Islands Trust Council regular meeting, August 19, 2026

[0:00:00] Voice 15: now live streamed and recording.

[0:00:03] Trustee Fast: Wonderful. Okay, thank you everybody for

[0:00:07] Trustee Fast: joining us, anybody out there in digital land or on recording land. This is a meeting of the

[0:00:15] Trustee Fast: Financial Planning Committee, August 19th, 2026. And I'm Sue Ellen Fast, I'm the chair

[0:00:22] Trustee Fast: and of this committee of Islands Trust Council.

[0:00:27] Trustee Fast: So we're meeting today across all kinds of nations' territories.

[0:00:35] Trustee Fast: I'm here from Nuhwelaquem, which is Bowen Island,

[0:00:40] Trustee Fast: Squamish Nation territory, and the waters around Bowen Island

[0:00:45] Trustee Fast: for 300 meters out, also the territory of Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam.

[0:00:51] Trustee Fast: and I'm just grateful to be living here in the beautiful Islands Trust area.

[0:00:59] Trustee Fast: I'm going to introduce trustees.

[0:01:04] Trustee Fast: Why don't you just go around and say your name

[0:01:07] Trustee Fast: and where you're zooming in from, Trustee Boland.

[0:01:13] Voice 10: Good morning, Maureen Boland, and I'm a trustee for Saturna Island

[0:01:20] Voice 10: and also known as, you know what, I'm not going to try it just now.

[0:01:25] Voice 10: You caught me by surprise.

[0:01:28] Voice 10: I thought I had time to practice, but I don't, so I'm not going to say it.

[0:01:32] Voice 10: Okay, thanks.

[0:01:35] Voice 10: Trustee Yates.

[0:01:39] Voice 19: Thank you, Chair Fast.

[0:01:41] Voice 19: I'm chiming in this morning from Snenemoch territory

[0:01:45] Voice 19: for the Gabriel Island Local Trust Area,

[0:01:48] Voice 19: which includes Mudge and the Corsi Islands.

[0:01:52] Voice 19: Thank you.

[0:01:53] Voice 19: Trustee Peterson.

[0:01:57] Voice 11: Good morning.

[0:01:59] Voice 11: Coming to you from Hue'etai, also known as Luskeetee Island.

[0:02:03] Voice 11: And Mairead, I'm told it's better to try and fail than to not try at all.

[0:02:11] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Tim.

[0:02:13] Trustee Fast: Trustee Patrick.

[0:02:16] Trustee Patrick: Hello.

[0:02:17] Trustee Patrick: Laura Patrick, coming from Salt Spring Island,

[0:02:20] Trustee Patrick: a very large and important territory of many Coast Salish First Nations.

[0:02:25] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:02:26] Trustee Fast: And Trustee Getty.

[0:02:29] Voice 17: Good morning from the Kwelekum, Bowen Island, and same as what Sue Ellen introduced in terms of the Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh and the Musqueam territories.

[0:02:44] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Judy. Trustee Maude.

[0:02:47] Voice 2: Good morning, David Maude from Maine Island, traditional home of the Wissanik people.

[0:02:53] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Trustee Graham.

[0:02:54] Trustee Fast: Graham.

[0:02:57] Voice 12: Good morning from Denman Island, locally elected down

[0:03:00] Voice 12: Denman Island. David Graham and traditional territory of the Comox and other

[0:03:04] Voice 12: Coast Salish people.

[0:03:06] Voice 5: Thank you. And Trustee Elliott.

[0:03:11] Voice 7: Hello, everyone. Zooming in to you from Gabriola Island in the

[0:03:15] Voice 7: territory of Stenamook First Nation. Thank you.

[0:03:20] Trustee Fast: And we have a number of our professional staff here today.

[0:03:24] Trustee Fast: And so I'm going to briefly, I'll just say your name and you can

[0:03:28] Trustee Fast: wave, I think. Robert Barlow's running the meeting, if he's back there. Okay, actually,

[0:03:36] Trustee Fast: what I'm going to do is I'm going to pass it over to our CAO, Ruben Brawny, and maybe, Ruben,

[0:03:43] Trustee Fast: you can introduce the staff, including the new person who's with us today, who I'm excited to

[0:03:49] Trustee Fast: get to know. Over to you. Thank

[0:03:51] Voice 14: you, Chair, and good morning. Pleasure to be joining you from

[0:03:55] Voice 14: from Lekwungen Territory here in Victoria.

[0:03:57] Voice 14: Yeah, we have a number of staff here

[0:03:59] Voice 14: to support Financial Planning Committee.

[0:04:02] Voice 14: Director of Financial Employee Services, Derek Coburn.

[0:04:05] Voice 14: Our Financial Officer, Nancy Rogers.

[0:04:08] Voice 14: Legislative Services Clerk, Robert Barlow.

[0:04:10] Voice 14: And yes, Manager of Finance and Accounting, Nick Jane,

[0:04:15] Voice 14: who is our long-awaited, long-sought new manager

[0:04:19] Voice 14: on the finance side.

[0:04:21] Voice 14: We're thrilled to have him finally join us

[0:04:23] Voice 14: and is already having a really positive impact in adding some capacity and expertise to that team.

[0:04:28] Voice 14: Also joining us, Director of Planning Services, Stefan Cermak,

[0:04:32] Voice 14: Director of Legislative and Information Services, David Marler,

[0:04:35] Voice 14: and Director of Trust Area Services, Claire Freider.

[0:04:39] Voice 14: And I believe that is everybody. Thank you, Chair.

[0:04:43] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much. And welcome, everybody.

[0:04:46] Trustee Fast: Hoping we can have a productive and effective meeting.

[0:04:49] Trustee Fast: um so looking at the uh uh agenda here just a couple of notes at the top i'm going to try and

[0:04:57] Trustee Fast: uh include everybody but if for some reason i don't see your electronic hand go up um please

[0:05:04] Trustee Fast: speak up um i'm hoping we don't have to use the chat uh because um nobody in the public can see

[0:05:14] Trustee Fast: it if we use the chat and it's hard to paste out of there um and uh we've got um some breaks i'm

[0:05:23] Trustee Fast: going to try and put in there so 11 15 will be our first break unless anybody wants one before that

[0:05:28] Trustee Fast: please let me know and then uh we'll break for lunch and that kind of thing see how it goes here

[0:05:35] Trustee Fast: and uh otherwise i'm um uh i'm on to item that's the call to order and i'm on to uh item two which

[0:05:43] Trustee Fast: which is the agenda. So looking at the agenda, I just wanted to mention that 8.5 is a late item.

[0:05:52] Trustee Fast: That's the letter that I've drafted for the incoming chair of FPC next term. So that'll

[0:06:02] Trustee Fast: be posted during the meeting. We can have a look at it. And when we get down there,

[0:06:06] Trustee Fast: we can have a brief discussion if anybody wants to. Any other changes or adjustments to the agenda

[0:06:13] Trustee Fast: that people are interested in no hearing none then by consent uh we're approving the agenda

[0:06:23] Trustee Fast: with that one light item okay thank you all right and then uh public comments i don't agree

[0:06:31] Trustee Fast: oh go please go ahead can we

[0:06:34] Voice 17: get a copy of that letter uh during one of the breaks so that we can

[0:06:38] Voice 17: read it before we discuss it

[0:06:41] Trustee Fast: that's what i'm hoping will happen um it was all very last minute

[0:06:46] Trustee Fast: it and my

[0:06:46] Voice 5: my fault but i yeah okay

[0:06:49] Trustee Fast: i think um staff are going to post it during the during our

[0:06:55] Trustee Fast: meeting thanks um yeah and then um okay so public comment period i don't see any members of the

[0:07:04] Trustee Fast: public here and hearing nobody okay we're going to go by that no delegations no correspondence

[0:07:10] Trustee Fast: and we're down to 6.1 the draft minutes this is on page starting on page four

[0:07:15] Trustee Fast: Or anybody got any changes they would like to make to the, well, I think maybe that was the

[0:07:26] Trustee Fast: letter just came in. No, maybe not. I don't see. Oh, oh, well. Okay. Any changes to the agenda?

[0:07:44] Trustee Fast: Okay. I'm not seeing an attachment there, Robert, to that. Maybe it'll come in a minute. Okay.

[0:07:52] Trustee Fast: Okay. And then by consent, I think we're accepting the minutes from our May 27th meeting.

[0:08:01] Trustee Fast: Thank you, everybody. And then we're going to move on past that kind of thing.

[0:08:08] Trustee Fast: Follow-up action list is page number nine. You can see everything down there is completed.

[0:08:14] Trustee Fast: Any questions? Okay. And we'll move down to the first request for decision.

[0:08:25] Trustee Fast: And this is 7.1. It starts on page 10. And this is a statement of financial information, commonly known as SOFI. And did you want to introduce this for us, anybody?

[0:08:39] Trustee Fast: Thank

[0:08:42] Voice 1: you, Chair. Yes, as you mentioned, this is part of our annual reporting requirements coming through from the Financial Information Act. It's the exact same report we present every year. It pretty much breaks down some additional details to what you find in our financial statement package.

[0:09:02] Voice 1: package. You'll see there's some attachments that follow the request for decision.

[0:09:09] Voice 1: Excuse me. Basically, what it's looking at is there's three components that we provide

[0:09:15] Voice 1: information on. And yeah, once this goes through all the way through Trust Council, there will be

[0:09:20] Voice 1: sign off from the chair myself. But it's basically looking at payments to trustees, which is the

[0:09:27] Voice 1: screen we're on now, page 15. Similarly, there's payments to staff. So it flags any staff made over

[0:09:36] Voice 1: $75,000. Then you'll see there's a line at the very bottom for all the other staff who are

[0:09:42] Voice 1: salaries combined, but they're individually under $75,000. And the last schedule is the schedule of

[0:09:50] Voice 1: all payments to vendors. And same thing, you see this identifies the major vendors. And yeah,

[0:09:58] Voice 1: Yeah, I'm just going to see, we're zooming down a wee bit.

[0:10:00] Voice 1: And then there's one same thing, a global line for any vendors under $25,000.

[0:10:03] Voice 1: They don't get identified, but they're consolidated up.

[0:10:07] Voice 1: You can see there's only, let me get to that page, how many there were.

[0:10:14] Voice 1: Yeah, there's 23 suppliers, you can see, that received over $25,000 payments from us.

[0:10:20] Voice 1: By far, the largest is the Minister of Finance.

[0:10:23] Voice 1: Relate to all things payroll, trustee, staff, remuneration, benefits, a lot of that.

[0:10:28] Voice 1: That's where the biggest vendor is.

[0:10:31] Voice 1: A lot of the other vendors are support, whether it's our ongoing IT support,

[0:10:36] Voice 1: sorry, system support companies, a few projects we have on the go

[0:10:42] Voice 1: that have all been approved prior.

[0:10:44] Voice 1: So that's a quick list of all the main suppliers we paid for.

[0:10:48] Voice 1: And as I said, this is the exact same format, same content as every year,

[0:10:52] Voice 1: and the dollar values are all pretty much in line with prior years as well.

[0:10:56] Voice 1: Well, if I can open up, see if there's any questions.

[0:11:00] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[0:11:01] Trustee Fast: I do see a hand up.

[0:11:02] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland.

[0:11:05] Voice 10: You may have answered it,

[0:11:07] Voice 10: and I may not have noticed in previous statements,

[0:11:10] Voice 10: but the payment to Young Anderson seems like quite a lot.

[0:11:14] Voice 10: And given that we have legal fees as well in the budget

[0:11:19] Voice 10: at about 500,000, something like that.

[0:11:22] Voice 10: Maybe I'm wrong.

[0:11:23] Voice 10: Yeah.

[0:11:23] Voice 10: Yeah. Anyway, is that normal, that three quarters of a million effectively to young Anderson?

[0:11:30] Voice 1: It is high. And this current year that we're in now, fiscal year 27, will be high as well.

[0:11:37] Voice 1: There's a lot of projects we've been working on that have required additional back and forth with the lawyers.

[0:11:45] Voice 1: So it is, yeah, it is exceptionally high.

[0:11:49] Voice 1: I'd like to say it'll go down in future years, but there's a few big initiatives going on,

[0:11:54] Voice 1: whether we're talking about our and I say I see Ronnie we can jump in on a second but we are

[0:11:59] Voice 1: looking at a few major projects a few major overarching projects we're working on that are

[0:12:05] Voice 1: involving lots of legal back and forth so

[0:12:08] Voice 10: Ruben did you want to add

[0:12:10] Voice 1: to that sorry just

[0:12:11] Voice 10: I was just

[0:12:12] Voice 10: going

[0:12:13] Trustee Fast: to add a comment which is one moment please

[0:12:16] Trustee Fast: trustee we've got staff with their hands up people

[0:12:19] Trustee Fast: are trying to respond so i'm going to go to director marler yeah

[0:12:25] Voice 13: this number the it does

[0:12:28] Voice 13: vary by year and it really depends on what kind of court cases that we're dealing with and in this

[0:12:35] Voice 13: particular year this number can be driven up substantially by just one or two significant

[0:12:42] Voice 13: cases that cost a lot more than um than anticipated and that's essentially what happened

[0:12:50] Voice 13: here so you know if you can't winter the details here but uh in camera we could provide more

[0:12:56] Voice 13: information if council or sorry fpc requires that thanks thank you i

[0:13:02] Voice 10: just said

[0:13:03] Trustee Fast: one moment

[0:13:05] Trustee Fast: one moment please trustee boland this is a committee discussion trustee elliott

[0:13:12] Voice 7: uh thank

[0:13:13] Voice 7: you chair um so i'm wondering if in order to answer questions that council might have on these

[0:13:21] Voice 7: suppliers, questions that this committee is asking, there could be a briefing, maybe that

[0:13:28] Voice 7: isn't attached to the schedule of payments, but a covering briefing and sort of explaining

[0:13:36] Voice 7: some of these, like connecting them to what projects they're related to, like dream house

[0:13:43] Voice 7: kitchens and interiors. Is that the Salt Spring Island renovation project? So I think trustees

[0:13:51] Voice 7: will have questions so if this comes to council rather than having those questions asked in the

[0:13:57] Voice 7: meeting could we have a cover or a briefing that just briefly connects the the suppliers to

[0:14:05] Voice 7: the related project thank

[0:14:10] Trustee Fast: you trustee elliot that's a great suggestion fits with our

[0:14:13] Trustee Fast: uh terms of reference for this committee um any more hands up trustee boland yeah

[0:14:25] Voice 10: thanks uh thanks

[0:14:26] Voice 10: Thanks for the comments and the responses so far.

[0:14:31] Voice 10: So what I'm understanding from you, David, is that even though we budget X, Y, Z for legal fees, this is a spillover.

[0:14:42] Voice 10: And in addition to that, or are the legal fees that we budgeted included in that number?

[0:14:49] Voice 10: And I think what Trustee Elliott suggested was a great idea. Thanks.

[0:14:54] Voice 10: Thank you. Over

[0:14:56] Trustee Fast: to you, Director Marlowe.

[0:14:59] Voice 13: Yeah, thank you through the Chair.

[0:15:02] Voice 13: Yeah, no, this is including that.

[0:15:05] Voice 13: So we would counsel budgets for, say, defense of bylaws

[0:15:12] Voice 13: or the local trust which is proactively taking action.

[0:15:17] Voice 13: The defense of bylaws is the one that we really don't know.

[0:15:21] Voice 13: We're estimating based on our average for previous years.

[0:15:25] Voice 13: so we may put a number in there

[0:15:28] Voice 13: and then find that that is absolutely not enough

[0:15:32] Voice 13: and the actual court case

[0:15:37] Voice 13: if it becomes a live court case for example

[0:15:40] Voice 13: which could go over several weeks

[0:15:42] Voice 13: that can rack up into hundreds of thousands of dollars

[0:15:45] Voice 13: very very quickly

[0:15:46] Voice 13: whereas the budget probably on the anticipated

[0:15:50] Voice 13: maybe $60,000 or something like that

[0:15:53] Voice 13: So those are all hypothetical, but that is an example of exactly what happens. And it just takes one challenge to the bylaw that goes in that direction.

[0:16:13] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Director Marmer. I think it was a good point that all of these things, all of these expenses are things that have been through the budget, I think. Would that be correct?

[0:16:27] Trustee Fast: Excuse

[0:16:29] Voice 1: me, Chair. That's right. As Director Marler mentioned, Young Anderson, our legal one is what we budget plus anything in addition based on the court cases that we can't control or clearly identify at budget time.

[0:16:44] Voice 1: Thank

[0:16:47] Trustee Fast: you. Any other questions about the statement of financial information about the SOFI? I'm looking at, I had that question about the Minister of Finance. So thank you for answering that one, Director Coburn.

[0:17:06] Trustee Fast: And is that all, I'm on page 18, and it said that Minister of Finance, the $1,297,000, is that all of the staff payroll and things like that?

[0:17:22] Trustee Fast: Does it all go through there?

[0:17:24] Voice 1: Includes staff payroll, trustee, the benefits portion goes through there.

[0:17:30] Voice 1: I'm trying to think what else is included in that one.

[0:17:33] Trustee Fast: That's okay.

[0:17:34] Trustee Fast: We can put it in that briefing later.

[0:17:37] Voice 1: Okay, I'll put it out.

[0:17:38] Voice 1: make sure you

[0:17:39] Voice 1: don't forget to get that briefing for everyone

[0:17:41] Trustee Fast: trustee

[0:17:45] Voice 7: elliott yeah thank you chair

[0:17:49] Voice 7: i was just going to ask if uh staff want a resolution to request a briefing to accompany

[0:17:56] Voice 7: the statement of financial information about um the services or it's just understood through

[0:18:06] Voice 7: this discussion and then i'm happy to make the recommended motion i

[0:18:11] Voice 1: believe it's here i believe

[0:18:12] Voice 1: it's understood okay

[0:18:16] Trustee Fast: so please go ahead trustee elliott with the uh resolution

[0:18:22] Trustee Fast: oh

[0:18:24] Voice 7: sorry i move that financial planning committee forward the 2025-26 statement of financial

[0:18:30] Voice 7: information to trust council for approval thank

[0:18:34] Trustee Fast: you do i have a seconder trustee peterson are you

[0:18:37] Trustee Fast: seconding yes i see nodding okay so we've got a mover and a seconder and um any discussion okay

[0:18:50] Trustee Fast: Okay, then I'll call the vote. All those in favor, please raise your electronic hand.

[0:18:57] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And lower your hands. Any opposed? Thanks, everybody. That passes unanimously.

[0:19:08] Trustee Fast: Okay, on to the briefing next on page 20. It's where it starts. And over to you, Director Coburn.

[0:19:19] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair.

[0:19:22] Voice 1: Yeah, so this is similar as what we presented last quarter.

[0:19:26] Voice 1: The difference here is in year end, we present on balance sheet, but for the quarters during

[0:19:32] Voice 1: the year, we only present on income statement items.

[0:19:35] Voice 1: The first section we're looking at is under revenue, and it looks funny in quarter one.

[0:19:42] Voice 1: So if you can just scroll up a wee bit, sorry, to the, if you could scroll up on the briefing

[0:19:47] Voice 1: to that first, yeah, perfect.

[0:19:49] Voice 1: On the revenue side, our funding usually comes in in quarter two, so it's always awkward in quarter one reporting where we don't really have much revenue to talk about, so everything's way under budget.

[0:19:59] Voice 1: But I can announce that our general property tax levy, the municipal property tax from Bowen Island levy, both came in in July.

[0:20:08] Voice 1: The provincial grant came in in July, so everything came in early in quarter two.

[0:20:13] Voice 1: So basically as of next quarter, all the revenues will be now showing positively and on track.

[0:20:19] Voice 1: So it's just to make sure people aren't worried why we're so under budget and revenue in quarter one.

[0:20:24] Voice 1: But it's just our timing always comes in in July, which hits quarter two.

[0:20:28] Voice 1: So this time next quarter, we'll be able to announce that our revenue streams are in great shape.

[0:20:34] Voice 1: The focus I want to look at is on the expense side.

[0:20:38] Voice 1: So as I did last quarter, I'm going to break it down to the four main buckets.

[0:20:42] Voice 1: The first being the trust council services.

[0:20:46] Voice 1: You'll see a popular everything's under budget.

[0:20:48] Voice 1: I think there's only one line item that's over budget right now, but on the Trust Council,

[0:20:54] Voice 1: they're under budget by $111,000.

[0:20:56] Voice 1: I've identified the two main causes for that.

[0:21:00] Voice 1: One is the June TC meeting was held virtually.

[0:21:06] Voice 1: Oh, sorry, I say no.

[0:21:08] Voice 1: Nancy, can you make the agenda a little bit larger, please?

[0:21:16] Voice 1: Thank you, Nancy.

[0:21:18] Voice 1: Yeah, so just, yeah, I'll wait that.

[0:21:22] Voice 1: Okay, perfect.

[0:21:23] Voice 1: Yeah, there's two items.

[0:21:25] Voice 1: One is the June meeting went virtual, so that saved us, as you can see,

[0:21:28] Voice 1: it's approximately $75,000 to $80,000 every time we bring the OTC together in person.

[0:21:33] Voice 1: So that was a big cause of the savings.

[0:21:36] Voice 1: And then there was also some delays in the hiring that had some cost savings as well.

[0:21:43] Voice 1: So that was it on the Trust Council services side.

[0:21:46] Voice 1: Then if you scroll down, you'll see the first bullet on the next page.

[0:21:50] Voice 1: Everything else within that bucket, the variances are all under $5,000.

[0:21:55] Voice 1: So everything's tracking right to budget perfectly.

[0:21:58] Voice 1: The second bucket is the local trust committee services.

