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WHY CAN'T YOU TREAT A SINGLE CRT DECISION AS THE LAW? A single Civil Resolution Tribunal decision cannot be treated as the law, because the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act was never built to produce precedent. I have had an uncounted number of conversations that start the same way: someone sends me a CRT decision, on facts they say are just like theirs, and asks if they have to do what the CRT said in that decision. It is a reasonable question to ask, and here is my usual response: one decision, on its own, does not tell you what the law requires. It can be very useful in trying to decide what to do for your Strata Corporation but it does not restrict your freedom to do make the best decision for your strata community in your particular situation. Of course, this answer depends on their actually being an opportunity for discretion, several aspects of the Strata Property Act are direct in what a Strata Corporation must do or cannot do. We have written about the logical fallacy of treating precedent as though it locks in a future outcome in another article, and the Civil Resolution Tribunal is the clearest example of why that fallacy is so tempting. The tribunal produces a steady stream of readable, plain-language decisions on exactly the disputes that Owners and Councils actually have. That readability is precisely what makes a single decision feel like an answer, when it is closer to one data point. WHAT DOES THE CIVIL RESOLUTION TRIBUNAL ACT SAY ABOUT PRECEDENT? The Civil Resolution Tribunal Act is built around resolving the dispute in front of the tribunal, not building a body of binding authority for the next one. The tribunal's mandate is to provide dispute resolution services that are "accessible, speedy, economical, informal and flexible" and that "applies principles of law and fairness" (s.2(2)), and its role, once agreement fails, is simply "to resolve the dispute by deciding the claims brought to the tribunal by the parties" (s.2(3)(b)). Nothing in that mandate asks a tribunal member to follow, distinguish, or reconcile earlier decisions the way a court is expected to. The Act's own structure confirms this. Where a claim raises an issue "of such importance that the claim or dispute would benefit from being adjudicated by that court to establish a precedent," that is a listed reason for a court, not the tribunal, to take the claim (s.16.3(a)). The legislature drew the line itself: precedent-setting is a court function that moves a dispute out of the jurisdiction of the CRT. This only makes sense if the tribunal is not capable of setting precedent. The BC Supreme Court has applied exactly this reasoning, keeping a claim out of the tribunal in part because it involved "multiple areas where the strata corporation asked the Court to make new law" (The Owners, Strata Plan VIS 1210 v. Ngai Estate, 2024 BCSC 2232, paras 42, 47-49). WHY IS A CRT DECISION REACHED WITHOUT THE BENEFIT OF LEGAL ARGUMENT? A CRT decision is usually reached without a lawyer testing either side's position, because the Act's default is self-representation. Unless a party is a child, a person with impaired capacity, or the tribunal or the rules otherwise permit it, "the parties are to represent themselves in a tribunal proceeding" (s.20(1)). That is a deliberate part of the tribunal's design, not an oversight; the Court of Appeal has described the resulting process as "the inevitable result of legislation that diverts disputes...into a tribunal that is not required to afford the litigants a traditional hearing," reflecting the legislature's own balance of efficiency against formality (Downing v. Strata Plan VR2356, 2023 BCCA 100, para 65): [65] What might initially strike an observer to be procedural unfairness in this case is the inevitable result of legislation that diverts disputes—some of which are large in terms of money and of vital concern to residents of condominiums—into a tribunal that is not required to afford the litigants a traditional hearing, even where there are credibility questions. The impression that the process is unfair is reinforced by the statutory limitation on the scope of appellate review of the tribunal decisions. But the decision to move disputes involving strata corporations into this dispute resolution process is a policy decision of the legislature, and reflects the legislature’s balancing of the competing claims of efficiency and fairness.[emphasis added] For people that rely on the CRT to resolve conflicts, the prioritization of efficiency over fairness can seem like a critical flaw. However, it is important to be clear about what that means in practice. A decision written after two self-represented parties each explained their side, with no one testing whether the tribunal member identified the right test, applied it correctly, or was even shown the governing authority, is not the same kind of document as a reasoned judgment. Our experience is that CRT reasons can be excellent, but they can also miss a binding line of authority entirely, simply because it was not raised. WHY DOES A SINGLE DECISION FEEL SO PERSUASIVE ANYWAY? A single decision feels persuasive because it is concrete, it is recent, and it resembles your own situation in the details that happen to catch your eye. That is exactly the shape of the precedent fallacy: assuming that because a decision was made on one set of facts, the same decision must follow on a similar set. The role of a lawyer, when there is precedent, is to test how similar "similar" really is. That is not required with a decision of the Civil Resolution Tribunal, because even if the situation is completely analogous there is no precedent. This is not an argument that a CRT decision is worthless. It is an argument that a single CRT decision, read in isolation, is the wrong unit of analysis. Strata Corporation's should not believe that they have lost the ability to implement a decision that is best for that community only because a CRT decision stated that a different Strata Corporation could or could not have implemented the same thing. WHY DOES A COLLECTION OF DECISIONS TELL YOU SOMETHING ONE CANNOT? Quantity has a quality all its own. One tribunal member's reasoning on one afternoon can be idiosyncratic, incomplete, or simply wrong, but the same tribunal member's reasoning is far less likely to be an outlier when twenty other members, on twenty other files, keep landing in the same place on the same narrow question. A single CRT decision is a data point; a cluster of them, gathered around one specific issue and read together, is a pattern. Patterns are informative even when no individual point in them can be relied upon. This is the sense in which the Civil Resolution Tribunal functions as a compass rather than a map. A map claims to show you the actual road, turn by turn, and a single CRT decision cannot make that claim for you, because nothing obliges the next tribunal member to take the same road again. A compass makes a smaller, more honest claim: it tells you which direction the terrain generally runs, based on everything gathered about it so far, and lets you plan around that. Read enough CRT decisions on the same recurring question, and a direction of travel emerges, whether the tribunal has tended to treat a certain kind of delay as significantly unfair, or a certain kind of chargeback as unauthorized, even though the tribunal itself is not bound to keep pointing that way tomorrow. HOW DOES MORLEY HANSON USE CRT TRENDS WHEN ADVISING A STRATA? Our practice is to keep those two things separate rather than letting one quietly stand in for the other. When we advise on a question that the Civil Resolution Tribunal regularly decides, we give a Strata two distinct statements: first, what the law actually requires, grounded in the Strata Property Act and binding court authority; and second, a candid estimate, based on the pattern across the tribunal's recent decisions, of what the Civil Resolution Tribunal itself would likely decide if a dispute is started. We call the second one our guestimate, deliberately, so that no one mistakes it for a legal opinion. The distinction matters because the two answers do not always match. Binding authority may point one way while the tribunal's own practice, for reasons that are not always fully articulated, tends to point another. Where they diverge, we say so, because that divergence is itself useful information: it can affect how a Strata Corporation describes or implements a solution and how it can be prepared to respond if a dispute is started with the Civil Resolution Tribunal. A CRT DECISION IS A COMPASS, NOT A MAP, AND SHOULD USED THAT WAY A single Civil Resolution Tribunal decision is not the law, and it was never designed to be. The Act routes precedent-setting to the courts, builds the tribunal's process around self-represented parties resolving their own dispute rather than testing legal argument, and gives no tribunal member any obligation to follow another's reasoning. Treating one CRT decision as though it settles a different dispute is the same fallacy as treating one court decision as an unbreakable precedent, except with even less to support the analogy. None of that makes the Civil Resolution Tribunal's decisions unimportant. Read in volume, on a specific recurring question, they show a direction of travel that a robust and resilient Strata Community can genuinely use to anticipate what is likely to happen, even while understanding that the tribunal remains free to go a different way next time. A compass is still worth carrying. You simply have to know that it is a compass, and not a map.

