I would, my first priority would be, let's look at getting an overview of the

[2:42:29] Voice 4: policies that currently are directing towards EC. Are some of those just defunct? Let's get rid of

[2:42:36] Voice 4: them. Do we need to address those? Do we need to direct those in some way, some form? And that

[2:42:41] Voice 4: could be the place to start among all of the policies like and i think that that also will

[2:42:46] Voice 4: help us solve some of the issues in terms of like um that will also address hopefully some of the

[2:42:52] Voice 4: like getting a really clear idea of what ec ought to be um in in our estimation and then and then

[2:42:59] Voice 4: taking that to trust council um i think that by addressing those policies first that'll give us a

[2:43:05] Voice 4: good that'll give us a good leg up on doing what trust council has asked us to do which is address

[2:43:09] Voice 4: the election of EC, which I think we can sort of more broadly do is like, what are the broad

[2:43:14] Voice 4: rules? What do we think EC ought to be? Because that will change how we think elections ought

[2:43:18] Voice 4: to work. And it'll change the sort of people who might choose to run for EC in the long run.

[2:43:22] Voice 4: So my proposal would be for a special meeting, and I'd love to hear from other members of the

[2:43:27] Voice 4: committee, but also from Director Marler in a moment about like, whether that feels like a good

[2:43:32] Voice 4: direction, if that feels like something we're interested in. But also, if it doesn't,

[2:43:38] Voice 4: because i think that's sort of secondary i'm gonna uh ask chair if she's all right with me

[2:43:44] Voice 4: making the motion to adopt the regular meetings as presented uh and then maybe we can get into

[2:43:51] Voice 4: talking about the other stuff after the fact yeah

[2:43:54] Voice 7: i think that's a good plan let's um deal

[2:43:56] Voice 7: with this request for decision with respect to the schedule and the format and then um it's 12 30

[2:44:05] Voice 7: Actually, it's 12.45, 44.

[2:44:09] Voice 7: So I'm at your pleasure in terms of what the next

[2:44:12] Voice 7: steps are going to be.

[2:44:13] Voice 7: But let's deal

[2:44:13] Voice 7: with this one.

[2:44:15] Voice 4: Yeah, if it's all right, I'll make the motion.

[2:44:17] Voice 4: And I just want to double check.

[2:44:18] Voice 4: Director Marler, is it fine if I make recommendations one and two is the same motion?

[2:44:23] Voice 4: So it's scheduling the meetings and then making them all electronic?

[2:44:31] Voice 1: It's fine as long as there's no one of them doesn't

[2:44:34] Voice 4: cause it to fail.

[2:44:35] Voice 4: I'm going to make that motion.

[2:44:37] Voice 4: If anybody's mad about it, they can talk and chat and chirp about it.

[2:44:42] Voice 4: I move that the Governments Committee adopt the proposed meeting dates of Wednesday, April 29th, 2026, Wednesday, July 15th, 2026, and Thursday, October 8th, 2026.

[2:45:04] Voice 4: Oh, I guess I need to do these other ones as well.

[2:45:06] Voice 4: Is that right, Director Marler?

[2:45:07] Voice 4: okay then also wednesday pardon

[2:45:09] Voice 4: me yes okay uh wednesday november 25th 2026 and wednesday

[2:45:17] Voice 4: january 13th 2027 where's my recommendation uh for the 2026-27 fiscal year uh and that the

[2:45:29] Voice 4: governance committee direct staff to schedule all adopted governance committee meetings as

[2:45:33] Voice 4: electronic meetings.

[2:45:37] Voice 7: Second.

[2:45:38] Voice 7: Trustee Peterson.

[2:45:39] Voice 7: Thank you.

[2:45:41] Voice 7: Any more discussion?

[2:45:43] Voice 7: All right.

[2:45:44] Voice 7: Can I get those in favor, please?

[2:45:54] Voice 1: Yeah, three in favor, four in favor.

[2:45:57] Voice 7: Hands down.

[2:45:59] Voice 7: Any opposed?

[2:46:03] Voice 7: One opposed.

[2:46:06] Voice 7: All right.

[2:46:07] Voice 7: So that carries.

[2:46:10] Voice 7: All right.

[2:46:11] Voice 7: So do we break for lunch or do we continue working?

[2:46:20] Voice 7: I think it looks like we might have another hour's worth of work.

[2:46:24] Voice 5: Well, I would suggest that we break for lunch because we do have this time that's scheduled. We're talking about doing working meetings. Let's consider, I don't necessarily want to run it all the way to three o'clock, but some of the things that Trustee Borthwick was talking about, it sounds like we could actually engage some aspects of those today.

[2:46:45] Voice 7: Trustee Borthwick, you had your hand up. It's now down.

[2:46:49] Voice 7: Yeah,

[2:46:50] Voice 4: no, no, sorry. I was just gonna say, yeah, I think we should take a break. And let's, let's discuss that. But I and I, again, like, I would love to hear from the committee as to like, does, does adopting, you know, the scope and mandate of the executive committee seem like a good first step for tackling policies? And also, does that even work for Director Marler? But I think we could probably answer that after lunch.

[2:47:17] Voice 4: All

[2:47:18] Voice 7: right. So what I would like you to think about on that score is we just went through this briefing with respect to our original request in August to have staff spend time on this request for decisions and reports and council committee preparation.

[2:47:37] Voice 7: So, we've had a little bit of discussion on that and we may have other comments that we want to pass to staff, but I would like to suggest that we shift that to the side of the desk and bring up the second point, executive committee terms of reference and some of these other things that are mentioned in that briefing, point number two, as background for our discussions on executive committee.

[2:48:05] Voice 7: So I wouldn't mind having some feedback from staff in terms of whether or not that shifting of priorities is helpful in terms of not piling on top of Director Marler's workload in terms of what we've talked about today and just moving it around.

[2:48:26] Voice 7: Okay, so let's take a half hour break for lunch. Is that enough time?

[2:48:31] Voice 7: all right not seeing any objection then half an hour from now so that'll be

[2:48:38] Voice 7: about 1 20 roughly have a good lunch

[3:22:10] Voice 7: Mr. Barlow, do we have quorum?

[3:22:17] Voice 9: You do not have visible quorum.

[3:22:20] Voice 9: There are one, two, three visible trustees, four visible.

[3:22:26] Voice 9: Yes, you do have quorum.

[3:22:29] Voice 7: All right.

[3:22:30] Voice 7: But

[3:22:30] Voice 9: I do notice Trustee Harris seems not to be on the call on Zoom at the moment.

[3:22:38] Voice 7: Okay.

[3:22:40] Voice 7: We're not closed, so he can get back in, right?

[3:22:44] Voice 9: Yes, of course.

[3:22:45] Voice 9: Okay.

[3:22:46] Voice 7: All right.

[3:22:47] Voice 7: All right. So let's get back to it.

[3:22:55] Voice 7: So we've got the work program.

[3:22:57] Voice 7: I think we've touched on everything at this point in the agenda.

[3:23:03] Voice 7: A few things we're going to go back to and touch again,

[3:23:05] Voice 7: but let's work on the work program.

[3:23:10] Voice 7: Director Marler, can you share a screen with the updated work matrix?

[3:23:21] Voice 1: Yeah, just give me a minute to pull that up. You should see it now.

[3:23:50] Voice 7: Thank you. Yep. All right. We have an active project report on pages 35 and 36,

[3:24:02] Voice 7: and we have this previous version of this matrix on page 37. So what I did for homework to prepare

[3:24:12] Voice 7: this was to change the upper right segment of this into the three

[3:24:19] Voice 7: recommendations that we got from Trust Council and then tried to put some of

[3:24:25] Voice 7: the others into the other slots on this and there's a little bit at the bottom

[3:24:33] Voice 7: in terms of reasons why we're not working on some of the others. I wasn't

[3:24:37] Voice 7: quite sure where to put Secretariat, but I highlighted the three gray items as having to do

[3:24:44] Voice 7: with information to candidates before the election, helping trustees understand their roles,

[3:24:51] Voice 7: and helping trustees fulfill their roles. As being related, although the fulfilling our roles

[3:24:58] Voice 7: is the priority that Trust Council gave us.

[3:25:03] Voice 7: Excuse me.

[3:25:04] Voice 7: So some of this falls into the information to the candidates

[3:25:09] Voice 7: before the election, falls into the working group, I think,

[3:25:13] Voice 7: that has just been formed in terms of onboarding new trustees.

[3:25:20] Voice 7: And it's much bigger, broader questions in terms of understanding the roles

[3:25:25] Voice 7: and fulfilling their roles.

[3:25:26] Voice 7: But some of it goes back to what Trustee Bernardo was talking about in terms of how the policies need to be updated.

[3:25:38] Voice 7: That's a big part of the problem.

[3:25:41] Voice 7: So just by, that's a very general, broad background to try to help open up the conversation.

[3:25:50] Voice 7: We've got, what, two and a half hours left?

[3:25:55] Voice 7: How would you like to spend the time?

[3:26:01] Voice 7: How are we going to work on some of these issues?

[3:26:10] Voice 7: Before we left for lunch, Director Marler, I had suggested that we might rearrange some of the priorities.

[3:26:17] Voice 7: Oh, sorry, I got some hands up.

[3:26:19] Voice 7: Okay, Trustee Bernardo.

[3:26:21] Voice 5: Yeah, it seems to me that we ought to be able to suppose, first of all, the matrix issue pretty fast.

[3:26:31] Voice 5: Because Trust Council has put his mind to it and it's given us what it thinks are urgent and high priority.

[3:26:36] Voice 5: and i think you've got them in the matrix here the question is um or really election and of

[3:26:46] Voice 5: executive and strategic corporate planning that's already straightforward as i said before that um

[3:26:53] Voice 5: that's something that we should be able to you know the election the executive committee something

[3:26:59] Voice 5: you ought to deal with pretty quickly and the strategic bit and the help trustees fulfill

[3:27:04] Voice 5: fulfill their roles bit, those two elements are definitely things where we have to work pretty

[3:27:11] Voice 5: closely with staff to define the shape of the issue. And on the help trustees fulfill their

[3:27:19] Voice 5: roles, it's different. It's related to, but different than what we had before, which is

[3:27:25] Voice 5: help trustees understand their roles and information to candidates, and it's related

[3:27:32] Voice 5: information to candidates for election and also to the meeting process helping trustees

[3:27:37] Voice 5: pull their fulfill their roles is a purpose of thing um and i think revising the policies

[3:27:47] Voice 5: including the meeting process gets rolled into that information to candidates is a piece of that

[3:27:54] Voice 5: but i don't think we can help trustees under understand their roles until we do a better

[3:27:59] Voice 5: job of defining them uh through the policies um and i so i think where we're at with urgent

[3:28:08] Voice 5: high priorities just find the way it is so i was just i would just hope that this group would

[3:28:13] Voice 5: you know acknowledge that help trustees fulfill their roles encompasses quite a bit um and i think

[3:28:20] Voice 5: once we dispense with the um matrix uh i would like us to get back to um the issue that trustee

[3:28:27] Voice 5: Borthwick raised before.

[3:28:34] Voice 7: That's a good segue, Trustee Borthwick.

