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Joy Mathews

Retention Periods

  • Financial and other records, such as meeting minutes, must be kept for 7 years
  • Fundamental corporation documents (for example, the declaration, by-laws, rules, turnover documents, performance audits, reserve fund studies and plans) and agreements have an unlimited retention period.
  • Proxies and ballots and forms of recorded votes must be kept for 90 days unless notice is received in writing of pending litigation.
  • Records can be retained in either electronic or paper format.  Safeguards must be implemented to protect electronic records.

Access to Records

  • Step 1: An owner must make a request for records on the standard form.  No reason need be given for the request;
  • Step 2: Within 30-days of receipt of a request, the board is required to respond to the request using standardized forms, which shall indicate the following for each record:
    • Whether or not it is a core record;
    • Identifying it will be disclosed or, if not, providing reasons for not disclosing it; and,
    • The costs of obtaining the record or the location where the corporation will make a copy available for review.
  • Step 3: The owner can send a response confirming which records are still be requested.
  • Step 4: There are different timelines for production of records:
    • Core Records (Electronic): must be available when corporation’s response is due (e.g. 30 days) and delivered or available in paper form (if requested) no later than seven (7) days following receipt of the requester’s response and payment of applicable fee.
    • Core Records (Paper): must be available within seven (7) days of requester’s response and payment of applicable fees.
    • Non-core records (Electronic & Paper): must be available within thirty (30) days of requester’s response and payment of applicable fees.

Denial of Access to Records

  • If a condominium corporation denies access to records the request to access the records will be deemed abandoned unless within sixty (60) days of the condominium corporation’s response (see step 3, above) the owner must (i) deliver a response to request form and pay the required fee or (ii) apply to the Condominum Tribunal to adjudicate the request;
  • If a condominium corporation does not respond to an owner’s request to access records, the owner’s request will be deemed abandoned unless the owner applies to the Condominium Tribunal within six (6) months of the request.

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