January 13, 2022

The Hon. Ross Romano, MPP
Minister of Government & Consumer Services
777 Bay St, College Park
5th Floor, Toronto, ON M7A 2J3

Dear Minister Romano:

Further to our earlier submission on January 10th wherein the Association of Condominium Managers of Ontario (ACMO) expressed general support for the proposed permanent changes, we note that the current proposal makes no reference to the temporary amendments to Section 54 - Service by Electronic Means. It therefore appears that when the current emergency amendments expire on September 30, 2022, the original Section 54 comes back into force, which dictates that service of meeting notices by e-mail alone requires owner agreement, without which a copy must be delivered by mail (or personally) to unit owners.

We feel that the processes described in the temporary/emergency Section 54 are more efficient, expedient, and perhaps more in keeping with the overall spirit of enabling digital virtual processes and is more reflective of modern realities. ACMO recommends that the requirement to secure owner agreement to receive meeting notices by email alone be discontinued and replaced with an “opt-out” mechanism.

In fact, ACMO recommends that condominium corporations be permitted to serve all notices, beyond just meeting notices, by electronic means only without owner agreement, but this may require a complimentary obligation that unit owners supply a valid email address for service on notifying the corporation of their new ownership interest and mailing address for service. While it may have seemed intrusive in 2015 to require owners to provide an email address for service, that reluctance seems antiquated and impractical in 2022, and we ask the Ministry to revisit this issue and require owners to provide a valid email address for service on taking ownership of a unit, for the purpose of subsection 46.1(2).

Some further thought is needed on how to handle owners without an email address (surely a tiny minority), and how those owners will be assessed the resulting fees for the cost of the condo corporation administering and sending hardcopy notices, which is now a common practice.

We would be glad to discuss this further with you. Thank your efforts to improve the regulations and for considering this additional submission.

Best Regards,

Paul MacDonald
Executive Director of ACMO

Katherine Gow
President of ACMO