Legal

November 26, 2024 Published by Toronto and Area Chapter - By Joy Mathews

Condominium Authority Tribunal – Then and Now

From the Fall 2024 issue of CCI Toronto Condovoice Magazine.

In 2015, I co-wrote a Condo Voice article about the future of what we now call the Condominium Authority Tribunal (“CAT”) which started with this statement, “If Shakespeare was a live today, and owned a condo in Ontario (let’s say Stratford), he would have ample material for a new play about disagreements”.

I argued in that article that the proposed changes in the Act, which are designed to streamline condominium dispute resolution mechanisms, could well do the opposite.

Fast forward to 2024, nine-years later and…unfortunately…I was mostly correct.

Although the CAT’s homepage states that it is “dedicated to helping condo owners and corporations resolve disputes conveniently, quickly and affordably”, I have some concerns.

Let’s look at the there three (3) visionary adjectives in turn. “Conveniently”:

• “Conveniently”: Yes for owners….anything but for corporations.
• “Quickly”: Hmmm….depends on the owner’s appetite for reasonable settlement, it seems.
• “Affordably”: Yes, again, for owners… anything but for corporations.

The Government of Ontario sets the CAT’s jurisdiction to hear disputes and it was effectively frozen from its inception in 2017 to 2020 to only include Request for Records complaints.

I was always and continue to be concerned about administrative bureaucratic problems which face similar administrative judicial bodies such as the Landlord and Tenant Board.

In fact, the Toronto Star picked up my 2015 article back then and an industry leading real estate lawyer supported my earlier views and commented that “Unfortunately, when a government uses words such as quick, impartial and inexpensive, my skepticism alarms go off. If the Landlord and Tenant Board is any example, the condominium dispute office will likely be slow, backlogged, expensive and biased.”

Indeed, I am writing in the “rant” section of the Condovoice magazine, so it is difficult not to jump on the “CAT Hate Group Chat” that seems to be developing in the condo world.

However, unlike some, I truly believe that the CAT’s trajectory is upwards towards its stated vision.

That said, there are a few practical (and, frankly, pretty straightforward) quick fixes, the low-hanging fruit, that can be implemented immediately for a better overall user experience, including:

Timetabling CAT Applications: the courts do this, why doesn’t the CAT?

This helps all parties: applicants, respondents, and adjudicators. This is important for preventing owners from dragging out the process - for example, when owners have been unreasonably resistant to reaching a settlement agreement in mediation, despite there being no outstanding issues - there are negative consequences for everyone involved.

For example, when counsel are representing multiple clients at the CAT, we are inundated with CAT email updates, which can come in 24-hours per day, 7 days per week. Owners (the ones that may be employed) are likely working during the time that the adjudicator requests responses. And, adjudicators, don’t you wish to know when responses will be coming in... unless the CAT prefers the Foucault panopticon approach to discipline and punishment (if you don’t know, look it up), then why the surprise game to scheduling.

Realistic Standardized Forms: the best disinfectant is light, so they say.

Why don’t the CAT forms provide flexibility regarding the minimum time permitted to state redacted records? We recently represented a condominium corporation and the adjudicator decided against our client that one (1) hour was too long to redact a document, however that was the “minimum” permitted time on their standardized form….it felt like we were screaming into a tornado!

Weaponizing CAT Applications: weak management watch out!

Even if a CAT case is filed for a legitimate reason, an owner may take advantage of the process to attack weak management and try to include other issues outside the CAT’s jurisdiction (such as governance). Group of owners can band together to each file CAT cases and capitalize on the same mistakes, as well as try to overwhelm management. For example, if several owners continuously submit records requests and the manager makes the same mistake when responding to all of them, then each owner can file CAT cases for the same reasons. Even if management learned its lesson about the proper procedure after the 1st case.

With a few tweaks and not a complete overhaul, the CAT may likely end up being like most things in our condo industry, reasonably incompetent...but, hey, it’s better than the alternative.

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Joy Mathews, Lawyer, Mathews Condo Law, PC