One of Council’s public members, Karen Reschke, resigned her position due to other commitments, effective November 3, 2021. With this resignation, Council will experience additional change at the governance level. The addition of three new public members instead of two, combined with the addition of one new elected member in January 2022, represents a
40 per cent turnover in Council leadership in the next three months. This presents a governance stability and succession concern for Council and the College, particularly in the midst of implementing Bill 46.
Governance stability and succession are essential to the College’s ability to function effectively, especially to support successful implementation of Bill 46 requirements that will continue through the legislated timeline of December 2022. In addition to Bill 46 implementation, onboarding and orientation of new Councillors is an essential, yet time-consuming, endeavour that will be more intensive due to the number of new Councillors.
The Governance Committee presented Council with a proposal, informed by both governance best practices and other Alberta regulatory college practices, to ensure Council governance stability and succession. Council reviewed and approved the proposal, resulting in the following changes to Bylaw 3.2 Terms of Office as follows:
- To align elected Council terms with the fiscal year (July 1-June 30) while also allowing Council to amend terms as needed to achieve stable succession; and
- To extend the terms of all current elected Councillors by one year to allow for Council governance succession and stability during the onboarding and orientation of new Councillors and the implementation of Bill 46.
With these changes, terms of current elected Councillors conclude as follows: