Stay in the Know with the CAO!

Since it was launched in 2017, the Condominium Authority of Ontario (CAO) has worked diligently to protect the interests of condo owners. According to the CAO itself,

“The Condominium Authority of Ontario (CAO) is focused on consumer protection and supporting healthy condo communities across Ontario. The CAO is your trusted source for information, training, dispute resolution, and other services to help improve condominium living.”

The CAO’s initial focus was on creating director training, establishing a public registry of condo corporations, and implementing and collecting annual returns from condo corporations.  As the provincial government expanded its dispute-resolution authority, the CAO, and its Condominium Authority Tribunal (CAT) worked with determination to encourage early resolution of issues. As Canada’s first fully online tribunal, the CAO has aspired to be a model for dispute resolution, working to solve condo disputes conveniently, quickly, and affordably.

In addition to the gradually expanding role of the CAT in settling disputes, in recent months the CAO has been busy developing a wide range of resources that help inform condo buyers, landlords, owners, tenants and management. The CAO’s helpful resources include:

• condo forms (more than 20 forms are currently available)
• a step-by-step guide for electric vehicle charging systems            
• Legal resources for condo owners
• Ontario’s Residential Condominium Buyers’ Guide
• an Owners’ Meeting Guide
• an Owner-Requisitioned Meeting Template
• a Proxy Overview and Sample Forms
• an Annual Condominium Requirements Guide
• How-to Guides and Letter Templates

Most recently, the CAO published an excellent CAO Best Practices Guide : Ensuring Healthy Reserve Funds. This comprehensive, 39-page guide expertly explains why a healthy reserve fund is critical to a condominium community’s well-being. The budgeted annual contribution to reserve is typically a condo corporation’s largest single expense in the annual budget. Therefore, it’s exceptionally important that all condo stakeholders understand how the integrity of a reserve fund study is protected, and how important it is to the value of a condominium to have adequate reserve funds in place to pay for the inevitable major repairs and replacements of a condo corporation’s assets.

We strongly encourage everyone to visit the CAO’s website and to become familiar with the excellent resources it offers. To assist you, you can subscribe to receive important news and updates delivered straight to your inbox -- thecao.ca/subscribe