Condo life is rife with conflict
Tony Gioventu, CHOA’s executive director says “Nobody is to blame, but everybody is at fault, from the Strata Property Act to property managers to strata corporations to the owners.”
....Although property managers are hired to provide good advice, there are many examples of them doing the opposite, according to both Gioventu and Deryk Norton, who runs the website strataadvocate.ca and is a director of the Vancouver Island Strata Owners Association.
...Norton and Gioventu also say that the government must raise the penalties and fines because they fall so far short of the damage that bad managers, BAD LAWYERS, BAD JUDGES, and BAD ADVOCATES inflict on condo owners that it amounts to almost no consequence at all. And they urge the government to include fines and penalties for anyone else who breaches the act including BAD ADVOCATES, MANAGERS, LAWYERS, JUDGES, real estate agents, developers and even strata council members.
By omitting legal professionals and bad advocates like himself from responsibility and claiming they are not "to blame" Tony Gioventu is guilty of deception, to say the least. Other than falling into such a trap of distraction and lies of omission, the Vancouver Sun published a respectable column.
DO NOT TRUST ADVOCATES WHO ACT LIKE WOLVES IN SHEEP’S
CLOTHING
Legal professionals acting in conflict mislead
advocates who blindly follow like sheep, so that on its website the Vancouver
Island Strata Owners Association answers the following question, and others,
deceptively, and so do the Condominium Homeowners Association and the Canadian
Condominium Institute. THIS IS HIGHLY PROFITABLE FOR LAWYERS AND INSURANCE COMPANIES and an unspeakable cost for strata owners.
Can a bylaw make owners responsible for accidental
damage to common property that they have caused?
Under the law the
answer is No. Neither the Strata
Property Act nor the Regulations allow
the strata corporation to transfer its responsibility to repair damage to common
property (s. 72), and a bylaw that
contravenes the Act is unenforceable (s.121).
Section 155 of the Act
makes owners of strata lots “named
insureds” under the strata corporation’s liability insurance, but the
strata corporation's insurance deductible (s.158.1)
is a “common expense” (s.1) and as
such, the strata must sue an owner “in
order to recover the deductible portion of an insurance claim if the owner is
responsible for the damage” (s.158.2).
To best protect themselves it is prudent for owners to take
out personal liability insurance to cover the strata’s insurance deductibles as
the courts have defined “responsible”
to mean that the damage came from the owner’s strata lot, whether or not the
owner actually caused the accident. For example, if an owner’s plumbing
fixture or appliance leaks and damages the suite below, the owner is
responsible because the appliance or fixture is on his/her property. Mari v. Strata Plan LMS 2835, 2007 BCSC
740, The Owners, Strata Plan VIS 6634 v.
Brown, 2017 BCCRT 86. In contrast, if a leaking pipe in a strata lot happens
to be common property the Act makes
the strata responsible for repairs, and Graham
v. The Owners, Strata Plan K 852, 2018 BCCRT 619 is just one court case example
of that.
Bottom line: a bylaw cannot override the Act or deprive an owner of their right to due process in court.
Anyone (judge, lawyer, manager, insurer, realtor, council member, owner, or
advocate) who undermines this minimum statutory protection is acting in a scandalous
conflict of interest that brings the law into disrepute and irresponsibly manufactures
perpetual strife at the expense of BC strata owners.