[3:28:40] Voice 4: Yeah, well, I was about to

[3:28:41] Voice 4: say that. I mean, I sound a bit like a broken clock in that I agree with a lot of what Trustee

[3:28:44] Voice 4: Bernardo was saying. But yeah, that I think, you know, sort of by nature of some of what we've

[3:28:52] Voice 4: already discussed and what's already been undertaken in various other forums, a lot of

[3:28:56] Voice 4: the stuff that's, you know, here is in some version of the process. And certainly this look

[3:29:03] Voice 4: look at policy um you know has really underscored for me that actually a lot of um a lot of that

[3:29:10] Voice 4: work can't happen until we have really clarified and yeah pruned pruned the deadwood from from

[3:29:17] Voice 4: the policies so that we can effectively say you know because i think right now we'd run the risk

[3:29:23] Voice 4: of if we if we you know tried to uh support trustees in executing their duties per current

[3:29:31] Voice 4: policy uh we'd wind up running afoul of contradictory or or unclear policy and so

[3:29:37] Voice 4: you know we are actually in many ways best served by sort of refining those um and and yeah to me

[3:29:45] Voice 4: that in in you know as i was saying sort of before lunch um i think uh a good sort of first step

[3:29:53] Voice 4: there and again i you know like i said before i'd love to hear from the committee but i also

[3:29:57] Voice 4: Also love to hear from staff and to make sure that I.

[3:30:00] Voice 4: because i'm trying to uh um uh respond to what i feel like director marler was sort of discussing

[3:30:08] Voice 4: and sort of wanting some direction in terms of like where to lead this or where to like you know

[3:30:14] Voice 4: that these are all going to be like he's going to be undertaking this work i think that's all well

[3:30:19] Voice 4: and good um but that um you know he needs some some direction if we want something specific

[3:30:25] Voice 4: civic undertaken beforehand. And I think that looking into, um, you know, sort of deciding

[3:30:31] Voice 4: whether we think, uh, you know, examining the, the function and mandate of, of the EC is a valuable

[3:30:39] Voice 4: sort of first step. Um, and, and yeah, cause I think, I think a lot of our, a lot of our work

[3:30:45] Voice 4: currently flows from or through the EC. And so I think getting really clear about what the EC ought

[3:30:50] Voice 4: ought to be, um, is a, is a valuable conversation. Um, I think it has a potential to address a lot

[3:30:57] Voice 4: of the issues. Um, so yeah, if that's, if that's a valuable place to start, if that is a useful

[3:31:02] Voice 4: narrowing, perhaps I don't, I don't see director Marla, but perhaps the CAO can, can speak to if

[3:31:08] Voice 4: that's a helpful bit of direction. Um, and, and then, yeah, I'd love to hear what other people

[3:31:13] Voice 4: on the committee think.

[3:31:16] Voice 13: CEO Bruni. Thank you, chair. Yeah. I think that is that narrowing is

[3:31:21] Voice 13: is going to be the key consideration.

[3:31:23] Voice 13: As we've talked about earlier in this meeting,

[3:31:25] Voice 13: there's a large number of policies

[3:31:28] Voice 13: and areas you could focus in terms of updating policy,

[3:31:31] Voice 13: but we're also in the practical space of,

[3:31:33] Voice 13: after December, there'll be three trust council meetings

[3:31:36] Voice 13: before the election.

[3:31:37] Voice 13: And so if there are policy changes

[3:31:39] Voice 13: that you would hope to advance before the election,

[3:31:43] Voice 13: no matter how many meetings this group has,

[3:31:45] Voice 13: those are the kind of windows to be able to advance those.

[3:31:48] Voice 13: And so I think if there are particular areas of policy that you want to focus on, and if it's related to executive committee, I'm sure Director Marta could start with a summary for you or a list of all the relevant policy pieces and where those delegate and assign powers to executive committee.

[3:32:07] Voice 13: but having an area of focus, I think, would be very helpful given the practical realities of

[3:32:15] Voice 13: the window that we're in. And I think looking back to that meeting schedule too, sort of

[3:32:20] Voice 13: identifying if there is an area you really want to focus on in January, then let's put that on

[3:32:26] Voice 13: the table at this stage and identify that as that is the big deep dive that you want to take in

[3:32:31] Voice 13: january then that'll help us also kind of prioritize the work thanks trustee burthwick

[3:32:38] Voice 13: um

[3:32:39] Voice 4: and yeah and just to i also you know i'm i um uh i wanted to sort of invite we've got

[3:32:48] Voice 4: you know half of ec in this committee as well i'm also interested in hearing their thoughts

[3:32:52] Voice 4: around this this discussion um because they have a lot of relevant experience chair patrick

[3:33:02] Trustee Patrick: oh there's a few threads here i mean the the one regarding executive committee role i think that

[3:33:12] Trustee Patrick: has to be addressed through the policy review what has been delegated in the past to trust

[3:33:16] Trustee Patrick: council with each and every review policy that needs to be re-examined is that still the right

[3:33:22] Trustee Patrick: thing to do today uh and i can understand 1990 it was hard to get together now we can so um the

[3:33:30] Trustee Patrick: The role piece, and I think it's, again, it'd be nice to hear from CAO Broney on kind of where staff may be headed in the onboarding materials.

[3:33:43] Trustee Patrick: I mean, I think you've got some ideas at the 35,000-foot level.

[3:33:48] Trustee Patrick: Because I think of the word fulfill their roles.

[3:33:53] Trustee Patrick: There's an S on the end of that.

[3:33:55] Trustee Patrick: And I think, you know, do we have the material that is understandable to people who are considering running and for those who are already running to be better at their roles?

[3:34:14] Trustee Patrick: roles um to understand you know trust council what does that mean uh local trust committees

[3:34:20] Trustee Patrick: what does that mean uh being a member of the community and attending events in your community

[3:34:25] Trustee Patrick: what does that mean um there's a there's a lot out there and i think um as the materials developed

[3:34:32] Trustee Patrick: is it as robust and simple and easily understood as possible so i think kind of maybe hearing where

[3:34:39] Trustee Patrick: staff are heading and then if we could fill in any gaps or help support that i'd say that would be

[3:34:44] Trustee Patrick: our best use um

[3:34:50] Voice 7: sorry cao brony i see your hand trustee peterson uh

[3:34:55] Voice 13: thank you chair yeah on on

[3:34:57] Voice 13: that point i would say we're only just starting to sort of really get our heads around what that

[3:35:02] Voice 13: work looks like but i think there are really two components and they line up with the two

[3:35:06] Voice 13: recommendations from the governance review as well right so the helping trustees um understand

[3:35:12] Voice 13: their role was really about the pre-decision to stand up and put yourself forward as a candidate.

[3:35:19] Voice 13: So that's the pre-election piece. Do you know what you're signing yourself up for? At least

[3:35:23] Voice 13: that's how it was framed in the governance review. And then helping trustees fulfill their roles was

[3:35:27] Voice 13: the congratulations, you are now a trustee. And what does that onboarding and orientation look

[3:35:32] Voice 13: like? And we're looking to address kind of both of those. Part of that is through, to Chair Patrick's

[3:35:39] Voice 13: point enhancing the existing content that we have and expanding on it and that's where we'll be

[3:35:45] Voice 13: looking for um this working group to help give us some some advice and input on as well um and

[3:35:52] Voice 13: then the second piece particularly for the onboarding and orientation is what does an

[3:35:58] Voice 13: extended onboarding model look like so it's not as what we've heard is that there's a lot up front

[3:36:04] Voice 13: Not necessarily so to some extent, because before you can really start doing the job of a trustee, there's a lot you need to understand.

[3:36:11] Voice 13: But how do we also support that in a more ongoing and longer term way?

[3:36:15] Voice 13: So that's kind of the two, initially the two pieces we're looking at is what is the content, the priority content that we need to address pre and post election, but also particularly post election.

[3:36:26] Voice 13: And how do we better support trustees in that first kind of 12 months, probably timeline around getting them up and running, but then also supporting and reinforcing and reminding them of some of those pieces as they go along.

[3:36:41] Voice 13: So that's the broad scope of the work, which I think gets at both of those general recommendations, but maybe in a little crunchier way than wasn't really outlined in the governance report.

[3:36:54] Voice 7: Trustee Peterson.

[3:36:58] Voice 11: Thank you, Chair.

[3:36:58] Voice 11: Yeah, I appreciate those comments, CEO.

[3:37:05] Voice 11: Back to the questions around executive committee.

[3:37:12] Voice 11: And earlier, I picked out a piece of the briefing that we have,

[3:37:22] Voice 11: which, of course, which mentions, of course,

[3:37:28] Voice 11: of course, the timing of the elections were fairly constrained, but how it works and the

[3:37:34] Voice 11: timing during that meeting can be tweaked. And I think that's something that I think would be

[3:37:40] Voice 11: worth exploring a bit. And then the other piece that I think would be really useful,

[3:37:50] Voice 11: which would probably be a little bit of staff preparation, is if this committee

[3:37:56] Voice 11: um can be it can have a like a look at what are the what are the delegated as opposed to statutory

[3:38:07] Voice 11: roles that that um that ec currently has under under policy and just to kind of get a you know

[3:38:17] Voice 11: even if it's just in a list form and then um i think that would actually really help generate

[3:38:22] Voice 11: rate discussion on are are all of these delegated authorities um still reasonable still relevant

[3:38:31] Voice 11: are there other ways they they can they can be actioned through your trust council or other

[3:38:35] Voice 11: committees and and just to be able to have like i think it'd be great to have sort of that material

[3:38:42] Voice 11: um in front of us to ruminate on for a bit and then maybe have an hour hour long discussion or

[3:38:47] Voice 11: or something uh at one of these meetings uh coming up to sort of sort through them a little

[3:38:54] Voice 11: bit and and have that discussion because i think that'd be um i think it'd be interesting and

[3:38:59] Voice 11: illuminating and and and helpful i think for the further further work okay

[3:39:08] Voice 7: so um what i heard then

[3:39:10] Voice 7: from ceo brony and um the the three or four trustees that have spoken is that the information

[3:39:18] Voice 7: to candidates before election and the helping the trustees understand their

[3:39:22] Voice 7: rules that that is material that is going to be looked at by this new

[3:39:25] Voice 7: working group and if they make any headway on that and that's going to be

[3:39:31] Voice 7: reported to this group so if we leave it to the left-hand side of this matrix and

[3:39:36] Voice 7: just think of it as something that might come up in our January or what is it a

[3:39:43] Voice 7: to march meeting um then uh we'll hopefully have a better handle on it with some help from that

[3:39:49] Voice 7: other working group so that um and the meeting process bylaw is what we were talking about with

[3:39:56] Voice 7: the other briefing that we had today and all the different policies and the compensation has been

[3:40:03] Voice 7: reported out in terms of its ongoing so they can stay over there so if we focus on the the upper

[3:40:10] Voice 7: right then, the election of the executive committee. And I think I would like to maybe

[3:40:19] Voice 7: expand a bit on what Trustee Bernardo said. We're limited in terms of the legislation requires that

[3:40:29] Voice 7: it be done X number of days after the election and the first meeting is called and all of those

[3:40:35] Voice 7: sort of legislative constraints but in terms of what we do and how we do it

[3:40:43] Voice 7: it'd be very interesting to have a conversation in terms of some of the

[3:40:48] Voice 7: things that have come up in this chair training program and the role playing

[3:40:54] Voice 7: and for those of you that weren't involved in that it'd be helpful I'm

[3:40:58] Voice 7: sure for us to explain that but you know try and think of like Joe says let me

[3:41:04] Voice 7: get creative in terms of how do we use the time that we've got so um you know my my recollection

[3:41:13] Voice 7: was um that there was a social where we wandered around and talked to each other and there was a

[3:41:17] Voice 7: couple of meals and um it wasn't structured and nobody knew what to talk about no i mean

[3:41:25] Voice 7: i never sat on a board that was this big and you know politicians as opposed to people working on

[3:41:30] Voice 7: on the same charity project or something.