WHEN DOES STRATA BYLAW ENFORCEMENT BECOME SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? Strata bylaw enforcement becomes significantly unfair, under section 164 of the Strata Property Act, when it is oppressive, burdensome, or unfairly prejudicial to an Owner — something more than mere prejudice or trifling unfairness (Reid v. Strata Plan LMS 2503, 2001 BCSC 1578, aff'd 2003 BCCA 126; Dollan v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 1589, 2012 BCCA 44, paras 26-27). Two recurring fact patterns account for most of these claims. The first is a Strata skipping the process the Act itself requires before it fines, charges, or restricts an Owner. The second is a Strata applying a bylaw to one Owner while letting a comparable Owner's identical conduct go unaddressed. Both routes are assessed under the same test, and the Civil Resolution Tribunal applies it identically to a court, since its own significant-unfairness power under the Civil Resolution Tribunal Act mirrors section 164 directly. This article sets out what that process actually requires, what happens when it is skipped, what makes enforcement selective rather than even-handed, and why most selective-enforcement claims still fail. WHAT PROCESS MUST A STRATA FOLLOW BEFORE FINING OR RESTRICTING AN OWNER? A Strata must satisfy five conjunctive requirements before it may fine an Owner, charge them the cost of remedying a contravention, or deny them access to a recreational facility (s.135). The steps are: The Strata received a complaint about the contravention. The Owner or tenant had a reasonable opportunity to answer the complaint, including a hearing if one was requested. Where the person is a tenant, the tenant's landlord and the Owner were both notified. A member of Council who was the subject of the complaint did not participate in the decision (s.136). The Strata gave written notice of its decision as soon as feasible. A missed step at any of these five bars the enforcement, and the most consequential of the five in practice is the second: whether the opportunity to answer was actually reasonable. Separately, an Owner or tenant has their own statutory right to request a hearing at a Council meeting on written application; once requested, Council must hold that hearing within four weeks and, where a decision is sought, give a written decision within one week after the hearing (s.34.1). None of these five requirements is as rigid as it first sounds. A "complaint" does not need to come from a neighbour or another third party — a Strata Council can itself be the complainant that satisfies this requirement, since section 135 does not require a complaint from someone distinct from Council (David v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR 2588, 2023 BCSC 1358, para 81, adopting The Owners, Strata Plan VR19 v. Collins, 2004 BCSC 1743). A contravention is also established by the simple, objective fact of non-compliance with a bylaw's own terms — a fine for breaching a hard-surface-flooring bylaw does not depend on anyone actually complaining about the noise the bylaw was designed to prevent (David, para 80). And formal notice is not the only way to satisfy the complaint requirement: a long history of correspondence making clear what the fines related to has been found to give adequate notice under section 135, even without a single formal complaint letter (Terry v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 309, 2016 BCSC 237, para 36). WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A STRATA SKIPS THAT PROCESS? A Strata that enforces a bylaw without following section 135 or section 34.1 exposes itself to a significant-unfairness claim, and the Civil Resolution Tribunal has followed this reasoning repeatedly. A Strata that denied an Owner's hearing request and only offered to meet outside the four-week window the Act requires was found significantly unfair on that basis (Lozjanin v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 3577, 2019 BCCRT 481). A Strata that failed to schedule a requested hearing at all, despite more than ten separate requests over a year and a half, was found significantly unfair for the same reason (Hart v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR 172, 2023 BCCRT 529). The consequence of skipping the process runs in both directions, however. Where a Strata's selective bylaw enforcement was significantly unfair, but the affected Owner also had an available hearing under section 135 and never requested it, a court has discounted the remedy to reflect the Owner's own failure to use the process available to them — a factor the court described as weighing heavily against the Owner, even though it did not defeat the underlying finding of significant unfairness (The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 3259 v. Sze Hang Holding Inc., 2016 BCSC 32, paras 258-259). An Owner who believes a fine or a bylaw contravention notice is wrong should request the hearing the Act gives them, not only because it may change the outcome, but because failing to request it can reduce what a court is later willing to award. WHEN DOES A PROCEDURAL DEFAULT NOT RESULT IN THE FINES BEING DECLARED INVALID? A procedural breach, on its own, does not automatically entitle anyone to a remedy. Procedural fairness requires a decision-maker to speak with one voice about the procedures it requires of a party, and not to enforce those procedures with greater vigour at a later stage than was originally represented — a principle the Supreme Court applied in reviewing how the Civil Resolution Tribunal handled a Strata's water-damage claim, expressly holding that it applies "regardless of whether the claim is concerned mainly with private property rights" (West v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 2637, 2021 BCSC 824, para 83). However, the same court declined to set the decision aside, because the breach it found caused no identifiable harm — the party was still able to raise its important points despite the procedural inconsistency, and a breach without shown prejudice does not warrant a remedy (West, para 85). The Civil Resolution Tribunal has reached the same result on its own facts. A council hearing held without quorum and without a written decision afterward was found not significantly unfair, where the procedural breaches were not shown to have caused sufficient harm (Shayesteh-Fard v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR437, 2026 BCCRT 86). A three-month delay in providing records the Owner was entitled to was found not significantly unfair for the same reason, once the Owner recovered the documents through a further demand (Herchen v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 3380, 2026 BCCRT 649). The distinction that matters is whether the procedural slip actually cost the Owner something, not whether the Strata's paperwork was perfect. WHAT MAKES BYLAW ENFORCEMENT DISCRIMINATORY OR SELECTIVE? Bylaw enforcement is discriminatory when a Strata applies its own bylaw or policy to some Owners but not to others who are in the same position, without a disclosed and rational basis for the difference. A commercial Strata's council informally exempted various Owners from an "open for business" bylaw's fines — Owners who posted a "for sale" sign and hired a realtor, Owners who claimed their work took them elsewhere, Owners who agreed to let their unit be used for mall promotion — while continuing to fine the defendant Owners for the identical infraction, without ever telling Owners generally that these exemptions existed or on what basis they were granted. The court held this was significantly unfair, even though it accepted the council was not acting in bad