Raising the Bar: Addressing Deficiencies in Strata Management Course Materials

Devin Kenhai is the Executive Director of Licensing Education at UBC Sauder School of Business: Real Estate Division. He has been borderline magnanimous in his dealings with me over the past year considering my regular stream of emails revealing the many errors in the course materials.

Dear Devin,

Thank-you for responding to my emails. It would be appreciated if the academic committee would provide me with confirmation that they are looking into my corrections. If they disagree and do not intend to make any changes to the materials I want to know. If they agree and intend to make appropriate changes to the materials I would also like to know.

My intention is to license Good Counsel as a strata management brokerage, this summer (all going well with the strata management challenge exam which I write tomorrow). Once I have a sufficient number of clients, I intend to hire unlicensed staff who I see as having good potential to be excellent strata managers. Further, as mentioned in prior correspondence, I have an earnest interest in raising the level of proficiency of strata management across the province. It is in this vein that I request follow-up from UBC/BCFSA. There are deficiencies in the materials and I want them to be improved because I want strata management to improve.

I have been involved in and studied democracy and governance extensively. It is a passion of mine. We have seen tremendous assaults on democracy and governance worldwide in the past several years. My hope is that this assault will serve as an impetus to strengthen our legislated democratic processes and governance procedures. Unfortunately, this outcome is far from a given.

There are sections of the strata management materials that seem to suggest that the President/Chair of the strata council somehow has some greater authority than the other elected strata councilors. This must change. It's not true and is the cause of so much wrongdoing by strata councils and strata managers. On their own, any individual councilor has no power, no authority. It is the council as a whole (through their democratic decision making processes) that has power and authority. John Carver's Policy Governance serves as an excellent reference for this important distinction.

Onto teaching methods: The sole videos that are helpful to me are those of Bruce Woolley. The other videos are so dry and monotonous as to be almost completely unhelpful to learning the course content. UBC's Strata Management video content needs to be overhauled. You are falling behind. Way behind. See https://www.youtube.com/@AccountingStuff for the modern way of teaching. I have learned more from James of Accounting Stuff than I have learned about accounting from the broker's or strata management accounting videos. Further, instead of your accounting materials being specifically relevant to strata management, they are barely more relevant than James' Accounting Stuff content. This is ludicrous because James has no mandate to teach about accounting for strata corporations.

Strata corporations are non-profits. Strata management students need to understand what stratas need to do to be enduring enterprises in the current and the future. What should the balance sheet look like for a healthy strata corporation? What should the income statement look like? What does academic peer-reviewed analysis of strata corporations tell us about factors that contribute to their success/demise? Is there any of this research to be had? If so, why is it not brought into the course content? If not, why has no one studied stratas and what factors contribute to their individual success/demise?

I did my Honours thesis at Trent University on the factors that influenced the location of Canadian mining companies in South America. The number one factor in choosing location, according to my analysis, was the political stability of the host nation. I have a feeling that a similar conclusion would be true for stratas - the success/demise of the strata has a lot to do with the altruism and competence of the strata council. And yet, the attitude of the electors when it comes to electing the strata council for their building is frequently far from solemn. Oftentimes, in my experience, strata council members are acclaimed - basically, anyone who is willing to do the job is elected, no matter their level of commitment, proven competency in governance or motives for putting their name forward.

Derek Pinto