[3:41:34] Voice 7: So it was quite a different dynamic.

[3:41:37] Voice 7: And I think that, you know, maybe some role playing,

[3:41:41] Voice 7: maybe some storytelling, maybe some examples.

[3:41:46] Voice 7: We need to figure out who can run a meeting and, you know,

[3:41:51] Voice 7: where their hearts are,

[3:41:52] Voice 7: where their minds are in terms of who we want to have in the position of

[3:41:56] Voice 7: chair. Trustee Bernardo, your hands up.

[3:41:58] Voice 7: Yeah,

[3:42:00] Voice 5: I mean, one of the dilemmas, I think, that relate to, you know, educating and briefing new trustees is a powerful element about how we improve the election of the executive committee.

[3:42:19] Voice 5: that's all wrapped up into that story that's for sure and having better materials and having these

[3:42:26] Voice 5: formal not formal but you know these kind of structured uh approaches i think that's helpful

[3:42:33] Voice 5: but you know something the the human element the human experience part of it tends to get lost

[3:42:43] Voice 5: when you no matter how nicely people are lecturing at you they're still lecturing at you

[3:42:48] Voice 5: You know, and for new trustees in particular, I think what they really need is a really

[3:42:59] Voice 5: frank, fair explanation of what it's like to do the job and what's involved, like what

[3:43:07] Voice 5: your experience is going to be like as a trustee.

[3:43:12] Voice 5: People don't run out of some abstract theoretical, you know, motivation.

[3:43:19] Voice 5: they run because typically they've got some specific things that that they feel that they

[3:43:25] Voice 5: can contribute that's the nicest way of putting it um sometimes the thing they think they can

[3:43:32] Voice 5: contribute is knocking over the apple cart because it's all full of rotten apples there's an element

[3:43:37] Voice 5: of that um in terms of the perceptions of trustees to a greater or lesser degree and we can't pretend

[3:43:43] Voice 5: it's not there. So I think when we deal with the election at the executive committee and try to

[3:43:51] Voice 5: inform both candidates before the election and newly elected trustees after the election how to

[3:43:57] Voice 5: a how to understand their roles but also what the executive committee does. I think some form of

[3:44:06] Voice 5: no risk one-on-one or a small group of people just casually talking with each other and saying look

[3:44:14] Voice 5: There's all this formality here, but these meetings can be maddening. Here's why. And there's this structure. And you're going to be getting these agenda packages, and you're going to be appalled when you see them. They're too much. And that kind of thing.

[3:44:28] Voice 5: I think we could do a much better job of simply acclimatizing new trustees to what that moment feels like when they hit the ground, because suddenly they're going to be presented at their first trust council meeting with all this stuff.

[3:44:44] Voice 5: They're going to be bewildered.

[3:44:46] Voice 5: They might be inspired by debates they've seen on TV or elsewhere about what the legislative process is like.

[3:44:54] Voice 5: And it turns out it's quite different from that.

[3:44:56] Voice 5: it's quite it's in fact our debates at trust council are quite restricted as they are in fact

[3:45:01] Voice 5: at the committee level uh there's open debate but it's within fairly narrow parameters um so i i

[3:45:10] Voice 5: think we need to um as part of the election the executive committee aspect i think we need to work

[3:45:16] Voice 5: in like some kind of you know and you know chair getty was sort of you know addressing that to some

[3:45:23] Voice 5: some extent i i i think putting um re-elected trustees together with new trustees just to just

[3:45:32] Voice 5: so that they can have some conversations where to the best of their ability they explain what

[3:45:38] Voice 5: it's going to be like in common sense normal accessible language certainly when i was elected

[3:45:44] Voice 5: and the you know the the effort to acclimatize and coach new trustees was you know it's all earnest

[3:45:52] Voice 5: uh and it's well intended but it's like from a hundred thousand feet i think we need to do what

[3:45:58] Voice 5: we can and especially before the election the executive committee we need to do a chunk of this

[3:46:04] Voice 5: we need to help new trustees understand what it's like actually on the ground what that experience

[3:46:09] Voice 5: is so that so that they don't find themselves becoming unnecessarily frustrated they just need

[3:46:16] Voice 5: to understand what this process is like thanks um

[3:46:24] Voice 7: so would that consist of some sort of a list of

[3:46:29] Voice 7: ideas that would go to this working group trustee oh sorry cao bruni thank

[3:46:43] Voice 13: you just just on that

[3:46:44] Voice 13: point that's exactly the kind of ideas that we're hoping to get through this working group and we're

[3:46:50] Voice 13: expecting to also engage the broader trustee group as well beyond the working group um but also to

[3:46:56] Voice 13: to trustee bernardo's point that's exactly the kind of i think additional content and approach

[3:47:03] Voice 13: we're also looking at how we incorporate so it's not just here's a package of written material

[3:47:08] Voice 13: you know that sort of summarizes what the job is but i think both for prospective candidates and

[3:47:14] Voice 13: then for new trustees engaging with current trustees to have a bit of that candid conversation

[3:47:22] Voice 13: conversation around understanding what you're really signing up for and what the work is going

[3:47:26] Voice 13: to look like is very much a part of, I think, where what we need to add to the existing foundation

[3:47:33] Voice 13: that we had for information for trustees and onboarding as well, so that it's not just driven

[3:47:38] Voice 13: by sort of the structure and process and policy, all of which are really important, but the actual

[3:47:45] Voice 13: day-to-day experience, so that people have a clear-eyed sense of what the job actually is.

[3:47:53] Voice 7: trustee borthwick yeah

[3:47:56] Voice 4: i mean and and like i say like a lot of the word you know i think that has

[3:47:59] Voice 4: been said this a lot of this conversation does pertain to what that working group will be

[3:48:03] Voice 4: discussing um in terms of what this committee um you know i i wonder if this committee should be

[3:48:14] Voice 4: you know sort of going through is like so there's the election there's i mean and there's not some

[3:48:20] Voice 4: as we said there's not a whole bunch we can do to change the process of that

[3:48:24] Voice 4: That there's a lot we can do to prepare for that process, but the actual process itself of the election when it comes to that November meeting, there's not a ton of flexibility there.

[3:48:35] Voice 4: And we do need to know who's going to be at the helm, at least for that first bit.

[3:48:39] Voice 4: it. I think there's been a lot of discussion about should there be an interim? Should there

[3:48:43] Voice 4: be a trial period? Should there be the option for reelection throughout the course of the term,

[3:48:48] Voice 4: which is within our bailiwick to sort of address if we think that's a value. And I think that would

[3:48:55] Voice 4: be something that maybe is valuable to talk about in this body. Just to bat the ideas around,

[3:49:00] Voice 4: I know it's being discussed a great deal and people feel strongly one way or another,

[3:49:05] Voice 4: other. Obviously, taking on being on the executive, as I'm sure Tim and Laura will affirm, is a lot of

[3:49:13] Voice 4: work. And it's, you know, it's not for the faint of heart, necessarily. And that might not be

[3:49:20] Voice 4: something, you know, certainly what I heard in that run up to our battle, that election in this

[3:49:25] Voice 4: term was, you know, when we've had this discussion before, I've had people say, well, you know,

[3:49:30] Voice 4: no one's going to want to, you know, people who are going to run for this, you know, want to know

[3:49:34] Voice 4: that they've got that you know role going forward for a long period of time which by itself didn't

[3:49:41] Voice 4: really feel tremendously compelling to me as a reason to do it or not do it um you know i think

[3:49:46] Voice 4: i think certainly there's been some value in the the sort of accident of chance that's that's put

[3:49:51] Voice 4: uh you know had a had a change of chair over the course of this term has been a really interesting

[3:49:58] Voice 4: experience i think whether you like it or not i think it's really been useful for us to see

[3:50:03] Voice 4: what it looks like to have a change happen on the executive over the course of a term.

[3:50:08] Voice 4: And so for me, in terms of like conversation about what we want to have, the conversation

[3:50:14] Voice 4: we want to have, and if we want to be talking about, you know, fulfilling this direction

[3:50:18] Voice 4: from trust counsel, I think the election is part of it, but also what the role and like,

[3:50:24] Voice 4: again, looked like digging into those policies around the executive changes the nature of

[3:50:29] Voice 4: the election because depending on what the job is of that body it changes the nature of who you

[3:50:35] Voice 4: want to elect potentially um you know what what is their role to some degree it's it's you know

[3:50:40] Voice 4: it's a broad there's there's there's something there anyways and i just think that's worth

[3:50:45] Voice 4: sort of digging into in terms of conversation in terms of like the specifics of how we prepare

[3:50:50] Voice 4: trustees and i totally i'm 100 agreed with with what's been said before in terms of like we need

[3:50:55] Voice 4: need to do a whole bunch more to prepare people and give them a realistic and i really liked

[3:50:59] Voice 4: the frank and frair explanation that that that joe was talking about i think that's absolutely core

[3:51:06] Voice 4: to how we you we make that election better um turns out informed voters are always better voters

[3:51:13] Voice 4: uh but but i mean i think in terms of like what what this body is should be like sort of honing

[3:51:20] Voice 4: in on is then let's have this broader conversation around um you know what do we think the executive

[3:51:25] Voice 4: ought to be and it may be that we come out of it going well actually things as they are are fine

[3:51:30] Voice 4: but we i think there's probably definitely policy stuff that needs to be looked at and worked on

[3:51:34] Voice 4: um and so that that in terms of like that's again i don't know i feel like i'm kind of coming around

[3:51:41] Voice 4: to this a lot but i i think what i'm hearing from staff and from certainly from my own mental

[3:51:47] Voice 4: process it would be helpful to um uh sort of hone in on a subject to to guide you know further

[3:51:57] Voice 4: conversation as we go through this process um and yeah that's that's that's where my brain's at but

[3:52:03] Voice 4: but

[3:52:07] Voice 7: uh chair patrick yeah

[3:52:10] Trustee Patrick: i don't i don't think figuring out what's been delegated or not

[3:52:15] Trustee Patrick: delegated is going to make um a big difference at this point i think an expectation of trust

[3:52:22] Trustee Patrick: counsel should be on any executive that they're always looking at the decisions that are before

[3:52:27] Trustee Patrick: them and saying is this should i be making it or not or should this be returned to trust counsel

[3:52:32] Trustee Patrick: i think that needs to become um a habit or not just a habit it has become procedure of

[3:52:39] Trustee Patrick: when Trust Council is functioning. I think what is ultimately the most important thing and will

[3:52:45] Trustee Patrick: not change no matter what the delegations are, is the chairing ability of the individuals.