faith: the council's discretion to grant exemptions is real, but an undisclosed, ill-defined, and excessively broad exercise of it defeats every Owner's reasonable expectation that the bylaw will be enforced consistently (Sze Hang Holding Inc., 2016 BCSC 32, paras 248-258). Selective enforcement does not need to involve fines to be significantly unfair. A Strata had, as a matter of practice, allocated one exclusive-use parking stall to every commercial Owner whose unit was under 1,000 square feet — except one Owner, who was denied the same allocation for years despite owning several qualifying units. The court held that applying the Strata's own consistent policy to every similarly situated Owner but one was significantly unfair, and ordered the missing parking stalls allocated (B.P.Y.A. 1163 Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR 2192, 2008 BCSC 695, paras 47-49). The Civil Resolution Tribunal has followed the same reasoning where the comparators are genuinely equivalent: a Strata that fined one Owner $50 for a parking violation while permitting other Owners and tradespeople to commit the identical breach was found to have applied a discriminatory double standard (Schultz v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 2822, 2026 BCCRT 351), as was a Strata that investigated and fined one Owner for tree pruning while declining to investigate similar pruning by other Owners (Molyneux v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS 5744, 2024 BCCRT 1100). WHY DO MOST SELECTIVE-ENFORCEMENT CLAIMS FAIL? A Strata does not have to remedy a trifling or trivial contravention of its own bylaws, and the same floor limits how much differential treatment an Owner can complain about. Where cooling equipment had sat, uncomplained-of, on limited common property for decades, the Court of Appeal held the contravention was trivial and the Strata had no duty to act on it — a council acting reasonably in the interests of all Owners can decide to ignore a trifling infraction without unfairly prejudicing anyone (Abdoh v. The Owners of Strata Plan KAS2003, 2014 BCCA 270, paras 22-23). A selective-enforcement claim needs a comparator whose conduct was genuinely the same as the complaining Owner's, and material harm from the difference — not just a general sense that someone else got away with something. Our review of the Civil Resolution Tribunal's own published decisions bears this out: the tribunal has found bylaw enforcement significantly unfair in only about a third of the disputes where that question was actually decided on its merits, and selective-enforcement claims specifically fail more often than the average, because the comparators an Owner points to are rarely identical to their own situation. An Owner who built an unapproved shed pointed to neighbours' garden beds as comparable conduct the Strata had tolerated; the tribunal found the comparison did not hold, since a shed and a garden bed are not the same kind of alteration (Berezan v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 9, 2019 BCCRT 438). An Owner fined $400 for a balcony-storage prohibition pointed to other Owners who were not fined for similar items; the tribunal again found the comparators were not exact enough to establish a double standard (1093870 B.C. Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW213, 2022 BCCRT 328). A single Civil Resolution Tribunal decision is a data point, not a binding decision, but a large collection of them pointing the same way shows a direction for how these claims are actually decided — and that direction favours the Strata far more often than it favours the Owner. CONSISTENT PROCESS AND CONSISTENT ENFORCEMENT PROTECT A STRATA FROM A SIGNIFICANT-UNFAIRNESS CLAIM The law is about line drawing, and both threads in this article are really the same line seen from two directions: whether a Strata treated one Owner the way it treats, or would treat, everyone else. A Strata that follows section 135 and section 34.1 in substance, not just in form, and that applies its bylaws and policies on a transparent and consistent basis, is very unlikely to face a successful section 164 claim on either ground. A Strata that improvises its process, or that grants informal exceptions it never writes down, is exposed on both. The key purpose of the law is for social ordering, and 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 — a documented, rational basis for treating two situations differently is what separates a defensible exercise of discretion from a significant-unfairness claim waiting to happen. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

WHAT MAKES A STRATA'S CONDUCT SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? A Strata's conduct is significantly unfair when it is oppressive, meaning burdensome, harsh, wrongful, lacking in probity or fair dealing, or done in bad faith, or when it is unfairly prejudicial, meaning unjust or inequitable (Reid v. Strata Plan LMS 2503 (Owners), 2001 BCSC 1578, paras 9-14). An Owner or tenant who believes a Strata's action, threatened action, or decision meets that standard can ask the Supreme Court, or the Civil Resolution Tribunal, to intervene (Strata Property Act, s.164(1); Civil Resolution Tribunal Act, s.123(2)). That standard sits well above ordinary disagreement. The Court of Appeal has confirmed that significantly unfair conduct requires "something more than mere prejudice or trifling unfairness" (Dollan v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 1589, 2012 BCCA 44, paras 26-27, 49-51). The law is about line drawing, and this line sits deliberately high. An Owner who dislikes a decision, or would have preferred a different outcome, has not crossed it on that basis alone. We have written another article with a more detailed history of the development of the legal test to determine if an action is significantly unfair. WHAT TEST DECIDES WHETHER CONDUCT IS SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? Courts and the Civil Resolution Tribunal decide whether conduct crosses that line using the Reid formulation above, informed by whether the Owner held a reasonable expectation that the Strata's conduct violated. Reasonable expectations were treated inconsistently for some time. One Court of Appeal justice proposed a formal two-part test built around them, and another applied a different "disproportionate burden" gloss instead. The Court of Appeal has since settled the question: *Reid*'s own oppressive/unfairly-prejudicial formulation remains the test, and reasonable expectations are one relevant factor to weigh within it, not a separate, mandatory hurdle (King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851), 2020 BCCA 342, paras 88-89). However, "one relevant factor" does not mean an optional one. Treating an Owner's reasonable expectations as legally irrelevant is itself a reviewable error, because it fails to account for section 164's remedial purpose (Kunzler v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS 1433), 2021 BCCA 173, paras 92-93, 95). What founds a reasonable expectation matters too: it needs an actual, affirmative representation from the Strata, a developer, or the governing bylaws. General marketing or zoning language is not enough (Kunzler, paras 131-134). HOW CONSISTENTLY DOES THE CIVIL RESOLUTION TRIBUNAL APPLY THIS TEST? The Civil Resolution Tribunal applies the same test the courts do, because the two are not separate standards. The tribunal's own parallel power under CRTA section 123(2) mirrors section 164, and the Dollan/Reid principles that govern the court's own analysis apply equally to a tribunal claim (Dolnik v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 1350), 2023 BCSC 