[0:22:03] Voice 1: And that one is under budget by $80,000.

[0:22:06] Voice 1: The two key causes of that one are projects coming in or being delayed in their start dates.

[0:22:13] Voice 1: Excuse me.

[0:22:15] Voice 1: And then underspent in legal on the bylaws and defense buckets.

[0:22:21] Voice 1: buckets. When we talked a bit earlier about the legal expenses and the SOFI, there's three buckets

[0:22:26] Voice 1: we have. We have bylaw enforcements, defense, and those are the two that are really hard to

[0:22:32] Voice 1: forecast for. And then the third bucket is general requests for opinions from legal counsel.

[0:22:39] Voice 1: And then everything else under the local trust committee was the same thing, under $5,000,

[0:22:44] Voice 1: they're all tracking well. In the trust conservancy services area, they're under budget by $145,000.

[0:22:52] Voice 1: The two main causes of that is under property management, they've underspent by $80,000.

[0:22:57] Voice 1: And same thing, some of their projects and the work is, this one was proper, these work is scheduled to start in Q2 and Q3.

[0:23:05] Voice 1: So basically next quarter, you'll get a very similar note that those projects were planned to start later in the year.

[0:23:10] Voice 1: So for the first two quarters, they'll report as under budget.

[0:23:14] Voice 1: And then on the staffing side, it's under budget and it's vacancies, the delays in hiring.

[0:23:20] Voice 1: hiring but the good news is we've been very very busy with our postings in the last

[0:23:27] Voice 1: month or so so I'm hoping this will catch up it will take a bit of time by the time we go through

[0:23:32] Voice 1: the whole hiring process so next quarter they'll still be under budgets on staffing but by quarter

[0:23:37] Voice 1: three I'm hoping we're all fully staffed and then once again the other line items within

[0:23:42] Voice 1: trust conservancy are all tracking right onto budget and then the last bucket is the general

[0:23:48] Voice 1: admin services. And these are sort of the corporate costs that then we look at and charge

[0:23:54] Voice 1: out to some of the departments. This one is under budget by $37,000. So it's tracking very close to

[0:24:00] Voice 1: budget. Three things that you want to flag on this one. One is computer furniture equipment

[0:24:07] Voice 1: are underspent by $36,000. These are purposely scheduled to be happening as we speak now. So

[0:24:15] Voice 1: we'll be actually spending when we plan to spend on some of our IS or our computer updates and

[0:24:22] Voice 1: equipment. The second area we're underspent on is office operations. Excuse me. And part of that

[0:24:31] Voice 1: was just a timing issue of when we received invoices coming in. Some of the invoices missed

[0:24:36] Voice 1: the quarter one cutoff and only came in in quarter two. So next quarter, that line will disappear.

[0:24:40] Voice 1: here. One area we are overspent on, not by a big amount, but is under staffing for finance

[0:24:47] Voice 1: employee services. While we had staff on leave, we brought in temporary auxiliary staff to help

[0:24:53] Voice 1: support the office operations. So basically, we're doubling up on staffing for a few months.

[0:24:58] Voice 1: But that's now that the staffing team is more in full shape, that'll fall off. And

[0:25:07] Voice 1: And each year or each quarter going forward now, that will slowly dissipate and go away.

[0:25:13] Voice 1: What we've added, the two things we add, one is that we've seen last one as well.

[0:25:18] Voice 1: If you scroll down a bit, please, Nancy, is the printout from SAGE.

[0:25:21] Voice 1: This is sort of the income statement coming from SAGE.

[0:25:25] Voice 1: The one thing, if you're trying to look at the numbers completely, one thing you will see slightly different on the expense side.

[0:25:30] Voice 1: So, for example, under, yeah, I'm pointing, you can't see me point, under trust council services.

[0:25:35] Voice 1: and in each of the other buckets you'll see a line called general admin allocation you'll see

[0:25:40] Voice 1: under trust it says 17.3 percent actually no you can't see that um so what would happen is the

[0:25:46] Voice 1: admin bucket or the overhead gets allocated to the to the each of the departments but my first

[0:25:53] Voice 1: analysis i did on the previous page i lumped it all together otherwise i've got to explain why is

[0:25:59] Voice 1: You know, it's 17% here, 72% there, 10% there, but I discussed the variance in a whole bucket.

[0:26:06] Voice 1: And then this is the after the fact, how we allocate it out to each of the departments.

[0:26:10] Voice 1: But the bottom lines all are in agreement.

[0:26:13] Voice 1: And we've created one thing new this year.

[0:26:15] Voice 1: If you go to the next two pages down, we've included a new graphic this quarter.

[0:26:23] Voice 1: And we're trying to look at how different ways of presenting stuff.

[0:26:25] Voice 1: Oh, we might have to shrink this one down to fit it all in.

[0:26:27] Voice 1: yeah so i know with numbers some people like uh narratives some like tape or some like charts

[0:26:36] Voice 1: some like financial statements so here's another way to look at we for example if we look at the

[0:26:42] Voice 1: first one trust council service that first column in blue is the budget so we took their total

[0:26:47] Voice 1: budget of 1.4 for quarter one it's a quarter of that so 430 000 and year to date we spent 319

[0:26:55] Voice 1: Sorry, quarter to date, we spent 319,000 against it, resulting in that underspend that we mentioned previously.

[0:27:04] Voice 1: So you can see across all four of the buckets were underspent as a whole, and island stress as a whole is underspent.

[0:27:10] Voice 1: Part of it is unfilled positions.

[0:27:13] Voice 1: Part of it is items that we planned happened in quarters two and three.

[0:27:17] Voice 1: So I think what you'll see going forward is these variances, these underspends will shrink each quarter as you get closer to year end.

[0:27:25] Voice 1: So hopefully this is a different view.

[0:27:27] Voice 1: I'm not sure if everyone likes that or not,

[0:27:28] Voice 1: but I see a hand up, Trustee Elliott.

[0:27:32] Voice 7: Go ahead.

[0:27:34] Voice 7: Sure, and this is just a very small note,

[0:27:37] Voice 7: but is the year-to-date variance supposed to be blue,

[0:27:43] Voice 7: but it's showing up, sorry, in the chart here,

[0:27:45] Voice 7: it's showing up as green.

[0:27:46] Voice 7: So I don't know if anybody else.

[0:27:49] Voice 1: Oh, that's a good point.

[0:27:50] Voice 1: Okay, thank you.

[0:27:51] Voice 1: We will.

[0:27:53] Voice 7: So we're just making sure.

[0:27:55] Voice 7: I

[0:27:55] Voice 1: didn't even notice that color difference.

[0:27:56] Voice 1: Thank you.

[0:27:57] Voice 1: Thanks

[0:27:58] Voice 7: so much. All right.

[0:27:59] Voice 1: We'll fix that

[0:28:00] Voice 1: for next quarter.

[0:28:02] Trustee Fast: I have a quick question. Director Coburn, can you remind me what SAGE means?

[0:28:08] Voice 1: Oh, that's our financial system that we use.

[0:28:12] Voice 1: I thought

[0:28:14] Trustee Fast: so, but I'm acronymically challenged. Okay, thank you.

[0:28:18] Voice 1: I

[0:28:19] Trustee Fast: really like the graphic display too. I think that will be helpful.

[0:28:28] Trustee Fast: and uh anybody got questions for the director about the briefing not seeing any more while

[0:28:38] Voice 1: we're waiting i can share i could just want to highlight to i want to thank nick for this nick

[0:28:43] Voice 1: is very very one of his big strengths is is his usage of excel and be able to portray this thing

[0:28:50] Voice 1: so we're going to try and get more graphics into our future presentations as well so this is this

[0:28:55] Voice 1: is courtesy of nick so thank you very much nick for all your work in helping create this new

[0:28:58] Voice 1: new profile.

[0:29:01] Voice 5: Very good. Good. Thank you very much. Okay.

[0:29:07] Trustee Fast: Seeing only thumbs ups and no more

[0:29:10] Trustee Fast: questions, I'm going to move us on then to the next item. Thank you very much. We're going to

[0:29:17] Trustee Fast: move on to 7.3 starts on page 25. This is a request for decision about sort of budget consultation

[0:29:26] Trustee Fast: consultation light. And who's going to be speaking to this one? Is this Director Frater?

[0:29:38] Trustee Fast: Sorry, Claire has

[0:29:42] Voice 1: muted us. I was trying to pass it over to you.

[0:29:44] Voice 4: Thank you. Yes, I'm happy to speak to this. See, the committee may remember that you've asked for

[0:29:49] Voice 4: a strategic priority survey this year, which has been undertaken, and the results will be provided

[0:29:54] Voice 4: to Trust Council in September. As a result of that, we've changed the recommendation.

[0:30:00] Voice 4: from previous years such that we return to sort of what was being done around

[0:30:03] Voice 4: 2015 time which is to promote the opportunity for the public to comment on

[0:30:08] Voice 4: the draft budget but do so just by email into the budget at islandstrust.bc.ca

[0:30:13] Voice 4: inbox we would then compile any feedback received and provide it to Trust

[0:30:18] Voice 4: Council for consideration at their March meeting this approach has the advantage

[0:30:24] Voice 4: of no more costs in this fiscal year as the funding to undertake public engagement has

[0:30:31] Voice 4: already been expended. Should you wish to still undertake a survey and do paid promotion we could

[0:30:36] Voice 4: look at the communications budget and come back to executive committee with some opportunities to

[0:30:41] Voice 4: reduce some other spending and allocate it towards this. So at this time we've got a proposed project

[0:30:47] Voice 4: charter for your review and would be looking for the committee to pass the motion or provide

[0:30:52] Voice 4: alternate direction to staff and if it

[0:30:54] Voice 4: incurs potential overspending in that area as i mentioned

[0:30:58] Voice 4: we would go to the executive committee so happy to take questions thank you okay thank you director

[0:31:05] Voice 19: freighter trustee yates thank you director freighter um i definitely prefer this to the

[0:31:13] Voice 19: survey method um i think we'll get a better response and i think it will cost us less money

[0:31:20] Voice 19: and if we have a dedicated page on the website that is an excellent plan as long as it's not

[0:31:27] Voice 19: too hard to find thank you thank you trustee yates trustee

[0:31:34] Trustee Fast: boland i

[0:31:35] Voice 10: like this idea and i'm

[0:31:37] Voice 10: glad that you've you and possibly derek have wrenched it out of the hands of the trustees

[0:31:43] Voice 10: who are capable of discussing this for three days and coming to no conclusion so thank you for that

[0:31:50] Voice 10: that. And I see that it really rests, I think, on the importance of having a very early draft

[0:31:57] Voice 10: budget, which is, you know, I think a great way to really get engagement rather than in sort of

[0:32:05] Voice 10: abstract, you know, strategies, etc. The specifics of a draft budget should really focus people and

[0:32:13] Voice 10: hopefully deliver some good feedback. So thank you.

[0:32:18] Trustee Fast: good thank you very much uh trustee elliott um

[0:32:24] Voice 7: thank you i may be confused on the numbers when

[0:32:27] Voice 7: i'm looking at the charter but uh the purpose is should be 27 28 budget and the timeline looks

[0:32:39] Voice 7: really yes

[0:32:40] Voice 4: sorry we missed updating those fiscal year numbers we won't see that and

[0:32:45] Voice 8: And if we go

[0:32:46] Voice 7: on to the third bullet in the work program overview, the launching of 20, it should be 27, 28, and the dates look like January 28th to February 7th.

[0:32:58] Voice 7: That's a week of engagement.

[0:33:02] Voice 7: What, are those timelines wrong?

[0:33:08] Voice 9: January

[0:33:09] Voice 7: 28th, 2027 to February 7th, 2027?

[0:33:12] Voice 4: It may be, yeah, they might be.

[0:33:14] Voice 4: i think what we did is we looked at the committee meeting and of course that's not going to work

[0:33:18] Voice 4: this year with timelines yeah i will take a look at that um it may be that we would provide

[0:33:22] Voice 4: materials to the committee chair for approval if we need to go out ahead of the committee meeting

[0:33:27] Voice 4: knowing that dates have shifted this year post election so yeah i'll take a look at that and

[0:33:31] Voice 4: make sure it makes sense we'll make sure that there's some political oversight of our materials

[0:33:34] Voice 4: before they go um yeah thanks for noting that sorry it was a bit of a scramble to get this on

[0:33:39] Voice 4: the agenda post-vacation so apologies that we didn't quite get that right

[0:33:43] Voice 7: what is the what's

[0:33:45] Voice 7: your anticipated engagement time i

[0:33:48] Voice 4: will take a look at the schedule generally we try and provide

[0:33:52] Voice 4: it typically has been two and a half weeks has been what's possible between

[0:33:56] Voice 4: fpc meetings january to february i'll take a look at the engagement schedule and try and ensure it's

[0:34:01] Voice 4: at least that um if if at all possible given that council approves the draft budget in um december

[0:34:08] Voice 4: we could go out that early, but of course, numbers change in early January when we receive

[0:34:12] Voice 4: the BC assessment data, which can at times radically shift the proposed taxation amounts.

[0:34:22] Voice 4: So we like to kind of wait for that data to come in prior to sort of going out with final numbers.

[0:34:29] Voice 7: Well, I think we need to have a little discussion on this because I'm wondering if two and a half

[0:34:35] Voice 7: is enough time for public awareness. I mean, you mentioned getting nonprofit groups to get word out

[0:34:43] Voice 7: to the community about the opportunity. That's just, that's just not enough time. I thought

[0:34:49] Voice 7: this was going to be sort of a rolling six months, six months of here, you know, we want to hear

[0:34:55] Voice 7: your your thoughts um and keep updating uh the website with the um what was it your frequently

[0:35:05] Voice 7: asked questions yeah so i don't i think this needs a rework and i think it needs to be quite a bit

[0:35:12] Voice 7: longer maybe two months or something so i don't know how that could be worked into the timeline

[0:35:18] Voice 7: but um even six weeks just seems very or two and a half weeks is is way too short you know

[0:35:25] Voice 4: So to be clear, that's what we've typically done.

[0:35:27] Voice 4: I think we'll take a look at, of course,

[0:35:29] Voice 4: maximizing the engagement time that's available.

[0:35:31] Voice 4: Again, it's just trading that off

[0:35:33] Voice 4: against having more accurate numbers

[0:35:36] Voice 4: based on the new information we get in January.

[0:35:38] Voice 4: I'll speak with the director of finance

[0:35:39] Voice 4: and it may be that we can work

[0:35:40] Voice 4: with our communication specialist to just put caveats.

[0:35:43] Voice 4: I go out earlier in December and just have caveats

[0:35:45] Voice 4: that the numbers will change as we go out.

[0:35:48] Voice 4: I'll speak with them around that.

[0:35:49] Voice 4: And then I think given the election period,

[0:35:51] Voice 4: we will speak with either Islands Trust chair and or the chair of FPC as the committee's reconstituted post-election

[0:35:59] Voice 4: and just seek guidance at that time if that works for the committee.

[0:36:03] Voice 4: Otherwise, we can bring a project charter back to the first meeting of the committee at its first business meeting.

[0:36:12] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Director.

[0:36:13] Trustee Fast: I think, as I recall, Trust Council was surprisingly uninterested in having a lot of budget consultation.

[0:36:23] Trustee Fast: And so this is a trimmed down light version and working around the election period.

[0:36:32] Trustee Fast: I note that our next meeting, October 15th, is two days before the election.

[0:36:40] Trustee Fast: So we'll still need to be at work as FPC to facilitate getting a draft budget to Trust Council before the election day.

[0:36:54] Trustee Fast: two days later. And so I'm wondering if we can pass this motion with the words as amended

[0:37:06] Trustee Fast: after it to reflect the changes in the timing that you were going to make, Director Freighter,

[0:37:12] Trustee Fast: what do you suggest? Certainly,

[0:37:14] Voice 4: if you look at the alternatives in the RFD, so if we could

[0:37:16] Voice 4: go to page sorry let me get there 27 you go to the bottom of page 27 we do have one there where

[0:37:26] Voice 4: you just request staff to return with a different project charter you could certainly lean into that

[0:37:30] Voice 4: alternative number two and we can come back with some revisions if that's the will of the committee

[0:37:35] Voice 4: because

[0:37:37] Trustee Fast: we do have another meeting uh coming up yet this term yeah

[0:37:41] Voice 4: so we could certainly bring

[0:37:41] Voice 4: it back to that meeting if you like okay

[0:37:44] Trustee Fast: um what do you think uh trustees can i see any more hands

[0:37:51] Trustee Fast: or can i receive a motion trustee yates uh

[0:37:57] Voice 19: i think my preference would be to make to make this

[0:38:01] Voice 19: recommendation but as amended by the discussion at this meeting would that work just as well

[0:38:10] Voice 4: uh certainly yes we can acknowledge that we'd like that you'd like it to go out as soon as possible

[0:38:15] Voice 4: after the December, what I'm hearing from the committee

[0:38:17] Voice 4: is an interest in launching the engagement

[0:38:19] Voice 4: as soon as possible after the December meeting

[0:38:22] Voice 4: and for the longest period of time possible

[0:38:24] Voice 4: and that we would, I would assure the committee

[0:38:26] Voice 4: that we would put an asterisk on the messaging

[0:38:31] Voice 4: to advise the public that numbers may change in January

[0:38:34] Voice 4: based on new information that arrives.

[0:38:38] Voice 4: Okay,

[0:38:39] Voice 19: so please go ahead and make a motion.

[0:38:41] Voice 19: I'd be happy

[0:38:41] Voice 19: to make that motion

[0:38:42] Voice 19: And I was just going to say I do agree with Trustee Elliott that we definitely need a longer engagement time.

[0:38:49] Voice 19: I think this is a better process, but as long as it's understood that we need a longer engagement time, that would be great.

[0:38:56] Voice 19: So I move that the Financial Planning Committee endorse the 2027-28 Budget Public Engagement Project Charter as amended.

[0:39:07] Voice 19: Thank you, Trustee Yates.

[0:39:09] Trustee Fast: And do I have a seconder?

[0:39:11] Trustee Fast: Trustee Boland, are you seconding?

[0:39:13] Trustee Fast: yeah or did okay thank you and uh discussion not seeing any hands then thank you everybody

[0:39:26] Trustee Fast: i'll call the vote all those in favor thank you very much and lower your hands please

[0:39:37] Trustee Fast: any opposed thank you trustees we are working through the business that passes unanimously

[0:39:45] Trustee Fast: unanimously and we're on to 8.1 um this is our uh new investment policy and so cross for decision

[0:40:01] Trustee Fast: and uh please take it away um director colbert thank

[0:40:06] Voice 1: you chair yeah we're calling it a new

[0:40:09] Voice 1: investment our new policy this is basically our practices we've been following for years but it

[0:40:15] Voice 1: It hasn't been documented in terms of a policy and procedures.

[0:40:19] Voice 1: So I'm bringing forward is two documents.

[0:40:22] Voice 1: The first one being the, excuse me, investment policy itself.

[0:40:28] Voice 1: And I'm looking at it since I've put this in the package,

[0:40:32] Voice 1: I see a few more tweaks that can, I think,

[0:40:34] Voice 1: add some clarity and some strength to it.

[0:40:37] Voice 1: One being in the purpose statement,

[0:40:39] Voice 1: I'd like to make reference and add that this is compliant with provincial

[0:40:43] Voice 1: provincial legislation so it's not that we just made these up but you'll see in the last section

[0:40:48] Voice 1: it does identify which legislation we're talking about but i'm going to i'd like to propose to add

[0:40:52] Voice 1: that statement in the purpose statement as well that

[0:40:57] Trustee Fast: sounds good and you're on page 29 starting

[0:40:59] Trustee Fast: but everybody by the way and uh please go ahead yeah

[0:41:02] Voice 1: so we're now on i guess slide 31 which is

[0:41:05] Voice 1: the first page of the investment policy um as we scroll down the key i think the most important

[0:41:11] Voice 1: important part here is to look at is B5, the authorized investment includes. So these are

[0:41:17] Voice 1: all the things that legislation says we're allowed to look at. So I mentioned a couple of weeks ago,

[0:41:22] Voice 1: we received all our taxation levies came in. So over $10 million came in. So we had to look at

[0:41:27] Voice 1: what's the best way to invest it. And we're looking at things like highest rate of return,

[0:41:34] Voice 1: what's the risk return, how much our cashflow, we can't just lock it all in.

[0:41:39] Voice 1: You know, if we just went strictly with high rates, we'd look at the longest lock-in to get us the best rates, but we do spend approximately a million dollars a month.

[0:41:50] Voice 1: So we have to make sure we have cash flow available to pay things like our suppliers, remuneration staff, and trustees, and other expenses.

[0:41:59] Voice 1: So we do take all that into consideration.

[0:42:01] Voice 1: These are things we looked at.

[0:42:03] Voice 1: We met with a handful of different investment firms, talked to them, and it was really interesting.

