See: Eric Andrew-Gee, “Slaughterhouse smell repels Toronto condo dwellers”, Toronto Star (1 July 2013).

This recent Toronto Star story illustrates tensions resulting from rapid expansion of condo developments in areas of our city previously dominated by manufacturing plants but which still contain operations that impact the surrounding area.

It also highlights the surprising ignorance of those who shill condo units in such areas and the purchasers who lap them up without doing proper diligence.

At issue is a slaughterhouse that has been a feature of the King and Bathurst neighbourhood for over 100 years and still employs 700 people. The Toronto Civic Abattoir, built before 1915 and owned by Quality Meat Packers since 1960, is one of only three federally-licensed pig slaughter plants operating in Ontario. Its owner received a $3 million loan last year from the federal government to finance upgrades to the facility.

The complaints: In addition to the pervasive animal odour and sounds, there is significant truck traffic serving the plant.

Continue Reading Something smells here . . .

As the spring AGM season draws to a close, hundreds of newly-elected condo directors are just starting to settle into their roles, usually with very little orientation or training.  

As a small way to help ease the transition into condo directorship, we offer this short welcome letter submitted by Stephen Kurtz, a former condo director in Windsor.  Thank you, Stephen, for submitting this piece and for your years of service on your condo’s board.

On behalf of the collective owners of our readers’ condominiums, thanks to all of you who have recently joined your condo board, for giving your time and effort in service to your community. 

*********

Continue Reading Guest post: Welcome and wisdom to new condo directors

The spring edition of our quarterly newsletter was distributed to over 500 attendees of the bi-annual Condo Conference and Tradeshow held April 27 in Hamilton.  

Hats off to the Golden Horsehoe Chapter of the Canadian Condominium Institute for another great conference, jam-packed with seminars, friendly exhibitors and the latest updates on the Condo Act Review process still underway.

The newsletter is now available for download (here) and features:

  • Supers’ Units Assessment Victory!
  • Bob Gardiner’s Committee Criteria
  • Condo slammed for lax rule enforcement

While our newsletters often include items posted to our blog, you will periodically find exclusive content not featured elsewhere.  Be sure to read each issue cover to cover. 

It is rare for us at Ontario Condo Law Blog to beat up on an underdog, but the owner-occupied reserved position on condo boards is decidedly worthy of that honour.

That reserved position (set out in the Condominium Act, 1998, subsections 28(3), 46(3) and 51(5) to (8)) surely is an underdog – it enjoys little or no support and no one (at least publicly) takes credit for its creation. While at least one of the Condo Act Review working groups is currently considering the fate of the owner-occupied position provision among many other much-needed improvements to our condo law, today’s post lends support to eradicating it. We also ponder what lessons the creation of that now universally reviled provision can usefully teach us as we amend the Condo Act this time around.

Continue Reading Time to abolish the owner-occupied director position

Those of us who work with condo corporations often grumble that unit owners have no appreciable knowledge or understanding of the declaration, by-laws or rules that govern their condominium.  Indeed, if you ask any 100 (or 1,000 or 10,000) unit owners whether they have ever read those documents, the overwhelming majority will candidly tell you that they have not.  While there are many different reasons why owners fail to even attempt to learn how their condominium works and what is expected of them, at least one of those reasons is squarely the fault of the corporation itself.
I cannot possibly count the number of crappy condo document packages (whether or not accompanied by a status certificate) that have crossed my desk over the past decade that featured one or more of the following cardinal sins:

Continue Reading Another cause of owner ignorance: Lousy condo doc packages

Canadian courts and tribunals decided plenty of condo law cases during the first quarter of 2013.   Here’s a roundup of the most notable.

ONCA: Condo board deemed to know about a claim after unit purchaser with specific knowledge of that claim joins the bd. http://canlii.ca/t/fv10w

ONSC stays lawsuit over shared facilities dispute between 2 condos until mediation and arbitration exhausted. http://canlii.ca/t/fvhtp

ONSC: Mortgagee awarded costs of application for condo lien discharge when condo’s lawyers run up big bill needlessly. http://canlii.ca/t/fvm3f

OMB sets terms of minor variance to reduce parking space requirement at Brampton temple in a condo unit. http://ow.ly/h6MhL

ONSC: Condo corps are landlords that may require personal use of an owned unit and can evict tenants, per RTA s.46. http://canlii.ca/t/fw3mj

ONSC sets procedure for YCC 42 unit owners to review and object to accounts of that condo’s outgoing administrator. http://canlii.ca/t/fvwwm

ONCA orders rectification of title register in land boundary dispute. http://bit.ly/ZpjMqL

HRTO: No discrimination by condo and property manager requiring unit owner to remove unauthorized balcony enclosure. http://canlii.ca/t/fvsl4

ONSC: Condo to pay oppression damages of $40K + costs for not enforcing noise rules and for harassing complainant. http://ow.ly/hTFHP

ONSC: Remedial work on condo garage was maintenance and repair, not “substantial change” as alleged by unit owner. http://canlii.ca/t/fwd1p

NSSCC: Condo recoups damages re water heater leak on basis of owner failing to stop flood, not failure to maintain. http://canlii.ca/t/fw64z

Continue Reading Microblog posts to April 1, 2013 – Court and Tribunal Decisions

Condos would be wise to consider immediate filing of a 2013 Request for Reconsideration with MPAC for their superintendent’s unit and any other common amenity service unit before the imminent April 1st filing deadline, in order to take advantage of the new $9 nominal assessment ruling.