113, paras 82-85). The tribunal must apply that test independently, too. It cannot dismiss a significant-unfairness claim merely by cross-referencing a related finding, such as a rejected repair-negligence claim on the same facts, without asking the significant-unfairness question in its own right (*Dolnik*, paras 86-90). A single Civil Resolution Tribunal decision is a data point, not a binding decision, but a collection of them can show a direction for how the law is developing; we have written about that distinction, and why it matters, in another article. It is important to recognize that our own review of the tribunal's published decisions is exactly that kind of collection, not a rule any single dispute is bound by. Read together, though, the tribunal finds significant unfairness in roughly three cases out of every ten it decides on the merits. That pattern is worth knowing before treating a complaint, or a Strata's own conduct, as an obvious outcome either way. WHAT PUSHES A STRATA'S CONDUCT TOWARD BEING SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? The reported judgments show a consistent shape to the conduct that crosses the line. A repair delay of over seven years, maintained despite two legal opinions confirming the repair was the Strata's own duty, was significantly unfair, and the latitude ordinarily given to lay-volunteer Councils did not save it (Hill v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS 510), 2016 BCSC 1753, paras 66-67, 75-88). An undisclosed, case-by-case exemption from a bylaw's fines for some Owners, while others were fined for the identical conduct, was significantly unfair even without any bad faith on Council's part (Sze Hang Holding Inc.), 2016 BCSC 32, paras 236-239, 248-258). And a decade-long, mutually-relied-upon cost-allocation practice, reversed unilaterally once a new majority took control of Council, was "oppressive, unduly burdensome, unjust, and inequitable" (King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851), 2018 BCSC 1772, paras 59-64, 84-92). The Civil Resolution Tribunal has followed the same reasoning repeatedly in its own decisions. Months of documented noise complaints and acoustic evidence, met with no enforcement action at all, were significantly unfair (Chan v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS2583), 2021 BCCRT 456). A new Council's reversal of a prior Council's approval of an Owner's own alterations was significantly unfair on the same reliance-based reasoning as King Day Holdings (McFadyen v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 2154, 2022 BCCRT 1191). A multi-year failure to repair a roof, despite a documented mould health hazard, was significantly unfair (Smyth v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS522, 2024 BCCRT 1169). Charging geothermal operating expenses to twenty-five units that received no benefit from the system was significantly unfair (Suter v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS1699, 2024 BCCRT 1086). And a parking fine imposed on one Owner, while other Owners and tradespeople were permitted to exceed the same time limit, was significantly unfair as discriminatory enforcement (Schultz v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 2822, 2026 BCCRT 351). WHAT PUSHES A STRATA'S CONDUCT AWAY FROM BEING SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? The same body of case law shows the factors pointing the other way just as clearly. When a Strata council could not act because the Owners themselves had repeatedly failed to reach the ¾ majority a special levy required, that impasse was not council unfairness at all; the evidence showed the council lacked authority to act, not that it acted unfairly (Browne et al. v. The Owners, Strata Plan 582, 2007 BCSC 206, para 32). A cost-allocation practice in place since 2003, repeatedly re-presented to and re-approved by the Owners without objection, was not significantly unfair to continue, even though it departed from the Act's own unit-entitlement default (Christensen v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS468), 2013 BCSC 1714, paras 29-35). And a large number of individually trivial grievances does not add up to significant unfairness by being combined; each complaint still has to clear the oppressive or unfairly-prejudicial standard on its own (Tafti v. Davis, 2024 BCSC 176, para 366). The Civil Resolution Tribunal has applied the same reasoning in its own decisions. A bylaw enacted by a ¾ vote of the Owners was not significantly unfair, because a democratic vote and a Strata's compliance with its own bylaw authority were respected (Ehteshami v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS3752, 2020 BCCRT 1163). An Owner who performed unauthorized common-property work, and only later sought retroactive approval, had no reasonable expectation of getting it (The Owners, Strata Plan VR 211 v. Knight), 2020 BCCRT 193). A $10 charge on a $23.50 invoice was too trivial to be significantly unfair, whatever the Owner's own view of it (Raitt v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 1087, 2022 BCCRT 279). Nineteen months of complaints, investigated and communicated to the respondent Owner even though the Strata reached its own conclusion without imposing a fine, was within the Strata's own reasonable discretion (Brookes v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 1890, 2021 BCCRT 1181). And a Strata that switched its fee calculation to the unit-entitlement basis the Act itself required could not be faulted for complying with its own statutory obligation (Commercial Section, Strata Plan LMS 1991 v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 1991, 2018 BCCRT 333). WHAT SHOULD COUNCIL DO WITH THIS PATTERN? It is important for Council to treat these two lists as a self-check to run before acting, not as a defence assembled after a dispute begins. A decision that reverses an Owner's own documented reliance, singles out one Owner for treatment others avoid, or leaves a known repair or complaint unaddressed for years, sits squarely in the pattern that has repeatedly been found significantly unfair. A decision that follows a properly authorized vote, applies consistently to every Owner, and responds to a complaint even if imperfectly, sits in the pattern that has not. Our recommendation is that Council document the reasons for a decision at the time it is made, particularly when the decision departs from, or reverses, an established practice Owners have relied on. A Strata that can point to its own contemporaneous, rational basis for treating one Owner differently from another is in a stronger position than one that can only reconstruct that basis after the fact. SIGNIFICANT UNFAIRNESS REQUIRES REAL OPPRESSION, NOT MERE DISAGREEMENT Significantly unfair conduct is not a label for a decision an Owner dislikes. It requires conduct that is oppressive or unfairly prejudicial, weighed against whether the Owner's own reasonable expectations were violated, and the reported pattern, in both the courts and the Civil Resolution Tribunal, applies that standard with real teeth in both directions. There is a presumption in law that if people understand the law, they will act consistent with what it requires, and a Council that has not been shown where this line actually sits cannot be expected to stay on the right side of it. A robust and resilient Strata Community treats a departure from an established practice, or a complaint left unaddressed, as a genuine risk worth assessing carefully, rather than as a bet that no one will ever ask the Civil Resolution Tribunal to look at it. