The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada
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BC/Yukon Region – Regional Executive Meeting #6

Thursday, November 28, 2024, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Delta Vancouver Inn & Suites, 550 West Hastings St, Vancouver, BC, V6B 1L6

Meeting IDKNNY9M9RRNS

 

Meeting Minutes

 

Regional Executive Meeting – November 28, 2024

  1. Approval of Agenda – (All) Consensus
  2. Approval of Minutes – (All)
    1. October 17 & 18, 2024 Consensus
  3. Business Arising from Minutes – (All)
    1. Review of action items – AI: Lauren organize shared drive.
    2. Surrey Branch developments (timed item for 9:30 am) – (D. Chiu & R. MacDonald)
    3. Subcommittee for portfolio/bylaws review – (K. Johnston) Bylaws pertain to portfolios (description of positions). BF to Feb 2025 meeting.
  4. Regional Director Report - (M. Cranny)

First, thanks to you all for managing the Steward Council in my absence. I appreciate everyone stepping up to make sure it went as well as I hear it did.

 

Since our last meeting much of my time has been healing from my knee surgery. That said I have stayed as active as possible. I sent a report to the Victoria Branch AGM to be shared with attendees. I will be attending their bowling event December 7th.  I was granted a medical accommodation to attend the National AGM which involved taking the train. I left Nov 1st and arrived in Toronto Nov 5th. There was a BOD meetings Nov 5-6th. Then the AGM was Nov 8-9th and I was quite happy with the outcome overall. The dues increase was successful as were some other helpful resolutions. Review the AGM for more details. The election was also very interesting and we have a number of new folks on the BOD with some folks returning. We will have a new president, Sean O’Reilly. I am looking forward to working with these folks to stabilize the union leadership and make the business of the institute the focus of our efforts. There are still some outstanding matters with the outgoing president but I don’t have an update other than to say I think some things were happening this week.  The train ride is quite beautiful but 4 days there and 4 days back was a lot of train time.  There will be board orientation for new folks Dec 8-9th, then BOD meetings Dec 10-11th with the newly elected BOD members joining. There will be a RD meeting on Dec 12th. Very busy week. I will attend all virtually as I am not cleared to fly until the new year.

 

I attended the Vancouver Branch AGM on Nov 20th and it was very well attended. I spoke to the RTO issue, though there is not much new to report. I did mention that the grievance route should be considered carefully as unless there is an accommodation issue or some other way the CA is being broken, grievances will not be successful. We don’t want to load the ERO’s with “nuisance” grievances. I appealed for more stewards who are willing to be active.  I do hope that we can refocus on the RTO issue.  I also spoke about the looming election and that we should prepare to fight. We are already seeing cuts with the current government.. I was pleased that they had elections with a couple new, younger folks joining their executive.

 

I plan to attend the NCVI Branch AGM on Dec 10th and the Fraser Valley Branch AGM on Dec 11th. Squeezing these in while doing the BOD meetings that week.  Unfortunately, I am not able to attend the Northern Branch AGM this year.

Accept and approve Morgan’s oral report. m/s/c

  1. Steward Renewals (M. Cranny) Reviewed steward renewals.
  2. Office/Staff Report – (K. Hawkins)

Office

The Vancouver office is moving. We have signed a contract for suite 955 at 789 W Pender, which still affords us easy access to transit for members. We will be directly across from Pacific Center. We take possession on Dec 1 and move during the week of Jan 12-17. I will be in town to facilitate the move.

 

This also means that, before Jan 10, we need to have someone from this group coordinate with Alex to come to the office and determine what items belong to the executive (there are definitely old items but there may be some that you want) and remove them. We will not have a storage room in our new office so we cannot take any regional items.

 

A thank you to the Board for extending the lease by one month so we have space to move. The rent is costing half of our current space rent.

 

Staff

Our office has three excessively high workloads. Caseloads range from the 60s-90s. I have already advised staff side leadership that we require another indeterminate ERO in this region and will be making the formal request for the new budget year. It was previously part of the forecast for positions in the LR section. I think there is a growing recognition that ERO work is very complex and we require the appropriate number of representatives in order to meet our standards. We are in a challenging situation with respect to meeting our member standards due to volume. CSC continues to be a significant challenge, as is the FNHA and YHC. CRA also contributes a steady workflow as does DFO. We are in the midst of a complex policy analysis for specific CSC issues. The single highest contributor to our workloads is CSC, which is always a concern when we have far more members at CRA (half of our regional members) for instance. We would benefit from stewards tackling earlier phases of cases and ensuring they are communicating what's unfolding in worksites.

 

From an incoming workload perspective, we've had 578 new cases in this region this year. As the month is wrapping up, this represents around 52.5 new cases per month, whereas September and October were 90 and 92 new files respectively. We have a current equivalent of five EROs.

 

We have two hearings scheduled for January and one is definitively proceeding. The other is undetermined at this time but we do not anticipate it will move forward. We have another one in February that is potentially moving forward though it's vaccine related so there's a potential for adjournment pending a judicial review for a potentially precedent setting grievance.

Accept and approve Kris’ oral report. m/s/c

  1. Financial Report – Treasurer - (P. MacDougall)
    1. Financial update – reviewed financial report.
  2. Regional Training Committee Report – (P. MacDougall)

TEAM met in October a fair amount of the meeting involved the postmortem on the Peet to Peer session held in September.  Overall positive feedback with nearly all the participants being approved for training with no concerns. There are two peer facilitators that the trainers recommend do not train without a stronger co-facilitator.  Neither of those are in our region so we have 4 new peer trainers available for future training courses, we just have to find opportunities for them to teach.

