06/10/2022 – Jurisdiction Ontario
Part 80 published on 01/12/2022
The CAT orders condominium corporation to produce emails containing reports or opinions from consultants
The Applicant requested various records relating to a roof leak and resulting water leakage into the Applicant’s unit. The condominium corporation had not produced emails between the condominium corporation and its engineering consultants because the condominium corporation had assumed that such emails do not constitute records of the condominium corporation. The Tribunal ordered the condominium corporation to produce such emails. The Tribunal said:
Section 55 (1) of the Act and section 13.1 (1) of Ontario Regulation 48/01 (“O. Reg. 48/01) set out the records a corporation is required to keep. As Counsel for TSCC 2150 submitted, s. 55 (1) of the Act does not require corporations to keep correspondence as records. However, the records prescribed in s.13.1 (1) of O. Reg. 48/01 include the following:
All reports and opinions of an architect, engineer, or other person whose profession lends credibility to the report or opinion, that the corporation receives and that relate to physical features of the property or of any real or personal property that the corporation owns or that is the subject of an agreement mentioned in section 113 or subsection 154 (5) of the Act entered into by or on behalf of the corporation.
It stands to reason that if the “reports or opinions” are contained in an e-mail or written correspondence then the corporation is required to keep that e-mail or written correspondence as a corporate record. This requirement would apply to any such e-mails or correspondence sent by an engineer from Trace Consulting. Therefore, I will order TSCC 2150 to provide copies of any e-mails or written correspondence it received from a Trace Consulting engineer which contains a report or opinion relating to the roof leak and/or its repair or, if there are no such records, to provide a written confirmation that they do not exist.