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TEST FOR SIGNIFICANT UNFAIRNESS The test for significant unfairness under s.164 of the Strata Property Act has developed over the years, most recently in 2021, when the Court of Appeal clarified how an Owner's reasonable expectations fit into the inquiry. Section 164 itself is short: it lets the Supreme Court make any order necessary to prevent or remedy significantly unfair action, decision, or conduct by a Strata or by a majority of voters, but it does not say what "significantly unfair" actually means. Every part of the working test is judge-made, built up case by case since 2001, and it has shifted more than once along the way. WHAT TEST DID DOLLAN SET OUT IN 2012? Dollan did not produce a single, unified test. Each of the three judges hearing the case wrote separate reasons, and they did not agree with each other on how an Owner's reasonable expectations should factor in. Justice Garson, writing for the majority, restated the meaning "significantly unfair" had already been given in Reid v. Strata Plan LMS 2503, 2001 BCSC 1578 — conduct that is oppressive, in that it is burdensome, harsh, wrongful, lacking in probity or fair dealing, or done in bad faith, or conduct that is unfairly prejudicial, in that it is unjust or inequitable — and then went further, proposing that a modified, two-part reasonable-expectations inquiry, borrowed from the corporate-oppression test in BCE Inc. v. 1976 Debentureholders, should also form part of the analysis (Dollan, paras 26-31). Justice D. Smith disagreed with that last step. In her own reasons, she endorsed the Reid meaning of "significantly unfair" but declined to import the BCE reasonable-expectations test, even in modified form, on the basis that doing so would unduly complicate the inquiry and risked misdirecting its focus (Dollan, para 54). Justice Hall took a third path again, proposing that a strata council decision reached through a fair, democratic process should be given a presumption of regularity, while the court retained a limited ability to correct a decision that placed too heavy a burden on a minority Owner (Dollan, paras 43-46). Dollan is the origin of the current test, but on the reasonable-expectations question, it left three separate views on the table rather than one. HOW DID KING DAY HOLDINGS SETTLE THE SPLIT IN 2020? King Day Holdings settled the split Dollan left open. The Court of Appeal confirmed that the correct test for significant unfairness is uncontroversial and is the Reid formulation, fully endorsed in Dollan, and it characterized Justice Garson's reasonable-expectations framing as one relevant factor to weigh within that test, not a separate, mandatory second test an Owner also has to satisfy (King Day Holdings Ltd., paras 88-89). This is the answer that resolved Dollan's three-way split: an Owner's reasonable expectations still matter, but they are folded into a single oppressive/unfairly-prejudicial inquiry rather than standing beside it as a competing hurdle. WHAT DID KUNZLER CHANGE IN 2021? Kunzler refined King Day Holdings rather than replacing it. The Court of Appeal drew a sharp line between two things a chambers judge might do with an Owner's reasonable expectations: correctly rejecting them as the determining, foundational factor is not the same as incorrectly treating them as legally irrelevant, and the second is an extricable error of law reviewed on a correctness standard (Kunzler, paras 92-93). In other words, a judge must still actually consider what the Owner reasonably expected, even while giving that expectation no more weight than King Day Holdings allows. Our understanding is that Kunzler also confirmed the section's reach extends to the passage or amendment of a Bylaw, not only to a resolution or a discretionary decision applying an existing Bylaw (Kunzler, paras 13, 94). It is important to note that Kunzler itself was a deference win for the Strata, not a win for the Owner who raised it. Our understanding is that the supermajority-enacted Bylaw under appeal, which prohibited commercial cannabis production after the Owner had taken only preparatory steps toward that use, was upheld as not significantly unfair (Kunzler). Requiring a judge to consider reasonable expectations is a procedural discipline, not a guarantee that considering them will change the result. DOES THIS MEAN COURTS NOW DEFER MORE TO A STRATA'S DEMOCRATIC DECISIONS? Courts still defer to a Strata's fair, democratic decisions, but that deference has never been absolute. The presumption of regularity Justice Hall proposed in Dollan remains the touchstone for a council decision reached through a fair process (Dollan, paras 43-46). However, s.164 is remedial, and a fair, democratic process does not by itself immunize a significantly unfair outcome from review (Dollan). Kunzler's own result shows both principles operating together: the court insisted on considering the Owner's expectations, and having done so, still deferred to the Strata's democratically enacted Bylaw. WHY HAS THIS TEST BEEN LEFT ENTIRELY TO THE COURTS TO WORK OUT? Section 164 gives the Supreme Court broad remedial power but never defines "significantly unfair". Every element of the test discussed above, from Reid's oppressive/unfairly-prejudicial meaning cluster through Kunzler's error-of-law refinement, is judicial gloss on a single undefined phrase in the Act. It is important to recognize that there are a lot of drafting deficiencies in the Strata Property Act, and we remain optimistic that at some point the government will look at doing a revision and update in consultation with practitioners, Owners and professional service providers. Until then, a Strata and its Owners are left relying on two decades of case law to know what a two-sentence section actually requires. THE TEST'S STRUCTURE IS SETTLED; ITS APPLICATION TO REASONABLE EXPECTATIONS IS STILL DEVELOPING The core test for significant unfairness has been stable since King Day Holdings settled Dollan's three-way split in 2020: conduct is significantly unfair if it is oppressive or unfairly prejudicial in the Reid sense, and an Owner's reasonable expectations are one relevant factor within that inquiry, not a separate test. What Kunzler changed in 2021 was not the structure but the discipline around applying it: a judge must actually turn their mind to an Owner's reasonable expectations, on pain of an extricable error of law, even though doing so does not guarantee the Owner a different result. A robust and resilient Strata Community benefits from knowing that this test, however judge-made, has settled shape even as courts continue to work out how it applies to new facts. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