[0:42:09] Voice 1: we did them both on the same day and we actually pitted them one against the other and we gave

[0:42:15] Voice 1: them 24 hours they came back and they both provided increased rates even though the first rates were

[0:42:20] Voice 1: you know the best offer that they make us as a great returning client but they came back with

[0:42:26] Voice 1: the higher rates when we sort of let them know we weren't guaranteed to keep going the same

[0:42:32] Voice 1: investment firm so they both came back with higher rates and got both got piece of the pie

[0:42:36] Voice 1: um i'm just noticing now section pieces b6 and b7 can fall off because that's more talking about

[0:42:45] Voice 1: the procedure side which is not need to be brought forward to trust counsel so those two

[0:42:51] Voice 1: which

[0:42:51] Voice 5: those again uh

[0:42:53] Voice 1: b6 which is at the bottom of page 31 and b7 the top of page 32 because those

[0:43:01] Voice 1: are more procedure stuff that was should have been in the procedure manual sorry with i missed

[0:43:06] Voice 1: that before i submit it to the package okay

[0:43:09] Trustee Fast: hang on one sec i see

[0:43:10] Voice 1: a couple hands

[0:43:11] Trustee Fast: yeah and uh i'd

[0:43:14] Trustee Fast: like to pick them up as we go along trustee patrick um they're

[0:43:20] Trustee Patrick: i know they're kind of high

[0:43:21] Trustee Patrick: level but is there anything about uh avoiding oil and gas investments um

[0:43:29] Voice 1: we haven't built in

[0:43:30] Voice 1: specific you know green clauses there's lots of different investment things we could look at

[0:43:36] Voice 1: uh so we're not strictly excluding those but we aren't going out and looking for them either

[0:43:43] Voice 1: thank

[0:43:46] Trustee Fast: you uh trustee elliot um

[0:43:50] Voice 7: okay well i do think on that point there is

[0:43:55] Voice 7: something to be considered and i wonder if the current policy references that at all um

[0:44:02] Voice 7: when i look at the like the links to supreme forms and documents actually does that reserves

[0:44:08] Voice 7: and surplus policy is that the only one that we have like this is a new policy yeah

[0:44:16] Voice 1: so that's the

[0:44:17] Voice 1: sorry the section d the reference to reserve and surplus policy 651 so that's an existing policy

[0:44:26] Voice 1: that's on schedule to be reviewed in september so it's they're all so intertwined that it's hard to

[0:44:32] Voice 1: really do one without the other but i want to do this one first because they said we had 11 million

[0:44:37] Voice 1: dollars hitting us we I need to make sure I was investing them properly so I had to create this

[0:44:42] Voice 1: document this policy document right away to make sure that we had the guidance a lot of the stuff

[0:44:48] Voice 1: we looked as it comes into provincial legislation we looked at some other major local governments

[0:44:54] Voice 1: see what they had and some of theirs like said one one district I looked at theirs was like 20 pages

[0:45:01] Voice 1: long and defined it was like it was overkill for what we need as an investment policy oh thank you

[0:45:10] Trustee Fast: I'm wondering if we should let the director finish his report, since I thought that might be just one topic. Can people hang on and we'll let the director finish his report and then we can have the questions? I'm seeing some nods. Okay, please go ahead. Sorry.

[0:45:26] Trustee Fast: you know

[0:45:27] Voice 1: um yeah so this like said this is the high level this is the guidance rules we're

[0:45:34] Voice 1: following when we're making our investment options and then we attached as an information

[0:45:38] Voice 1: purposes only the next two pages is the investment procedures so these don't normally come forward

[0:45:45] Voice 1: but because this was a net new policy i just want to let you know this is the due diligence that

[0:45:50] Voice 1: goes on behind the scenes when we make our decisions how we invest who we invest with

[0:45:54] Voice 1: how much we invest. It is a very rigorous process. And I said, this is what we've been

[0:45:59] Voice 1: doing forever. We just never had it documented on paper. So now I can bring it forward to

[0:46:04] Voice 1: this team and then Trust Council next month and say, this is what's going on behind the

[0:46:10] Voice 1: scenes to give you some comfort that we are following the right process, the controls

[0:46:14] Voice 1: that we need to make sure our investments are all well made. I think it might be a good

[0:46:20] Voice 1: idea. So remember, policies is the discretion coming through FPC and Trust Council for

[0:46:26] Voice 1: feedback. In certain cases, I've brought, I've attached procedures just to give some extra

[0:46:30] Voice 1: support and rationale, but usually the procedures gets approved by the senior leadership team

[0:46:36] Voice 1: within Islands Trust. So if you could point

[0:46:39] Trustee Fast: here to come back to questions.

[0:46:42] Trustee Fast: Very good. That was my question. Okay. And I'm going back to questions now.

[0:46:47] Trustee Fast: Thanks everybody for waiting. And Trustee Yates.

[0:46:50] Trustee Fast: Thank

[0:46:51] Voice 19: you, Dr. Coburn. I do think that it is incumbent on us as Islands Trust and as responsible citizens to consider ethical investment and not just to consider it, but to prioritize it.

[0:47:10] Voice 19: There are ethical investment companies in British Columbia who can advise accordingly and get very good returns on things like green energy, for example, which we know is going to be the way of the future.

[0:47:28] Voice 19: We know for a fact that oil and gas has a lifespan, and at some point it will not be worth investing in fossil fuel. So I really think that one of the goals under policy should be to not just consider ethical investment, but to prioritize ethical investment.

[0:47:54] Voice 19: investment.

[0:47:57] Trustee Fast: Thank you. I'm going in order as I see the hands here. Trustee Peterson.

[0:48:05] Voice 11: Yeah, thank you. And thank you, Chair Patrick, for bringing this topic up because I think

[0:48:11] Voice 11: my perspective is that Islands Trust, given our mandate, ought to seriously be thinking about

[0:48:21] Voice 11: where it is investing its money

[0:48:23] Voice 11: and that it should be investing consistent

[0:48:26] Voice 11: with our preserve and protect goals.

[0:48:33] Voice 11: Anything else seems odd

[0:48:37] Voice 11: and I would assume this is probably going to need

[0:48:41] Voice 11: to be a discussion for dress council

[0:48:44] Voice 11: if the policy is going to be amended in that way.

[0:48:47] Voice 11: But it seems to me to be like really straightforward that we should be investing consistent with our mandate.

[0:49:01] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Peterson.

[0:49:02] Trustee Fast: Trustee Elliott.

[0:49:06] Voice 7: Perhaps the director has a comment in response before I ask a question.

[0:49:10] Trustee Fast: Oh, sorry,

[0:49:11] Voice 7: I missed your hand.

[0:49:12] Voice 7: No problem.

[0:49:13] Voice 7: Thank

[0:49:13] Voice 1: you, Chair.

[0:49:14] Voice 1: Just two quick points just to let people know some of the analysis we go through.

[0:49:18] Voice 1: as I focused on section five that's on the screen right now,

[0:49:21] Voice 1: these are guiding us what we're allowed to invest in.

[0:49:24] Voice 1: And right now we do not invest in security or stocks.

[0:49:28] Voice 1: We invest in things like general GICs,

[0:49:34] Voice 1: excuse me, high investment accounts,

[0:49:36] Voice 1: short-term that we can do role.

[0:49:38] Voice 1: We basically have created a laddered approach

[0:49:40] Voice 1: that we invest in multiple different products.

[0:49:42] Voice 1: So at every few months money's coming due

[0:49:44] Voice 1: that we can look at our needs and reinvest.

[0:49:46] Voice 1: So we're not really playing the stock marker and looking at some of these companies that were, you know, some of the discussions in the last few comments have to stay avoid from.

[0:49:57] Voice 1: That's why I say we're not looking at it, but we're not doing the stocks.

[0:50:01] Voice 1: We're not really going after any of those companies.

[0:50:03] Voice 1: When we deal with the banks, it's going into a GIC.

[0:50:07] Voice 1: And the banks and the groups that are identified here in Section 5, they've got some rules on how they invest behind the scenes.

[0:50:15] Voice 1: But we're investing in short term and very liquid investments with established criteria and firms that have been identified in legislation. So we're not even allowed to go into the stock market.

[0:50:28] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Director Coburn. I'm

[0:50:30] Voice 1: putting myself on

[0:50:31] Trustee Fast: the list. Yeah, I'm going on the list after Trustee Getty. So, Trustee Elliott, did you have another part of your question?

[0:50:41] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[0:50:42] Voice 7: So perhaps then we should have a policy about investments shall not be in securities, short term stocks, such and such, that it's not necessarily an ethical question, but it's the type of investment. And maybe that does need to be clarified. So that was my first point. Thank you for answering that.

[0:51:07] Voice 7: The second comment that I'd like is around listing the procedures. And I think it's going to be confusing to attach procedures for council's consideration. And this will be my comment for the next policy as well on procurement.

[0:51:30] Voice 7: Because required procedures, you know, that's what directors and the CAO oversees.

[0:51:39] Voice 7: Trustees can give comment on policy, but that's kind of the limit of our knowledge.

[0:51:45] Voice 7: And I think this kind of process, while it does give comfort that there is a procedure, I think that's understood.

[0:51:53] Voice 7: I think procedures are in the hands of staff and the managers.

[0:51:56] Voice 7: So I don't think we need to see procedures. And frankly, when we get to the second policy on procurement, it's downright confusing and will cause more challenges than it's going to provide solutions.

[0:52:11] Voice 7: So, my recommendation is to not include procedures, but I'd like to hear from the director and maybe the CAO about that, because if this is a different way of presenting policy or we're going to involve council in discussing procedures, that's kind of a big shift.

[0:52:26] Voice 7: We've never had that before. Thanks.

[0:52:30] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Over to you, CAO Brani.

[0:52:33] Trustee Fast: yeah

[0:52:34] Voice 14: thank you through the chair and i appreciate the point um trustee elliott i think um less so

[0:52:40] Voice 14: on this case as director coburn said he wanted to provide it as a bit of background context but

[0:52:45] Voice 14: um for reference on the next item the procurement policy i did agree that in that instance it would

[0:52:52] Voice 14: make sense to share the procedure primarily because the changes to the policy relative to

[0:52:57] Voice 14: the existing policy are quite extensive and and one of the major changes is moving a lot of the

[0:53:03] Voice 14: pieces that were in the policy into procedure um and so the thinking there was that it might be

[0:53:08] Voice 14: helpful and assuage any concerns trustees might have about where did all those pieces from the

[0:53:14] Voice 14: policy go to show where that that they're remaining in procedure but i think i take your point that it

[0:53:20] Voice 14: also has the risk of um causing some confusion and so we can we can consider that when it goes

[0:53:25] Voice 14: to council um i do think though that um all right this is not going to be our normal practice though

[0:53:32] Voice 14: either as director coburn said we don't normally do this um but particularly in the procurement

[0:53:36] Voice 14: one because of the the significance of the change and that by the primary changes we're moving it

[0:53:42] Voice 14: into procedure we opted to include it but appreciate that if it's causing more confusion

[0:53:46] Voice 14: than it than it's worth um then maybe that's not really effective thank you thank

[0:53:53] Trustee Fast: you okay

[0:53:54] Trustee Fast: Okay, that's food for thought too.

[0:53:56] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty?

[0:53:58] Voice 17: I would like to echo the comments by Chair Patrick and Trustee Yates and Trustee Peterson.

[0:54:08] Voice 17: And with respect to regular bank investments and GICs, I think there's still the advice that I get from my financial advisor

[0:54:21] Voice 17: is that there's still different GICs and different safe investments

[0:54:26] Voice 17: that can be what they're termed ethical.

[0:54:31] Voice 17: And I think that if anybody actually started to look at, you know,

[0:54:36] Voice 17: like people question pension plans that are investing in certain things

[0:54:39] Voice 17: that shouldn't be or, you know, there's a debate about it.

[0:54:43] Voice 17: I think that if the advisors that we've got can help us identify

[0:54:49] Voice 17: identify the safest things to use that can be considered ethical, that would be the best

[0:54:58] Voice 17: position for us. And if we need to have that, I think we should have that as some sort of a

[0:55:04] Voice 17: mandate or recommend, not stronger than a recommendation, that that's the first thing

[0:55:10] Voice 17: that we look at. And that's the advice that we ask for. And then when you find all those

[0:55:15] Voice 17: pieces, the rest of us can invest in them too.

[0:55:21] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Getty. I'm on the list next. So sorry, I didn't get my electronic hand up in time, but I am keeping the list. And I just want to say I, too, am in agreement about, with the previous speakers, most of them, about what Trustee Yates called prioritized ethical investment.

[0:55:46] Trustee Fast: and uh i uh i'm pretty sure that the municipal finance authority has a green fund now and um

[0:55:55] Trustee Fast: and i have heard over the past 10 years with discussions about this including at islands trust

[0:56:02] Trustee Fast: uh at one point and uh and at various uh union of municipal um employees or sorry

[0:56:12] Trustee Fast: UBCM and other local government officials have been asking the same kind of questions.

[0:56:18] Trustee Fast: So I would encourage staff to look around among those authorized investments.

[0:56:25] Trustee Fast: I like your idea, Director Coburn, of making it clear that these are whichever parts are in legislation to make that clear, that it's not the Islands Trust just deciding these things.

[0:56:41] Trustee Fast: And then I'm going to follow up with Trustee Elliott, too, her idea about just stick to giving trustees the policy.

[0:56:52] Trustee Fast: I like that idea because if you put it in front of elected officials, we're going to weigh in on them and on procedures.

[0:57:03] Trustee Fast: And it might not be the best use of everybody's time.

[0:57:10] Trustee Fast: I don't mind presenting it as an information item in a separate briefing even, so that it's separate from, but that's just my input there.

[0:57:19] Trustee Fast: And I'm going to go on now to Trustee Peterson.

[0:57:24] Voice 11: Thank you, Chair. Good conversation.

[0:57:26] Voice 11: conversation speaking of confusion as trustee elliott mentioned uh the director had talked

[0:57:34] Voice 11: about securities and yet on page 31 i see one two three four different types of securities that are

[0:57:41] Voice 11: in the authorized investments list so i'm not being a real financial whiz i'm not sure is it

[0:57:49] Voice 11: a security or is it a security um so just highlighting one piece of of uh of of uh the

[0:57:57] Voice 11: puzzle here that may come across as confusing to some i'm

[0:58:03] Trustee Fast: going to go to the director now to

[0:58:04] Trustee Fast: respond director coburn thank

[0:58:07] Voice 1: you chair yeah let me expand on that so i didn't it wasn't very clear

[0:58:10] Voice 1: the first time around part of our decisions when we're looking at our investment options we're

[0:58:15] Voice 1: We're looking at, one of the key points is guaranteed.

[0:58:21] Voice 1: So the options we invest in our base funds are guaranteed.

[0:58:24] Voice 1: So it's impossible for us to lose money.

[0:58:26] Voice 1: It's all with, like I said, some of these institutions shown in Section 5.

[0:58:31] Voice 1: When we're looking at GICs and the options we're going through, they're all guaranteed.

[0:58:35] Voice 1: With stocks, you could lose everything.

[0:58:37] Voice 1: So we, and that's why you see a lot of different governments will stay away from the stocks.

[0:58:42] Voice 1: stocks um other things we're looking at some of the investment options out there some of them have

[0:58:49] Voice 1: great you know better rates and more interesting things but a lot of them are restricted to

[0:58:55] Voice 1: 250 000 so we're looking at that means you know if we're freaking divide 11 million into 250 000

[0:59:02] Voice 1: it's a lot of different options we're managing it's a lot of admin time so we lose some of the

[0:59:06] Voice 1: benefit there um those are a couple comments we're looking i mean there's some of these some

[0:59:14] Voice 1: of these high impact gics they do have the ethical components built into them so it's

[0:59:19] Voice 1: it's hard for us to say if we were to try and reach out every investment firm and every investment

[0:59:24] Voice 1: option we have that could take us weeks of work and it's it's something we need to be we're aware

[0:59:30] Voice 1: aware of and that's to say it's a fine line between not going out investing in but trying

[0:59:37] Voice 1: to at the same time make sure our investments aren't crossing a line into something that might

[0:59:40] Voice 1: be deemed unethical so there is

[0:59:44] Voice 2: a lot of things behind

[0:59:45] Voice 1: the scenes that do we do take into

[0:59:47] Voice 1: consideration and that's why i think i do support your recommendation that when this goes everything

[0:59:53] Voice 1: goes forward to trust council we drop off the procedures documents and then we can focus more

[0:59:58] Voice 1: more on why we do in the future.

[1:00:00] Voice 1: behind it and the policy that requires approval at this at trust council thank you chair okay

[1:00:06] Trustee Fast: thank you and i'm going to go now to manager jane yes

[1:00:13] Voice 2: i just wanted to add a small clarification

[1:00:16] Voice 2: i used to work with the investment firm i used to support more than a billion dollar

[1:00:22] Voice 2: book of business on the investment side so when we say securities it doesn't mean like it's

[1:00:30] Voice 2: stocks like securities also include bonds so basically when we are talking about securities

[1:00:37] Voice 2: of Canada or a province they don't issue like stocks they issue just uh bonds and same thing

[1:00:45] Voice 2: for uh municipality regional district or greater board thank

[1:00:54] Trustee Fast: you that's helpful um thank you very

[1:00:56] Trustee Fast: much okay i'm going to go back to my list now trustee boland um

[1:01:06] Voice 10: i think the director

[1:01:11] Voice 10: coburn answered my question in a way in that you know there are so many um guidelines constraints

[1:01:18] Voice 10: safety nets around this and we have our trust policy statement and we have our you know reason

[1:01:27] Voice 10: reason for being here that I really think that it's not very necessary to go into this level of

[1:01:33] Voice 10: detail. The policies are driven by legislation and policies at higher levels within the province

[1:01:40] Voice 10: and indeed the moral and ethical values of everybody around the table here. So I feel

[1:01:47] Voice 10: like we should just leave this and let it go the way it is and the way it's been put together by

[1:01:54] Voice 10: our extremely competent and knowledgeable staff so thank you thank

[1:02:01] Trustee Fast: you trustee Boland trustee Elliot

[1:02:03] Trustee Fast: thank

[1:02:05] Voice 7: you I echo that and most of what I've heard but I also did hear the director say high impact

[1:02:13] Voice 7: or ethical funds and so could that be added as an authorized investment knowing that staff are

[1:02:22] Voice 7: looking out for that but at least it's in the scope of the list of investments that are

[1:02:27] Voice 7: authorized so high impact gics or or ethical gics i think that's something the conservancy

[1:02:34] Voice 7: also has if i'm remembering correctly but um yeah perhaps that could be added to the list

[1:02:40] Voice 7: and i do support removing anything but the most brief procedures uh table i just don't think

[1:02:48] Voice 7: we need to see that. Thanks.

[1:02:51] Voice 7: Thank you, Christy Elliott. Okay.

[1:02:53] Voice 7: Director Colbert?

[1:02:54] Voice 1: I just want to add one more point. This Section 5 that I keep

[1:02:57] Voice 1: coming back to, this is taking verbatim

[1:02:59] Voice 1: from legislation.

[1:03:00] Voice 1: So I don't think it'd be

[1:03:03] Voice 1: prudent on us to start adding our own

[1:03:05] Voice 1: additional clauses on top

[1:03:07] Voice 1: of what's in legislation.

[1:03:09] Voice 1: So it's things that in the back of our mind we are

[1:03:11] Voice 1: considering, but I don't think we can put it in our

[1:03:13] Voice 1: policy, because now we'd be

[1:03:14] Voice 1: different from legislation, and I think

[1:03:17] Voice 1: that'd be more of an issue for us.

[1:03:20] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Director Coburn.

[1:03:21] Trustee Fast: Is that where you would be thinking of putting the words as?

[1:03:27] Voice 1: Yeah, in Section 5.

[1:03:29] Trustee Fast: Legislation?

[1:03:29] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[1:03:30] Voice 1: Yeah.

[1:03:30] Voice 1: What I'll do is in Section 1, I'm recommending a general comment.

[1:03:33] Voice 1: But here in Section 5, I can put the specific section where this all came from.

[1:03:37] Voice 1: That way it's really clear that I didn't make this up.

[1:03:41] Trustee Fast: I think that's really helpful as this committee in terms of our committee helping to facilitate effective discussion at Trust Council table.

[1:03:51] Trustee Fast: director marler yeah

[1:03:55] Voice 13: thank you um and thank you i was just going to comment on that but what i was

[1:03:59] Voice 13: going to say is as it's a policy of council um this is the limitation so these are the opportunities

[1:04:06] Voice 13: for investment but if you want something uh about green investment that is within these so for

[1:04:14] Voice 13: example let's say it's the security of the municipal finance authority um you can have a

[1:04:19] Voice 13: separate policy below that just says that when considering investments in these policies staff

[1:04:25] Voice 13: will look for green opportunities and we'd have to define what we mean by that so as long as it fits

[1:04:34] Voice 13: within that you can provide a bit more of a subset of what you would like you just can't

[1:04:38] Voice 13: expand this list but you could narrow it if you're if you'd like to do that thanks thank you

[1:04:46] Trustee Fast: that's great because we were thinking already correct me if i'm wrong director uh colburn of

[1:04:52] Trustee Fast: removing policies or what's currently down there as six and seven right as being procedures so we

[1:05:00] Trustee Fast: could replace six with something uh that was um uh prioritize ethical green investments

[1:05:10] Trustee Fast: from the among the above list or something um would that be fair he's

[1:05:20] Trustee Fast: writing yes yeah okay he's not shaking his head or jumping up and down his hair

[1:05:25] Trustee Fast: did not go on fire okay um who would like to think about what should we

[1:05:31] Trustee Fast: replace six and seven with if we want to revise this policy or do we want to

[1:05:42] Trustee Fast: we'll leave those procedure points in there six and seven or do we want to send it all in as is

[1:05:50] Trustee Fast: in which case the to trust council which would be the recommendation that's on our cover sheet

[1:05:58] Trustee Fast: there on page two there's probably other things we could do and it's also oh yes it's also on

[1:06:12] Trustee Fast: on page 29 trustee boland um derek

[1:06:17] Voice 10: in general in the islands trust you would have staff procedures

[1:06:21] Voice 10: to guide any policy and we wouldn't necessarily have to see them am i correct in saying that

[1:06:29] Voice 10: yes my recommendation would be to remove seven and leave six basically and then i think we should go

[1:06:37] Voice 10: to trust council and we should just leave it as it is given the discussion we've had about the

[1:06:44] Voice 10: safety net that wraps around us in many ways we should avoid over complicating it as you suggested

[1:06:51] Voice 10: where we create um exceptions and you know i think our regulation in general we have endless endless

[1:07:02] Voice 10: policies which nobody is familiar with sometimes policies contradict each other because we create

[1:07:07] Voice 10: so many detailed you know exceptions based on a discussion such as we've just had so i would go

[1:07:16] Voice 10: with you know plain ordinary vanilla and don't show us the procedures because you always have

[1:07:23] Voice 10: staff procedures to support a policy and leave it exactly the way it is and i would move that

[1:07:30] Voice 10: seven is removed and otherwise we just go forth with what you've prepared thanks

[1:07:37] Voice 10: Thanks.