The Assessment Review Board ruled last Friday that 40 participating supers’ units should be assessed for taxation at nine dollars each. That means no municipal tax.

That precedent is important because it applies not only to supers’ units, but extends also to other common amenities service units, such as parking, guest, mechanical, gatehouse, recreational and other units owned by the corporation providing amenities or services to its unit owners. The ARB based its primary decision upon analysis of the nature of service easement aspects which merge s. 12 of the Condominium Act with s. 9 of the Assessment Act to enable an exemption from the full current value concept which otherwise governs assessment of realty parcels.

The ARB concluded alternatively that the market value of the supers’ units was minimal and already resided in the owners’ residential, parking and locker units.

The ARB also concluded that it was inequitable to assess supers’ units differently than guest units. Last year, Bob Gardiner had convinced MPAC to reduce the assessment of over 200 of GMA’s condo clients’ guest and visitor parking units to a nominal assessment of $9 each, based upon his unique Request for Reconsideration rationales.

Bob has persistently spear-headed this initiative since 2005. Much of the language of the 35 page decision is based on his written and oral argument explaining over 100 legal concepts to rationalize 6 grounds for appeal, supported by 14 legal precedent cases contained in his Legal Authorities binder, as well as 200 pages of documents in his Statement of Facts binder.

David Fleet, an assessment law expert, and Carol Dirks, a condo lawyer, also forcefully submitted key arguments in a teamwork approach. The team convinced the ARB to accept a "condo world" view of common amenity service unit assessment, instead of the assessment arguments so capably submitted by MPAC’s lawyer, Don Mitchell.

It is possible MPAC may appeal the ARB’s decision, but the deadline to file the 2013 Request for Reconsideration for your Corporation’s common amenity service units expires April 1, 2013. You should receive legal advice well before that deadline. You can file even if you have already paid the tax. A copy of GMA’s 2013 RfR enrollment form and further information can be obtained from Gardiner Miller Arnold LLP by emailing bob.gardiner@gmalaw.ca.

Noteworthy costs awards were recently released in Middlesex Condominium Corporation No. 232 v. Owners, which we cited as number 6 in our top 10 condo law cases of 2012 as follows:

Faced with an increasingly unhappy ownership, the board commenced an application for appointment of an administrator. The owners then requisitioned a meeting to remove directors, prompting the board to make an unsuccessful bid for the requisition meeting to be delayed until after the application for appointing an administrator was heard. The court ultimately dismissed the board’s application to appoint an administrator, finding that s. 131 of the Condo Act was designed as a last resort for condominiums in perilous circumstances and not as a way to allow a board that has lost the confidence of the owners to get their way regardless of the democratic will of the owners. The court has not yet released its decision on costs, but given this board’s brazen disregard for owners’ democratic rights, this seems like a suitable case for the directors to be held personally responsible for the legal costs as in Boily v. CCC 145 above. The tactics used by the corporation in this instance were despicable.

While it may not be clear from this description, the MCC 232 case is made up of two components decided by different judges: The board’s application for appointment of an administrator that was heard by Justice Carey and, second, the board’s motion heard by Justice Bryant for an injunction to restrain an owners’ meeting to remove the board until after the application for appointment of an administrator was decided. Both components were dismissed and the old board was removed and replaced. The rulings on costs were subsequently reserved until February 11, 2013.  We understand that leave to appeal these costs rulings is presently being sought.

Continue Reading Directors personally responsible for costs of litigation to quash owners’ rights

Following Stage 1 of Ontario’s Condo Act Review last fall, a findings report was issued in January 2013 by Canada’s Public Policy Forum, the facilitators spearheading the review process.  That findings report is available for review.  See here for executive summary and here for full report.

Comments on this findings report are being received until March 11, 2013.

The report encompasses comments submitted by the public at large and at five information sessions held by the Minister at locations across Ontario, and includes findings of the 36-member citizen panel and four full-day stakeholder round-table sessions.

The report is well-written, thoughtful and demonstrates a deep understanding of a broad array of issues and problems that need to be looked at further and solved. Reading the full report is worthwhile, even if only to see that the single or small few problems faced by any single group are a mere drop in the bucket relative to the large number of issues affecting the various stakeholders in the condo community. The Condo Act is complex legislation that affects a lot of people and parties in very different ways.  Legislation of this magnitude deserves the type of comprehensive public review process now underway.

You can send your comments or suggestions directly to ONCONDO or use the handy Discussion Guide the PPF has prepared to help you organize your thoughts to comment meaningfully on the report. To help encourage you to participate, we reproduce the text of the salient part of the Discussion Guide below (while encouraging you to review the full guide):

Continue Reading Comments due for Stage 1 Findings Report on Condo Act Review

Compared to our American neighbours, Canadian courts play host to relatively few class action lawsuits. Class actions involving condominiums are quite rare.  Even rarer are class action suits that actually generate significant cash returns to condominiums but, as they say, there is a first time for everything.

In 2008, Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) commenced a class action lawsuit against ThyssenKrupp Elevator over the cost of replacing faulty sheave jammers installed during or before 2006. A sheave jammer is a secondary braking device designed to stop the movement of an elevator in the event the primary control and braking systems do not operate effectively. 

Continue Reading Elevator class action lawsuit ends in $12 million settlement