CAN A STRATA'S FAILURE TO ENFORCE ITS BYLAWS BE SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? A Strata's failure to enforce its own bylaws can be significantly unfair to the Owner affected by the violation, even though bylaw enforcement is ordinarily left to Council's discretion. The test applied under s.164 of the Strata Property Act asks whether the conduct is oppressive, unfairly prejudicial to, or unfairly disregards the interests of the Owner or tenant who brought the claim, a standard the Court of Appeal has confirmed as the settled test (King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851), 2020 BCCA 342). Whether the Owner held a reasonable expectation about how the Strata would act is one relevant factor within that standard, not a separate test the Owner must also satisfy. Owners rely on the Strata to respond when they report a problem, and a Strata that simply lets a complaint sit unanswered is not protected by the fact that it never made a decision at all. DOES A STRATA HAVE TO ENFORCE EVERY BYLAW COMPLAINT? A Strata must investigate every bylaw complaint it receives subject to a genuine, though limited, discretion not to enforce a trivial infraction. This discretion is a qualified discretion rather than an absolute discretion because s.26 of the Strata Property Act is itself made subject to the rest of the Act (The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 3259 v. Sze Hang Holding Inc.), 2016 BCSC 32). However, that discretion is bounded: Owners have a reasonable expectation that bylaws will be enforced consistently, including an expectation that enforcement will not be applied in a discriminatory or unfairly prejudicial way (Sze Hang Holding, 2016 BCSC 32). For example, imagine a Strata that receives a noise complaint, sends one warning letter, and then does nothing further for a year despite the Owner continuing to report the same problem. The single warning letter may have been a reasonable first step, but the year of silence afterward is what tends to move a case from "Council exercised its discretion" toward "the Strata's inaction disregarded the Owner's interests." WHAT SHOULD BE CONSIDERED WHEN DECIDING IF THE DELAY HAS GONE ON TOO LONG? Not every gap in enforcement crosses the line into significant unfairness. Isolated instances of easily rectifiable procedural irregularity are not significantly unfair (Azura Management (Kelowna) Corp. v. Owners of the Strata Plan KAS2428, 2009 BCSC 506, paras 14-17). A collection of individually trivial complaints does not become significantly unfair simply by being added together, either; each complaint still has to meet the oppressive or unfairly prejudicial standard on its own (Tafti v. Davis, 2024 BCSC 176). It is important to recognize that Council is made up of lay volunteers, and the Court held in Mitchell that lay volunteer councils are owed some administrative latitude within reason when their conduct is scrutinized (Mitchell v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS 1202, 2015 BCSC 2153). That latitude, however, operates within the statutory scheme the Act sets out, not as a substitute for it. A single missed deadline or an imperfect first response is the kind of thing this latitude is meant to cover; a complaint that goes unanswered for years is not. DOES FOLLOWING A FAIR PROCESS PROTECT A STRATA THAT WAITED TOO LONG TO ACT? Following a fair process does not protect a Strata that waited too long to act. Section 164 is remedial, and a fair, democratic process does not immunize a significantly unfair outcome from review (Dollan v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 1589, 2012 BCCA 44). This is because the harm to the Owner comes from the delay itself, not from any defect in how Council reached its decision. A Strata that holds every meeting properly, keeps minutes, and sends polite letters can still have acted significantly unfairly if none of that activity actually resolved the Owner's complaint. WHAT SHOULD A STRATA DO WHEN THERE ARE CONTINUED COMPLAINTS? Our recommendation is that a Strata treat a repeated complaint as a problem that needs a decision, not a file that can stay open indefinitely. Investigate promptly, document what was found, and if the complaint is substantiated, move to the next enforcement step within a reasonable time rather than repeating the same warning letter for months or years. We have written about the limitations to the power of bylaws and that complaints of possible bylaw contraventions require particulars in other articles; those tools exist so that a substantiated complaint has somewhere to go. An uncounted number of the enforcement disputes we see start the same way: a real complaint, a first response that looked reasonable, and then silence. STRATAS SHOULD ESCALATE, NOT IGNORE, REPEATED BYLAW COMPLAINTS A Strata is entitled to use its judgment about whether and how to enforce a bylaw, and it is not expected to be perfect. However, that judgment must keep moving toward a decision; it cannot be exercised once and then abandoned while the same complaint continues to come in. When a Strata's silence continues for months, the Owner who has been left without an answer has a real basis to say the Strata's conduct has become significantly unfair. A robust and resilient Strata Community responds to its Owners, even when the answer is difficult or the complaint is unwelcome. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

IS EVERY REPAIR DELAY SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? Not every repair delay is significantly unfair, but a delay that becomes an oppressive failure of the Strata's own repair duty can be. A Strata Corporation must repair and maintain Common Property and common assets under s.72 of the Strata Property Act (Repair of property, s.72), and a failure to perform that duty, in circumstances a court determines to be oppressive, can result in financial sanctions under s.164 (Hill v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS 510, 2016 BCSC 1753). The standard that separates an ordinary delay from an oppressive one is reasonableness, not perfection. WHAT STANDARD DOES A STRATA HAVE TO MEET WHEN IT REPAIRS COMMON PROPERTY? A Strata has to act reasonably in the circumstances, not perform every repair immediately or perfectly. The s.72 repair-and-maintain duty does not require a Strata to perform repairs immediately or without flaw; the overarching test is reasonableness in the circumstances (Hirji v. The Owners Strata Corporation Plan VR 44, 2015 BCSC 2043). Our understanding is that a Strata is not an insurer of its own building; its obligation is to do all that can reasonably be done, and a Strata that acted reasonably is not at fault merely because the contractors it hired failed to fix the problem effectively (Wright v. The Owners, Strata Plan #205, 1996 CanLII 2460). The starting point for assessing whether a Strata met that standard is deference to the decision made by Council as approved by the Owners (Weir v. Owners, Strata Plan NW 17, 2010 BCSC 784). For example, a Strata that investigates a leak, gets a professional opinion, budgets the repair, and completes the work over the following construction season has met the reasonableness standard, even though the Owner living with the leak would have preferred it fixed the same week. WHEN DOES A DELAY STOP BEING REASONABLE? A delay stops being reasonable once the building's condition makes the repair necessary and deferring it is no longer a practical option. Where a building has reached a state in which repairs are required to comply with the Strata's s.72 obligations, deferring or staging the bulk of those repairs to a later date is not a practical option; it is "kicking the can down the road" and continues a breach of the maintenance obligation (Davis v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 3411, 2020 BCSC 1434). It is important to recognize that this is a factual line, not a fixed number of years: it turns on whether the repair has become necessary, not merely overdue by some owner's preference. DOES A SINGLE MISSED DEADLINE OR AN IMPERFECT RESPONSE MAKE A STRATA'S CONDUCT SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? A single missed deadline or an imperfect response does not, on its own, make a Strata's conduct significantly unfair. Isolated instances of easily rectifiable procedural irregularity are not significantly unfair, and a collection of individually trivial complaints does not become significantly unfair simply by being added together (Tafti v. Davis, 2024 BCSC 176). This is because the s.72 standard is reasonableness, not perfection: a Strata that responds promptly, investigates properly, and then makes one scheduling error is meeting its duty in substance, even though the individual error would look bad in isolation. NOT EVERY DELAY CROSSES THE LINE, BUT AN OPPRESSIVE ONE CAN The s.72 repair-and-maintain duty is a reasonableness standard, and a Strata that acts reasonably, even imperfectly, is not at risk under s.164 merely because a repair took longer than an Owner wanted. However, once a repair has become genuinely necessary, deferring it stops being a practical option, and continuing to defer it can cross from an ordinary delay into an oppressive breach of the Strata's own duty, with real financial consequences. A robust and resilient Strata Community moves from investigation to action once a repair is actually needed, rather than treating "eventually" as a substitute for a plan. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

