Discussion Groups

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING THIS LETTER!!! I think it is worth more than it's weight in gold as evidence for the CRT, and I'd phone the author with a huge thank you! Your bylaws are worth much more than the paper they are written on. The strata council is legally obligated to remedy the contraventions of both the use of property bylaw and your underlay sound rating bylaw. Under no circumstances is your neighbour entitled to create a nuisance or assault you with needless noise that unreasonably interferes with enjoyment of your property as purchased. Your strata council's failure to take remedial action as statutorily mandated is creating another nuisance, which is in itself another contravention of standard bylaws. It sounds significantly unfair to expect innocent law abiding victims to absorb the relentless nuisance that others acting unlawfully for the frivolous sake of fashion are RESPONSIBLE for causing. It is well known that replacing carpets with hard surfac...

What’s presented at our AGM is held out as the insurance policy, but it’s just a summary of coverage. ⁠ In fine print at the bottom of the last page it says, "This record sheet is intended for reference only. Please refer to your polic(ies) for complete details." ⁠ After making s.36 requests to the strata since 2003 to no avail, I finally received our full insurance contract directly from BFL by specifically quoting and requesting every item referred to in the summary that was provided at the AGM. That contract contains 150 pages of policies. ⁠ I haven't done it yet, but I intend to ask for a copy of our strata's history of claims also. **** What’s REALLY going on with strata insurance? How much does anybody know? The hard market arising out of catastrophic wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and other environmental disasters associated with global climate change makes sense to me. The financial impact of trip cancellations, bankruptcies, disabilities, and worl...

Does anyone else live in a strata where property managers draft strata bylaws, minutes, and correspondence, and hire its lawyers? Does your strata have a Strata “Agent” or is that person called the Strata “Manager?” Does their title vary from time to time? Call me slow, but I just realized that although owners and council members have responsibilities under the SPA, there’s a legal process whereby most, if not all, the powers and duties of the strata council can be transferred to a single individual who has absolutely no responsibility under the SPA! This is a 2-step process: first owners adopt a bylaw that allows for the powers and duties of council to be delegated; second, a person who is not an owner is named as the new “Strata Manager.” Once this is voted on with approval and recorded in the minutes, the deed is done. This is what the CRT and courts call “democracy.” I don't think most owners realize that they just allowed an administrator with an inherent conflict of i...

We had carpenter ants pouring into our family room like a river. The nest was in an adjacent railroad tie retaining wall on the north side of our patio. I don't know how the pest control company did it, but they found the nest, and we never saw the ants again. The trick is to find the nest. The building was repaired in our leaky condo project, but the retaining wall has remained damaged for about 20 years despite an engineers report recommending repairs over 5 years ago. ****  

 I didn't know there was a law about this. Although the persecutor's litigation privilege is jealously guarded, the victim's medical confidentiality is usually stripped away ruthlessly. Either you stand naked before the enemy, or you give up on defending your rights. At least that has been my experience. You can't rely on a privacy policy, the SPA, or any kind of decency at all. **** Thank you for sharing your letter to council. It inspired me to write one along the same lines, only mine is 3 pages long, my council already has medical evidence from 4 doctors, the fiasco with my council has been going on for over 20 months, and I don't expect anything from the Human Rights Tribunal before next year... ****

The situation you describe sounds like a dog chasing its tail. It is disrespectful to those who voted at the SGM, and it not an efficient use of precious AGM time to keep going over it. Tampering with minutes is a serious offence. The minutes should be amended to accurately report that the matter was previously decided at the SGM and is now concluded. As far as the notion of council overturning a decision made by the owners, I don't think they could properly do that even if they wanted to. It's standard practice in normal parliamentary procedure that once a vote is taken the matter is conclusively decided. Bringing it up again is out of order, by default. It is exactly the same principle that applies to a party who fails to prevail in litigation. They cannot keep making new claims for the same thing. Section 51 of the SPA provides that if a resolution is passed at a SGM by persons holding less than 50% of the strata's votes, then within one week following the vote, person...