[1:07:41] Trustee Fast: I'm going to let that pause for a moment because I have a clarification question.

[1:07:47] Trustee Fast: Another change was to add the words compliant with BC legislation into number five up there.

[1:08:00] Trustee Fast: I guess my, would that be correct, Director Coburn?

[1:08:05] Voice 1: I'm going to add the words compliant with provincial legislation to the purpose statement.

[1:08:09] Voice 1: And then in Section 5, I'm going to add per community charter, Section 183.

[1:08:15] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you.

[1:08:17] Trustee Fast: So I'm wondering, hearing the discussion here, and you've already been taking notes that we might be able to put into a, craft into a motion.

[1:08:29] Trustee Fast: Am I, how does the committee feel about moving the motion with maybe suggesting as amended during the meeting, right?

[1:08:51] Trustee Fast: I'm not seeing anybody's hands fly up.

[1:08:53] Trustee Fast: So I'm waiting for a motion then, Trustee Boland.

[1:09:00] Trustee Fast: I would be happy to make that motion.

[1:09:05] Trustee Fast: Okay. Can we have that up on the screen, I guess? That's on page 30. Where is it?

[1:09:13] Voice 1: Page 29.

[1:09:19] Trustee Fast: 29, yeah.

[1:09:20] Voice 1: Or 30, sorry. It's on both pages.

[1:09:29] Trustee Fast: There's the wording on the screen, Trustee Boland. And if you

[1:09:33] Voice 10: might want to

[1:09:34] Trustee Fast: add, as amended.

[1:09:35] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[1:09:37] Voice 10: I move that financial planning committee forward a draft of a new investment policy to

[1:09:43] Voice 10: Ernst Trust Council for approval as amended during the financial planning committee meeting today.

[1:09:56] Voice 10: I'm not sure if that's grammatically correct, but you get the sense of it. Put a comma in there

[1:10:01] Voice 10: somewhere.

[1:10:05] Trustee Fast: Nancy, is it you back there? Can somebody put that up on the, or Robert,

[1:10:09] Trustee Fast: up on the screen so we can all see it and before i ask for a seconder i'm going to ask about the

[1:10:23] Trustee Fast: wording uh is everybody comfortable with that wording do we want to insert the word discussion

[1:10:32] Trustee Fast: with the manager or is there

[1:10:35] Voice 10: anything else discussion would be good after the discussion

[1:10:38] Voice 10: because it was it was a good discussion and where would you like the word discussion

[1:10:44] Voice 10: after committee but I think they you know we don't need to say with anybody basically it's

[1:10:55] Voice 10: you know the attendees are the attendees so I'd say after discussion in the meeting of yeah that's

[1:11:02] Voice 10: good

[1:11:02] Trustee Fast: okay how about anybody else I'm not seeing anybody's hands fly up to second this and I'm

[1:11:10] Trustee Fast: wondering um trustee Graham well

[1:11:15] Voice 12: I was going to second it if you're prepared to have the motion

[1:11:18] Voice 12: can uh second it

[1:11:20] Trustee Fast: okay but just before you do then thank you very much i didn't know if there was

[1:11:25] Trustee Fast: kind of if if the assembly was looking at it and going i don't know okay and um any more wording

[1:11:34] Trustee Fast: adjustments and looking at you director coburn is that going to be clear enough for you yes i've

[1:11:40] Voice 1: been scribbling all over the policy as we've been talking so i've got it all down so it looks

[1:11:45] Voice 1: Slightly different

[1:11:46] Trustee Fast: than the one

[1:11:46] Voice 1: that comes forward to Trust Council.

[1:11:50] Voice 19: Okay. And Trustee Yates, you have your hand up.

[1:11:53] Voice 19: Just a question. Director Marler did suggest a way that we could get a statement in there

[1:12:01] Voice 19: about ethical investment. It sounded reasonable to me. Is that possible?

[1:12:10] Trustee Fast: I think it would be good to make that motion before we pass this one.

[1:12:16] Voice 19: Okay. I don't have time to do that right now. I'm just trying to take notes on this one, but I'll let it

[1:12:24] Trustee Fast: go for now.

[1:12:24] Trustee Fast: Okay. I

[1:12:24] Trustee Fast: think he had suggested replacing number seven with something like prioritized ethical green investments will be prioritized. I don't know. Something like that.

[1:12:41] Trustee Fast: I see Director Marner's hand up. Go ahead, Director Marner.

[1:12:47] Voice 13: Yeah, thank you. Just process. One option is somebody could just move to table this motion

[1:12:54] Voice 13: or entertain a different motion and then come back to this. That's one option.

[1:12:57] Voice 13: The other option is you could just go ahead with this motion and then separate motion to recommend

[1:13:03] Voice 13: to Trust Council that they ask staff to add in some language about ethical or ask staff to bring

[1:13:09] Voice 13: some language about ethical to Trust Council for consideration at that point. That's another

[1:13:15] Voice 13: other option or you could just delay this to the next meeting so a few options for you thank you

[1:13:21] Trustee Fast: thank you um i appreciate that and i um i think that might be good it'll give everybody a chance

[1:13:27] Trustee Fast: to think about the wording um so how would you like to proceed trustees if somebody would like

[1:13:34] Trustee Fast: to trustee getty is

[1:13:38] Voice 17: that uh i guess it's a question for director coburn is that uh one of

[1:13:43] Voice 17: of the amendments that you've been considering in terms of the notes that

[1:13:47] Voice 17: you're taking on this policy to add something about green investments as a

[1:13:52] Voice 17: priority?

[1:13:52] Voice 17: Yeah.

[1:13:53] Voice 1: Thank you, Trustee Eddy. So I did mark down as a, we're going to,

[1:13:56] Voice 1: we mentioned, we're going to get rid of 0.7, the current 0.7,

[1:14:00] Voice 1: and I've got a note to replace it with a new 0.7 prioritizing ethical and

[1:14:05] Voice 1: green investments and

[1:14:07] Voice 17: leave it vague.

[1:14:08] Voice 17: Okay. So

[1:14:09] Voice 17: with respect to the motion that's on the,

[1:14:11] Voice 17: the table that has not been seconded that is approved as amended during this discussion

[1:14:17] Voice 17: that it's included thank

[1:14:19] Trustee Fast: you and i see manager jane's hand up uh

[1:14:25] Voice 2: just want to share a bit of

[1:14:26] Voice 2: my experience in the investment area so i would say like that green investment that's a good idea

[1:14:36] Voice 2: but in the past when i was working with investment firms it usually applies to long-term

[1:14:41] Voice 2: investment. With short-term investment, like if we look for some GIC offered by a company

[1:14:48] Voice 2: which offer like green kind of GIC, it's quite possible that the risk rating of that

[1:14:57] Voice 2: GIC sugar might be way higher. And this is our operating budget money, like 10 million. So we

[1:15:05] Voice 2: want to make sure that we are super conservative with this investment. Like we have to balance

[1:15:11] Voice 2: balance different objectives. That is just my experience working in the investment firm in the

[1:15:17] Voice 2: past. Thank you.

[1:15:19] Trustee Fast: Thank you. That's very helpful. And I think we can look forward to discussing

[1:15:24] Trustee Fast: this at Trust Council too, because right now I think it's in our discussion that the manager

[1:15:32] Trustee Fast: is going to consider. So looking at the motion on the table there, coming up to 11.15 here,

[1:15:37] Trustee Fast: where we're going to take a break. I'm wondering, David, Graham, are you still prepared to second

[1:15:44] Trustee Fast: this motion?

[1:15:45] Voice 12: I am prepared to second that motion.

[1:15:47] Trustee Fast: Okay. So the motion is moved and seconded.

[1:15:51] Trustee Fast: And any more discussion? Good discussion. Thank you, everybody. Please raise your hand if you're

[1:16:01] Trustee Fast: in favor of this motion. Thank you. And lower your hands. Any opposed? Thank you very much,

[1:16:17] Trustee Fast: everybody that passes unanimously um and uh we're going to take a break now would people like 10

[1:16:24] Trustee Fast: minutes was susan yates sorry

[1:16:28] Voice 19: i just wanted to thank manager jane for the comments regarding

[1:16:32] Voice 19: green investments usually being longer term i understand that it's a good observation but i'm

[1:16:39] Voice 19: really happy that if we can just consider ethical investments or prioritize them in some way

[1:16:47] Voice 19: I just think it's incumbent upon us.

[1:16:50] Voice 19: And if it turns out we cannot do that, that's fine.

[1:16:53] Voice 19: But I really believe it's important that we make that a priority.

[1:16:57] Voice 19: Thank you so much.

[1:16:59] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:17:00] Trustee Fast: This is policy coming from the trustees.

[1:17:03] Trustee Fast: That's great.

[1:17:03] Trustee Fast: Let's take a break now, and we'll come back at 1130.

[1:17:08] Trustee Fast: Sound good?

[1:17:09] Trustee Fast: Yeah.

[1:17:10] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:17:11] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:17:12] Voice 5: Thank you.

[1:17:13] Voice 5: Okay.

[1:17:14] Voice 5: I've

[1:24:02] Voice 15: got a few more minutes.

[1:24:03] Voice 15: Okay.

[1:24:03] Voice 15: Phase two.

[1:24:54] Voice 15: Director

[1:25:03] Voice 7: Coburn, your mic is on just so you're aware.

[1:30:30] Voice 5: Hello.

[1:30:35] Voice 18: Hi.

[1:30:37] Trustee Fast: Hi, everybody.

[1:30:39] Trustee Fast: Thank you for coming back.

[1:30:43] Trustee Fast: It appears that the wood chipper has stopped chipping up branches outside my window,

[1:30:49] Trustee Fast: so I've opened some windows.

[1:30:50] Trustee Fast: And when I see a few more cameras on, then we can reconvene.

[1:31:08] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[1:31:09] Trustee Fast: People

[1:31:10] Voice 5: are coming in.

[1:31:11] Trustee Fast: I think we've got maybe a quorum.

[1:31:13] Trustee Fast: from, oh,

[1:31:16] Voice 5: Trustee Elliott, are you there?

[1:31:26] Voice 5: Yes, I am.

[1:31:28] Trustee Fast: Oh, very good.

[1:31:29] Trustee Fast: Okay, I think we might be all accounted for here.

[1:31:31] Trustee Fast: This is wonderful.

[1:31:32] Trustee Fast: Thanks, everybody.

[1:31:33] Trustee Fast: Let's get the meeting back underway.

[1:31:36] Trustee Fast: We've completed 8.1,

[1:31:38] Trustee Fast: and we're now at 8.2,

[1:31:42] Trustee Fast: revised procurement policy.

[1:31:46] Trustee Fast: This is a request for decision.

[1:31:49] Trustee Fast: And please take it away, Director Coburn.

[1:31:56] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair.

[1:31:57] Voice 1: So I'll start with where we ended up on the last one.

[1:32:00] Voice 1: Well, I'll ask everybody to ignore the procedures document attached, and I'll make sure I build

[1:32:05] Voice 1: some of that into the discussion we have when we look at the policy itself.

[1:32:11] Voice 1: I just wanted to start with saying, yeah, this policy was last updated over a decade

[1:32:15] Voice 1: ago, so it definitely needs to be at the very least refreshed.

[1:32:19] Voice 1: But one thing I did do is I did bring some, I modernized the approach to how we do procurement

[1:32:25] Voice 1: both the front end the solicitation side and the back end contract management side

[1:32:31] Voice 1: it's an area i've spent sort of the last 20 years in so i've i brought a lot of practice to what's

[1:32:36] Voice 1: happening in in government world in ministry world so the good news everything i'm looking

[1:32:41] Voice 1: at now it's in line with government procedures with trade agreements with trade law so i'm

[1:32:47] Voice 1: bringing some of that best practice to modernize our approach here so one thing i did notice is

[1:32:52] Voice 1: is pretty much we had sort of two options.

[1:32:55] Voice 1: Either it was a direct ward

[1:32:57] Voice 1: or it went to a full-blown request for proposal

[1:33:00] Voice 1: or RFP process,

[1:33:01] Voice 1: which usually meant a few months' time

[1:33:03] Voice 1: for both staff, vendors,

[1:33:06] Voice 1: and it's very cumbersome.

[1:33:08] Voice 1: And, you know, that's great

[1:33:10] Voice 1: when you're talking about projects

[1:33:11] Voice 1: that are in hundreds of thousands of dollars,

[1:33:13] Voice 1: but a lot of our opportunities we put out

[1:33:15] Voice 1: would be $20,000, $30,000, $40,000,

[1:33:17] Voice 1: and we'd have these very cumbersome processes.

[1:33:24] Voice 1: So what I did is I took the previous procurement policy, which was an eight-page document and split into two documents, a two-page policy, which is the high-level view, which I think everybody on this call really is interested in knowing.

[1:33:37] Voice 1: What are the ground rules?

[1:33:38] Voice 1: What's guiding us?

[1:33:39] Voice 1: And then behind the scenes, there's the how-to with lots and lots of detail that I'm sorry I included, and I probably got everybody to, I know once you see it, you can't not see it.

[1:33:48] Voice 1: But we're looking at some of the big changes that we incorporated.

[1:33:53] Voice 1: The biggest change, I think, is up front on the procurement or the solicitation side is for smaller dollar low-risk transactions under $50,000, we have a new process, which I stole from Ministry Land, which instead of taking three months and probably costing us thousands of dollars of staff time, is now a process we can do in probably two to three weeks and result in a contract.

[1:34:18] Voice 1: So that's going to be a major cost savings in terms of time for both staff and the vendor world.

[1:34:24] Voice 1: And I can tell you from the last two to three years in the ministry world, when they brought in that new approach, I'd say 80% of ministry transactions went through that approach.

[1:34:35] Voice 1: And the vendor world loved it because it sped up the process so much because it is a big effort for vendors to reply to RFP.

[1:34:42] Voice 1: So that was one of the really, really big changes.

[1:34:45] Voice 1: Another change we looked at was direct awards.

[1:34:47] Voice 1: Like I said, in the old world, it was kind of direct ward or RFP.

[1:34:50] Voice 1: We put tighter rules on when is a direct ward appropriate.

[1:34:54] Voice 1: I mean, it should always be our last choice, last option, not our, oh, it's an easy, quick way to get a few dollars out the door.

[1:35:02] Voice 1: So you put a lot more rules.

[1:35:04] Voice 1: And there are cases where it makes sense that a direct ward is the right option.

[1:35:08] Voice 1: Some of it's built into government policy things, like if you're dealing with another level of government, it makes sense it's going to be a direct ward.

[1:35:16] Voice 1: You're not going to make them go through a process when they are truly the vendor that you should be dealing with.

[1:35:22] Voice 1: The biggest issue we need to watch for is something called sole source, where instead of doing my research on the market, I'm going to say there's nobody out there and I want to do a direct award contract.

[1:35:32] Voice 1: So we really made it so that's not likely to happen in the future.

[1:35:39] Voice 1: And then the third thing we did, a big change, was the expense authority matrix.

[1:35:42] Voice 1: I did attach that. I think it might be, you know,

[1:35:45] Voice 1: that's a good way to have a peek at is we simplified the process in the old

[1:35:49] Voice 1: matrix. We had so many, like, you know, even managers,

[1:35:53] Voice 1: there's multiple degrees of what a manager can do. We looked at, said,

[1:35:56] Voice 1: if you're, you know, a manager and rather than have two or three different

[1:36:01] Voice 1: variations where 95% of them were the same, we consolidated,

[1:36:04] Voice 1: found where's the right point and make sure everybody was at the same level.

[1:36:08] Voice 1: So those are sort of the three really big changes we brought forward to this,

[1:36:15] Voice 1: policy. Would you mind scrolling down a little bit, Nancy? Thank you. Like I said, one thing

[1:36:20] Voice 1: we did is we used $50,000 as our threshold. The previous one had been $25,000 and it hadn't been

[1:36:28] Voice 1: changed in years. Just so you're aware, ministries use, based on trade agreements, $75,000. So we

[1:36:36] Voice 1: we've bumped it up from 25 to 50 and no,

[1:36:40] Voice 1: I'll just put a thought in your mind.

[1:36:42] Voice 1: Maybe next year we look at as things go well and we like this new approach,

[1:36:45] Voice 1: maybe we do take it up to a higher amount,

[1:36:47] Voice 1: but right now the leadership team was very comfortable with bringing our,

[1:36:51] Voice 1: our, our threshold from 25 to 50. Cause as you see right now,

[1:36:54] Voice 1: we hadn't changed it in so many years that you can't do a whole lot of work

[1:36:58] Voice 1: for under $25,000 when you're talking to consultants.

[1:37:01] Voice 1: consultants. I'm just looking at anything I want to grab from the procurement side that I don't

[1:37:09] Voice 1: know. But basically I said, we went through and we had even subcategories within some of those

[1:37:14] Voice 1: expansions of small dollar process, medium dollar process, large dollar process. And a lot of it is

[1:37:20] Voice 1: said building in the risk reward process. There are some things like, you know, if we say

[1:37:26] Voice 1: theoretically RFPs will bring us a request for proposal going to the market, more voice from

[1:37:31] Voice 1: and the vendor, but it is very time consuming.

[1:37:34] Voice 1: And for my dealing with this a lot in my past 20 years or so is vendors,

[1:37:39] Voice 1: a lot of vendors are walking away when the process outweighs the benefit.

[1:37:43] Voice 1: Like I said, if we're going to ask a vendor to spend a month time drafting a process

[1:37:48] Voice 1: or responding to a process that's for $20,000, they've probably just spent,

[1:37:54] Voice 1: they've just lost their profit in doing such a formal response.

[1:37:58] Voice 1: So hopefully this will open the doors and more vendors will want to deal

[1:38:01] Voice 1: deal with the Islands Trust moving forward. And then one last thing we did too, is we created

[1:38:09] Voice 1: something called an expense authority card. So every time a staff is assigned expense authority

[1:38:15] Voice 1: to be able to approve things as per the matrix, we're going to sit down with them, walk them

[1:38:19] Voice 1: through and give them a one-on-one and what this really means, what rules they really need to go

[1:38:23] Voice 1: over it. So it's a lot about documentation. We've documented the process step-by-step.

[1:38:29] Voice 1: You might say it's too much detail. I said, you shouldn't have to look at that.

[1:38:33] Voice 1: I apologize for including it, but it's something we will be sharing with staff.

[1:38:37] Voice 1: But this is the key thing we're looking at right now.

[1:38:39] Voice 1: This first page is the procurement policy on page, was it 37?

[1:38:44] Voice 1: Is that what I'm seeing?

[1:38:46] Voice 1: Make sure I got the right, yeah, 37.

[1:38:48] Voice 1: So these are all things, and that's one thing I looked at is provincial government has already created so much of this that I, you know,

[1:38:55] Voice 1: I wasn't afraid to steal, beg, and borrow from what's already created in ministry land and take it and then make it fit the needs of Islands Trust.

[1:39:04] Voice 1: Like I said, I can't loosen the doors, but I can tighten things and make things more appropriate to how we do business here in Islands Trust.

[1:39:11] Voice 1: So right now, I'm really comfortable our new process supports all the legislation, policy, trade agreements, trade law, and everything's in good order.

[1:39:20] Voice 1: And we've modernized it with new approaches, new thresholds, so we're not burdening staff and vendors.

[1:39:25] Voice 1: And I see, sorry, Trustee Elliott has a question.

[1:39:29] Trustee Fast: Sure. If you've finished your presentation, I'm going to go to questions now.

[1:39:34] Trustee Fast: now. So Trustee Elliott.

[1:39:36] Voice 7: I can wait if the director has more, it's more feedback on the policy.

[1:39:41] Voice 1: No, I think this is a good point. He said we could talk for a long time on this. But once

[1:39:45] Voice 1: we hear some comments from the attendees of this committee, that might spark a good conversation.

[1:39:51] Trustee Fast: Thank you for your introduction then. And please go ahead, Trustee Elliott.

[1:39:56] Voice 7: Great, thank you. I think the policy in general is really well worded. It's pretty straightforward

[1:40:05] Voice 7: forward um and seems to be briefer than some of our uh current policies so i really like that

[1:40:14] Voice 7: um going back to your briefing you made some comments about um the onerous um well the

[1:40:24] Voice 7: onerous nature of our current procurement policy may be turning off vendors who um it's just not

[1:40:31] Voice 7: worth their while to go through this and i think that should be captured in the implications

[1:40:36] Voice 7: perhaps under something like competitiveness or in you know ensuring that the organization

[1:40:44] Voice 7: is keeping up with the with where other governments and and agencies soliciting

[1:40:51] Voice 7: these this level of procurement are at so perhaps competitiveness ease of process you

[1:40:58] Voice 7: You made quite a few comments in your introduction that perhaps could be fleshed out in the briefing a little bit.

[1:41:09] Voice 7: And, yeah, I don't have any, I do have some comments on, yeah.

