Gerry Hyman has another article for the Toronto Star.  Let’s look at some of the questions:

QUESTION:  The president of our corporation is also the vice-president. secretary and treasurer. He is impossible to work with and is making poor decisions. How do we remove him? Our problem is that no other owner wants the difficult job. Can we hire a property manager to deal with bookkeeping and other matters?

ANSWER:  An owners meeting can be requisitioned — by 15 per cent of the owners — to vote on the removal of one or more directors.

Removal requires an affirmative vote of owners of more than 50 per cent of the units. Those at the requisitioned meeting will then vote upon a replacement for each removed director. The president must be a director, so that if the director who is president is removed he is also removed as president. The board must then elect a new president and may then elect or appoint replacements for the offices of vice-president, secretary and treasurer, perhaps choosing different persons to spread the workload.

The workload for the new officers could also be lightened by engaging a management company to assist in the bookkeeping and other matters, provided that all substantive decisions of the corporation are made by the board and not by the management company.

This is why the Condominium act needs to put specific restraints on directors, such as a three term limit for directors and not allowing an unlimited number of proxies being handed in at owners’ meetings.  Both of these allow directors to easily remain in power.  This needs to change, now.

However, in this case, the owners have nothing to gripe about.  If no one else wants to do the work, then this individual is being allowed to do all the work and have all the control.  Other owners need to step up and serve on the Board – and hire a management company to help.

Another question raised was:

QUESTION:  Does the Condominium Act require minutes of owners meetings to be taken and made available to the owners?

ANSWER:  The Condominium Act requires a corporation to keep adequate records, including a minute book containing the minutes of meetings of the owners and of the board. Therefore, minutes of owners meetings must be taken.

The act does not require the corporation to make the minutes available to the owners unless an owner submits the prescribed form requesting to examine the minutes, in accordance with the act. In that event the minutes must be made available to the requesting owner.

Information must be deleted from the provided minutes relating to employees of the corporation, relating to actual or contemplated litigation and relating to specific owners or their units except for information relating to the requesting owner or that owner’s unit.

Mr. Hyman starts to answer the question with the first paragraph, and then goes on to talk about Board meeting Minutes even though the question doesn’t ask about Board meetings.

Minutes of owners’ meetings must be kept, and owners have the right to view those Minutes and to receive a copy of those Minutes without anything being redacted or omitted.  The redacted information only applies to Board meetings.

Of course, the Board would be wise to create an online portal to place redacted Board Minutes, Minutes of Owners’ meetings, the Condominium’s Declaration, Description, By-laws, and Rules, plus financial information (Financial Statements and Budgets.)   This makes it easy for the owners to get a lot of information that they want to see.