[3:52:51] Trustee Patrick: They're going to be chairing your local trust committees. They may be chairing Trust Council.

[3:52:56] Trustee Patrick: They may be, you know, and how to really tease those abilities out. Is this someone who can work

[3:53:04] Trustee Patrick: and chair in these meetings and really help process good meetings, outcomes as they go forward.

[3:53:16] Trustee Patrick: So I think that would be the distinction for me.

[3:53:25] Voice 7: Trustee Bernardo?

[3:53:27] Voice 5: Yeah, following up on both what Trustees Borthwick and Patrick were mentioning,

[3:53:36] Voice 5: I'm trying to think of it in terms of logistics.

[3:53:40] Voice 5: I mean, as I keep harping on to help trustees fulfill their roles, assessing policies and revising them to making them more fitting is, I'm now saying for the 10th time, you know, I think a really important component of that, which is why I kind of slightly disagree with what Chair Patrick is saying, which is, I think for us as a committee, as we go through that process of assessing those policies,

[3:54:11] Voice 5: especially when we get to this preeminent issue of what EC does and doesn't do and what EC ought to or ought not to do.

[3:54:21] Voice 5: These are value questions.

[3:54:23] Voice 5: I think it would be just in terms of logistics extremely helpful if there were some off-the-shelf summary of EC's authorities,

[3:54:34] Voice 5: For us to have that as trustees without, you know, being given a briefing note that refers us to, you know, 23 different policies and their different sections, that's going to be a struggle to understand what they collectively mean.

[3:54:49] Voice 5: But if there was some off-the-shelf summary, which I would hope actually exists, if only to inform the staff when they're doing their job as to what EC is supposed to do and not do and what staff's job is in supporting the organization, that off-the-shelf summary of EC's authorities would be very handy for us as trustees on this committee to have.

[3:55:13] Voice 5: have so that we we have a ourselves a clearer picture of what those policies actually say

[3:55:21] Voice 5: so that when director marler comes to us with a proposal it's not and it's saying you know

[3:55:30] Voice 5: this particular policy you know we think we ought to ditch these provisions we ought to rewrite that

[3:55:34] Voice 5: that we're not landing to you know in our assessment role that we're not landing on that

[3:55:40] Voice 5: cold, that we already have a sense of what the big picture is, and that the work that the staff

[3:55:48] Voice 5: is doing helps us navigate through these various high points that we already know exist. I mean,

[3:55:54] Voice 5: it's just going to make us that much more effective in assessing the work that staff does.

[3:55:58] Voice 5: So I really hope there is some kind of off-the-shelf summary of EC's authorities that

[3:56:03] Voice 5: that could be provided to us.

[3:56:06] Voice 5: And going back...

[3:56:08] Voice 7: Sorry, if I can interrupt, if it doesn't exist,

[3:56:10] Voice 7: then that would be a priority to have that

[3:56:12] Voice 7: before we start getting into all the rest of it.

[3:56:14] Voice 5: Yeah, yeah, I would think so.

[3:56:17] Voice 5: And yeah, I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you.

[3:56:21] Voice 5: Trustee Harris?

[3:56:23] Voice 12: The election of EC is double, triple, quadruple

[3:56:26] Voice 12: on democratic representation.

[3:56:28] Voice 12: So anything that can be done to rid the organization

[3:56:32] Voice 12: of the structure as it is,

[3:56:34] Voice 12: um is clearly much needed when i hear this talk about um helping trustees fulfill their roles

[3:56:40] Voice 12: it's like well we have no idea what trustees um campaign may possibly be prior to the election

[3:56:49] Voice 12: or what the campaign they're running on if a trustee is running on the campaign

[3:56:53] Voice 12: saying that they're going to do everything they can to get their island out of the island's trust

[3:56:56] Voice 12: are they you know not allowed to talk that way once they get elected um it's it's very very

[3:57:06] Voice 12: frustrating for me to hear the conversation about helping trustees fulfill their roles and

[3:57:09] Voice 12: and it borders on restricting what they can or can't do or should or shouldn't be doing because

[3:57:15] Voice 12: of some personal agenda they may have now i don't know about the other islands but salt spring island

[3:57:20] Voice 12: for instance there's 11 000 plus registered voters um the community was very involved in

[3:57:26] Voice 12: in the last election for trustees for this term.

[3:57:29] Voice 12: It wasn't just one trustee out with some agenda.

[3:57:33] Voice 12: It was a whole community

[3:57:35] Voice 12: that they'd been negatively affected by the organization

[3:57:38] Voice 12: in their minds and wanted to see change.

[3:57:41] Voice 12: So what are we to say to another trustee gets elected

[3:57:45] Voice 12: on that type of a campaign

[3:57:46] Voice 12: where they want to see hard, heavy change

[3:57:50] Voice 12: and who knows what they could be elected on.

[3:57:52] Voice 12: They could be elected on abolishing the Islands Trust.

[3:57:56] Voice 12: That could be their campaign.

[3:57:57] Voice 12: What happens when someone like that gets elected, if they do?

[3:58:02] Voice 12: That's a question I have in the open for anybody to answer.

[3:58:05] Voice 12: Thank you.

[3:58:07] Voice 7: Well, I think that's very important information.

[3:58:10] Voice 7: And we have had a trustee on Bowen that was elected on just that kind of a platform.

[3:58:15] Voice 7: So, you know, there is, I think that's important information for the rest of the trustees to

[3:58:21] Voice 7: understand in terms of whether or not that person gets elected to be the chair of the EC,

[3:58:25] Voice 7: for instance. Trustee Bernardo?

[3:58:28] Voice 5: Yeah, I think Trustee Harris raises an important question,

[3:58:32] Voice 5: which is people are going to get elected for all sorts of reasons. And we shouldn't be pretending

[3:58:40] Voice 5: that they're all going to be, oh, steady as she goes. I just trust it's this terrific thing. We're

[3:58:44] Voice 5: just going to keep going the same path we've going in the past. We all know there's a fair

[3:58:49] Voice 5: a bit of community discontent about the and confusion frankly about the nature of the

[3:58:53] Voice 5: organization and what it can and can't do and what it has done and hasn't done um it's quite

[3:59:00] Voice 5: possible that uh trustees will get elected uh uh on a you know on a policy of advocating

[3:59:06] Voice 5: you know a radical um restructuring if not complete dismemberment to the island's trust

[3:59:13] Voice 5: If some fellow gets elected from one or another area on that platform, that's all fine and well. That's what that person is going to be elected to deal with. Having said that, even at that level of advocacy, at that radical level, that trustee is simply not going to be as effective in their advocacy function if they don't understand what the basic gear mechanism of the organization is.

[3:59:42] Voice 5: because um if you have a new trustee who is elected on a you know a stern platform of advocacy

[3:59:51] Voice 5: of major reform that's fine that's that's operating from the street level of saying

[3:59:57] Voice 5: look things aren't working on the ground

[4:00:00] Voice 5: But if you're coming in to do radical reform, you have to know how the darn thing works before you before you start making decisions or even coming up with ideas about what to disassemble or what to keep or how to simply deal with it.

[4:00:15] Voice 5: so uh i think um that education function but also that you know education function not at the formal

[4:00:23] Voice 5: level but just at that practical level because i think we do have to help new trustees uh you know

[4:00:29] Voice 5: whoever's left over after the election has to help new trustees whatever their their mandate is

[4:00:35] Voice 5: help them understand um what's actually feasible and uh given the current structure of the system

[4:00:44] Voice 5: what's feasible working within the system and what has to operate outside of the system those

[4:00:48] Voice 5: kind of things and you can't do that analysis as a trustee as a newly elected trustee until you

[4:00:54] Voice 5: have some a fairly solid understanding of how the mechanism works and i can tell you my own

[4:00:59] Voice 5: personal experiences has been that um it took at least a couple of years to get even a basic

[4:01:08] Voice 5: grounding of understanding of as opposed to constantly tripping over what seemed at the

[4:01:13] Voice 5: the time to be fairly obscure policy rationales. And then when you trip over them, you realize

[4:01:18] Voice 5: much of it is subject of interpretation. New trustees need to know what is actually a black

[4:01:24] Voice 5: letter law here and what is actually interpretation that's coming down from the executive committee

[4:01:28] Voice 5: and from the staff so that they know how to navigate that business. So I wouldn't want to

[4:01:33] Voice 5: be dismissive of it. And since we're on the topic of it, Trust Council has given us our priorities

[4:01:42] Voice 5: And we're going to work within that framework. But I do think we have a larger role as well in terms of acting as an advisory capacity.

[4:01:53] Voice 5: And the more we've been talking about this whole business of orienting new trustees and the role of the executive and strategic planning and all that sort of thing, and the election is coming up,

[4:02:08] Voice 5: I think we need to be mindful that public political discourse appears to be increasingly focused more than before on reconciliation and what it means.

[4:02:26] Voice 5: I think we're all aware the Cowichan decision has some pretty big potential ramifications for all local governments that we don't really understand.

[4:02:34] Voice 5: uh but we're gonna do our best to try to understand that but while that's going on

[4:02:41] Voice 5: we all know that out in the real world um all sorts of language gets banged about that you know

[4:02:48] Voice 5: there's a whole end of the world type talk other people saying it doesn't you know it's all fine

[4:02:53] Voice 5: all that kind of stuff it's it's that couch and decision has the potential to really engage some

[4:02:58] Voice 5: pretty intense feelings and for the average person it's one of those unusual public policy things

[4:03:04] Voice 5: that um it's pretty easy for the average person to see personal significance in it that's all

[4:03:11] Voice 5: leading up to this aspect of the whole help trustees fulfill their roles aspect of it

[4:03:15] Voice 5: um our whole communication effort at the trust as an organization like both staff and trustees

[4:03:22] Voice 5: i think we need to be exceedingly mindful of the audience that we need to understand

[4:03:28] Voice 5: that there's this potential to provoke intense feelings if we're not sensitive to where people

[4:03:35] Voice 5: are coming from um what i'm getting to with this thing is when we talk about reconciliation let's

[4:03:44] Voice 5: not be careless in the language we use that creates misunderstandings um i think we should

[4:03:52] Voice 5: be probably putting really a lot of effort whenever we talk about in a public forum whether

[4:03:56] Voice 5: they're trustee or staff or in a public document public document when we're talking about

[4:04:00] Voice 5: reconciliation i think we need to be very sensitive uh in our word choices i'll leave that at that

[4:04:07] Voice 5: thank you okay

[4:04:09] Voice 7: let's it's all good and important and um interesting but i think that's you know

[4:04:15] Voice 7: communication and advocacy and we're it's um something that um we've been told is a lower

[4:04:23] Voice 7: priority so at this point we need to spend some time talking about these other issues

[4:04:28] Voice 7: uh director marler i see your hand up jamie but i'm dealing with staff first yeah

[4:04:34] Voice 1: yeah thank you

[4:04:36] Voice 1: i just wanted to say that we do have a document that shows uh the authorities for executive

[4:04:43] Voice 1: committee for the chair for the vice chairs individually so it's a single document it

[4:04:48] Voice 1: It lays it out by legislation, by Trust Council by-law, and by policies.

