If you want to see what connect and organize produces, search OROMOO and lawsuit.

The silence in support of the two little fish advocates who will win their case to the benefit of 100,000 agents, is deafening. Except for a handful of open supporters of the two women, that was a group of keyboard warriors at their finest happy to have 4 women do the work while they rambled on and threw money at lawyers to do something. Recentlly, another woman was publicly defamed for raising awareness about a by-law overhaul managed to rally a thousand or so to vote it down. There too crickets for change or over her being insulted.

Talk is cheap! Today it’s the twitter version of no one wanting to read anything in full or spend more than a few hundred keystrokes on a position.

Few, very few are more than keyboard warriors. The big fish talk who have the soapbox and power do nothing. It’s telling that all the advocacy pieces for change are written by men in positions of power but the only actions were by women with relatively few of the thousands of keyboard warriors they advocated for, openly standing with them.

The for profit thing isn’t new either. There is a story of an attempt to start one by a handful of well known agents each with multiple decades in the business, and as directors, presidents and association arbitrators. It was a hair-brained plan to dismantle a provincial association’s current reason for being, create an opposing for profit association that would profit by charging a fee to belong to a private website and by selling products to the membership. It included talk of suing one or more boards by one of the principals who felt he was being targeted for speaking out against them. The organization was registered in one man’s name, its website created.

Not all ideas of for-profit in this industry is made with sound logic or even good intentions. That surely was not one. It was thwarted when discovered but I suspect that plan may still be on the table. Fortunately, the principals don’t know what they’re doing.

Great comment. I would count myself among those who don’t feel When TRREB moved from NPO to For Profit along with the creation of PropTx (and the whole back story there) I expressed the opinion that our Associations should be Share Capital Corporations. You’re the only other person I’ve heard express this. Cheers! I’ve toyed with running for office based on this platform instead of the usual, dare I say drivel, we hear from not all, but too many candidates The MLS, PropTX etc. were all built with Realtor funding yet we aren’t the real stakeholders are we. Share Capital would be transformative in terms of realtor engagement and benefits to membership. I’d back anybody running on this platform.

Whatever boards are still standing after the Competition Bureau/Hereford litigation funder duo finish throttling the industry should be pick up the pieces, damp down their egos and join forces. For example, I’d love to see Cornerstone and Calgary team up and give TRREB/PropTx a run for their money.

CREA should also think seriously about selling off a chunk of Realtor.ca while its near peak value. Giving Zillow, CoStar or Beike a toe-hold in Canada’s portal business is not for the faint of heart, but something’s going to give soon. We should get ahead of it.

I hear you, and you’re right that venting alone won’t create change. But it can be the start of something more if it’s used to connect and organize.

The next step is understanding what the broader membership really wants. Talk to people in your office, in your network, at events. Ask what matters to them. What do they think needs to change? What would they support? The goal isn’t to rally outrage, it’s to build alignment around shared priorities.

Once you have a sense of that, look at your board’s by-laws. The process is already defined. What does it take to bring a motion forward? How many signatures to call a Special General Meeting? When’s the next AGM, and how do you get something on the agenda? Knowing the mechanics is key.

From there, start preparing: whether that’s drafting motions, building a group willing to speak publicly, or creating a place to share updates and coordinate next steps. A small, organized group with a clear ask is far more powerful than scattered frustration.

Once you have a widely accepted idea of where you want to go, you then bring in the tools to get there. Ideas like referendums for major decisions, sunset clauses for board programs, and better ways to engage members in governance. But none of this moves forward unless more people start getting involved at the local level and within the structure that already exists.

It’s about being prepared, informed, and persistent. That’s how things start to shift.

I appreciate the comment and have a pretty good sense of what my next contribution to REM should be! Thank you

Thanks for this, Larry,

The reality dashboards idea is spot on. If the numbers look rough, that should be the headline. That’s how we build real trust (with facts, not filters).

I’m a big fan of sunset clauses. So many programs just live forever without review, and members are left wondering who approved what and when. Putting an expiry on anything not member-voted makes a lot of sense.

The rest of your suggestions all point to the same thing: participation. Not just performative input, but real, structured involvement. And I agree! That’s where the shift starts.

My worry is that the folks who aren’t participating now likely still won’t, even if we build a more transparent, inclusive culture. They’ve been conditioned to believe their voice doesn’t matter, or they’re too busy navigating a tough market to take time for governance. So we need to do more than just open the doors; we need to pull people in. Show them how this directly affects their business. Connect the dots between board decisions and their day-to-day.

Maybe that’s a mix of micro-credentialing like you suggest, targeted outreach, and rethinking how we define “value” in membership. Not just services, but agency. If members start to feel like they own the outcome, I think the numbers shift.

Thanks for adding to the conversation. More of this.

Brandon, clarification accepted and appreciated. And I did not really miss your point about members responsibility is to not be passive. Might disagree with that one too, but not for the idea that members should not be involved. Rather the systemic structure of NPO’s, where there is no accountability or objective means to evaluate organizational success, both breeds, inhibits, and dismisses the very involvement your ideas promote. ORE is directly involved in the success of us REALTORS®, we actually think because it is for us alone that we even know how to run it from a governance viewpoint, and we cannot. Being more active is not the solution, shifting our governance to professional governors of corporate structures would be the more beneficial route, in which case, like the lowly shareholder of a for profit share corporation, our interests at profiting from the entities existence would always be the guide and not the few who believe what they know is all that is necessary to know.

Disagree with the idea ORE amalgamations is a contributor. Certainly, the combining of boards has not realized improved governance benefits – it is perhaps entrenching the malais that has existed for a long time in the associations, and if that is what is meant by contributing to the current status – maybe that is fair.

Agree the emphasis of ORE is downgrading instead of uplifting the professionalism. And for certain agree the foundational aspect of what REALTORS® do is about a very personal relationship and support which is not manifest in remote, distance, and virtual services.

Still, and historically speaking in relation to how a professional guild transforms from territorial, local community structured organizations into a provincial one, the consolidation of 40 areas into 35, then 30, then 25 and eventually to 1 begins with an amalgamation. In that sense one is better than none and on the road to more that leads to all into one.

Even though the horizon may be visible, the problem is that some for profit entity will soon be ahead of the approach. We will loose. Or worse, we will get to the horizon first but will have not changed our governance ways.

The revolution starts when keyboard warriors become action agents, very few are game

and,

they then stand up to the threats and vigorously defend. Fewer still will.

Unfortunately, talk is the only thing that’s cheap in this industry.

Unfortunatley, talk is cheap.

The revolution starts when keyboard warriors become action agents, very few are game

and,

they then stand up to the threats and vigorously defend. Fewer still will.