CAN A STRATA CHARGE OR RETAIN MONEY WITHOUT LEGAL AUTHORITY? A Strata cannot charge an Owner, or keep money it received, without a legal basis for doing so, and a pattern of unauthorized financial conduct is one of the most common ways a Strata ends up on the losing side of a significant-unfairness claim. Compliance with the Act's own cost-allocation formula is generally not significantly unfair (King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851, 2020 BCCA 342), but that general rule protects a Strata only while it stays inside its actual authority: charging for a benefit an Owner never receives, changing a cost-sharing arrangement Owners relied on, or keeping money the Strata was never entitled to are all different ways of stepping outside it. Most of these disputes reach the Civil Resolution Tribunal rather than a court. A Tribunal decision does not bind a future dispute the way a court decision does, but the pattern across a large number of Tribunal decisions is a useful, concrete guide to how this doctrine actually plays out for Owners and Stratas. The rest of this article works through several of them. WHAT DOES "CHARGING FOR A BENEFIT AN OWNER DOESN'T RECEIVE" LOOK LIKE IN PRACTICE? It looks like a Strata billing an Owner, through ordinary unit-entitlement fees, for a system that Owner's Strata Lot has no access to and pays separately to replicate. The Tribunal found this in C.2K Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan K 577, 2018 BCCRT 236, where a commercial Owner was charged its unit-entitlement share of garbage collection, gas and electrical utilities, HVAC, and elevator expenses despite maintaining its own separate garbage pickup and utility systems and having no access to the residential elevator at all — the Tribunal found the disparity between what the Owner paid and what it actually used was decisive. The Tribunal reached the same conclusion on very similar facts in Suter v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS1699, 2024 BCCRT 1086: a strata billed all 69 Strata Lots for its geothermal heating and cooling system's operating costs, even though 25 units had no geothermal connection, no prospect of ever getting one, and paid separately for their own heating. The Tribunal drew a specific line here — an owner who gets some benefit from a shared system, even an unequal one, is generally still expected to pay their unit-entitlement share; it is zero benefit, permanently, that crosses into unfairness. The Tribunal applied the same reasoning in Rhodes v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS 3573, 2026 BCCRT 990, ordering that chiller repair costs be allocated only to the 15 cooled units, not all 62 residential units, because the other 47 units could never be connected to the system. Generalov v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 2498, 2018 BCCRT 516, adds a related but distinct problem: after six years of treating landscaping as a shared common expense, an apartment-owner-controlled council shifted the cost onto the development's twelve townhouse owners alone, without amending the Bylaws and without giving those owners any choice to maintain their own yards more cheaply. The Tribunal found the sudden change violated the townhouse owners' reasonable expectation that the established practice would continue. CAN A STRATA CHANGE A LONG-STANDING COST ARRANGEMENT WITHOUT WARNING? Not without real risk, particularly where Owners have relied on the old arrangement for years. Our understanding is that a Strata's insistence on strict unit entitlement can itself be significantly unfair in exceptional circumstances, including where an established, long-relied-upon different allocation is unilaterally abandoned without a duly authorized resolution (King Day Holdings, 2020 BCCA 342). The Tribunal applied that same logic in Ahlfield v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 3156, 2025 BCCRT 459: after thirty years of allocating expenses 24.82 percent to townhouses and 75.18 percent to apartments, the strata switched to unit entitlement, raising townhouse fees by 42 percent in a single year. The Tribunal ordered a return to the historical percentages, reasoning that thirty years of consistent practice, combined with a 73 percent apartment voting majority the townhouse owners could not outvote, made the change significantly unfair. Gordon v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS2300, 2026 BCCRT 654, shows the same problem arising even sooner: a developer represented to a commercial purchaser that its Strata Lots would bear 16 percent of common expenses, the strata followed that figure for two years, and then raised it to 21.45 percent. The Tribunal found the Owner's expectation, built on both the original representation and two years of consistent practice, made the 34 percent increase significantly unfair. A related problem arises where the underlying numbers a Strata relies on are simply wrong. In Klassen v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 1710, 2022 BCCRT 705, the strata knew — it had obtained two legal opinions confirming it — that its filed Schedule of Unit Entitlement overstated one Owner's share by roughly 12 percent, tried and failed to secure the unanimous resolution needed to fix it, and kept billing the Owner on the inflated figure regardless. The Tribunal found continuing to charge a known-incorrect entitlement was significantly unfair, even though the strata had acted in good faith and had no unilateral power to correct the Schedule itself. WHAT ABOUT CHARGES A STRATA NEVER PROPERLY DISCLOSED TO THE OWNER? A Strata's failure to tell an Owner about a financial change before charging them for its consequences is treated seriously. In The Owners, Strata Plan EPS5579 v. Kwong, 2023 BCCRT 742, the strata raised its insurance deductible from $10,000 to $100,000, posted a notice about the increase on an online portal the Owner had never registered for, and then billed her the full $100,000 after a water-damage claim. The Tribunal found the portal posting did not satisfy the Strata's statutory duty to notify Owners of the change, and capped the Owner's liability at the old $10,000 deductible. Hoyt v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 1802, 2026 BCCRT 82, is a more direct version of the same problem: a debt arose in July 2019, the strata did not tell the Owners about it until December 2022, did not explain how the amount was calculated until March 2023, and had in the meantime been charging interest retroactively back to 2019. The Tribunal found charging interest on a debt the Strata itself never disclosed or explained was, on its own, significantly unfair. CAN A STRATA KEEP MONEY IT WAS NEVER ENTITLED TO? No, and continuing to hold onto a payment after learning it was never properly owed tends to make a weak position into a significantly unfair one. In Xu v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 2012, 2022 BCCRT 1319, a