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Bill 72 to improve the Condominium Act of Ontario passed
in the Legislature on Thursday, May 10th |
Main Points:
- Establish a Condo Review Board for quicker, less expensive dispute resolution.
- Extend Tarion’s New Home Warranties Plan to cover conversion condos (e.g. lofts).
- Simplifiy the process for installing renewable energy and other energy efficient technologies.
- Requires better noise protection standards for condominiums.
- Require that half of Tarion’s directors have experience in consumer protection and advocacy.
- Introduce the use good faith language in declarations (purchase contracts).
- Require developers and property managers to disclose conflicts of interest prior to performance audits.
- Provide training support to volunteer condo boards through the Condo Review Board.
- Require developers to deposit 0.5% of the building’s value with the Condo Review Board until a condo board certifies that the condo was properly built.
- Ensure that developers can’t ask owners to move into a building before it is fully built.
- Provide a 5-year full warranty on all major structural components (electrical, elevators, etc).
- Provide one vote per owner regardless of number of units owned.
- Require property managers to be licensed by the Province.
- Extend developer responsibility for condominium fees from one to three years.
- Require developers to disclose all previous business names used to construct condo projects.
Please write your MPP to request support for this Bill and to offer suggestions.
Click here to find who your MPP is.
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You can review Bill 72
by following the links below: |
Additional Links: |
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Like Little Towns. In speaking with friends who serve on municipal Councils and Boards, I am struck by the utter disbelief they display upon hearing of the lack of accountability of our Boards of Directors and Property Management Companies and of the baffling lack of "enforcement" on the part of the Ontario Government. Each and every one, without exception, has stated that if the antics of
some Directors, Officers and Property Managers of some condominium
Corporations were to occur in the sphere of "municipal governance",
those responsible would be facing the scrutiny of the Ministry of
Municipal Affairs and Housing, the Ministry of the Attorney General and
investigations by provincial auditors and regional and provincial
police services.
The Government would surely spare no resources or
expense in bringing those responsible for such actions to account for
their negligent, incompetent and perhaps even criminal behaviour.
We have towns in this Province with smaller populations than many
individual Ontario condominium Corporations yet the Government has
consistently refused to acknowledge that the rights of unit Owners
(taxpayers) to good governance and fiscal accountability are worthy of
the same standard of protection and enforcement of the law as those of
other taxpayers in Ontario.
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I know there are Owners out there who ask this question. And I am envious of any Owner who is fortunate enough to own a unit in a well managed Corporation with competent, reasonable and service oriented Directors and Officers. After all, why should such Owners join with other Owners to lobby for legislative reform? Allow me to try to answer this question.
If you take for example, the Owner of a unit in a Corporation where
"governance issues" abound and where there is a complete or even partial
contempt for law and the interests of Owners. Such an Owner has only
two alternatives;
- To pay the thousands of dollars associated with mediation
and/or arbitration and possible litigation to remedy the situation after
which, such a condominium community would be divided and unpleasant to
live in; or
- Attempt to sell his/her/their unit.
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 Some Boards of Directors, with help from some property management companies and condominium lawyers, intentionally and with malice, refuse to follow the governing documents of their condominium Corporations (Declaration, By-laws & Rules) as well as provincial legislation and regulations. These Boards make up their own rules as they go along and usually in order to shirk their responsibilities and/or to intimidate and oppress unit Owners, particularly unit Owners who oppose them. They will choose to apply certain Rules to certain unit Owners and not to others. Why do they do this? Because they can!
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