[1:41:16] Voice 7: Yeah. So the purpose captures a large number of concepts that you list as are in the Procurement

[1:41:29] Voice 7: Services Act and the applicable trade agreements. My question is whether staff who don't have your

[1:41:37] Voice 7: level of knowledge, and this is where you're coming from, Director Coburn, in your previous

[1:41:43] Voice 7: capacity at the province, you're very familiar with all of the relevant trade agreements

[1:41:50] Voice 7: and the Procurement Services Act.

[1:41:53] Voice 7: But in the policy itself, for instance, it doesn't list how are Indigenous procurement

[1:42:00] Voice 7: initiatives to be followed?

[1:42:03] Voice 7: What does demand aggregation look like?

[1:42:07] Voice 7: And so while the policy is brief and effective, I wonder if staff coming in after you or without your level of knowledge would know where to go to ensure that the purpose, the list of considerations or principles are actually followed in policy.

[1:42:30] Voice 7: Because I'm not seeing them captured in the policy itself. And I doubt, but I would ask for staff's advice, whether staff would go to the legislative references to figure out how to follow those principles listed in the purpose.

[1:42:49] Voice 1: Chair, would you like me to respond to that one?

[1:42:51] Voice 7: Go ahead, Director.

[1:42:52] Voice 7: Yeah,

[1:42:53] Voice 1: so perfect. So it's good timing. Thank you, Trustee Elliott. The finance team has actually already started drafting a information package for all staff. So we're hoping once, you know, once this policy is approved at the September Trust Council meeting in October, we will be hosting multiple staff opportunities for detailed training sessions on how to read the policy, how to do procurement or solicitation of front page, how to do proper

[1:43:22] Voice 1: contract management and be a contract manager, the back end of this whole process.

[1:43:27] Voice 1: Just a quick note, I know we talked about how we advanced the budget cycle, and we did these open

[1:43:33] Voice 1: information sessions with staff, and we did three different sessions. We had over 80% of the

[1:43:39] Voice 1: Islands Trust staff attend those three sessions, and I'm assuming it'll be very similar to this.

[1:43:44] Voice 1: We will put multiple options, different mornings, afternoons, different days,

[1:43:48] Voice 1: staff to attend and we'll have a detailed slide deck we'll walk through it all the deck will be

[1:43:53] Voice 1: made available that they can have in their back pocket and nancy here is also very well

[1:44:00] Voice 1: knowledgeable about procurement so she's you know another resource too and the way the detailed

[1:44:05] Voice 1: procedures hands right now is programmers need to start it because they have the thought of what

[1:44:10] Voice 1: they need and what they want but then the finance team works very closely with the different

[1:44:14] Voice 1: departments to draft their solicitation documents and their contracts to make sure we get what we

[1:44:20] Voice 1: want so yeah so all that's already built in it's already slowly being drafted and like i said once

[1:44:27] Voice 1: once this is official and approved then we can go out and start communicating with staff so we've

[1:44:32] Voice 1: been giving them teasers they know stuff is coming and there will be more training available for them

[1:44:36] Voice 1: but we have to wait till this is officially approved in september thank you thank you

[1:44:42] Trustee Fast: director coburn uh trustee patrick hi

[1:44:45] Trustee Patrick: thank you yes i think this is a welcome change um i think

[1:44:51] Trustee Patrick: probably salt spring seen more uh contracts go out or attempt to go out to then probably other

[1:44:57] Trustee Patrick: local trust areas and sometimes our challenge is that the budgets are generally public you know so

[1:45:04] Trustee Patrick: the vendors you know will they they know what their what the maximum dollar value is because

[1:45:09] Trustee Patrick: because it's in our budgets. It's public knowledge. But when they look at our terms

[1:45:15] Trustee Patrick: of reference or request for proposals that we put out, they observe that it doesn't match.

[1:45:23] Trustee Patrick: The budget might be $100,000, but we're asking for a million dollars worth of work.

[1:45:28] Trustee Patrick: And so I know those are other elements. We will get better at preparing

[1:45:35] Trustee Patrick: scopes of work and proposals going forward.

[1:45:38] Trustee Patrick: But a method, and it's probably something that falls into the procedures,

[1:45:43] Trustee Patrick: is a standard element of our requests for proposals should include

[1:45:50] Trustee Patrick: requesting a vendor to identify are there any missing elements

[1:45:54] Trustee Patrick: or suggested improvements and that they price those separately.

[1:45:59] Trustee Patrick: You know, so that we open the door to maybe we didn't get it right. And, you know, and that, you know, we're opening the door to innovation or a little different approach from vendors.

[1:46:13] Trustee Patrick: So it's probably a procedural level request, but I think it should be a standing element in like every one of our terms of reference that we invite the vendor to identify missing elements or, you know, suggested improvements, price it separately, you know, the evaluation piece should just include how, you know, how that would be factored into an evaluation.

[1:46:39] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Patrick. Did you want to respond to that, Director Coburn?

[1:46:43] Trustee Fast: Yeah,

[1:46:44] Voice 1: I think it's probably easier if I can respond after each one right away

[1:46:47] Voice 1: just so we don't lose that train of thought.

[1:46:49] Voice 1: So I heard a few things.

[1:46:50] Voice 1: One was the challenge about making our budgets public.

[1:46:54] Voice 1: What I recommend, if we were doing a quarter million dollar or larger project,

[1:46:58] Voice 1: then I'd say we do have the ability to be silent on our budget

[1:47:03] Voice 1: and let the market dictate what it should be.

[1:47:06] Voice 1: Most of our projects, though, are in the $20,000 to $40,000 range

[1:47:09] Voice 1: where if we don't draft it,

[1:47:12] Voice 1: we're going to get responses back for $100,000.

[1:47:15] Voice 1: So part of it is, as you mentioned,

[1:47:17] Voice 1: how we define our scope of work.

[1:47:19] Voice 1: We need to be clear on that to make sure they're clear.

[1:47:22] Voice 1: This is a small project.

[1:47:23] Voice 1: Don't bid $100,000.

[1:47:25] Voice 1: So on smaller ones, I recommend putting a budget

[1:47:28] Voice 1: so people know, don't waste your time

[1:47:30] Voice 1: with a big formal Rolls-Royce response to us.

[1:47:33] Voice 1: But for the really big projects that we do,

[1:47:36] Voice 1: then I would recommend being silent

[1:47:37] Voice 1: and let them, you know, fight it out and give us who gives us the best rate.

[1:47:43] Voice 1: Another comment you're talking about getting feedback from them on what's missing.

[1:47:46] Voice 1: One thing we need to look at is in the very, I call it sort of formal, informal,

[1:47:51] Voice 1: in the formal request for proposal RFP process, it's kind of a,

[1:47:55] Voice 1: there's no give or take or back and forth.

[1:47:58] Voice 1: There's something called contract A, contract B.

[1:48:00] Voice 1: We ask for something when they submit a bid, it's as is or you got to drop it.

[1:48:06] Voice 1: There's not an opportunity.

[1:48:07] Voice 1: opportunity um in this new process i said for under fifty thousand dollars where i think the

[1:48:11] Voice 1: vast majority of our opportunities lie um there is a process for a bit more give and take a bit

[1:48:17] Voice 1: more opportunity to discuss things with vendors so and that's that's another nice thing is not

[1:48:22] Voice 1: only does it speed up the process for both our staff and the vendor community it allows a few

[1:48:27] Voice 1: more options and how things are done whereas in the rfp it's very formal and you can't vary from

[1:48:33] Voice 1: it. Otherwise, we'd be breaking these principles that you see on this page. So that's another

[1:48:41] Voice 1: reason I'm really urging us to look at that new mid-ground process for small dollar opportunities

[1:48:46] Voice 1: under $50,000, where we can have more back and forth and more opportunities to have discussions

[1:48:51] Voice 1: with the vendors, whereas with a formal RFP, we can't do it. It's once we put something out there

[1:48:57] Voice 1: that's locked in and we can't change from that, not without a formal process of announcing to

[1:49:01] Voice 1: the whole world and discussing with all potential vendors yeah so all this is all built into the

[1:49:06] Voice 1: process and like i said it's it will be documented and shared with staff in due time thank you

[1:49:13] Trustee Fast: director coburn and i realize i'm i'm just going to interject for a moment in that uh i think we

[1:49:19] Trustee Fast: should break for lunch let's aim for 12 30 and uh i'm just going to and we'll have at least half an

[1:49:25] Trustee Fast: an hour and uh over to you trustee elliot thank you chair

[1:49:30] Voice 7: um i'm not sure if my question was

[1:49:35] Voice 7: understood clearly and perhaps it was overly long so what i'm looking what we're looking at is a

[1:49:43] Voice 7: draft policy that will go to trust council for approval however if the principles in the purpose

[1:49:49] Voice 7: of this policy are not captured the policy itself that those are not

[1:49:57] Voice 7: enshrined in policy for counsel to approve so how is accountability

[1:50:03] Voice 7: transparency competition all those listed considerations how is that

[1:50:10] Voice 7: that reflected in policy for council to then approve or not. The old policy has that language

[1:50:22] Voice 7: but this does not and so it may be captured in your procedures and in your instructions to staff

[1:50:28] Voice 7: and in the flow through that you're going to do but council has a responsibility to approve policy

[1:50:34] Voice 7: And if it's not following how those principles are captured, that's the missing piece of information.

[1:50:46] Voice 7: Are you looking for definitions?

[1:50:48] Voice 7: No, I'm looking for articulation and policy for how these principles such as social policy considerations, how is local purchasing considered?

[1:50:58] Voice 7: How are Indigenous procurement initiatives prioritized?

[1:51:03] Voice 7: prioritized like where is that captured it's not in the policy that we're seeing here it's in our

[1:51:11] Voice 7: current policy there's quite a long list

[1:51:15] Voice 1: it's sorry if i may interrupt that go ahead it is part

[1:51:18] Voice 1: of the in the procedures document a lot of it comes out of the procurement services act or the

[1:51:23] Voice 1: ministry procurement policy which like i said a lot of the definitions are included in there

[1:51:27] Voice 1: a lot of it though is more on the procedure side which is part of the procedures manual so it's

[1:51:33] Voice 1: I don't think we want it in here, because remember, if we put it in here, then we have to follow that to the letter of the law, and there's no discretion to consider anything other than what we have here.

[1:51:43] Voice 1: So it's purposely, these are rolled up level words, and in the procedures and in the training, it'll talk about what does accountability mean?

[1:51:52] Voice 1: How do you do that when you're setting up a procurement process?

[1:51:57] Voice 1: But it's more procedures or day-to-day operations than it is in a policy, so it's been pulled out.

[1:52:02] Voice 1: And that's one of the issues I had with the previous policies.

[1:52:05] Voice 1: There's too much details of how to.

[1:52:07] Voice 1: A policy should be why, and then the procedures is how.

[1:52:11] Voice 1: And I tried to pull out all the how pieces and make this the why pieces.

[1:52:17] Trustee Fast: Thank you very much.

[1:52:18] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[1:52:18] Trustee Fast: Well, I have

[1:52:19] Trustee Fast: myself on the speaking list.

[1:52:22] Trustee Fast: I'll come back to you, Trustee Elliott, if you don't mind.

[1:52:24] Trustee Fast: I wonder if other trustees also have questions.

[1:52:27] Trustee Fast: I liked what I actually like this policy I think it's clear especially that list of purposes and I

[1:52:38] Trustee Fast: take the point I saw in there avoid overburdening staff for low-risk low-value purchases and one

[1:52:48] Trustee Fast: thing I notice about the islands trust that is different from Bowen Island municipality over

[1:52:56] Trustee Fast: here is over here on Bowen we don't ask for all the project charters so council has already

[1:53:04] Trustee Fast: trust council does and trust council has already seen a lot more detail in terms of

[1:53:13] Trustee Fast: how each project is going to play out so I wonder if that might be part of the

[1:53:21] Trustee Fast: conversation here is that the overburdening of staff, low risk, low value purchases when we

[1:53:28] Trustee Fast: already have all those other project charters and things in place. That's just something I thought

[1:53:33] Trustee Fast: might be worth considering. Do others have questions for the director? Trustee Yates.

[1:53:42] Voice 19: Thank you so much, Director Coburn. This is nowhere near my area of expertise,

[1:53:48] Voice 19: So I can't tell you how much I appreciate the briefing that you've given us and also the conversation among trustees, because I actually printed this out so that I could read it more carefully.

[1:54:03] Voice 19: And I just really appreciate the detail and I really appreciate the discussion around this topic. Thank you.

[1:54:11] Voice 1: Thank you. I just want to add one thing I forgot to mention earlier. Nancy and I are the in-house experts providing advice, but at the end of the day, we still work with the staff in the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs who do work for us, who provide us support at no cost.

[1:54:28] Voice 1: so you know six months goes on the other end answering nancy's questions now i'm on this end

[1:54:34] Voice 1: working with the staff in the ministry so there there's another team of four or five

[1:54:38] Voice 1: procurement experts as well who are also looking at what we're doing and providing more guidance

[1:54:44] Voice 1: as well so there is another level of whether you call it governance oversight that happens as well

[1:54:49] Voice 1: so it's they make sure that we're we're not uh straying too far thank

[1:54:55] Trustee Fast: you i didn't know that

[1:54:57] Trustee Fast: Okay, Trustee Elliott.

[1:55:00] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Chair.

[1:55:02] Voice 7: I think what I'm struggling with is we seem to be going into a new path, which is an articulation of the procedures, which I totally respect is your department.

[1:55:17] Voice 7: And it lays it out very clearly, and I'm not going to try to understand that.

[1:55:22] Voice 7: I don't think that procedures chart should appear before council.

[1:55:24] Voice 7: What I'm challenged with is how does council approve this policy or have debate? For instance, how is environmental, how are environmental considerations evaluated?

[1:55:42] Voice 7: evaluated? What, like, when I look at the old policy, I know there is a lot of language that

[1:55:48] Voice 7: is procedural, which you've said you've, you're pulled out, you've pulled out, and it's much

[1:55:54] Voice 7: clearer and simpler. But I think there's got to be a middle road somewhere where we're the policy

[1:56:01] Voice 7: talks about how these considerations are evaluated, with the long term view that it's not just you

[1:56:10] Voice 7: you and Nancy and current staff who have this understanding, the policy needs to be clear so

[1:56:15] Voice 7: that staff coming in 10 years from now or trustees who are new to the work understand

[1:56:22] Voice 7: social policy considerations and how they are reflected in the evaluation of contracts and

[1:56:29] Voice 7: procurement. So I think there's something missing between your drafted policy, which is simple,

[1:56:36] Voice 7: simple, straightforward, effective, and the procedures, which I don't think trustees need

[1:56:42] Voice 7: to see. And it's related to how these principles and the purpose flow through the whole process.

[1:56:55] Voice 7: So I'm just missing something.

[1:56:59] Voice 1: Sure, I'll add another piece. I don't know if this will help or not. But one thing is a lot

[1:57:03] Voice 1: A lot of the opportunities we look at, it's all situational based.

[1:57:06] Voice 1: So depending on what the work is, for example, let's target environmental considerations.

[1:57:12] Voice 1: If somebody is sitting at a desk doing some research, international or other jurisdictional research and writing us a report, there's a different lens we apply than someone who's doing some physical work on a property that could have, when people think of environmental impacts.

[1:57:29] Voice 1: So depending on what the work is, there's different angles we take.

[1:57:32] Voice 1: we put more weight on it uh so that's and that's why there's there's no one size fits all that i

[1:57:38] Voice 1: can put on this document that explains you know this means exactly this it's it's until a department

[1:57:44] Voice 1: calls and say i want to hire a contractor to do x until they talk to us what x means then we can go

[1:57:49] Voice 1: through this behind the scenes and say okay this is really critical to that particular project

[1:57:54] Voice 1: we need to make sure when you do evaluations we do a big focus on this um like for example local

[1:58:01] Voice 1: purchase considerations. There is, well, it depends who you talk to, but legally

[1:58:05] Voice 1: we're not allowed to say buy BC, especially if the opportunity crosses

[1:58:09] Voice 1: 75,000 and the trade agreement says you're not allowed to do that. Under

[1:58:13] Voice 1: 75, we have some leeway. And I was like, some

[1:58:17] Voice 1: of the bottom ones, these are some projects, sorry, the first few bullets are coming right

[1:58:21] Voice 1: out of government policy. The bottom bullets are more sort of initiatives that

[1:58:25] Voice 1: government's taken on the last few years. Sometimes they've had

[1:58:29] Voice 1: working groups sometimes they've drafted a some kind of a paper but a lot of it is not really

[1:58:36] Voice 1: clear let's take for example uh esg environmental social and governance some of those things that

[1:58:43] Voice 1: build into multiple of these factors right now there's about 15 different companies around the

[1:58:48] Voice 1: world who define what when they say you know something's a good green project what it means

[1:58:53] Voice 1: so one thing i'm saying okay right now we can't even decide what does green mean what does so

[1:58:59] Voice 1: So I can't define it on this document because the world hasn't gotten there yet.

[1:59:03] Voice 1: And I don't think we want to be the first entity to define this is what green means.

[1:59:07] Voice 1: And if it doesn't fit this, we're not going to do it.

[1:59:09] Voice 1: So that's probably a lot of these are very behavioral or big picture, good things to consider.

[1:59:14] Voice 1: But based on what the project is, that's what we've got to sit down and work with the department.

[1:59:18] Voice 1: How critical is this to Islands Trust, to your program area?

[1:59:23] Voice 1: What do we want to enforce on this?

[1:59:25] Voice 1: I mean I've seen some of the initiatives coming out of central government where it's just

[1:59:30] Voice 1: like some of the things they're asking for just does not make sense it doesn't exist out there

[1:59:35] Voice 1: you know like you know in the ideal world they keep saying oh well you know the big private

[1:59:38] Voice 1: sector they'll go and hire a non-profit to do this and that's not going to work if we try and

[1:59:44] Voice 1: force and hardcore that into our opportunities I know it's not going to happen we will not get

[1:59:49] Voice 1: the responses at the end of the day three months later we're going to have no responses or responses

[1:59:54] Voice 1: that are so poor that they're not going to meet our criteria,

[1:59:56] Voice 1: then we're stuck.

[1:59:57] Voice 1: Now we're three months gone by.

[2:00:00] Voice 1: Now what's going to come next is, well, we've already wasted three months.

[2:00:02] Voice 1: I want a direct word now because I've got to get this work done.

[2:00:04] Voice 1: And I'm just going to go to entity X.

[2:00:07] Voice 1: So we build it case by case based on the situation of the work.

[2:00:11] Voice 1: But I don't think there's a way to hard-code it into this document.

[2:00:17] Voice 1: But if anyone's got some other thoughts, I'm more than happy to hear how we can enhance this.

[2:00:22] Voice 1: Like I said, at first I thought maybe you wanted definitions, but I'm hearing not that.

[2:00:27] Voice 1: So I probably partially answered your question.

[2:00:29] Voice 1: I

[2:00:31] Trustee Fast: want to bring in lots of trustees who haven't said anything.

[2:00:37] Trustee Fast: And seeing as how we're an advisory committee to Trust Council, we want to help Trust Council have thoughtful deliberations, discussions.

[2:00:52] Trustee Fast: Is this policy without the procedure part?

[2:00:59] Trustee Fast: So I'm assuming that we just leave the procedure parts off, so pages up to the end of page 38.

[2:01:08] Trustee Fast: Is there somebody who'd like to make the motion that is on the top of page 35?

[2:01:19] Trustee Fast: Or what would people like to do?

[2:01:23] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty?

[2:01:26] Voice 17: I'm happy to move the motion.

[2:01:28] Voice 17: and I haven't really said anything because I don't have any comments with respect to or any

[2:01:34] Voice 17: suggestions in terms of revision. I kind of like where Toby's coming from, and maybe there should

[2:01:40] Voice 17: be a cross-reference to some of the details that are more laid out in the procedures. But, you know,

[2:01:49] Voice 17: in terms of these are the principles that we're guided by, and for more detail, you know, there's

[2:01:57] Voice 17: reference to this other policy manual but or procedure manual but um you know when i read this

[2:02:03] Voice 17: i kept thinking of the reflecting pool down in the states and it was like you know yeah we need

[2:02:09] Voice 17: to have all of this set up and clarified and it's a timely discussion and i'm i'm quite happy with

[2:02:16] Voice 17: the way this is all written and thanks for the work to get it set up okay

[2:02:22] Trustee Fast: thank you um trustee

[2:02:25] Trustee Fast: Elliot, I'm going to go to Trustee Graham first. I haven't heard from a first-time speaker. Go ahead,

[2:02:30] Trustee Fast: Trustee Graham.

[2:02:31] Voice 12: Thank you, Chair. Yeah, I guess I come to these topics a little differently. This

[2:02:37] Voice 12: is operational policy, and my role as a trustee, I don't like to dip into the machinery of the

[2:02:46] Voice 12: trust. That's our CAO's responsibility to hire the people that can do the job, and I'm happy

[2:02:51] Voice 12: that they do that i'm happy that they have uh good leadership and and defined procurement policies

[2:02:58] Voice 12: and and operational stuff there's enough there's enough on my plate as a trustee that i don't dip

[2:03:04] Voice 12: my toe into this kind of detail um i'm happy to listen to the comments i understand where people

[2:03:12] Voice 12: who who need that kind of depth come from i i respect their interests at that level but i i

[2:03:17] Voice 12: I don't share that.

[2:03:20] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[2:03:22] Trustee Fast: So think about a motion because we've got to move on with this meeting.

[2:03:27] Trustee Fast: Trustee Elliott.

[2:03:29] Voice 7: Okay, this will be my final word on it.

[2:03:31] Voice 7: I think this policy needs new work.

[2:03:33] Voice 7: And it's because we are the link to our communities and how the Islands Trust executes its work and purchasing procedures are very much nested in that work.