We had presentations from the PRQC Chair and were supposed to have another presentation on Pride at Work but they were unable to join the Zoom meeting. 

The regular meeting covered the usual topics:

Review of Strategic plan: Met with the new lead for education, Jill Piebeck.  Currently working on Scientific integrity training course, and an in-depth discussion on the development of future courses, question on whether we should have Sergeant in arms training to try to ensure the AGMs go more smoothly.

Continued our cyclical review of the training policy – this was a shorter discussion than usual as it was expected that there were going to be resolutions at the AGM which would affect our review (subsequently, this did not happen).

Continued discussion on the creation of a mentorship program and how it will fit into the Steward Portal. This will be developed in cooperation with the National Steward Officer.

    1. Upcoming training in BC/Yukon Region
    2. National training initiatives
    3. Review Training committee membership

Review Terms of Reference - Accept and approve amended Terms of Reference. m/s/c

Accept and approve Pete’s oral report. m/s/c

  1. Awards Committee – (D. Corda)
    1. Executive of the Year
    2. Steward of the Year
  2. YPN Initiative – (D. Chiu)

The YPC hosted three Steward Council events in October at the JW Marriott in Vancouver to captialize the central location - an evening reception at the hotel, billiards night, and a more family-oriented event at Science World. The events were well attended with 25-35 participants at each of them.

The Committee decided to meet for an extra day during Steward Council to do long-term planning for the next year. The focus for next year is to maximize engagement through outreach to Young Professionals who are located in less central areas; while minimizing the amount of in-person meetings. Eric Massey, from the SH group bargaining team, was invited to provide an introduction of bargaining to the YPC. Jordan Loverock also did a presentation on the usage of ChatGPT to aide with event planning.

 

The committee discussed, defined and assigned roles or portfolios to better share the responsibilities of the work planned. BC/Yukon is roughly separated into 5 rough regions - Yukon, Lower Mainland, Island, North, and South-East. Members, ideally from those regions, were assigned to represent those regions in any discussions of engagements. Other roles include VP of engagements, membership, political influence, secretary, and treasurer.

The committee (Terri) placed an order of waterproof bags using the new YP logos from Comms as promotional goods to give out during engagement events.

A web page for the BC/Yukon YPC was finally approved after much back-and-forth. It is currently blank but provides a space for meeting minutes and information about the YPC and the events.

The national ad-hoc committee met during the AGM in Toronto to discuss recent activities within each region and get clarification on the budget allocations available. John Purdie presented on cost containment measures and effects to the overall budget. As several of the regions have budget from their regional executive and the ad-hoc committee is unlikely to exhaust annually allocation, regions could put forward proposals for reallocations. There will be another meeting in December to meet with the Advisory Committee to determine strategic alignments.

    1. YP Forum – October 2024

Accept and approve Davy’s oral report. m/s/c

  1. National initiatives
    1. Legacy Fund & challenge cup – (S. Auchoybur) Haven’t heard who won Legacy Cup.
    2. Rob MacDonald via Zoom - Discussion Vancouver Branch, Fraser Valley and Surrey/White Rock Branches. Survey sent to 19 members in Langley to determine which branch they prefer to belong: Fraser Valley or Surrey/White Rock Branch. Deciding on boundaries. Only 2 responded. Suggest dealing with Langley as a separate item since there are separate resolutions. Rob MacDonald will submit email based on discussion.
  2. New Business
    1. 2025 Regional Steward Council debrief – execution of workshop and keynote speaker could be improved.
    2. PIPSC AGM debrief
  • Regional caucus – too short due to financial forum.
  • Hospitality suite  - improve communication/advertising. Address liabilities involving hospitality.
    1. 2025 Regional Council update – Rob MacDonald chair. Invited Sean O’Reily new president. AI: Kris to contact Christine re: Work Force Adjustment session.
    2. Committees of the board selections – reviewed candidates and selected recommended candidates for committees to be presented to the BOD.
    3. Chief Steward for BC/Yukon Region – AI: Dean issue expression of interest for Chief Steward for the Region as soon as possible.
    4. Handling of Steward/Regional Council cancellations & extra days – discussed dealing with no shows and tracking no shows with no valid reason.
  1. Next Meeting(s)
    1. February 21, 2025, Inn on the Quay, New Westminster
    2. April 8, 2025, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm, April 9, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, Mariott Inner Harbour, Victoria
    3. June 11, 2025, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm, Tigh-Na-Ma-Ra Resort, Parksville, Training Committee
    4. June 12, 2025, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, Tigh-Na-Ma-Ra Resort, Parksville, Regional Executive
    5. June 13 – 14, 2025, Regional Council – Tigh-Na-Ma-Ra Resort, Parksville
    6. September 5 - 6, or 12 – 13, 2025, TBD (includes strategic planning day) lower mainland
    7. October 16, 2025, 1:00 – 5:00 pm, October 17, 2025, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm, Westin Hotel, Whistler
    8. October 17 – 18, 2025, Steward Council, Westin Hotel Whistler
  2. Roundtable

Kris – labour school topics include grievance handling and performance management.

Dean – Regional newsletter AI: Dean coordinate timeline with Morgan AI: Morgan send reminder for reps to issue committee reports.

Terri – invite to Fraser Valley AGM.

  1. Adjournment - To adjourn. m/s/c

 

Published on 27 February 2025