Morley Hanson

A robust and resilient Strata Community depends on Owners being able to predict how a bylaw will actually be enforced against them, before it is enforced. Our recommendation is that Council document its reasons whenever it declines to enforce a bylaw against one Owner, not only when it decides to enforce it against another

Council has real authority to manage the common property, but that authority stops where a change becomes significant, and that line has been drawn by a fact-specific legal test the courts and the Civil Resolution Tribunal have applied consistently for years.

Choosing not to fine a bylaw complaint is not, on its own, significantly unfair, because the Act gives Council real discretion in how it enforces the bylaws. What the case law consistently punishes is not the choice itself, but a Strata that had enough information to make that choice and did not make it, whether through an unexplained refusal to reach a conclusion, an unwillingness to act on evidence it obtained itself, or no investigation at all.

A Strata's power to recover legal costs on a lien is broader than a court's ordinary costs award. It begins only when a Certificate of Lien is registered, it includes only costs that were reasonably necessary to register or enforce that lien, and it ends when the arrears are paid.