[4:04:53] Voice 1: So I can share that after the meeting with you.

[4:04:55] Voice 1: I can just email it out to you.

[4:04:58] Voice 1: Excellent.

[4:05:00] Voice 7: Trustee Harris.

[4:05:03] Voice 12: I'm continuing on the helping trustees fulfill their roles.

[4:05:07] Voice 12: Now, it's one thing if it's a perfect world and everything's running as it should be.

[4:05:12] Voice 12: Unfortunately, we know that it's not because there are other aspects that need to be considered.

[4:05:18] Voice 12: that's you know what did the trustees from the previous term come up with um what has you know

[4:05:25] Voice 12: what are the dynamics um involving staff um we know for instance last term it was a huge issue

[4:05:34] Voice 12: um the cdf and we all know what happened with that and what went on in closed session

[4:05:39] Voice 12: and um so you know if something like that is going on then you get um people running to alleviate

[4:05:51] Voice 12: these kinds of um big problems that are having a negative you know negative impact on the social

[4:05:57] Voice 12: well-being of people in the community so again i i just i struggle and the language is going to

[4:06:02] Voice 12: have to be very precise when this helping trustees fulfill their roles you know get somehow finalized

[4:06:08] Voice 12: if it ever does, that trustees aren't being muzzled in some way. I'll leave it there.

[4:06:21] Voice 7: Any other comments?

[4:06:28] Voice 13: CAO Bruni.

[4:06:30] Voice 13: Thank you, Chair. Just briefly to Trustee Harris's comments, and I respect the perspective they're

[4:06:37] Voice 13: coming from. To clarify, I think from the staff perspective, when it comes to helping trustees

[4:06:42] Voice 13: understand their role and fulfill their roles. Our focus will be on the legislative and policy

[4:06:49] Voice 13: context in which trustees work and what their responsibilities are as set out in those things.

[4:06:56] Voice 13: As Trustee Bernardo has said, you know, regardless of political platform and priorities, once you

[4:07:02] Voice 13: become a trustee, you have to work within the system as it exists. Trustees themselves and

[4:07:08] Voice 13: trust council when it comes to policy and bylaw have some latitude to shape that system should

[4:07:12] Voice 13: they choose through advancing changes to those things and of course there are pieces under

[4:07:16] Voice 13: legislation that are determined by the province and not by us but the the point being helping

[4:07:23] Voice 13: trustees understand their role is not necessarily about advancing us as staff advancing particular

[4:07:33] Voice 13: strategic priorities and trust council strategic plan etc it's about orienting trustees to what

[4:07:39] Voice 13: their role is within the policy and bylaw construct that as it exists at the time they're

[4:07:45] Voice 13: elected. If I can just to sort of offer a suggestion for how you might want to consider

[4:07:52] Voice 13: moving forward with this sort of next step piece too, it sounds like we're essentially circling

[4:07:58] Voice 13: around two conversations that you might want to think about as the priority for your next meeting

[4:08:02] Voice 13: in January, which would be probably building off the piece that Director Mardo said he will share,

[4:08:07] Voice 13: which is an overview of the role and mandate of executive committee and its members.

[4:08:13] Voice 13: And you'll have a chance to digest that.

[4:08:15] Voice 13: And maybe there's an opportunity to make that an agenda item, which is, okay, how does that feel?

[4:08:20] Voice 13: Where do we have concerns?

[4:08:21] Voice 13: Where might you like to look at advancing policy changes in relation to that?

[4:08:25] Voice 13: And then secondly, a discussion around the election of executive committee and Director Marler.

[4:08:34] Voice 13: He'll have his own thoughts on this, I'm sure.

[4:08:36] Voice 13: But he and I can turn our mind to what might some, the options that we could provide you to refresh your memory on sort of what is the must-dos, the things we can't change from a legislative perspective, but where within that window in terms of the actual structure of that first meeting and how that might flow, what options might there be to approach that in a different and better way.

[4:08:59] Voice 13: So perhaps those two can be the kind of the meat of your next agenda in January, and that'll then map out if there's some policy work we want to do for the balance of this term, then that would still allow us a bit of time to look at that and try to advance some changes if needed to Trust Council. Thank you.

[4:09:19] Voice 13: Thank you. Trustee Borthwick.

[4:09:21] Voice 4: uh well uh cao bronies pretty much sort of distilled it down to what i was going to ask

[4:09:26] Voice 4: which is uh do do staff need any specific direction because that's also sort of uh is

[4:09:33] Voice 4: what i was feeling like the discussion was kind of centering around um do you need us to ask

[4:09:39] Voice 4: specifically for that or do you guys understand they have have enough there to to go on because

[4:09:46] Voice 4: that's certainly how i was seeing how that discussion was going and i don't know if other

[4:09:50] Voice 4: the trustees feel differently, but that seemed like a good place

[4:09:54] Voice 4: to start, and I just don't know if we need to give you something more direct.

[4:10:00] Voice 13: I'll defer to

[4:10:01] Voice 13: Director Marler, Chair, if I may, just on whether he needs anything

[4:10:05] Voice 13: in terms of a resolution for that as a focus for the next agenda, or if

[4:10:09] Voice 13: that's sufficient direction.

[4:10:12] Voice 1: Yeah, I think it would be good to have a resolution

[4:10:14] Voice 1: just so we can record it and then not forget in a week or two.

[4:10:19] Voice 1: That'll go in the top action list, and then we'll definitely be able to

[4:10:22] Voice 1: to action that. If you want to email me a resolution

[4:10:28] Voice 1: I can bring it up on the screen, a draft.

[4:10:30] Voice 1: You can

[4:10:31] Voice 1: send it to motion or to me.

[4:10:34] Voice 1: Are

[4:10:40] Voice 7: we talking about changing the

[4:10:45] Voice 7: staff work on, I'm harping on this I suppose, but going back

[4:10:49] Voice 7: to that briefing that we got earlier

[4:10:52] Voice 7: do we take the request for decision, the RFDs and the

[4:10:56] Voice 7: the committee preparation off to the side and start asking staff to put their time and energy

[4:11:03] Voice 7: into the EC so that that's the major discussion. And we haven't lost this information on RFD,

[4:11:13] Voice 7: but we get on to the meat of some of this other. Trustee Peterson?

[4:11:19] Voice 11: Well, we did pass a resolution earlier, but I do think that my reading of that resolution

[4:11:26] Voice 11: um could encompass this this work on on ec uh related stuff i think it's actually

[4:11:36] Voice 11: um you know there are those two pieces one is what can we do um to make the election of ec process

[4:11:45] Voice 11: uh better somehow um so that that's you know certainly one piece but the consideration of

[4:11:53] Voice 11: of what are the delegated authorities to EC,

[4:11:58] Voice 11: I think helps, I think it'd be good for all of us

[4:12:03] Voice 11: to get our eyes on that, think about that a bunch,

[4:12:08] Voice 11: preferably well in advance for our next meeting.

[4:12:12] Voice 11: But also that work that we do on that piece,

[4:12:19] Voice 11: I think will also be valuable in terms of information

[4:12:24] Voice 11: that can be shared with you know incoming trustees post-election what does the ec do

[4:12:31] Voice 11: so um and and so i i think it's a good a good place to put some of our um energy into i know

[4:12:42] Voice 11: that or at least what i thought i heard from director marler was that um a lot of the other

[4:12:49] Voice 11: work we've we've asked for is um work that he's going to be doing and then bringing back to us

[4:12:56] Voice 11: for review so i don't necessarily know i don't think it's necessarily a case of displacing

[4:13:03] Voice 11: anything from my perspective but if the director feels differently i'd be important to hear that

[4:13:10] Voice 11: director

[4:13:12] Voice 7: marler is is there a distinction between 2.2.1 and 2.4.1 or sorry the first bullet

[4:13:19] Voice 7: oh not even a bullet point the first numbered um focus on recommended updates that we've talked

[4:13:28] Voice 7: about earlier today as opposed to the second which was executive committee terms of reference

[4:13:32] Voice 7: election legislative role and committee meeting preparation that was the second policy

[4:13:41] Voice 1: right um

[4:13:43] Voice 1: yeah i think there is i think if you wanted to so i'm looking here and the thought action this

[4:13:50] Voice 1: Is that the one you're referring to, these Recommendation 1, 11, and 7?

[4:13:54] Voice 1: Yeah, page 19.

[4:13:56] Voice 1: Yeah.

[4:13:57] Voice 1: Yeah, so Recommendation 1, Election of Trust Council Leadership,

[4:14:02] Voice 1: would be different to say Helping Trustees Fulfill the Role.

[4:14:06] Voice 8: So

[4:14:06] Voice 1: if you want us to focus on the first one,

[4:14:09] Voice 1: Recommendation 1, Election of Trust Council Leadership,

[4:14:12] Voice 1: then a resolution to that effect,

[4:14:15] Voice 1: and then we can switch gears and focus

[4:14:17] Voice 7: on that for you.

[4:14:18] Voice 7: Okay.

[4:14:20] Voice 7: So, committee members, correct me if I'm wrong, what I'm hearing is that all the material today that was provided in the agenda was with respect to the first request or the first recommendation, RFDs and council committee preparation.

[4:14:36] Voice 7: But when we're talking about election of executive committee and helping trustees fulfill their role, we've repeatedly come back to the idea that the more we understand about EC and how we relate to them as trustees in terms of both the election and during the meetings,

[4:14:57] Voice 7: things that the function of the EC is and the roles and the things that we've delegated to them

[4:15:06] Voice 7: is fundamental. So I think that if there's limited staff time and we've got a little bit of budget to

[4:15:15] Voice 7: hire people to come in and help, that we should just set aside this, the one that was in our

[4:15:21] Voice 7: material today that hasn't had a lot of work done on it and is about to if they follow that

[4:15:27] Voice 7: recommendation and we ask we have a resolution that changes the focus on the staff work on

[4:15:34] Voice 7: policy so that it's the second recommendation trustee bernardo uh

[4:15:43] Voice 5: i'm getting a little

[4:15:44] Voice 5: anxious here about uh what is starting to feel like micromanaging the staff

[4:15:50] Voice 5: um this first of all thank you director marler for uh uh confirming there is in fact a summary

[4:15:57] Voice 5: of ec authorities it's uh easily distributed to all of us um that handy reference document

[4:16:04] Voice 5: having that in hand and thinking about what it says will dovetail nicely with the question of

[4:16:13] Voice 5: actually the election executive committee because determining at some point you know as we

[4:16:18] Voice 5: to try to determine what executive committee ought to do is the same as determining the

[4:16:26] Voice 5: executive committee's mandate. And that is something that in the election of executive

[4:16:31] Voice 5: committee has to be communicated in a very clear way, among other things, to help orient new

[4:16:37] Voice 5: trustees and frankly, some of the rest of us as well, probably. So I'm anxious that we,

[4:16:46] Voice 5: what we talked about before, meeting process and that kind of stuff, is relevant to all of that.