[2:03:45] Voice 7: The current policy has social policy considerations and local purchasing considerations. Does the policy articulate that where possible, local food should be purchased or prioritized for events?

[2:04:04] Voice 7: You know, these are things that really do affect our communities. And so while I respect how staff evaluate and consider all these different principles, I personally would like to see some of those reflected in some fairly simple language.

[2:04:24] Voice 7: language the environmental considerations the social policy and the local policy purchasing

[2:04:29] Voice 7: considerations just in terms of this is a guiding document it doesn't have to articulate exactly how

[2:04:38] Voice 7: much is local food um purchased or how that procedure is enacted but that it is considered

[2:04:45] Voice 7: in this way so i would like to see a little more work done in this and some of the wording of the

[2:04:51] Voice 7: the current policy that exists, not the procedural stuff,

[2:04:55] Voice 7: but how those principles are articulated,

[2:04:58] Voice 7: because I think that is council's responsibility.

[2:05:01] Voice 7: Thank you.

[2:05:03] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Elliott.

[2:05:05] Trustee Fast: And what I'm thinking now, the way you phrased that,

[2:05:09] Trustee Fast: is that perhaps we can pass this motion today

[2:05:15] Trustee Fast: and that staff will be thinking about that, what you said,

[2:05:19] Trustee Fast: said, because I haven't heard a lot of other trustees supporting those principles. And maybe

[2:05:25] Trustee Fast: we will see some revised alternatives in the report. Or maybe you can work with staff

[2:05:35] Trustee Fast: before that, because we'll be discussing this again at Trust Council. Just an idea. Trustee Yates.

[2:05:43] Voice 19: Thank you for

[2:05:44] Voice 19: that. And thank you, Trustee Elliott, for your comments here. I have been thinking the same thing, but like Trustee Graham, I sort of don't want to delve into too much of the operational stuff.

[2:05:57] Voice 19: stuff but um on the other hand our job is to be um a guiding board and um and a guiding council

[2:06:06] Voice 19: and so i do think it's important that we that we always think of um considering local first

[2:06:15] Voice 19: um sometimes it is a little bit more expensive it's like when we go to the farmer's market and

[2:06:22] Voice 19: and we buy really good vegetables, yeah, there's different costs.

[2:06:28] Voice 19: There's full-cost accounting.

[2:06:30] Voice 19: So I would like to see some kind of general principle on local, you know,

[2:06:39] Voice 19: like especially food and things like that, but I don't quite know how to word it.

[2:06:43] Voice 19: But I'm kind of thinking the same thing.

[2:06:45] Voice 19: But this will be going to council, and I think we need to remember this,

[2:06:50] Voice 19: And maybe between now and then we can come up with a guiding principle that doesn't, you know, mess up with, doesn't mess with operations, but is something that we acknowledge and will always consider.

[2:07:05] Voice 19: Thank you, Trustee Gates.

[2:07:06] Voice 19: Trustee Getty?

[2:07:07] Voice 19: I

[2:07:10] Voice 17: think I'd rather have it go to staff now and see whether or not we can work something into the policy, because if it comes to council and we're having a discussion and we throw in something new, then that turns into a whole different discussion and more difficulty.

[2:07:26] Voice 17: So, you know, we've got the September meeting that I'd like to get somehow or other incorporate some of Toby's ideas into some part of this general, I mean, it's a small project kind of issue, but, you know, I'd hate for us to be stuck with this when we actually want to have something else included.

[2:07:56] Voice 17: Thank you,

[2:07:59] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty, and I see the CAO has his hand up. Please go ahead.

[2:08:02] Voice 14: Yeah, thank you, Chair. I would just echo Trustee Getty's comments that if there is a desire to make substantive amendments to the draft policy,

[2:08:11] Voice 14: it would be helpful to have a motion from this committee to really be clear what additions or edits you would like to see to the policy

[2:08:19] Voice 14: so that we can undertake that work and ensure that it reflects the recommendations of the committee. Thanks.

[2:08:26] Voice 14: thank

[2:08:27] Trustee Fast: you well i think trustee elliott had three things she wanted to add there and um maybe she

[2:08:34] Trustee Fast: is madly typing she's the fastest typer i know trustee elliott

[2:08:39] Voice 7: um i'd like to request that we

[2:08:41] Voice 7: come back to this after lunch i will prepare a motion uh to capture some of uh the thoughts that

[2:08:48] Voice 7: i've been having i just am not quite ready with that yeah

[2:08:52] Trustee Fast: that sounds like a good idea so this

[2:08:55] Trustee Fast: This would be, I think, Director Marler, this would be tabling this motion.

[2:09:03] Trustee Fast: We don't even have a motion yet, but can we table this topic and come back after lunch?

[2:09:12] Trustee Fast: Yes,

[2:09:12] Voice 13: Richard, you can.

[2:09:15] Voice 13: Yeah, if I may.

[2:09:17] Voice 13: There's no motion, so you're not tabling anything.

[2:09:19] Voice 13: You can just say you'll just bring this back on the agenda after lunch.

[2:09:25] Voice 18: Very good.

[2:09:26] Voice 13: Okay, so after

[2:09:27] Trustee Fast: 12. Yeah, after like one o'clock or something, if we break at 1230 and come back, that's approximately in case anybody's watching and wants to know when it's going to be on. Okay, we'll return to that. Thank you. And Trustee Yates.

[2:09:43] Trustee Fast: Thank you,

[2:09:44] Voice 19: Chair Fass. So what I had in mind was sort of like the way an OCP guides the regulatory land use bylaws is just a philosophical statement somewhere where we don't mess with operations, but we do guide them by saying that this is an important principle.

[2:10:02] Voice 19: So I don't know, Trustee Elliott, if you can do a motion that's sort of one guiding motion, but that's kind of what I had in mind, but I'm sure you'll do a good job. Thank you.

[2:10:15] Trustee Fast: Thank you, everybody. We spent quite a bit of time on this. It's an important big new change, and so let's come back to it after lunch then.

[2:10:25] Trustee Fast: We'll move on now to 8.3, the pay transparency report, starting on page 49.

[2:10:38] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair.

[2:10:41] Voice 1: Yeah. Excuse me. Thank

[2:10:43] Voice 1: you. Yeah. So the pay transparency act came out three years ago

[2:10:48] Voice 1: and it's been sort of starting with large government organizations working down smaller

[2:10:54] Voice 1: and smaller each year. And this year it's any employees, any government entities with more

[2:10:59] Voice 1: than 50 employees. So we're, we're caught up in, in that category. So this would have been our,

[2:11:05] Voice 1: or this is our inaugural pay transparency report.

[2:11:09] Voice 1: As I did some digging, we've got multiple players within government

[2:11:12] Voice 1: that are involved in this.

[2:11:15] Voice 1: Within the Ministry of Finance, there's the Gender Equity Office,

[2:11:19] Voice 1: who is involved in some of the reporting out.

[2:11:22] Voice 1: There's the Public Service Agency, who's the holder of a lot of the payroll data.

[2:11:26] Voice 1: And those two, so those are two organizations we've worked with

[2:11:29] Voice 1: over the last few months trying to put this together.

[2:11:31] Voice 1: other. As we received our data set from the public service agency, one thing we came across,

[2:11:39] Voice 1: because a lot of this is looking at sort of discrepancies between pay scales. But unfortunately,

[2:11:46] Voice 1: right now, when we got our pay data, not enough staff have self-declared their status. So right

[2:11:54] Voice 1: Right now, your choices are male, female, other, or I don't want to disclose.

[2:12:00] Voice 1: So out of our, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think we had nine employees disclose.

[2:12:06] Voice 1: But central government said that is too small of a category, which means if we did that,

[2:12:10] Voice 1: people would be able to probably do some quick sleuthing and figure out who we're talking about.

[2:12:15] Voice 1: So we don't have enough details right now to produce a report.

[2:12:18] Voice 1: So when I went back to the central agencies, they basically told me,

[2:12:23] Voice 1: we agree with you issue a nil report which basically says we can't report but we did add

[2:12:29] Voice 1: an extra statement and we'll see that in a few seconds that basically says we will work with

[2:12:33] Voice 1: central agencies we will work with staff for example yeah it was earlier this week or yeah

[2:12:39] Voice 1: it was earlier this or it's last late last week the public service agency put out a bulletin on

[2:12:45] Voice 1: this on this because this is happening across government trying to get employees more involved

[2:12:50] Voice 1: and updating their profile so we can get better data

[2:12:52] Voice 1: to make better reports, make better decisions.

[2:12:54] Voice 1: I took their report.

[2:12:56] Voice 1: I emailed it to all staff, encouraging staff to go online,

[2:13:01] Voice 1: update their database, their profile,

[2:13:03] Voice 1: so we have the data to allow us to do a proper report.

[2:13:07] Voice 1: We're also, like I said, we will be meeting with Gender Equity Office

[2:13:10] Voice 1: and PSA over the coming months to figure out how we do this better.

[2:13:13] Voice 1: We will be meeting with staff, explaining the benefit,

[2:13:18] Voice 1: benefit why we they should do this because a lot of you know why should I go in and disclose this

[2:13:22] Voice 1: information what's in it for me why so we are we have a lot of ideas on how we can get better data

[2:13:27] Voice 1: next year to have a fulsome report because it's funny I started drafting a report I had the

[2:13:33] Voice 1: introductory part I had the closing comment and in the middle I had this gap for all the stats I was

[2:13:38] Voice 1: hoping to produce once I got the download from the public service agency which of course I couldn't

[2:13:43] Voice 1: get, so I couldn't do. So it's a long way to say this is a new report for year one with the promise

[2:13:49] Voice 1: to do more to be able to come back at year two. Ruben, I'm not sure if you want to add a bit to

[2:13:54] Voice 1: that, because I know your background at HR, you might add some more flavor on what's driving this

[2:13:59] Voice 1: whole initiative.

[2:14:00] Voice 14: Yeah, thanks, Derek. I think I would just add that I think this is a case where

[2:14:06] Voice 14: where it's important that we not issue a report

[2:14:11] Voice 14: that is on insufficient data

[2:14:13] Voice 14: because of the privacy risk it can create in particular,

[2:14:16] Voice 14: but also because it doesn't really provide

[2:14:18] Voice 14: a full picture of what our compensation landscape looks like.

[2:14:23] Voice 14: For context, I believe core public service as well.

[2:14:27] Voice 14: So this is a change.

[2:14:30] Voice 14: Previously, gender identity was also connected through

[2:14:33] Voice 14: or collected through other survey means,

[2:14:35] Voice 14: but with the change in the systems and the process for the provincial public

[2:14:39] Voice 14: service, it requires employees to self-identify.

[2:14:42] Voice 14: And within the provincial public service,

[2:14:44] Voice 14: I think what we saw was their response rate as the reporting rate is really

[2:14:47] Voice 14: low as well, something like less than 10%.

[2:14:51] Voice 14: So they're working with a much smaller data set,

[2:14:53] Voice 14: but of course they have 40,000 staff. And so, you know,

[2:14:55] Voice 14: they're able to report based on that without the privacy risk, but for us,

[2:14:59] Voice 14: that's really just not an option. So, so we'll,

[2:15:02] Voice 14: we'll certainly encourage staff to self-report in part so that we can do

[2:15:05] Voice 14: a full report next year but it'll depend on the availability of data but again i think it's just

[2:15:11] Voice 14: important to emphasize that you know we're taking this approach um well it's unfortunate that we we

[2:15:16] Voice 14: can't do a fulsome report it's it's uh supported by the public service agency and the gender equity

[2:15:21] Voice 14: office which oversees the reporting mechanism for for the entire legislative piece so we're not uh

[2:15:28] Voice 14: we're not freelancing on this we're taking what i think is the responsible step for our first year

[2:15:32] Voice 14: Thanks.

[2:15:34] Trustee Fast: Thank you. Yeah, I think that's the point, is that it's the first year and that we're not alone and nobody wants to influence anybody's privacy.

[2:15:49] Trustee Fast: I think we need to be really careful about that. So I'm looking for a motion, trustees, that we just report this, forward this to Trust Council for approval.

[2:16:00] Voice 1: So, Chair, can I just ask Nancy, if you could roll down to the report, just so you see what,

[2:16:05] Voice 1: when I say a nil report, this is what we actually will be publishing. The first part is just our

[2:16:10] Voice 1: self-identification. And then the bottom is that one line is basically what I was told we were

[2:16:15] Voice 1: allowed to say. And then we added the second line to show that we're, you know, we're not resting on,

[2:16:19] Voice 1: oh, I can't say resting on our laurels because we're not doing nothing. We are doing something

[2:16:23] Voice 1: about it. Sorry, back to you, Chair.

[2:16:27] Trustee Fast: Oh, thank you. Yeah, we didn't scroll down that far.

[2:16:29] Trustee Fast: but i expect all of us have read it and understand can i have a motion

[2:16:34] Trustee Fast: oh i'm seeing some hands up uh sorry trustee boland uh thank you um i

[2:16:43] Voice 10: i what's the word i

[2:16:46] Voice 10: support the initiative and i understand where you are and i think you're taking a responsible

[2:16:51] Voice 10: approach because we are a small group in the grand scheme of things and it would be

[2:16:56] Voice 10: uh yeah easy to give a sort of a report that gave you know slightly weird skewed data which would

[2:17:06] Voice 10: generate a lot of discussion so i think it's a good approach so i'm happy to move the recommendation

[2:17:12] Voice 10: when everybody else is ready thank

[2:17:16] Trustee Fast: you trustee ballman trustee getty i

[2:17:21] Voice 17: was just going to move

[2:17:22] Voice 17: the recommendation move that financial planning

[2:17:24] Voice 17: forward the pay transparency report to islands

[2:17:28] Voice 17: trust council for approval thank

[2:17:31] Trustee Fast: you and uh trustee bowling you you're gonna second that

[2:17:35] Trustee Fast: yeah thank you so we have a mover and a seconder for the uh motion that's on the cover sheet or

[2:17:42] Trustee Fast: that's on the um screen in front of us any more discussion okay all those in favor please raise

[2:17:51] Trustee Fast: Raise your hand.

[2:17:52] Trustee Fast: Digital hands, if you can.

[2:17:56] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[2:17:57] Trustee Fast: Lower your hands.

[2:18:02] Trustee Fast: Anybody opposed?

[2:18:04] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[2:18:05] Trustee Fast: That carries unanimously.

[2:18:07] Trustee Fast: Very good.

[2:18:08] Trustee Fast: On to the quarterly report, 8.4.

[2:18:15] Voice 1: Thank you, Chair.

[2:18:16] Voice 1: As

[2:18:17] Trustee Fast: we mentioned earlier, this doesn't normally

[2:18:19] Voice 1: come to this committee.

[2:18:21] Voice 1: I blame the new guy.

[2:18:24] Voice 1: I missed that.

[2:18:24] Voice 1: It should have gone directly to Trust Council.

[2:18:26] Voice 1: but it is some interesting information.

[2:18:29] Voice 1: A lot of it's information

[2:18:30] Voice 1: that has already been shared with this group.

[2:18:32] Voice 1: I can walk through it quickly.

[2:18:34] Voice 1: On the annual audit side,

[2:18:36] Voice 1: our next meeting will be in February.

[2:18:38] Voice 1: We will meet with our auditors, KPMG,

[2:18:40] Voice 1: to start prepping for next year's audit.

[2:18:42] Voice 1: So that's just,

[2:18:43] Voice 1: it's one of those workflow programs

[2:18:46] Voice 1: that just rotates, just change the year,

[2:18:48] Voice 1: but it's the same thing every year.

[2:18:51] Voice 1: On the financial planning committee,

[2:18:53] Voice 1: this is what I'll be reporting out to

[2:18:54] Voice 1: on the trust count to the trust council meeting next month these are the items we covered today

[2:18:59] Voice 1: so it's just a quick summary of today's agenda and then we flag from a financial services side

[2:19:06] Voice 1: because there's two sides to our team the financial services and the employee services

[2:19:11] Voice 1: so on the financial services we've listed about six things that i want to expand a bit more on

[2:19:17] Voice 1: that we've been working on in the last little while things that are typical your day-to-day

[2:19:20] Voice 1: processes so this is like so this is more just a informal briefing information sharing with this

[2:19:28] Voice 1: with this committee yeah some things you might have anyone who's been on the committee for a

[2:19:35] Voice 1: while might be aware of some things might be considered new that you haven't seen before

[2:19:41] Voice 1: trustee boland you had a question uh

[2:19:44] Voice 10: just a comment and a thank you i uh d that you advanced

[2:19:48] Voice 10: the start of the budget cycle by two months i think that's really to be commended because i'm

[2:19:54] Voice 10: sure it was a lot of effort and i think it will really really help in terms of transparency and

[2:20:00] Voice 10: good discussion and good material being prepped so thanks for that you're welcome

[2:20:07] Voice 1: like i said it

[2:20:08] Voice 1: was the right thing to do and as soon as i made it public and committed to it then it's like oh

[2:20:12] Voice 1: my gosh whatever i got myself into but it is working well thank

[2:20:19] Trustee Fast: you i have a question um

[2:20:20] Trustee Fast: um director coburn what is the carbon emissions reporting it's

[2:20:26] Voice 1: something i work very closely with

[2:20:27] Voice 1: the trust area services team it basically it's it's coming from which ministries is coming from

[2:20:34] Voice 1: i can't remember the climate something secretary i can't remember the group but they survey all

[2:20:38] Voice 1: government organizations saying tell us what you're doing on your projects that has a environmental

[2:20:44] Voice 1: environmental impact now for us like i said we're a very small player in this we have

[2:20:49] Voice 1: it's most of our answers are not applicable so it's a bit of uh i think

[2:20:55] Trustee Fast: i've seen that now that

[2:20:56] Trustee Fast: you say that and i'll go hand it up don't worry thank you

[2:20:58] Voice 1: yeah there's not a whole lot of

[2:20:59] Voice 1: information from us whereas uh other organizations that have more formal footprint would have a lot

[2:21:05] Voice 1: more to say on this but we being a small office don't have a whole lot we don't meet a lot of

[2:21:09] Voice 1: the thresholds for what they ask us to discuss.

[2:21:13] Voice 5: Gotcha. Thank you.

[2:21:19] Voice 1: And then the second part here

[2:21:20] Voice 1: is employee services. So this is from the HR side, everything we're working on that's come up in the

[2:21:27] Voice 1: last quarter. So it's always the, we always look at educational. We're really trying to put an

[2:21:32] Voice 1: emphasis on making sure our staff have the skillset. So a lot of information coming from

[2:21:37] Voice 1: the public service agency. Yeah. I know we're not supposed to use soft skills anymore, but it's more

[2:21:42] Voice 1: the well-rounded and then we're also looking at what can we do in-house to get more on some of

[2:21:47] Voice 1: the technical skill sets we're looking at bringing more training for staff more awareness that's sort

[2:21:53] Voice 1: of that section a section b is

[2:21:57] Voice 1: oh yes trustee

[2:21:59] Voice 17: giddy is there some way of sharing um some of that

[2:22:03] Voice 17: educational material because i i haven't seen half of these things or more so and it might be

[2:22:10] Voice 17: be interesting just to you know have it as some sort of a um a more general community um

[2:22:20] Voice 17: information

[2:22:20] Voice 1: so what happens now trustee get his law this funnels from the public service agency

[2:22:25] Voice 1: and then nicole miller our hr specialist she basically just summarizes cuts and pace every

[2:22:30] Voice 1: time she sees a good relevant article and shares with all highlands trust staff so it's all coming

[2:22:35] Voice 1: Coming out of the public service agency, it's all on their website.

[2:22:40] Voice 17: I think if

[2:22:41] Voice 17: you click

[2:22:44] Trustee Fast: any one of these links, it'll take you there.

[2:22:46] Voice 17: Yeah.

[2:22:46] Voice 17: But I mean, if somebody is actually getting it and doing something with it so that it goes out as educational material,

[2:22:53] Voice 17: I think that if it came up on Bowen's list of publications or notifications and there's something that was relevant

[2:23:03] Voice 17: or that we wanted to emphasize, then it would be interesting.

[2:23:07] Voice 17: So if I could

[2:23:08] Voice 1: just want to paraphrase here,

[2:23:09] Voice 1: ask him when we do our, as it comes up,

[2:23:12] Voice 1: our email outreach to our Islands Trust staff,

[2:23:15] Voice 1: he would like us to add trustees to that email distribution list?

[2:23:18] Voice 1: Yes, please.

[2:23:20] Voice 1: Yeah.

[2:23:20] Voice 1: Okay, I'll put a note here and I'll share it with Nicole when she's back.

[2:23:29] Voice 1: Just

[2:23:29] Voice 17: give me 30 seconds to write that down.

[2:23:31] Voice 17: Lots more reasons to party.

[2:23:34] Voice 1: I mean, there is some really good stuff,

[2:23:36] Voice 1: especially like this one right here at the bottom, this cultural piece.

[2:23:38] Voice 1: I know in my last office, I was interested, we were a team of seven, and we had, I think, five different nationalities on that team, so we made a concerted effort to recognize each other's events of celebration, and I love food, so every time there's an ethnic reason, let's build a party around that ethnic event, and it really brings the team together, makes you aware of what's going on, not just on our team, but around the world, so it's a great thing.

[2:24:06] Trustee Fast: Good plan.

[2:24:07] Trustee Fast: Maybe the Indigenous...

