CRO forced to use extraordinary powers to set election dates after board of directors shady actions hold up process.

The elections come but twice a year…except this time extra effort was required.

While there is nothing new to the election process undertaken by the Student Association of George Brown College (SAGBC), this year there have been some serious issues surrounding the elections committee and the BOD as a whole.

These elections are set to kick off Nov. 4.

Under normal circumstances each year, the board appoints members to the elections committee which works to come up with the election dates for the new cycle. They then bring these recommendations to the full BOD to vote in a simple resolution.

This time, the process was not followed by the committee and other members of the board. Instead, they neither recommended any dates for the elections, nor did they have a fair and democratic discussion in an open forum, where they should have shared concerns and made suggestions for how to ensure the election process was upheld.

Instead, Charles Wilson, the chief returning officer (CRO), has had to use extraordinary powers to ensure the elections process was not interrupted so things could carry on as normal.

“This year, the elections committee was appointed at the July board meeting. The committee met once in August and again in early September. However, both times the committee failed to recommend election dates to the board,” said Wilson. “Using my powers as the sole administrator of the election, I recommended a set of election dates to the board of directors. These dates were included in my previous report to the board. Although the board failed to approve those dates, it also failed to provide any substantive objections. I informed the board that not approving the election dates would be an extraordinary event, which would necessitate the use of my emergency powers under the bylaws to proceed with the election. After considering any potential objections, I decided to move forward with the proposed dates under my authority to enforce the bylaws.”

The CRO issued a declaration on Sept. 17, which outlined the issues at hand and explained why it was necessary for him to take such extraordinary measures.

In the declaration he notes “that there is no reasonable prospect of the normal procedures being followed without the use of the extraordinary powers of the chief returning officer, under bylaw 12 section 10(a).”

The most recent meeting of the BOD – held Sept. 16 – is when the resolution to vote and set election dates came up.

Instead of this being a very easy vote, members of the board decided it would be beneficial to leave the room to cry after being denied an opportunity for a closed session discussion, others simply chose to sit and stay silent, all while providing no real reasoning behind their objections to the election dates.

Ayush Dara, current director of communications & internal, shared that while he does not know what concerns the elections committee has due to the confidentiality of it being closed, he believes there are concerns.

“I don’t think everything is going smooth in the elections committee, because there are concerns. And some of the concern that I have received and like, I’m not going to disclose anything because of the confidentiality,” he said. “The members have some concerns that they tried to raise in the board meeting which they were not able to because of the confidentiality. They needed a platform, but they could not get any platform because of the laws and stuff.”

It should be noted that this is the first time that members of the elections committee would not recommend dates for the elections, in recent history of the SAGBC.

Dara says because they were told by SAGBC lawyer Ben Millard that if dates were not recommended, the CRO would take action and do it himself, he believes the members decided there was no point as it would be out of their hands.

He went on to note that there should have been more transparency from the lawyer and management surrounding what the board was allowed to do with elections dates and why things would play out the way they did.

“So, what I’m saying is maybe a little bit more information that, ‘hey, you are the board. These are the dates, we can go [and move the dates] up and down… Ben could have told like, if you don’t say yes, then the CRO would have to use the extraordinary power. And it might not look good to the board,” said Dara.

Rosalyn Miller, general manager of the SAGBC, issued a statement after the meeting noting that she believes some members of the board do not fully understand the bylaws.

“When I was temporary Chair of the election committee, and in hearing the challenge from the board in approving an election date, it became apparent to me that many individuals are challenged or did not fully understand the policies in the bylaws with respect to the election and the importance of the policies. Given the policy and the timeline, the election must, at minimum, must cover over four weeks. So, individuals that did not support an election date to occur by December 5, require probably better understanding of how the processes and procedures in the bylaw must be adhered to,” said Miller.

For those who may be raising concerns regarding the CRO, Miller wants students to understand that Wilson is experienced in the role and acts in the capacity of CRO for many other organizations.

“I also want to say that the students have experienced chief returning officer that will be running the election, who also runs the election for Seneca College, GBC’s board of governors, University of Waterloo and Durham [College], in addition to other community nonprofit groups out there. And so, our election for 2024 is in good hands and will proceed as per the bylaws.

This round, students will vote to elect new members for the positions of director of communications & internal, director of operations, and the now vacant position of preparatory and liberal studies educational centre representative.

The election will be broken down as follows for the upcoming fall election:

• Nominations are open from 9 a.m. Nov. 4 to 1 p.m. Nov. 8
• Campaigning runs from 9 a.m. Nov. 13 to 5 p.m. Nov. 29
• Voting runs from Nov. 25 to 29

For more information visit Elections.StudentAssociation.ca.