[4:16:53] Voice 5: For example, you'll recall there's that 1.3.2 thing that says, you know, executive committee

[4:16:59] Voice 5: is supposed to review everything. Does review actually mean review only, or does that mean

[4:17:05] Voice 5: review and approval? That's a policy question that is ambiguous in the existing policy

[4:17:09] Voice 5: seat and has de facto it's never been quite clear to me you know what ec is really doing there but

[4:17:20] Voice 5: de facto to all appearances in in like practical terms it certainly looks like executive committee

[4:17:26] Voice 5: functions as a traffic cop whether they do it officially or they just casually mention

[4:17:31] Voice 5: in some offhand email to somebody who sent in something they like to see well we don't think

[4:17:35] Voice 5: so because there's not enough room maybe next time uh that's exercising a discretion there

[4:17:42] Voice 5: so executive committee is on record for exercising discretion over the agenda

[4:17:47] Voice 5: and that authority to do that is uncertain it's ambiguous and it's something that we need

[4:17:52] Voice 5: to decide so i these things are all tied together and i i i'm anxious that we not

[4:18:02] Voice 5: not go down some path where we just literally tell staff, do these things in this order.

[4:18:10] Voice 5: The briefing that CAO Bruni helpfully suggested of bringing back to us, because we've talked

[4:18:18] Voice 5: about this before, about the election executive committee, bringing that briefing back to

[4:18:22] Voice 5: us, updating it about what's actually available to us legally and what isn't, ought not to

[4:18:28] Voice 5: use Trustee Peterson's language, displace the rest of the work.

[4:18:31] Voice 5: It doesn't have to.

[4:18:33] Voice 5: if though in practice it does i mean i think we should just leave it to staff to try to balance

[4:18:41] Voice 5: its workout i understand why staff is more comfortable with having resolutions but if we

[4:18:47] Voice 5: get to the point and we verge a little too much like this to where in fact um we find ourselves

[4:18:54] Voice 5: micromanaging their work priorities i mean when there are these potential synergies in all these

[4:18:59] Voice 5: different areas we need to leave some discretion to staff about what they can do i and i certainly

[4:19:08] Voice 5: agree if if staff is comfortable with the idea that in terms of planning for the next meeting

[4:19:13] Voice 5: that they would prefer to have the election executive committee be a topic um you know

[4:19:21] Voice 5: and that helps it focus or staff focus around that that's fine but just because we do that

[4:19:27] Voice 5: doesn't necessarily mean it's going to displace the other work if it's necessary

[4:19:31] Voice 7: yeah

[4:19:32] Voice 5: so the

[4:19:34] Voice 7: in august the governance committee passed the following motion that the governance committee

[4:19:39] Voice 7: requests staff to draft a policy combining trust council policies with recommended updates in

[4:19:45] Voice 7: priority order one was the rfd and council committee preparation and two was executive

[4:19:51] Voice 7: terms of reference executive committee election executive committee legislative role executive

[4:19:56] Voice 7: committee meeting preparation so we did prioritize it and if the discussion today is that it's more

[4:20:04] Voice 7: important or it's more urgent or it's a high priority on this matrix with respect to the

[4:20:11] Voice 7: executive committee that we switch that order and what David sorry Director Marler reported today

[4:20:19] Voice 7: day was that he provided the basics and that they hadn't had the opportunity to dig into it so this

[4:20:29] Voice 7: was a first pass on the RFD and the committee preparation so the suggestion is and I asked if

[4:20:38] Voice 7: needed a resolution in terms of shifting those priority orders and I believe the answer was yes

[4:20:47] Voice 7: so it's not i don't think it's if we've might if we are micromanaging now it's because we

[4:20:52] Voice 7: micromanaged in august as well

[4:20:54] Voice 5: so maybe

[4:20:55] Voice 5: that maybe that's something we should think about

[4:20:58] Voice 5: because um um like i said before i don't want to belabor it but all of these things are connected

[4:21:05] Voice 5: and the path forward to fixing some of this stuff so it works better

[4:21:10] Voice 5: doing things in a linear way doesn't always do it and you know i appreciate the point if we make it

[4:21:15] Voice 5: a priority that we want to deal with this election business first fine but that doesn't necessarily

[4:21:21] Voice 5: mean that the work involved for staff to do that is so large that it blows out the rest of the

[4:21:29] Voice 5: policy review process and um

[4:21:32] Voice 7: let's hear from director merler uh

[4:21:38] Voice 1: yeah thanks um in this instance

[4:21:42] Voice 1: Because of the volume of policies, I wouldn't consider it micromanaging, I would consider

[4:21:49] Voice 1: it prioritizing and I think that is needed because we'd like to make sure that we are

[4:21:55] Voice 1: doing the work in the priority order of governance committee and not the priority order of staff.

[4:22:00] Voice 1: So we recommended these and this is what you accepted, which is on the screen in front

[4:22:05] Voice 1: of you.

[4:22:05] Voice 1: If you would prefer that staff focus on item two there, there's only four policies listed.

[4:22:13] Voice 1: Those are very general.

[4:22:15] Voice 1: But when you look at the document that I'll send to you after the meeting, you'll see

[4:22:20] Voice 1: that executive committee's authorizations comes from a lot of different policies.

[4:22:26] Voice 1: So you may want to actually change this focus in a different way.

[4:22:34] Voice 1: So you may want to wait until you've had the ability to read that document

[4:22:39] Voice 1: and then come together and ask staff to come back with further recommendations on something.

[4:22:46] Voice 1: Or you can ask us to get started on these four, which are the key ones anyway,

[4:22:51] Voice 1: from meeting and terms of reference.

[4:22:54] Voice 1: And then the other ones can fall out as secondary amendments.

[4:22:59] Voice 1: But yeah, just looking for some direction from a priority perspective.

[4:23:04] Voice 1: uh so that we're doing the work of the governance committee and council thanks well

[4:23:09] Voice 5: if i can jump

[4:23:09] Voice 5: in i'm thank you for that director marler um that helps clarify things for me and so okay

[4:23:14] Voice 5: fine let's do that um it seems to me what we're talking about is changing the order of what we

[4:23:21] Voice 5: had decided back in august and moving two up to where one is now my point is actually a pretty

[4:23:28] Voice 5: simple one, which is they're all priorities. One is more important than the others. We're going to

[4:23:35] Voice 5: make the executive committee business first. That doesn't mean all of the rest of the three just

[4:23:40] Voice 5: fall off the table. I mean, if things can be done in parallel, let's. And that's what I want staff

[4:23:48] Voice 5: to have a clear understanding that it doesn't have to be single-mindedly obsessed with simply

[4:23:54] Voice 5: simply doing the number one priority to the exclusion of everything else.

[4:23:58] Voice 5: If it sees synergies in doing things in tandem, then it should.

[4:24:04] Voice 5: That's all I'm saying.

[4:24:05] Voice 5: I want us to be efficient here.

[4:24:10] Voice 7: Anybody got a resolution handy?

[4:24:16] Voice 7: Trustee Berthwick.

[4:24:18] Voice 4: So I did send something to Director Marler.

[4:24:24] Voice 4: I realized partway through that I'd hit a mental block.

[4:24:27] Voice 4: block so i want to make sure i would you know we can bring it up and we can sort of look at it this

[4:24:32] Voice 4: is i was trying to synthesize what uh cao was was talking about and i yeah they say i got about

[4:24:38] Voice 4: halfway through it i think i may have lost the exact wording that i had in my head so did you

[4:24:44] Voice 7: get that director mariner yeah i'll

[4:24:48] Voice 1: bring it on the screen as soon as i can in the chat

[4:24:54] Voice 1: give

[4:24:54] Voice 4: me a minute um i could put it in the chat if that's helpful david i

[4:25:01] Voice 1: know i've got it i'm just

[4:25:02] Voice 1: going to pull it up right now perfect

[4:25:04] Voice 4: governance

[4:25:18] Voice 7: committee requests staff to bring forward to the

[4:25:20] Voice 7: next meeting the topics of the structure of the executive committee election overview of the role

[4:25:24] Voice 7: and responsibilities of executive committee for discussion i'm trying

[4:25:33] Voice 7: yeah do you want reference

[4:25:35] Voice 7: to the policy numbers that are listed in this uh briefing it's kind of hard we don't know what those

[4:25:46] Voice 7: really are.

[4:25:48] Voice 5: Well, perhaps

[4:25:50] Voice 5: Director Marlowe, you can tell us, does this do the job for you?

[4:25:54] Voice 1: Yeah, it does actually because there are so many different

[4:25:58] Voice 1: policies and you may not want to restrict it. So if you just ask us to come back

[4:26:03] Voice 1: with these topics, we can then identify

[4:26:06] Voice 1: what the scope is. Most of that is already done in that

[4:26:11] Voice 1: document I'll send out to you anyway. So yeah,

[4:26:14] Voice 1: Yeah, this is, this is fine from my perspective.

[4:26:16] Voice 1: I understand what you're asking for.

[4:26:17] Voice 4: Great. Yeah. I was trying not to drill down too much, but also like,

[4:26:21] Voice 4: I, my understanding was you guys had a pretty good idea of what,

[4:26:24] Voice 4: what we were talking about and that just wanted to sort of bring that

[4:26:27] Voice 4: forward in that way. So.

[4:26:28] Voice 7: Thank you. How about a second?

[4:26:31] Voice 7: I'll second.

[4:26:33] Voice 4: I don't think I've, I should read it out.

[4:26:35] Voice 4: I suppose I'm going to formally move it.

[4:26:38] Voice 4: So I will move that the governance committee requests staff to bring

[4:26:41] Voice 4: forward to the next meeting,

[4:26:42] Voice 4: the topics of the structure of the executive committee election election and an overview of

[4:26:46] Voice 4: the role and responsibilities of executive committee for discussion

[4:26:49] Voice 5: seconded

[4:26:50] Voice 4: thank you

[4:26:52] Voice 7: any more discussion not seeing any more hands up i'll call the vote then all those in favor

[4:27:01] Voice 7: i

[4:27:07] Voice 1: see three in favor any

[4:27:09] Voice 7: any opposed joe your hand i

[4:27:17] Voice 1: don't see any opposed great

[4:27:19] Voice 7: that was carried

[4:27:22] Voice 7: Good.

[4:27:25] Voice 5: And Dr. Marlorth, between now and January,

[4:27:26] Voice 5: you also have time to do the other stuff, by all means.

[4:27:31] Voice 1: Absolutely.

[4:27:32] Voice 1: But just to be clear, this will be the focus.

[4:27:35] Voice 1: So the way we look at priorities is, you know, we'll focus on this,

[4:27:40] Voice 1: and then once we get this to a stage we're happy,

[4:27:43] Voice 1: then we'll move on to the next item.

[4:27:45] Voice 1: So we'll do as much as we can, but this will be the priority for us.

[4:27:50] Voice 7: All right.

[4:27:54] Voice 7: So what's left on the agenda is the Active Projects Report, pages 35 and 36.

[4:28:01] Voice 7: And we've completed, number one, the review of the governance report.

