After nearly a year of unconventional governance at Ontario’s real estate regulator, the Real Estate Council of Ontario’s (RECO) is returning to a more familiar structure, but the changes underway are far from over.

Jean Lépine was appointed by the provincial government as administrator of RECO in late 2025. Last week, he was named interim CEO of the regulator as the organization returns to board-led governance.

The shift comes as RECO continues a broader regulatory overhaul that began during Lépine’s time as administrator. With the iPro Realty Ltd. trust account scandal largely in the rearview, according to Lépine, RECO now turns to tightening consumer protection and improving its own financial viability as an organization. 

In a conversation with Real Estate Magazine, Lépine discusses what changes with a board back in place, the response to RECO’s proposed registrant fee changes, plans for its new Industry Advisory Council and why he believes more investment in the regulator is necessary.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

 

REM: Was this something that you volunteered for, or were you approached about the CEO role?

Lépine: Well, I think as the board enters its term, it has to make certain decisions on who’s going to lead the organization, and it was part of the conversation as we began the onboarding process: Who’s going to lead?

You’d have to ask them more questions on that, but I was asked and I was happy to do it.

REM: How is the CEO role different from being administrator?

Lépine: It’s a fair question. The administrator, as you know, is a provincial appointment, and so the minister can appoint an administrator to an organization under his purview. You know the stories around RECO prior to my appointment, and there were certain issues there. The administrator’s role really is to replace the governance capability of the organization.

The administrator becomes the board. In the case of this organization, I became the board, and very quickly, right out of the gate, the CEO resigned.

It was in some ways more effective for me to be both the administrator, which is the authority of the board, and the CEO when the CEO departed.

So, when you think about what the difference is between the two, one is the governance capability, which is the administrator and therefore the board, and then the CEO is management — top management.

That’s how the two are different, and that’s why, as we transitioned back to board-led governance, you see the administrator falling off and you return to a board and a CEO.

REM: How do your priorities change now that you’re CEO?

Lépine: It’s an exciting time for the organization. We move into this next phase with some momentum, with good connectivity to the sector and to the professionals in the sector, and with a renewed interest in connecting directly with consumers.

That means the matters related to iPro are principally in the rearview mirror. The matters of systemic change and, let’s call it regulatory modernization, are very much a day-to-day activity.

We are constantly working to make this organization more modern, more effective and more focused on proactive work as opposed to reactive work. The best example of that is annual financial filings that are to be launched on Oct. 1.

Those filings will get this organization finally in a position of better clarity and an ability to use data to decide on risks in the sector.

Currently, while we do inspections and audits, they are calendarized, if you will, and they’re not risk-informed to the degree that they should be. They are risk-informed because there are certain elements of information that we’re aware of that can tell us that we should see a certain brokerage over another.

But with annual financial filings and then a movement towards monthly trust reconciliations, we’re going to have way more data upon which to make decisions, and do that in a proactive way as opposed to a reactive way.

That’s a big deal for this organization. That’s a big change, and it’s one that thankfully I’ll be around to see through.

Then we’re going to take the actions that we need to take to make sure that consumers are protected in their relationship with brokerages and Realtors, and that the province sees its regulator doing its job.

REM: When do you anticipate launching the monthly trust reconciliations?

Lépine: The goal is early 2027, but we’re going to use the data that we get from the annual financial filings to inform the timing of that.

REM: How long do you anticipate being in the CEO role? Will the board start looking for a permanent CEO right away?

Lépine: They’re going to have a process, and they will have a decision to make in the not-too-distant future. But I can’t define their timeline. That’s their decision.

I’ll be here to serve up until that decision is made. Because I have the luxury of having been here, I kind of know what needs to get done.

The board has been, I would say, fantastic so far. They are professionals in their own right. They’re independent. They all have other board experience. Many of them have received director education. These are people who lead their own organizations. They’re just terrific.

So I think I will get the oversight that I need, or the good guidance that I need, and they will make proper governance decisions on a go-forward basis.

REM: We had a reader raise a question about the appointment process. You were administrator when the new board members were appointed, and now those board members have appointed you as CEO. Is there a conflict of interest there?

Lépine: Let me address that head-on.

First of all, there are five board members. Two were appointed by the minister, so I had nothing to do with that.

The other three who were elected at the annual general meeting were chosen from an application pool that was hosted by an independent third-party recruitment agency.

The recruitment agency did the recruitment. We set up a three-member panel that was also independent — not on our board and not previously on the board — and that panel made certain determinations based on the applications that they received.

Then the final three recommendations were made to the administrator at the time, which was me. But I didn’t do the recruitment. A recruiting firm did, and a panel chose them. I did not.

Because I had the authority of the board at the time as the administrator, it was my role to make that work, but I didn’t go ahead and pick them. I wasn’t interviewing them. I wasn’t part of any of that.

So all five board members are independent of me.

REM: What kind of response are you seeing to the call for applicants for the Industry Advisory Council?

Lépine: It’s a terrific turnout so far.

We have a process that we’re going to engage in now to review all the applications, but the numbers are really good, and there are great people.

We will have to do a process to get the numbers down because the numbers are pretty big, and that’s good. That’s a positive thing.

We will get to that work over the course of the next month or so. The goal is to launch it in January 2027, so we’re not too far off.

There will be an actual interview process. I think where we’re at now is there’s a shortlist, and then we need to do those interviews and come up with a final recommendation.

But it looks really good.

REM: What feedback have you received so far on the proposal to revert registrant fees to 2022 levels?

Lépine: There are 100,000 or more registrants in the province, and I can’t say that we’ve received a whole bunch of submissions. You might think that you would see thousands and thousands, and that’s not the case.

It does wrap up this week, so I have a certain view on the responses so far. It wouldn’t be a surprise to you that nobody wants to pay more for anything.

But the issue with this organization is that it is not operating at cost recovery, meaning we have to invest in this business, both in the people and the technology, and we have to invest in the mandate, which includes consumer protection and awareness building.

With the current fee structure, the two don’t match, so there’s a structural deficit. That has to be addressed.

The solution path is not just, “Cut costs and you’ll get there.” That’s not the solution path.

This organization, unfortunately — and this kind of relates to my time as administrator — did not invest in its future. As I arrived here, I could see the need to invest both in people and in technology. Because of that, the spend line is higher than the revenue line, and so that needs to be addressed.

I’ll say this last thing. When I looked into the history of fees in the organization, I was informed that the previous board reduced fees in 2022 for the 2023 year.

So I was like, “Wait, why did that happen?”

It was because it felt like there was enough money in the bank. Well, that’s a fine assessment at the time, but if you don’t invest in the business, by the time you arrive at 2026, or the end of 2025 and into 2026, the organization’s not built to deliver on its mandate.

No investment was made, so we have to do that now. To do that right over the course of the next couple of years, we have to get the fees to meet at least cost recovery, and it’s not there yet.

So that’s kind of where this is headed.