Toronto establishes a local appeal body

Toronto establishes a local appeal body

December 31, 2007

The murkiness around maintenance and repairs is one of the most serious defects in the current Condominium Act, Toronto condominium lawyer Armand Conant says in CondoBusiness.

While condo owners are responsible for the maintenance of their units and balconies, a court decision set the precedent that an owner could be held responsible for replacing concrete and rebar on their balcony, Conant, partner with Shibley Righton LLP, said as part of a panel discussion at Springfest in Toronto earlier this year, as CondoBusiness reports.

“So each unit owner on the 26th floor of the building is going to have to have their own scaffolding, their own contractor, to rebuild their concrete balcony,” he said, adding that “It makes no sense.”

Conant said that any role a condo owner plays in maintenance should be limited to general cleanliness and upkeep.

While Conant tells AdvocateDaily.com that the recent provincial election has held up the introduction of new condominium legislation, there is hope that two new bills will be re-introduced early in the fall.

The original legislation also proposed the creation of a “condo office”, he says in the article, which would house a database of condo corporations, educational resources and a dispute resolution office – but, he added, there are many questions for the government to answer on this issue.

These questions, he says, include who would pay for the office, how quickly decision-makers in the dispute resolution office would be trained, and how the condominium community’s expectations would be managed.