[4:28:07] Voice 7: We've got corporate planning with March 26 update,

[4:28:15] Voice 7: and that will be in line with the organizational work that CIO Broney is going to be,

[4:28:24] Voice 7: the report that we'll get in december and then um so now we've just done the meeting process

[4:28:30] Voice 7: bylaw 101 and policies part of that we've taken a section out of that and just done that

[4:28:36] Voice 7: resolution so september 26th hopefully we'll have something ready for the next council

[4:28:43] Voice 7: um the secretary and the in-house legal council so it's on the active projects list for

[4:28:52] Voice 7: December 2025. And that was one of the ones that the Trust Council had put into a secondary level

[4:29:02] Voice 7: of as staff are available. So I think that should go in with all of those other projects and come

[4:29:12] Voice 7: off this active projects report. And then the trustee remuneration, and we've just heard about

[4:29:19] Voice 7: that and hopefully a final report in february 26th so would everybody agree that those would

[4:29:25] Voice 7: be the updates to this active projects report i think we've just added one but

[4:29:31] Voice 5: director marler

[4:29:33] Voice 7: has his hand up oh where are you all right sorry thank you i'm

[4:29:40] Voice 1: hi i'm hiding yeah so it'd be

[4:29:42] Voice 1: appropriate because this is your um work program would be a resolution to remove for or put it

[4:29:50] Voice 1: it somewhere else, you can just remove it off the projects list.

[4:29:54] Voice 1: I think this is called the active projects list.

[4:29:58] Voice 1: So you can remove it off of there.

[4:30:01] Voice 7: Yeah.

[4:30:03] Voice 1: Yeah.

[4:30:04] Voice 1: Also, is there any updates to the matrix?

[4:30:06] Voice 1: You should do that by resolution as well.

[4:30:09] Voice 7: Okay.

[4:30:09] Voice 7: So then the last page was the 37, page 37,

[4:30:14] Voice 7: which was the matrix that was sent out with the agenda.

[4:30:21] Voice 7: And the one that we were looking at earlier is the one that I had amended

[4:30:27] Voice 7: so that it fell in line with what we got from the Trust Council's recommendations with respect to what our priorities should be.

[4:30:38] Voice 7: And we've had some time to look at that amendment without it being, maybe we can pull that up again.

[4:30:48] Voice 7: By comparison, there's some of these, I didn't have Director Mob's little pointy arrow thing in terms of things that are in progress as opposed to,

[4:30:57] Voice 7: And I moved the bottom of this. I put down two other things that were completed. So the very, very bottom. Sorry, David. The Section 3 Islands Trust Mandate and the recording of negative votes were all in the previous matrix and I took them out.

[4:31:16] Voice 7: oh so how are we um this is an informal way of um describing the work that we've got so

[4:31:31] Voice 7: does everybody uh comfortable with this if i were to suggest that we provide this to the trust

[4:31:38] Voice 7: council or is it this and strictly internal i

[4:31:43] Voice 9: would prefer uh

[4:31:44] Voice 5: sorry um go

[4:31:47] Voice 7: ahead yeah i'd prefer

[4:31:49] Voice 5: I prefer that we do this internally because trust counsel has given us

[4:31:53] Voice 5: direction.

[4:31:55] Voice 5: If you ever had the role of being somebody's supervisor or manager,

[4:31:59] Voice 5: at some point it gets tiresome when they keep coming back for you for

[4:32:01] Voice 5: instructions, how many times you have to tell them the same thing.

[4:32:05] Voice 5: And I don't think we should be badgering trust counsel at the fine points of

[4:32:09] Voice 5: how we, how we look at things. We've adopted, you know,

[4:32:15] Voice 5: we're following instructions that's urgent and high priority.

[4:32:18] Voice 5: and i think this is a good working document for us and if we need to have a resolution to tweak

[4:32:23] Voice 5: it i guess so that just confirms that we're doing that um my only comment would be it says well we

[4:32:28] Voice 5: have not immediate but important compensation um i'm thinking because it's in progress and we want

[4:32:36] Voice 5: to bring it and it's important to bring it to conclusion before the new trustees are elected

[4:32:43] Voice 5: you know so the new trustees come into a regime that is already structured they don't have to

[4:32:47] Voice 5: to deal with this vexing topic i would think the compensation probably belongs in urgent but lower

[4:32:52] Voice 5: lower priority well

[4:32:55] Voice 7: yes and no i think that if we don't get a report back uh by our march meeting

[4:33:02] Voice 7: which is the timetable that we were talked about in the verbal report today that then we switch it

[4:33:06] Voice 7: over we have to push harder than if for any reason it's not completed well

[4:33:14] Voice 5: i understood from director

[4:33:15] Voice 5: Director Marler, we need to be pushing, time's a-wasting, we need to be pushing fairly hard now in order to get the consultant to do the job done.

[4:33:22] Voice 5: And they've got it out for tender, all that sort of thing.

[4:33:26] Voice 5: So anyhow, that's my thought.

[4:33:30] Voice 7: Trustee Peterson?

[4:33:34] Voice 11: Yeah, just a couple of points there.

[4:33:36] Voice 11: My impression from what we heard earlier from the director

[4:33:40] Voice 11: that the remuneration piece is out to tender

[4:33:45] Voice 11: and that work doesn't need direction from us at this time.

[4:33:51] Voice 11: And then so just to the other point,

[4:33:57] Voice 11: typically committees will pass a resolution

[4:34:02] Voice 11: resolution to uh update their work plan and um and then send it off to uh trust council

[4:34:10] Voice 11: um that's kind of standard fare so we we may actually need a resolution um to trustee bernardo's

[4:34:16] Voice 11: point do

[4:34:18] Voice 7: you have one well

[4:34:23] Voice 11: i think if we're gonna if we're gonna do any amending we should do that

[4:34:26] Voice 11: first and then and then i'd be happy to make a resolution okay

[4:34:32] Voice 7: so then we amended the active

[4:34:34] Voice 7: projects report, and that is the standard one that goes to

[4:34:38] Voice 7: Trust

[4:34:38] Voice 5: Council. Point of order. I'm sorry about this. I didn't really understand what

[4:34:42] Voice 5: Trustee Peterson was saying about the need to go to Trust Council.

[4:34:46] Voice 5: I'm

[4:34:47] Voice 7: sorry. Provide a work plan to them, and they'd agree to it.

[4:34:51] Voice 11: Yeah, committees typically, as we amend our work plan,

[4:34:55] Voice 11: we amend it, and then we send it off to Trust Council, because

[4:34:59] Voice 11: of course, Trust Council's the decision maker. It's pretty

[4:35:03] Voice 11: straightforward of but i i think that's usually done by resolution and the director can um

[4:35:11] Voice 5: correct

[4:35:11] Voice 11: me if i'm incorrect okay

[4:35:14] Voice 5: but i think we've got the order wrong they've told us what

[4:35:17] Voice 5: the work plan is what are we doing going back to them telling them we're now going to do what you

[4:35:21] Voice 5: told us to do i'm sorry it just doesn't make any sense to me all

[4:35:29] Voice 7: right well then sorry director

[4:35:30] Voice 7: marler yeah

[4:35:33] Voice 1: i think maybe uh with having the matrix and the work plan we're kind of confusing

[4:35:38] Voice 1: and the two together. So the work plan is the other document

[4:35:41] Voice 1: that we're just looking at with the one to five items.

[4:35:45] Voice 1: The one I suggested, the item four, you should by resolution

[4:35:49] Voice 1: renew. The policy of council is that

[4:35:54] Voice 1: the committees will report

[4:35:57] Voice 1: their work plans to council at the quarterly meetings

[4:36:00] Voice 1: so they want to see it anyway and the intent is

[4:36:05] Voice 1: that council then endorses or approves it

[4:36:07] Voice 1: and has the ability to say,

[4:36:09] Voice 1: actually, no, we don't want you to do that.

[4:36:11] Voice 1: We want you to do something else.

[4:36:12] Voice 1: You misunderstood us

[4:36:14] Voice 1: or you haven't captured what we asked you to do.

[4:36:17] Voice 1: So it's kind of a check,

[4:36:18] Voice 1: just making sure that the committees

[4:36:20] Voice 1: are working on the work that council has asked them to do.

[4:36:23] Voice 1: So that's the work done.

[4:36:25] Voice 1: The matrix is totally

[4:36:26] Voice 1: the governance committee's internal document.

[4:36:30] Voice 1: You can really do what you want with this.

[4:36:32] Voice 1: And if you want to sign to council, you can,

[4:36:34] Voice 1: or you just keep it here and I'll update it

[4:36:38] Voice 1: according to your direction. Thanks.

[4:36:44] Voice 7: Alright, so the resolution would be to update the active

[4:36:48] Voice 7: projects report to reflect the decisions that were made

[4:36:52] Voice 7: at today's meeting. Is that specific enough

[4:36:56] Voice 7: Director Marler?

[4:37:05] Voice 1: No, I think for

[4:37:07] Voice 1: the work program, specifically say that

[4:37:11] Voice 1: the Active Projects, the Governance Committee's Active Projects report to be amended by,

[4:37:18] Voice 1: and then you can say deleting item four, Secretary and or in-house legal counsel.

[4:37:26] Voice 7: Okay, and do we also eliminate number one, the review of the governance report that's been completed?

[4:37:34] Voice 1: Yeah, you could do that too.

[4:37:36] Voice 1: So you can remove one and four and then just confirm that the remaining ones in order is the correct order.

[4:37:43] Voice 1: And then you can just say renumber appropriately.

[4:37:47] Voice 1: So we'll just renumber two to one, three to two, five to three, and leave it with three unless you want to add anything, but I suggest you don't.

[4:37:58] Voice 7: So, Governance Committee directs staff to amend the active projects report to delete items one and four that have been included in the November the third agenda and reorganize the numbers of the other remaining active projects.

[4:38:23] Voice 7: projects.

[4:38:30] Voice 1: There's the chair. I'm just

[4:38:31] Voice 1: writing it up. Yeah.

[4:38:35] Voice 5: A point of clarification with that,

[4:38:39] Voice 5: the way that active projects report looks like now, even with those things subtracted,

[4:38:43] Voice 5: it's going to be missing some of the stuff we talked about. That's going to be rolled in?

[4:38:52] Voice 5: The election, the executive, all that stuff. You know, those three top priorities sent to us by

[4:38:57] Voice 5: trust council well

[4:39:01] Voice 7: the meeting process one number three that's on this list is pretty broad says

[4:39:08] Voice 7: review and recommend amendments to the trust council meeting procedure bylaws 101 related

[4:39:13] Voice 7: policies to address concerns raised by great northern management consultants in the 2022

[4:39:18] Voice 7: governance report of the islands trust so the um the work that we were talking about on the

[4:39:26] Voice 7: executive committee actually falls within that it's so broad um and that was the um the work

[4:39:34] Voice 7: that we discussed in prioritizing the the work on the policies from the august meeting so i think it

[4:39:41] Voice 7: might unless you want to be more specific so

[4:39:58] Voice 1: the major yes

[4:40:00] Voice 7: yeah

[4:40:02] Voice 1: so you'll be left with item one

[4:40:04] Voice 1: being corporate planning which has it waiting on there item two would be meeting processes by

[4:40:11] Voice 1: one-on-one policies. And I think I'd agree with the chair that that would capture the

[4:40:19] Voice 1: executive committee policies that you would like us to focus on. So, that would cover

[4:40:25] Voice 1: it. And then item priority three would be policy 721, trustee remuneration, review and

[4:40:34] Voice 1: update, which is underway. So, cover the work that I think you want to focus on. And I do

[4:40:40] Voice 1: have a resolution so let me just pull this up for you is

[4:40:45] Voice 7: there anything that we're missing from

[4:40:47] Voice 7: the rest

[4:40:47] Voice 7: of the discussion yeah

[4:40:49] Voice 5: we're missing the whole business about uh examining the election of

[4:40:53] Voice 5: executive committee we're looking at the policies that's encompassed

[4:40:58] Voice 5: by what will now become item two yes

[4:41:01] Voice 7: and that's part of the review from great northern as well

[4:41:04] Voice 7: So

[4:41:05] Voice 5: is it our view that the new, the formerly item two, which is now going to become item one, will encompass the election as well as all the general policy talk?

