The End of the Emergency What that means for Condominium Meetings
Published in Condo Law Newsletter, by Shibley Righton LLP
On July 24, 2020, the Reopening Ontario (A Flexible Response to COVID-19) Act, 2020 came into force, ending the declaration of emergency in Ontario. Many of the provisions, including those that allowed for electronic service of notices, virtual meetings, and the delay of meetings, will expire in the coming months.
How does this affect your next condominium meeting? It depends on when your fiscal year ends and whether your meeting must be held on or before November 22, 2020.
Delay of AGMs – When does your fiscal year end?
During the state of emergency condominiums did not need to hold their AGMs. Now that it is over, here are the new AGM deadlines:
- For corporations with fiscal years ending between September 17, 2019 and January 24, 2020: If the last day to hold your AGM is between March 17 and July 24, 2020 (i.e., during the emergency), the AGM must now held be held on or before October 23, 2020;
- For corporations with fiscal years ending between January 25 and February 24, 2020: If the last day to hold your AGM is between July 25 and August 24, 2020, the AGM must now be held on or before November 22, 2020;
- For corporations with fiscal years ending on or after February 25, 2020: If the last day to hold your AGM is August 25 or later, then the emergency delay does not affect you and the last day to hold the AGM is 6 months after the end of your fiscal year.
Note that the timelines for requisition meetings are not affected by the delay. All the timelines for a requisition meeting are the same as they were pre-COVID.
Online Meetings, without a by-law, end November 22, 2020
The last day to hold an online meeting without a by-law is November 22, 2020. Until then, any condominium can:
- hold any meeting of owners online (i.e., virtually) or by telephone;
- serve owners or mortgagees by email without getting a written agreement from them first;
- provide all material by email or through a web portal;
- achieve quorum by having owners attend online; and
- record votes by telephone or electronically
After November 22, 2020 – Everything is back to normal (?)
As of today, any meeting held after November 22, 2020 will function as it did pre-COVID. Condominiums will need to:
- hold in-person meetings, unless the Corporation has implemented a by-law to allow for online or virtual meetings;
- mail out notices to owners who haven’t signed up for email delivery;
- provide paper material to those owners;
- achieve quorum through in-person attendance or by proxy; and
- record votes through a show of hands or by paper ballot.
The Ontario government can extend any of the electronic meeting provisions currently in place with a regulation beyond November 22, 2020, but we do not know when (or if) that will happen.
Condominiums that have not already done so should pass a by-law that allows for virtual meetings, before the November 22, 2020 deadline. Talk to your lawyer for more information about passing an electronic meeting by-law at your next meeting. Approval for this by-law is a majority of owners at a meeting not 51% of all units!