[2:24:10] Trustee Fast: kinds of celebration times or cultural events could be in there too i don't know it could grow

[2:24:18] Trustee Fast: enormously but anyway never mind and that's

[2:24:21] Voice 1: very well you'll see a lot more emphasis on that next

[2:24:24] Voice 1: month there'll be a lot more emphasis on the indigenous training uh if you can scroll down

[2:24:31] Voice 1: yes so b is all the staffings the comings and goings you've got you know the ones that are

[2:24:37] Voice 1: in hand the ones that are coming so just this this goes to show you how our are pretty much

[2:24:42] Voice 1: basically our employee services are called the HR team is one person and then part-time off of

[2:24:49] Voice 1: our receptionist here in the Victoria office so that one person is extremely busy you can see

[2:24:55] Voice 1: for a while it seems like every Monday there was an email going out so it's so this is that

[2:25:01] Voice 1: where I was talking earlier about the variance analysis a lot of the under budget as you can

[2:25:07] Voice 1: can see here now these staff positions are that you've been hearing about are all being filled

[2:25:10] Voice 1: so over time that under budget due to staff not being hired will go away and these will be fully

[2:25:17] Voice 1: now having said that every time you hire one there's a chance somebody else might leave and

[2:25:21] Voice 1: you have to start it over again but the mass hirings have happened we always talk a bit about

[2:25:26] Voice 1: our all staff meetings some of the training we've done and this last session was my first one i went

[2:25:31] Voice 1: to it was really great um you know recognizing staff which is a key part to the you know um

[2:25:37] Voice 1: celebrating what's happening internally uh ruben gave us a good feedback of what happened at the

[2:25:43] Voice 1: last trust council meeting and i found really helpful was the our information services and

[2:25:49] Voice 1: thank you david david's team did a really big presentation there's so many projects we've been

[2:25:53] Voice 1: talking about all these things you know the records management the website there's so many

[2:25:58] Voice 1: things that all tie to information services this area was really expanded everybody knew stuff that

[2:26:04] Voice 1: they've been hearing talking about they actually heard concrete examples of what it is you know

[2:26:09] Voice 1: some was hardcore promise deadline stuff is it's this is a multi-year plan and that's one thing

[2:26:14] Voice 1: you've heard too they're working on i believe it's called the five-year it plan or is plan

[2:26:18] Voice 1: so there will be a lot more there to guide us of when things are happening yes trustee bolin

[2:26:23] Voice 1: And

[2:26:25] Voice 10: can I make a plea that information sharing with trustees is mentioned as a specific topic, because I feel that the information services is focused around staff, obviously, and support for staff and then the public.

[2:26:46] Voice 10: and we sort of fall between the cracks because we get an agenda it seems like that's the way we get

[2:26:52] Voice 10: information but it's not really adequate and we constantly and I'm sure you've found this

[2:27:00] Voice 10: you have to reinvent the wheel and retell us and reshare us share with us information that should

[2:27:07] Voice 10: be readily available to us so I feel that as trustees and we are employees as well and we

[2:27:14] Voice 10: we drop between the cracks.

[2:27:16] Voice 10: And speaking as an information management specialist in the past,

[2:27:21] Voice 10: there's a big difference between records management

[2:27:23] Voice 10: and information management.

[2:27:25] Voice 10: Records management is complying with legislation

[2:27:28] Voice 10: and locking it away in a vault.

[2:27:31] Voice 10: And information sharing is a whole different ballgame.

[2:27:36] Voice 10: And I don't think that we, you, do it adequately with trustees.

[2:27:41] Voice 10: Okay, my speech, my end of term speech.

[2:27:44] Voice 10: I started with this four years ago, and I'm ending with it.

[2:27:48] Voice 10: Okay?

[2:27:49] Voice 10: Thank you.

[2:27:50] Voice 1: Thank you.

[2:27:51] Voice 1: I don't want to overpromise because that's not under my realm of responsibility,

[2:27:55] Voice 1: but the message was received.

[2:27:57] Voice 1: Thank you.

[2:27:58] Voice 10: It's a difficult topic, and I know it's not easy to solve,

[2:28:01] Voice 10: but at least put it on the agenda.

[2:28:03] Voice 10: Okay, thanks.

[2:28:04] Voice 10: Better is always good.

[2:28:06] Voice 10: Thanks.

[2:28:07] Voice 1: Thank you.

[2:28:08] Voice 1: And as we scroll down.

[2:28:10] Trustee Fast: We're just a couple of minutes away from 1230, so I'll let

[2:28:14] Voice 1: you carry on.

[2:28:14] Voice 1: Very, very fast.

[2:28:15] Voice 1: We have our last section to talk about our OSH Committee,

[2:28:17] Voice 1: our Occupational Health and Safety.

[2:28:19] Voice 1: We're always looking at things across our three offices.

[2:28:23] Voice 1: And actually just last, yesterday, at our senior leadership team,

[2:28:27] Voice 1: we talked about the draft emergency management plan that came forward.

[2:28:31] Voice 1: So we're looking, that's going to result in some further actions

[2:28:35] Voice 1: in the near future, things we need to do to make sure all staff are safe

[2:28:38] Voice 1: in our environment across all three offices.

[2:28:41] Voice 1: services. The good news is there'll be consistency in staff safety. You can probably see where I'm

[2:28:47] Voice 1: going with this. I don't want to say bad news, but that's going to come with the cost. There are some

[2:28:51] Voice 1: things we know we need to do to take care and deal with some of these issues that have come up over

[2:28:56] Voice 1: the year. So there will be, and it's, they'll fall under me to put together a plan of how we're going

[2:29:02] Voice 1: to work with this to address some of these requirements. Some will be this year, some next

[2:29:06] Voice 1: next year, some, based in over time.

[2:29:10] Voice 1: And then, yeah, we're almost at the end of this document.

[2:29:13] Voice 1: And like I said, this is an informal briefing sharing.

[2:29:19] Voice 1: And that's it for this document.

[2:29:20] Voice 1: And I think that might time us perfect time for our break.

[2:29:25] Voice 1: Thank you very much.

[2:29:25] Voice 1: Unless you have more

[2:29:26] Voice 1: questions on this, you have one minute.

[2:29:28] Voice 1: No pressure.

[2:29:30] Trustee Fast: This is just a report.

[2:29:31] Trustee Fast: We're going to see this again.

[2:29:33] Trustee Fast: It goes automatically, I think, to Trust Council.

[2:29:36] Trustee Fast: So you don't need a motion from us.

[2:29:37] Trustee Fast: And any questions for the director?

[2:29:42] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you, everybody. We're going to take a break now. And we're going to come back at one o'clock. If that suits everybody. I see some thumbs up. Thanks, everybody. We'll rejoin the meeting at one o'clock. And thank you, Toby, for taking on the extra work.

[2:30:01] Voice 1: Do we have some homework while we eat?

[2:59:44] Voice 5: Okay, we are assembling.

[2:59:57] Voice 5: Very good.

[3:00:00] Trustee Fast: thank you for returning trustees we're going to wait until uh director coburn is with us

[3:00:08] Trustee Fast: or for sure with us there he is and um i see that uh uh trustee elliott has sent in an email

[3:00:18] Trustee Fast: and if you've been in your email you would have seen that the my draft letter for the

[3:00:24] Trustee Fast: incoming chair is also there uh from robert for 8.5 but now we're going to go back to 8.2

[3:00:31] Trustee Fast: when we begin the meeting again and the streaming and everything is concerned confirmed okay

[3:00:47] Voice 5: all

[3:00:49] Voice 5: good uh robert are you yes

[3:00:54] Voice 16: we are live streaming and recording that does not stop during the

[3:00:59] Voice 16: resource okay

[3:01:01] Trustee Fast: thank you i was just checking because it was all kind of quiet okay so we're

[3:01:07] Trustee Fast: back uh together thank you everybody we'll resume our meeting now this is meeting of financial

[3:01:12] Trustee Fast: financial planning committee. And we're going to resume after a lunch break at 8.2. We've had a

[3:01:19] Trustee Fast: good discussion. And now I believe we've got a motion coming forward. And let me see if I can

[3:01:27] Trustee Fast: put that over there. And I can see the hands and trustee Elliot.

[3:01:32] Voice 7: Thank you. So yeah, so in response

[3:01:37] Voice 7: to the discussion, I don't think I need to go over it. But I'll just make the motion and see

[3:01:43] Voice 7: what everybody thinks sorry I'm just getting back to the email myself uh I move that financial

[3:01:50] Voice 7: planning committee request staff rework draft policy 6.5 point procurement to include high

[3:01:58] Voice 7: level directives related to the principles articulated in the purpose statement of the

[3:02:02] Voice 7: policy thank

[3:02:06] Trustee Fast: you so if we can have that on the screen I think staff are working on that because

[3:02:10] Trustee Fast: has the other screen has gone away and would you like to speak a little bit to it or would people

[3:02:17] Trustee Fast: like to just chime in go ahead trustee elliot

[3:02:19] Voice 7: oh sure um yeah so i was just rereading our current

[3:02:24] Voice 7: policy and um i don't think we need extensive language um that would give procedural direction

[3:02:34] Voice 7: as discussed, but some examples of how a local purchasing principle could be articulated in

[3:02:42] Voice 7: policy could be procurement will prioritize local suppliers where possible, provided they offer

[3:02:49] Voice 7: value for money and meet procurement requirements. And I gave another example of an Indigenous

[3:02:55] Voice 7: procurement initiative. Islands Trust will encourage Indigenous participation,

[3:03:00] Voice 7: participation, and we could say something by service providers or businesses, by reducing

[3:03:07] Voice 7: barriers to participation where reasonable and possible while ensuring value for money and

[3:03:12] Voice 7: meeting procurement requirements. So these sorts of guidelines, I would say, could articulate what

[3:03:24] Voice 7: the principles set out without stating explicitly how they're to be followed procedurally.

[3:03:31] Voice 7: so that's the intent of my motion and staff can rework it if the committee uh supports the idea

[3:03:40] Trustee Fast: thanks thank you trustee elliott and uh director colburn this motion um would this give you enough

[3:03:48] Trustee Fast: direction or any other yeah

[3:03:52] Voice 1: i think it is leave the door open that won't be exactly word for word

[3:03:55] Voice 1: for what you see on screen but she's giving me some good examples what level you're looking at

[3:04:00] Voice 1: four of additional content to add.

[3:04:04] Trustee Fast: Very good. Okay. Comments from other members of Trust Council.

[3:04:11] Trustee Fast: Chair, if

[3:04:12] Voice 7: I might, one more thing just

[3:04:14] Voice 7: before. We might change high-level directives to guidelines.

[3:04:22] Voice 7: Directives is, yeah, just to include guidelines would probably be simpler. Thanks.

[3:04:27] Voice 7: okay great trustee

[3:04:32] Voice 19: yates that's exactly what i was going to ask for so thank you

[3:04:37] Voice 19: and i'd be very happy to

[3:04:39] Voice 19: second this motion okay

[3:04:42] Trustee Fast: so we've got a motion moved and seconded

[3:04:45] Trustee Fast: by trustee elliott trustee yates uh trustee boland um

[3:04:53] Voice 10: i slightly lost track to be honest but

[3:04:55] Voice 10: But did you intend to explicitly refer to First Nations and barriers?

[3:05:01] Voice 10: I just feel personally that we should just say local.

[3:05:08] Voice 10: I support that effort to, you know, prioritize using local.

[3:05:14] Voice 10: But I think if you start talking about, you know, a specific group like that,

[3:05:19] Voice 10: I don't think it really works.

[3:05:22] Voice 10: I think it's better just to keep it more general than anybody local, just because I feel like then you have to start talking about what exactly are the barriers we're putting in, how do we reduce them, etc.

[3:05:35] Voice 10: I just think it makes it more fuzzy and it makes it more, it's sort of we're targeting a group who are also local.

[3:05:44] Voice 10: So I would prefer to just keep it to actually in the one that you sent us, social policy considerations, social procurement considerations, contributions towards a stronger local economy, enhancing the number of jobs and enhancing community arts and cultural infrastructure.

[3:06:05] Voice 10: I like that more general language. Thank you.

[3:06:09] Voice 10: Thank you.

[3:06:11] Trustee Fast: I think the way the motion is written, the director will be taking notes and thinking about that. What's going to work best? Anybody else have comments about this policy? And then we can move the second one, I guess. Right? Okay.

[3:06:39] Trustee Fast: Okay. I've got a motion moved and seconded. Any more discussion? Okay. I'm going to call a

[3:06:49] Trustee Fast: question on Trustee Elliott's motion. All in favor, raise your hand, please. Thank you. And

[3:06:59] Trustee Fast: lower your hands. Very good. Any opposed? None opposed. Thank you very much, Trustee Elliott

[3:07:10] Trustee Fast: Yates. And now it goes back to staff.

[3:07:15] Voice 7: Chair, sorry. Just a point of order. Actually,

[3:07:18] Voice 7: the wording is not correct it's requests staff that financial planning committee requests i

[3:07:25] Voice 7: think that was in my original just noticed it apologies for the interruption oh yeah

[3:07:31] Voice 18: we all missed

[3:07:31] Trustee Fast: that and i but i think it's just a um i can see it in your um motion that you sent us

[3:07:40] Trustee Fast: trustee patrick this

[3:07:43] Trustee Patrick: next motion is me um i was trying to help uh trustee elliott and i was

[3:07:48] Trustee Patrick: was looking at, I kind of had my go-to municipalities and I went to the district of

[3:07:52] Trustee Patrick: Saanich's procurement policy. And I was like, I really were missing a roles and responsibility

[3:07:58] Trustee Patrick: because I think when I think of procurement, this is one of those areas where following the

[3:08:04] Trustee Patrick: rules is important and ethics and our behavior and what we set up is important. And how is trust

[3:08:11] Trustee Patrick: trust counsel fit into this. And so I think if we're going to be sending it back to staff and

[3:08:17] Trustee Patrick: I didn't, I sent it out to staff, no one from staff said, no, we shouldn't have this in this

[3:08:22] Trustee Patrick: policy. I just think it would help. This is a policy where roles and responsibilities would

[3:08:28] Trustee Patrick: be important. What is counsel's role? It has, right now there's a section about a trustee,

[3:08:33] Trustee Patrick: how they should avoid conflict of interest. You know, that's good. But what is our role as trust

[3:08:40] Trustee Patrick: trust counsel in procurement and so forth, established by this policy.

[3:08:45] Trustee Patrick: So that's my motion.

[3:08:47] Trustee Patrick: If there's no comments from staff or anything, I'm willing to make it.

[3:08:53] Trustee Fast: Let's hear from staff.

[3:08:54] Trustee Fast: Does staff have any ways that this motion could be clarified or issues with it?

[3:09:02] Voice 1: Can I ask a quick question?

[3:09:04] Voice 1: I'm just looking to look at the distinction between trustees and trust counsel.

[3:09:09] Voice 1: I just want to make sure we're clear.

[3:09:11] Voice 1: We are in one mind, don't the trustees together create trust council?

[3:09:16] Voice 1: Do we need to say trustees and trust?

[3:09:18] Voice 1: Or do we need to, is it duplication?

[3:09:21] Voice 1: I'm not sure.

[3:09:21] Voice 1: We need to be clear on that.

[3:09:22] Trustee Patrick: I didn't want to tell staff what level of detail to go to for roles and responsibilities.

[3:09:26] Trustee Patrick: I think the District of Saanich is one example of what they have council.

[3:09:32] Trustee Patrick: They do have more than council for their roles and responsibilities.

[3:09:36] Trustee Patrick: I thought staff could decide that.

[3:09:39] Trustee Patrick: What would be appropriate? But I think in this case, what's in there right now is about an individual trustee's behavior, how they cannot be a procured source of money against, you know, they can't provide services to the Islands Trust.

[3:09:54] Trustee Patrick: That's not really about Trust Council's role of authorizing you, the staff, to go procure things on the approved budgets that we've created.

[3:10:10] Trustee Fast: Okay. So you're asking for some clarity there, and I see the director nodding. Okay. How about the rest of the committee? Do committee members have an issue with this, or is Trustee Getty?

[3:10:26] Trustee Fast: would

[3:10:28] Voice 17: this um it seems to me that what we would want to avoid is if there's some sort of a um

[3:10:34] Voice 17: not an arm's length connection between a trustee and someone who's bidding on a contractor somebody

[3:10:41] Voice 17: who wants to get involved and that um it would help if that was um if there was a requirement

[3:10:49] Voice 17: that that had to be described explained set out disclosed yeah thank you better so if that is what

[3:11:00] Voice 17: um this is one of the things at least that um this type of motion would be trying to

[3:11:08] Voice 17: protect against then um is that i guess that's a question is that included in roles and

[3:11:17] Voice 17: responsibilities beyond just the conflict of interest. So I'm not directly involved. I don't

[3:11:23] Voice 17: have a company that's going to be bidding on something, but it should still be arm's length

[3:11:27] Voice 17: or there should be some notification of that.

[3:11:33] Trustee Fast: I see your question and I'm wondering if

[3:11:35] Trustee Fast: Trustee Patrick, do you have an answer or did you want to answer this?

[3:11:38] Trustee Fast: Well,

[3:11:39] Trustee Patrick: you know, District of Saanich also has an ethics section to their policy and it's more

[3:11:45] Trustee Patrick: about the behavior between the vendors, that the vendors don't reach out to you as an elected

[3:11:51] Trustee Patrick: official and try to work you over on, here, hire me, I'm the best. So that is something else to

[3:12:00] Trustee Patrick: consider that could be done in roles and responsibilities, or it could be an ethics

[3:12:04] Trustee Patrick: piece related to that.

[3:12:08] Trustee Fast: Okay, thank you. And if I may, Judy, I'll put myself on the list,

[3:12:13] Trustee Fast: because over here at Bowen Island Municipality,

[3:12:16] Trustee Fast: we're also in the midst of updating our procurement policy.

[3:12:22] Trustee Fast: In our case, it's like 24 years or something

[3:12:25] Trustee Fast: since we became a municipality.

[3:12:27] Trustee Fast: And some of those considerations about being on a small island

[3:12:31] Trustee Fast: and family members and, you know, there's lots of overlaps.

[3:12:37] Trustee Fast: And so you may want to look at the draft,

[3:12:41] Trustee Fast: craft Bowen Island municipal purchasing policy because it considers some of those things too

[3:12:50] Trustee Fast: that might be might be helpful in other island communities so I'm just I'll send you that

[3:12:57] Trustee Fast: Derek later and but just to I get the point okay thank you I think then I anyway just finish my

[3:13:06] Trustee Fast: speaking I like the motion and I'm going to lower my hand anybody else want to discuss this

[3:13:14] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[3:13:14] Trustee Fast: Then I'm going to call the question.

[3:13:16] Trustee Fast: All those in favor?

[3:13:17] Trustee Patrick: The motion

[3:13:19] Trustee Fast: has been made.

[3:13:20] Trustee Fast: Oh, sorry.

[3:13:21] Trustee Fast: I thought you made it.

[3:13:22] Trustee Fast: I

[3:13:23] Trustee Patrick: don't think I did.

[3:13:25] Trustee Patrick: I

[3:13:25] Trustee Fast: can make it, though.

[3:13:26] Trustee Patrick: I move that the Financial Planning Committee request staff add a roles and responsibilities section to the draft policy 653 procurement.

[3:13:37] Trustee Fast: And I see Trustee Elliott's hand up.

[3:13:40] Trustee Fast: Are you seconding?

[3:13:41] Trustee Fast: We'll need.

[3:13:43] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[3:13:43] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:13:44] Trustee Fast: So we've got a motion now moved and seconded.

[3:13:48] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[3:13:51] Trustee Fast: And any more discussion?

[3:13:56] Trustee Fast: Trustee Getty?

[3:13:58] Voice 17: I'd like staff to comment whether or not we've already got policies that have to do with this kind of thing as part of their response to this request.

[3:14:15] Trustee Fast: I see Director Coburn madly reading.

[3:14:18] Voice 1: I'm looking at the list of ones that kind of link back to me, I see trustee remuneration, trustee training, trustee travel, trustee equipment, but I don't think anything on sort of the HR conflict side, so I think in section, the policy section B under the part of delegation of authority, I think that's where the roles and responsibilities would fit nicely, I could put something additional in there.

[3:14:45] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you. Trustee Boland? No? Okay. And then...

[3:14:55] Trustee Fast: I was over-enthusiastically voting in advance.

[3:14:58] Trustee Fast: Okay. Thank you. Just checking. All right. Seeing no more hands going up,

[3:15:05] Trustee Fast: I'm going to call the question. And all those in favor, please raise your hand.

[3:15:12] Trustee Fast: Thank you. And lower your hands. Any opposed? Very good. Thank you, trustees. That's two

[3:15:24] Trustee Fast: Two suggestions for staff, and it's back to staff.

[3:15:27] Trustee Fast: Very good.

[3:15:29] Trustee Fast: Okay, this is making notes here.

[3:15:32] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:15:32] Trustee Fast: And okay, so moving on now, we're down to 8.5.

[3:15:38] Trustee Fast: And this is the draft chair letter from me going to the new term committee.

[3:15:45] Trustee Fast: So I think you got this in your email.

[3:15:47] Trustee Fast: Robert set it out just after the meeting started this morning.

[3:15:52] Trustee Fast: I wonder if Nancy's got it.

[3:15:56] Trustee Fast: She's got her hand up.

[3:15:57] Trustee Fast: Go ahead, Nancy.

[3:15:59] Voice 20: You didn't, I don't think you made the motion to actually forward the procurement policy to Trust Council, did you?

[3:16:06] Voice 20: Or did I miss it?

[3:16:10] Voice 1: No,

[3:16:11] Trustee Fast: we referred it back to staff.

[3:16:14] Trustee Fast: Oh,

[3:16:14] Voice 20: you referred it back.

[3:16:15] Voice 20: Oh, so you're not taking it to Trust Council then?

[3:16:18] Voice 20: You want it come back here?

