Report of the National Elections Committee
Presented to the 102nd Annual General Meeting
The National Elections Committee (the Committee) is appointed by the PIPSC Board of Directors every three years. As per the December 5, 2020, the PIPSC AGM BL change the Elections Committee’s mandate was changed to a three-year term, allowing the Committee to be in place the year before the election, the year of the election, and the year after the election. This will ensure stability and knowledge sharing and will ensure a smooth and successful national election moving forward.
As such, as of January 1, 2021, for a two-year term, the Elections Committee is comprised of Thomas Kirkpatrick (Chair), Hugo Landry (QC), Patrick Provost (PRA/NWT) , Leslie Hill (ATL), Zul Nanji (NCR), Nancy Lavoie (QC), Christopher L’Estrange (ON), Mladen Komnenic (BC/Yukon), Eddie Gillis and Julie Gagnon (Staff Resources). A new Committee will be appointed to start a three-year mandate on January 1, 2023.
Starting in the early months of summer 2021, the Committee has been actively involved in preparing and conducting the 2021 national election, which are being held completely virtually due to the ongoing pandemic – a first for the Professional Institute. Given this challenging context, the Committee met frequently to review the overall election processes in the goal of streamlining some of the practices. For the benefit of all candidates, the Committee took a proactive approach to clarify and provide important election information, rules and guidelines at the start of the election period in the goal to ensure all candidates were well informed at the outset of the election process.
In order to meet the challenges of the current context and to assist and support the candidates in their campaign efforts, the Committee, put in place a series of town halls, which were promoted by the Institute through the Election web page. Each town hall session was moderated by en external party (Lise Hebabi) and were conducted in both French and English, based on questions submitted by members and selected by the Elections Committee. Along with answering a series of questions, candidates were also asked to provide their vision for PIPSC for the next three years and provided some takeaway closing remarks. These sessions were recorded (with the exception of the NCR Regional town hall, at which technical issues resulted in the session not being recorded) and posted to the elections web page, making them accessible to all members for the duration of the election.
Given the significant amount of work involved in putting in place these platforms, the Committee felt this was a beneficial and successful aspect of this year’s election that was appreciated by both candidates and members.
The Committee also had to deal with several election complaints, some of which resulted in appeals.
Following this year’s election, the Committee Chair plans to hold a post mortem meeting to develop a strategic work plan, with the assistance of IT and any other stakeholders. This will help IT to assess and develop the best solutions in terms of a successful elections matrix to ensure the ideal end result of successful elections moving forward.
The Committee remains available to assist in any election-related matter if and when required, until the end of its terms on December 31, 2022.
Respectfully submitted in solidarity,
Tom Kirkpatrick
Chair, Elections Committee