[4:41:19] Voice 5: Yes.

[4:41:20] Voice 5: Okay.

[4:41:33] Voice 7: Okay.

[4:41:34] Voice 1: I've got a resolution on the screen for you on that.

[4:41:38] Voice 7: Okay.

[4:41:39] Voice 1: Okay. I

[4:41:40] Voice 7: move that the Governance Committee request staff to amend the active work program report by deleting items one and four and renumbering the remaining projects accordingly.

[4:41:52] Voice 7: Trustee Borthwick? Seconder? Any more discussion? Trustee Harris?

[4:42:02] Voice 12: I just wanted to voice my opposition. I'm not going to get into all of the reasons, but I'm opposed.

[4:42:10] Voice 12: All

[4:42:13] Voice 7: right. Any other discussion? I'm going to call the vote. All those in favor? All right.

[4:42:29] Voice 8: Thank

[4:42:29] Voice 7: you, and put your hands down.

[4:42:32] Voice 7: Thank you, and all those opposed.

[4:42:35] Voice 7: So that one's carried.

[4:42:38] Voice 7: All right, so that's the end of our agenda.

[4:42:47] Voice 7: The next meeting is Wednesday, January the 28th from 10 till 3.

[4:42:51] Voice 7: We didn't have a closed meeting.

[4:42:53] Voice 7: There's no rise in report.

[4:42:55] Voice 7: Sorry, Trustee Peterson.

[4:42:58] Voice 11: I'm just wondering, should we not pass a resolution

[4:43:03] Voice 11: to send the work program to Trust Council as amended?

[4:43:08] Voice 7: Okay.

[4:43:11] Voice 7: You're dotting all of our I's and crossing our T's.

[4:43:14] Voice 7: I

[4:43:15] Voice 5: thought Director Marler had explicitly told us

[4:43:19] Voice 5: that happens as a matter of course.

[4:43:22] Voice 5: Okay,

[4:43:22] Voice 10: I'm just used to some committees doing that.

[4:43:25] Voice 10: Never mind.

[4:43:25] Voice 10: If we don't have to do it, let's not.

[4:43:29] Voice 7: Director Marler, what's your pleasure?

[4:43:34] Voice 1: In respect to what?

[4:43:36] Voice 7: Whether or not

[4:43:37] Voice 7: we formally make a resolution

[4:43:39] Voice 7: to forward this to trust council the amended work program no

[4:43:42] Voice 1: no the work program by policy

[4:43:47] Voice 1: it goes to council

[4:43:47] Voice 7: trustee peterson we get out from under that we'll be the uh the odd committee

[4:43:54] Voice 7: out all right any other business that uh anybody wants to raise it's now 244 we're 15 minutes short

[4:44:03] Voice 7: short of our original plan.

[4:44:05] Voice 7: Not too bad.

[4:44:06] Voice 7: We had a good discussion.

[4:44:09] Voice 7: How about a motion to adjourn?

[4:44:11] Voice 5: I've got a question.

[4:44:13] Voice 7: Oh, okay.

[4:44:14] Voice 7: Don't make it 15 minutes, okay?

[4:44:16] Voice 5: Oh, gee, that's my usual short version.

[4:44:20] Voice 5: The question's really directed to two people.

[4:44:23] Voice 5: One is the CEO, the other one is Chair Patrick.

[4:44:27] Voice 5: It's about the corporate planning piece.

[4:44:31] Voice 5: Where are we in...

[4:44:34] Voice 5: Without binding anybody to anything, I mean, what are the prospects of actually having something we can bring forward to Trust Council

[4:44:43] Voice 5: so that when we start developing the new budget after March of 2026, we actually are going to be able to do corporate planning?

[4:44:58] Voice 7: Can we get a preview of your December report, please?

[4:45:03] Voice 13: I'm not quite there, but thank you.

[4:45:06] Voice 13: Yeah, so I think that the most critical piece of that will be the departmental work plans, which we had hoped to do this summer, but because of the operational review we have postponed, but I'm still going to work with senior staff with the aim of having the departmental work plans, a template for those in place by end of this fiscal so that we can be completing those to inform next fiscal's planning.

[4:45:30] Voice 13: planning. That'll be the most, I think, significant piece from a budget perspective to inform

[4:45:37] Voice 13: the planning. And then, as I mentioned earlier, I do plan as well to reconvene the Corporate

[4:45:44] Voice 13: Planning Working Group to revisit that draft process and try to finalize that and adjust that

[4:45:50] Voice 13: and bring that forward to Trust Council. Realistically, that'll probably be June in

[4:45:57] Voice 13: terms of mapping out that finalizing what that process looks like um but i think the departmental

[4:46:02] Voice 13: work plans are the biggest gap for us to inform budget planning and so we're aiming to have that

[4:46:07] Voice 13: done by the end of this fiscal the

[4:46:10] Voice 7: end of this fiscal

[4:46:10] Voice 13: being december 31st no be so it won't

[4:46:14] Voice 13: inform the current budget planning cycle it would inform next year's budget plan so we'll have we

[4:46:20] Voice 13: aim to have departmental work plans next spring then those can inform the basis for the start of

[4:46:26] Voice 13: the next budget planning cycle and my operational review um as you know comes to you for in advance

[4:46:33] Voice 13: of december's meeting so that you can consider those recommendations as part of the budget

[4:46:38] Voice 13: deliberations um in december as well for this year for this current planning cycle

[4:46:43] Voice 7: trustee bernardo

[4:46:45] Voice 7: were you on the working group with the corporate planning before just the chair of the finance

[4:46:50] Voice 7: committee at that point i

[4:46:52] Voice 5: was active to the extent that i was an instigator that's about it

[4:46:57] Voice 7: But I

[4:46:57] Voice 5: do have a follow-up question for the CEO, which is with the corporate planning piece, obviously, departmental work plans are critical to all that.

[4:47:11] Voice 5: And I would just counsel that, you know, perfect is the enemy of good enough.

[4:47:15] Voice 5: So let's be careful there.

[4:47:17] Voice 5: But are we going to be able to, and this is a really cosmic question, it might not be able to answer, and it might be that Chair Patrick is in a better position to answer it.

[4:47:27] Voice 5: are we going to be able to transmit the message to trust council with that if we really adopt

[4:47:34] Voice 5: corporate planning it means we as trustees in a sense are binding our hands from our little

[4:47:41] Voice 5: enthusiasms that seem to pop up at every trust council meeting about diverting staff resources

[4:47:47] Voice 5: to do this latest fun thing that we think is important or spending even some money on it

[4:47:52] Voice 5: that um we are going to it is a commitment at the end of the day of trust council to be much more

[4:48:00] Voice 5: disciplined about allocating staff resources that it has to be within the framework of the process

[4:48:07] Voice 5: it's not something that although trust council has the power to do it's not going to do

[4:48:11] Voice 5: at at at its meetings except when it's at budget time are we going to be able to communicate that

[4:48:17] Voice 5: I

[4:48:19] Voice 13: think so. I think we'll have, there's a few pieces to that. I think, and you'll see some of this in my operational review report around, I think there is a need to reconsider aspects of how the strategic plan was developed and how that fits into the corporate

[4:48:39] Voice 13: planning process.

[4:48:40] Voice 13: process um and and i think there is a another component of that which is less about the

[4:48:49] Voice 13: planning process and more about the discipline around how direction is provided to staff from

[4:48:54] Voice 13: trust council i think part of the challenge we faced is that often direction is provided without

[4:49:00] Voice 13: any sort of feasibility assessment of whether or not going forth and doing work on that project is

[4:49:07] Voice 13: actually attainable or achievable i think historically sometimes there have been outside

[4:49:11] Voice 13: of a planning process just a direction to staff please go and do this piece of work

[4:49:17] Voice 13: without asking the question of is it actually doable from a capacity standpoint let alone a

[4:49:23] Voice 13: policy and legislative standpoint and all those other aspects and so i think there needs to be

[4:49:27] Voice 13: a greater level of discipline around that around sort of how we assess that feasibility before we

[4:49:34] Voice 13: give definitive direction. But to your point, ideally, all of those things are prioritized

[4:49:40] Voice 13: through a corporate planning process that says, these are the things we intend to work on

[4:49:45] Voice 13: strategic plan-wise and operationally. And anything that is beyond the scope of that,

[4:49:50] Voice 13: yeah, needs a careful thought and discussion around how does that align? And if it doesn't align,

[4:49:57] Voice 13: you can expect certainly from me and from staff, I think a question around,

[4:50:01] Voice 13: if it doesn't align how are you expecting us to resource that because our resources are devoted

[4:50:06] Voice 13: particularly with the capacity constraints we have to the priority items that are set out in

[4:50:11] Voice 13: the strategic plan so i think we can

[4:50:14] Voice 13: say it but i think the discipline is in the practice

[4:50:16] Voice 13: as well right well

[4:50:18] Voice 5: apart from you saying it which may or may not get traction i think it's very

[4:50:24] Voice 5: important that the instrument that we use to implement corporate planning which is going to

[4:50:30] Voice 5: to be a policy of some sort or a bylaw of some sort should incorporate language that does exactly

[4:50:37] Voice 5: what you just said that it's it's not it's not staff reacting to some latest enthusiasm it's

[4:50:46] Voice 5: the structure it's how it works and the policy says look when you develop the budget that's the

[4:50:52] Voice 5: time to come up with these ideas after that um only under extraordinary circumstances and it's

[4:50:59] Voice 5: specified in the policy, how it works, what you have to do in order to get something over the

[4:51:03] Voice 5: threshold, just because you read something in news three weeks ago and you bring it to trust

[4:51:07] Voice 5: council and you want to have a new resolution that is going to engage staff resources.

[4:51:14] Voice 5: That's not going to cut it. And I think some version of that has to be in the policy

[4:51:18] Voice 5: so that it's in black and white. This is what trust council decided. And if you want to go

[4:51:22] Voice 5: otherwise, and you're really excited about something, you're asking for a change in the

[4:51:28] Voice 5: a corporate planning policy. And I think that might be a tool. In fact, I know it's a tool for

[4:51:33] Voice 5: imposing discipline.

[4:51:38] Voice 7: All right. A little side discussion on our second priority,

[4:51:44] Voice 7: corporate planning. Thank you. All right. Can we get back to an adjournment? Anybody opposed?

[4:51:55] Voice 7: No. Let's adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Thank you all. Bye, everybody. See you soon.

[4:52:07] Voice 7: Thank you, Robert.