District 9 is Getting a Re-vamped “Constitution”

Marty Bond, on behalf of the Resolutions Committee

Changes have occurred in RTO/ERO’s governance over the last two years. Our organization has moved from being one under Ontario’s somewhat aged not-for-profit laws to one under the more up-to-date federal legislation.

As a result, the provincial governance rules and regulations needed rewriting to move us to a more corporate structure. Our constitution, now a “Governance Document”, needed updating too, to contain all the language to reflect the structural changes.

We realize that our governance document makes for pretty dry reading for all of us, but it does describe how we will continue to function as a district. For those who have questions about the document, I am available by phone and by email (see RTO-ERO District 9 Executive page) to attempt to answer or at least clarify the clauses that may concern you.

It is fair to say that unless you’re very familiar with our previous constitution, you’ll not notice many differences. I’ve attempted to describe some of the more important changes below.

Some of the changes that are in the draft of the new Governance Document are:

•     housekeeping, i.e., updating language to comply with the new Provincial By-Law document (called By-Law 2018-1);

•     under Objectives (p.2, #6.), expanded list of those eligible for membership;

•     Senators and Observers (e.g., from Huron-Perth) will normally have a term of one full year, covering the spring and fall meetings in Toronto;  we previously viewed each Senate as separate with no necessary continuity of attendance over one year;

•     the Board of Directors will now carry the responsibility for provincial decisions that affect us all whereas in the past, the legal and probably financial responsibility was on Senators at the bi-annual Senate. Members of that Board are now elected for three-year terms of office vs the previous annually elected Provincial Executive;

•     while Senators will approve the provincial budget, they will primarily advise the Board on other matters, e.g., pertaining to our health benefits, direction of the organization and a variety of other issues, as in the past;

•     specific clauses that contain changes are: 2.02, 2.09, 2.10, 2.11, 2.24, 2.15, 2.18, 2.27, 3.01b, 3.02b, 4.01, 4.02;

•     numbers of some clauses were also changed due to reorganization of the document.

You, as members of District 9, will be asked to approve our District Governance Document at the Annual General Meeting in October. Now, you will be able to see the document online District Governance. It is also our intention to print a copy for each member who attends the AGM.