[3:16:21] Trustee Fast: That's a good question.

[3:16:23] Trustee Fast: Do we want it?

[3:16:25] Trustee Fast: I thought it would go to Trust Council next, but maybe David Marler, if you're there, David.

[3:16:33] Trustee Fast: David,

[3:16:33] Voice 1: as it reads those two motions we just passed, does that slice for us to make those minor tweaks and then send it to Trust Council, or have we missed a step?

[3:16:44] Voice 13: Yeah, but given the confusion, I would suggest that the FPC make it clear by resolution.

[3:16:51] Voice 13: So if you just want staff to make the changes and bring it back to FPC, make that clear.

[3:16:57] Voice 13: And if you just want them to make changes and then send to council as amended, make that clear.

[3:17:02] Voice 13: So I would just ask FPC to make clear their intentions.

[3:17:07] Trustee Fast: Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Nancy. And what do you think, trustees?

[3:17:13] Trustee Fast: Who would like to speak up on what you think should happen?

[3:17:19] Trustee Fast: trustee getty

[3:17:20] Voice 17: let's um get it to council with amendments okay

[3:17:25] Trustee Fast: so if you could move the motion

[3:17:27] Trustee Fast: uh that's on page um i

[3:17:31] Voice 17: don't have the

[3:17:32] Voice 17: pages up in front of me so it's 35 yeah

[3:17:35] Trustee Fast: okay that financial

[3:17:38] Voice 18: planning

[3:17:38] Voice 17: i i would move the financial planning committee forward the revised procurement policy

[3:17:44] Voice 17: policy as amended at the august 19th financial planning committee meeting to islands trust

[3:17:52] Voice 17: council for approval thank

[3:17:55] Trustee Fast: you trustee giddy and i'm seeing am i nancy your hand is still up do i

[3:18:02] Trustee Fast: need see another um trustee who would like to second this trustee yates you second thing i'll

[3:18:13] Voice 19: I'll second it.

[3:18:14] Voice 19: Sorry, yes, my computer's a bit slow, sorry.

[3:18:18] Voice 19: Okay, were you seconding?

[3:18:20] Trustee Fast: Yes.

[3:18:21] Trustee Fast: Thank you, okay.

[3:18:23] Trustee Fast: So that's Trustee Getty and Trustee Yates

[3:18:29] Trustee Fast: moved and seconded that staff will make these revisions

[3:18:32] Trustee Fast: and forward the revised procurement policy

[3:18:37] Trustee Fast: to Trust Council for approval.

[3:18:39] Trustee Fast: Any discussion?

[3:18:43] Trustee Fast: Thank you, everybody.

[3:18:44] Trustee Fast: then let's vote on it all those in favor please raise your hand thank you and

[3:18:53] Trustee Fast: lower your hands any opposed very good thank you everybody

[3:19:01] Trustee Fast: Thank You Nancy for catching that I had been under the other idea okay so that

[3:19:11] Trustee Fast: draft letter is there I don't know if you want to discuss it I haven't had a

[3:19:15] Trustee Fast: chance to spend a lot of time on it I don't really want to write a letter by

[3:19:18] Trustee Fast: by committee, but if people have specific suggestions

[3:19:22] Trustee Fast: of something they think is missing

[3:19:24] Trustee Fast: or that would help the next financial planning committee

[3:19:30] Trustee Fast: chair to get off to a good start, I'm open.

[3:19:37] Trustee Fast: Otherwise, just here for discussion.

[3:19:46] Trustee Fast: Trustee Elliot first.

[3:19:49] Voice 8: Hi, thank you.

[3:19:51] Voice 8: I think it's great, it's clear.

[3:19:53] Voice 8: just at the very end your bc specific fact sheets doesn't seem to have a link unless that ubcm

[3:19:59] Voice 8: link is the only one but that's

[3:20:04] Trustee Fast: the link it takes you to everything ah

[3:20:07] Voice 8: okay thanks okay

[3:20:08] Voice 8: okay

[3:20:09] Trustee Fast: thank you um trustee peterson uh

[3:20:16] Voice 11: thank you chair my only comment was um

[3:20:19] Voice 11: Um, the bullet number two on page two, uh, talking about corporate planning.

[3:20:27] Voice 11: It says, this is a recommendation of the CAO.

[3:20:29] Voice 11: Of course, we all know that it was, um, it was a recommendation before we even got the

[3:20:37] Voice 11: CAO we have.

[3:20:38] Voice 11: Um, so I just wonder if that could be reflected.

[3:20:40] Voice 11: It looks to me, it just reads like the CAO has told us to do it.

[3:20:46] Voice 11: And it's a bit more involved than that.

[3:20:48] Trustee Fast: okay okay because

[3:20:52] Voice 11: the recommendation actually came

[3:20:53] Voice 11: yeah yeah

[3:20:56] Trustee Fast: no we looked at that a long time

[3:20:58] Trustee Fast: though didn't we okay thank you i got it and uh taking quick notes here trustee patrick

[3:21:07] Trustee Fast: yeah the only thing i think you're

[3:21:11] Trustee Patrick: it's there but i would always encourage the next trust council

[3:21:16] Trustee Patrick: it's sort of that continuous improvement i think we're getting there the corporate plans coming

[3:21:21] Trustee Patrick: I think the budget process, I think Director Coburn now bringing his ideas to the budget process. But I think the committee needs to be encouraged that the budget process could always be better. We always end up in March with half the trustees wanting to do something totally different than what the other half do. And it's like, we got to get to a stronger position that by March Trust Council, there should be general consensus built around a budget, not bringing new ideas still in March.

[3:21:52] Trustee Patrick: Okay, thank you.

[3:21:54] Voice 5: I'll see what I can do. Right. Anybody else?

[3:22:02] Voice 19: Trustee Yates?

[3:22:04] Voice 19: Yes, thank you for writing this letter, Chair Fassett. It's a really good idea. Can you please go to the Islands Trust Conservancy part of it, where you talk about the values, not necessarily in dollars, but certainly they relate to finance.

[3:22:24] Voice 5: yes

[3:22:24] Voice 19: um yeah um no sorry that's the bottom bottom of page two yeah when we talk about the value of

[3:22:36] Voice 19: like it may not be immediately evident what the value of um the conservancy is yeah considering

[3:22:43] Voice 19: the scale um yeah that's really good none of the asset value shows up because of the way this type

[3:22:55] Voice 19: of accounting is correctly done. And then the next paragraph, there's so many other ecosystem

[3:23:05] Voice 19: services like climate change mitigation and air pollution mitigation, all that kind of stuff.

[3:23:13] Voice 19: So I was just hoping we could beef that up a bit, but maybe it's good enough. But that is

[3:23:21] Voice 19: is really important to me that the ecosystem services provided by land that is properly

[3:23:27] Voice 19: stewarded um is almost inestimable although there has been dollar value put to it by some very good

[3:23:35] Voice 19: organizations so i just want to make sure we yeah we don't lose that um it's very important so thank

[3:23:42] Voice 19: thank you for doing that thank you anybody else

[3:23:48] Trustee Fast: okay thanks everybody i'll uh i'll see what i can

[3:23:54] Trustee Fast: do excuse me about those suggestions and that's great thank you I didn't know

[3:24:01] Trustee Fast: that this was coming but it's a suddenly it's happened okay and then we're back

[3:24:10] Trustee Fast: to our meeting agenda thank you for your input we're on number 10 that's the work

[3:24:17] Trustee Fast: program so page 57 I think just wanted to take a look at that so here we are we

[3:24:28] Trustee Fast: We've still got another meeting to go, and I think this I'll take to the Trust Council,

[3:24:36] Trustee Fast: and we'll be asking Trust Council to approve it.

[3:24:38] Trustee Fast: Not this one that's labeled current.

[3:24:42] Trustee Fast: That's what it is sort of now, but the one called proposed.

[3:24:49] Trustee Fast: Is that correct?

[3:24:54] Voice 18: Got it.

[3:24:56] Trustee Fast: I'm looking at the one on page 61.

[3:25:02] Trustee Fast: It says proposed.

[3:25:03] Trustee Fast: I like the big red letters.

[3:25:04] Trustee Fast: It makes it easier to sort through these.

[3:25:06] Trustee Fast: and um so here we are in our sort of timeline uh for this committee reviewed draft one of the

[3:25:14] Trustee Fast: budget in october 2026 is the first one there and then review draft two in december so it's

[3:25:22] Trustee Fast: kind of laying out the work ahead um the application fees is number two we've already

[3:25:28] Trustee Fast: got that on our list we got direction from trust council to do that and um so and the

[3:25:36] Trustee Fast: quarter two financial forecast, and then we're into future projects report. So this is the one

[3:25:43] Trustee Fast: I think that would be called our work program. Is that right? I have to admit, I get mixed up

[3:25:51] Trustee Fast: between active projects, fuel, and Robert?

[3:26:00] Voice 15: Yes, thank you, Chair. The work program

[3:26:04] Voice 15: The work program consists of two things, active projects and future projects.

[3:26:09] Voice 15: Oh, thank you.

[3:26:10] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[3:26:11] Trustee Fast: Okay.

[3:26:12] Trustee Fast: All right.

[3:26:12] Trustee Fast: And so future projects, if we just scroll up a little bit, that's the next three, obviously, are on page 62.

[3:26:20] Trustee Fast: to do and uh so those would be on the list for the next uh financial planning uh committee to do

[3:26:29] Trustee Fast: should they or trust council wish to um begin that uh trustee getty um

[3:26:37] Voice 17: in the last budget we

[3:26:39] Voice 17: speak um in preparation for the this election um there was the forty thousand dollars that was the

[3:26:47] Voice 17: the lump sum that was put into this budget, and that was, it's not the biggest item, but it was

[3:26:52] Voice 17: certainly sizable, and I think, I feel fairly strongly that there should be a reserve fund set

[3:26:59] Voice 17: up for that in particular, so that it's divided up over the four years, so it's not such a big

[3:27:05] Voice 17: hit on the last year, because we had, you know, quite a considerable increase, so, and it doesn't

[3:27:12] Voice 17: really fall. I mean, it's, I want to emphasize that, I suppose. So it's not evaluating all the

[3:27:18] Voice 17: other potential new reserve funds. And it's not necessarily part of a review of the policy

[3:27:27] Voice 17: that, you know, while those are ongoing, or those are something that would be good to work on when

[3:27:33] Voice 17: we have some time, I think that this next budget has to start the process so that there's, you

[3:27:39] Voice 17: you know, some estimate that it's going to be

[3:27:43] Voice 17: at least the 40,000 like it is this year

[3:27:45] Voice 17: and that that be taken into account

[3:27:48] Voice 17: in the four years leading up to the next election.

[3:27:51] Voice 17: So sort of pulling it out and moving it up

[3:27:55] Voice 17: so that it becomes part of the current projects

[3:28:00] Voice 17: and the outline of the first budget.

[3:28:04] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:28:05] Trustee Fast: So that would be changing number two

[3:28:07] Trustee Fast: on this page that's on the screen.

[3:28:10] Trustee Fast: um to read only perhaps no no i think or even set aside yeah

[3:28:17] Voice 17: future projects you know there

[3:28:19] Voice 17: might be more and there might be a broader context and the review of the policy might

[3:28:24] Voice 17: be broader as well and i don't deny those but i think that you know uh pulling it out

[3:28:31] Voice 17: specifically because we've just been through that budget that took into account the forty

[3:28:37] Voice 17: $40,000 for an election, that that simply be part of, in the previous page, when we're talking about current projects, that that be part of the budget discussion in the item one, I think it was in that page.

[3:28:52] Trustee Fast: Okay. Active Projects, the page previous. And can we have more than, I'm just going to,

[3:29:01] Trustee Fast: coming to everybody, can we have more than three things on this Active Projects list as FPC?

[3:29:11] Trustee Fast: I'm not hearing anything. Go ahead, Director Coburn.

[3:29:15] Voice 1: Thank you. Yeah, I got to watch who I see. I'm not sure on the historical process of this.

[3:29:23] Voice 1: I think we're looking like said they're all there will be a staggered approach to some of these

[3:29:28] Voice 1: dates and so before I answer your question I just see there's a typo on this page that I missed

[3:29:34] Voice 1: so Robert for taking notes we can go in the system after and fix it the last one

[3:29:39] Voice 1: the Q2 financial forecast because remember Q2 is up to the end of September 30th so we only close

[3:29:46] Voice 1: our books that first week of October I will not have it turned around in one week so that'll be

[3:29:52] Voice 1: coming forward at the December 2nd meeting. I just missed that before, sorry. Now to answer your question.

[3:30:00] Voice 1: those three items that were on the future list i'm just getting my my projected list i'm looking

[3:30:06] Voice 1: to work on those in late september so in my view they will all be in the short term so i i don't

[3:30:12] Voice 1: see a problem i add them all to current now as far as the what the rules are how many there's a

[3:30:18] Voice 1: limit to how many current i can't answer that question but they're on my to-do list in the

[3:30:23] Voice 1: very near future so i don't have an issue with adding them to current okay thank

[3:30:28] Voice 1: you very much

[3:30:29] Voice 1: them all for probably that december meeting as well okay

[3:30:35] Trustee Fast: and uh going to you trustee peterson

[3:30:39] Trustee Fast: thank

[3:30:42] Voice 11: you i i think uh while it may not be a great idea to have huge lists uh just go and look at a

[3:30:49] Voice 11: trust programs committee uh follow-up action or a work program list you'll you'll get an idea but

[3:30:57] Voice 11: But mainly I just wanted to speak in favor of the notion that the sooner we get an election reserve fund started, the better.

[3:31:08] Voice 11: I think that those years, the election years, it comes as a bit of a crunch.

[3:31:15] Voice 11: And I also think that my memory was that it was considerably more than $40,000, but in favor of a election reserve fund.

[3:31:27] Voice 11: Okay,

[3:31:28] Trustee Fast: thank you. I think I'm hearing, let's move the election reserve fund to the beginning of the list in the new projects there. I guess it is. And then moving, evaluating potential new specific reserve funds up into the current active projects list, or the proposed active. Anyway, Trustee Boland.

[3:31:55] Trustee Fast: yeah

[3:31:57] Voice 10: um i i wasn't going to say anything and then i thought since uh the elections made it up at the

[3:32:04] Voice 10: list the information technology five-year plan i feel that um some of the problems that the

[3:32:12] Voice 10: trust has faced um you know map it falling over um and a few other things but i first of all i

[3:32:21] Voice 10: recommend that the IT plan is lean and mean and doesn't have bells and whistles and gold plating.

[3:32:29] Voice 10: But the basic cost of IT infrastructure upgrades is considerable and I think that really deserves

[3:32:39] Voice 10: a reserve fund because otherwise it always gets thrown under the bus when we start to penny pinch

[3:32:48] Voice 10: in February, March.

[3:32:50] Voice 10: And I think about, you know,

[3:32:52] Voice 10: included in that is records management,

[3:32:54] Voice 10: updating information sharing capabilities,

[3:32:58] Voice 10: all of that.

[3:32:59] Voice 10: But I don't want gold plated.

[3:33:01] Voice 10: I don't want bells and whistles,

[3:33:03] Voice 10: but the basics are costly.

[3:33:06] Voice 10: And I think that really, really,

[3:33:09] Voice 10: really deserves a reserve fund.

[3:33:11] Voice 10: Thanks.

[3:33:13] Trustee Fast: Thank you.

[3:33:14] Trustee Fast: Yeah, I think we're talking about all those.

[3:33:17] Trustee Fast: But anyway, over to you, CAO.

[3:33:20] Voice 14: Thank you, Chair. Just briefly to touch on Trustee Boland's point, we anticipate that the draft five-year information services plan will be coming to Trust Council at its September meeting for comment, and so hopefully it reflects what you're thinking there, Trustee Boland, but I think that would be an important frame of reference then, and it can inform any consideration around whether or not a reserve fund for that purpose would make sense as well.

[3:33:47] Voice 14: but you'll you'll get it you'll be getting to first look at that plan uh yeah that's a september

[3:33:50] Voice 14: meeting thanks thank

[3:33:53] Trustee Fast: you very much and uh director coburn i see your hand is up again thank you i

[3:33:57] Voice 1: don't want to turn this too much of an accounting theory discussion but uh in terms of the reserve

[3:34:02] Voice 1: fund for the iit pieces what's happening is that's that's deemed a capital asset so what's going to

[3:34:09] Voice 1: happen is we might spend the money this year but the way the accounting for that works is we'll be

[3:34:15] Voice 1: amortizing over the life of the asset so let's say for example a laptop is three years so let's

[3:34:21] Voice 1: say we buy 10 laptops at three thousand thirty thousand dollars we'll be only be hit with ten

[3:34:27] Voice 1: thousand per year as we amortize it over the life of the asset so that's and there's some changes to

[3:34:32] Voice 1: the accounting standards that says budgeting and now must match your financial statement so all

[3:34:39] Voice 1: that will be changing in it's basically the amortization process will be doing what you're

[3:34:44] Voice 1: asking for so we don't need to create a fund for it but it will be in basically de facto happening

[3:34:52] Trustee Fast: okay thank you so i think i hear and correct me trustees if i'm wrong but that we're interested

[3:34:59] Trustee Fast: in moving um uh number two from the future projects report which is evaluating potential

[3:35:06] Trustee Fast: new specific reserve funds up into the active project report and then if that's

[3:35:19] Trustee Fast: correct and then referring this work program as amended to Trust Council

[3:35:25] Trustee Fast: might be the wording somebody want to make that motion go ahead trustee

[3:35:33] Trustee Fast: Peterson well

[3:35:35] Voice 11: I'm just wondering if we actually need to do that I heard

[3:35:38] Voice 11: heard director coburn say that he was going to start uh that work in september and i would look

[3:35:43] Voice 11: to him to see if the direction is required because if he's going to do it um would you like a motion

[3:35:52] Voice 11: director coburn um

[3:35:54] Voice 1: i i don't think it's required because it's already in sort of the work plan to

[3:35:58] Voice 1: have it done by the december tc meeting which

[3:36:03] Voice 18: comes forward

[3:36:04] Voice 1: to the december financial planning

[3:36:06] Voice 1: committee meeting which will then whenever the following whenever the following trust council

[3:36:12] Voice 1: media so it will happen in december okay

[3:36:16] Voice 11: yeah yeah that's that was what i thought i heard so

[3:36:21] Voice 11: i'm happy to make the motion to forward the work program report however okay

[3:36:28] Trustee Fast: thank you and um let

[3:36:30] Voice 11: me

[3:36:30] Trustee Fast: just okay go ahead the hand went down go ahead

[3:36:34] Voice 11: i move that financial planning committee approved

[3:36:37] Voice 11: the proposed work work program report and forward it to trust council for approval thank you sir

[3:36:45] Voice 1: can

[3:36:46] Voice 11: i ask one

[3:36:46] Voice 1: question on that remember i changed one date on the active do we need to say the

[3:36:51] Voice 1: amended as amended

[3:36:52] Voice 1: yeah that one date from october 15th will be now december 2nd okay

[3:37:00] Trustee Fast: all right and

[3:37:02] Trustee Fast: uh did i get a seconder i don't think i did yet uh thank you trustee yates i saw your hand before

[3:37:09] Trustee Fast: for two. That's great. And any more discussion? Trustee Yates?

[3:37:16] Voice 19: Yes, thank you. I was just

[3:37:18] Voice 19: reflecting back at September, sorry, not September, June council meeting where we talked about

[3:37:27] Voice 19: not having a $400,000 hit every four years for election expenses and instead, you know,

[3:37:34] Voice 19: trying to make it $100,000 a year and have a reserve fund. So this is, it was an important

[3:37:40] Voice 19: discussion and and i i'm really glad we're following through with that thanks yeah thank you

[3:37:48] Voice 19: very good

[3:37:49] Trustee Fast: so that's support uh any more discussion then i'll call the question about referring um

[3:37:56] Trustee Fast: this for to trust council for approval all in favor raise your hand thank you and lower your

[3:38:05] Trustee Fast: hands any opposed well thank you very good okay so that passes unanimously and then uh our next

[3:38:18] Trustee Fast: meeting october 15th two days before uh election day and uh thank you very much trustees thank you

[3:38:26] Trustee Fast: staff that was terrific trustee uh director coburn i

[3:38:31] Voice 1: just want to reiterate you mentioned earlier at

[3:38:33] Voice 1: that december or the october 15th meeting will be the presentation of version one of the budget so

[3:38:39] Voice 1: i'm hoping trustees will be present yes it'll be

[3:38:43] Voice 1: an important meeting it's

[3:38:44] Voice 1: near the end of your

[3:38:47] Voice 1: term but it is will be a very important meeting yes

[3:38:50] Trustee Fast: thank you for bringing that up it'll be the

[3:38:52] Trustee Fast: draft budget and the quarter two financial forecast or whatever equivalent whatever data you've got

[3:38:59] Trustee Fast: and uh and i think the application fees discussion will be interesting uh too if that's uh if that

[3:39:06] Trustee Fast: makes it uh through all the other work that has to be done and uh so i'm looking forward to that

[3:39:13] Trustee Fast: meeting i look forward to seeing everybody again there online and see you at trust council

[3:39:17] Trustee Fast: Council. Any more comments before I adjourn? I asked for adjourning. Nope. Okay. Thank you. Then

[3:39:24] Trustee Fast: no closed meeting. Next meeting October 15. Who would like to vote for move the adjournment?

[3:39:32] Trustee Fast: Thank you, Trustee Getty. I knew you would. Okay. And thank you, Trustee Yates. Thanks, everybody.

[3:39:37] Trustee Fast: That was terrific. And, and nice to meet you, Manager Jane. Okay. Bye for now.