strata imposed a chargeback with no Bylaw authority for it, let its own limitation period to pursue that chargeback expire, and then accepted a payment from the Owners' mortgage lender, who had mistakenly understood the strata's notice as a registered lien claim. Once the Owners explained the lender's mistake and the time bar, the strata still refused to return the money. The Tribunal found all three parts of that sequence — the unauthorized charge, the time-barred claim, and the refusal to give the money back once the mistake was known — independently supported a significant-unfairness finding. A STRATA'S FINANCIAL DECISIONS MUST MATCH ITS ACTUAL LEGAL AUTHORITY None of these Strata Corporations set out to act unfairly. Most followed a process, held a vote, or relied on the Act's own default unit-entitlement formula. However, a fair process and a technically compliant formula do not, on their own, authorize charging an Owner for something they do not benefit from, reversing a cost arrangement Owners have relied on for years, or holding onto money the Strata was never entitled to in the first place. A robust and resilient Strata Community keeps a close, current relationship between what it charges an Owner and what that Owner actually receives, and corrects the gap through a proper vote rather than by simply continuing to bill. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

WHAT IS THE TEST FOR SIGNIFICANT UNFAIRNESS? A Strata's conduct is significantly unfair when it is oppressive, meaning burdensome, harsh, wrongful, lacking in probity or fair dealing, or done in bad faith, or when it is unfairly prejudicial, meaning unjust or inequitable (Reid v. Strata Plan LMS 2503 (Owners), 2001 BCSC 1578, paras 9-14). Whether an Owner held a reasonable expectation about how the Strata would act is one relevant factor in that analysis, not a separate, mandatory hurdle ([*King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851, 2020 BCCA 342). We have written about bylaw enforcement delay generally, and about how a fine or other bylaw remedy has to follow a fair process, in other articles. This article looks at a narrower and more difficult question inside that same subject: whether a Strata that did investigate a bylaw complaint, but chose not to impose a fine, has acted significantly unfairly. MUST A STRATA FINE A SUBSTANTIATED BYLAW COMPLAINT? A Strata need not fine every substantiated bylaw complaint. Council's duty to enforce the bylaws is subject to the rest of the Strata Property Act, so it retains genuine, though limited, discretion not to enforce, and a fine is only one of the tools the Act gives Council; a warning, or time to comply, are enforcement options too (The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 3259 v. Sze Hang Holding Inc., 2016 BCSC 32, paras 237-238). A Strata also need not remedy a trifling or trivial infraction at all (Abdoh v. The Owners of Strata Plan KAS2003, 2014 BCCA 270). That discretion is bounded, though, not open-ended. Owners have a reasonable expectation that a bylaw complaint will actually be enforced consistently, and that expectation is what gives significant unfairness its grip on a decision not to fine, even though nothing in the Act requires a fine for every proven breach (Sze Hang, 2016 BCSC 32). WHEN HAS THE TRIBUNAL FOUND A STRATA'S INACTION SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? A Strata's decision not to fine becomes significantly unfair when the Strata has enough evidence to reach a conclusion and does not act on it. A Strata received a tenant's detailed reports and an acoustic report identifying a specific unit as the source of months of noise, but kept asking for more logs instead of attributing the noise to that unit or taking any enforcement step. The tribunal found the Strata's ongoing refusal to reach a conclusion, once it had sufficient evidence to reach one, was burdensome and wrongful (Chan v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS2583, 2021 BCCRT 456). A Strata that commissions its own expert evidence and then disregards it without a genuine reason follows the same pattern. A professional acoustic report confirmed a Strata Lot's floor alteration fell below the BC Building Code's noise-transmission standard, and Council's own minutes recorded that it simply disagreed with the report's finding, without commissioning further testing or taking any enforcement step for months afterward. The tribunal found this significantly unfair, noting the Strata was not genuinely uncertain, only unwilling to act on evidence it had chosen to obtain (Porto v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW2677, 2026 BCCRT 1060). The same result follows where a Strata does not investigate at all. A Strata took no steps to look into an Owner's complaint that a neighbour's canopy lacked required approval, for eight months, despite a follow-up request and a hearing request. The tribunal found this significantly unfair because the Strata's own statutory duty to enforce the bylaws requires at least an investigation, whatever the eventual outcome might be (LeTexier v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 284, 2019 BCCRT 940). An improper motive behind the inaction makes the same conclusion easier to reach. Two members of Council had a personal relationship with the Owner whose guest-suite misuse other Owners had reported and documented, and one member stated outright she would not take punitive action against him while she remained on Council. The tribunal found a reasonably prudent member of Council would not have refused to enforce the bylaws for personal reasons, and the years of resulting inaction were significantly unfair (Masse et al v. The Owners, Strata Plan VIS 6348 et al, 2018 BCCRT 112). WHEN HAVE DECISIONS NOT TO FINE BEEN FOUND REASONABLE? A decision not to fine has been found reasonable when the Strata actually investigated and reached a genuine conclusion, even one the complaining Owner disagrees with. A Strata formed a sub-committee to investigate a persistent noise complaint, attended the unit in response to text alerts, and eventually conducted its own sound recordings; Council unanimously concluded, based on those recordings, that the noise did not amount to a nuisance. The tribunal found this was not significantly unfair, because the Strata had reached a credible conclusion through a genuine process, not because it avoided one (Plante v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS2689, 2023 BCCRT 1024). A Strata reached the same kind of protected outcome after investigating a noise complaint over roughly a year, testing the noise itself rather than simply relying on the complainant's own account, and ultimately agreeing with the respondent that the noise was not unreasonable. No fine was imposed. The tribunal found the Strata had communicated respectfully throughout and balanced the competing interests involved, and that reaching a conclusion favourable to the respondent, on a genuine investigation, was not significantly unfair to the complainant (Leung v. The Owners, Strata Plan EPS643, 2026 BCCRT 1046). Multiple investigative and remedial steps taken over a long period have also been found reasonable on their own, even without a fine. A Strata responded to 19 months of smoking complaints with repeated violation notices, a dispute resolution meeting, an air purifier, improved ventilation, and contractor inspections, without ever imposing a fine. The tribunal found the Strata had reasonably investigated and met its duties, because the Act permits, but does not require, a fine where other enforcement steps are genuinely being pursued (Brookes v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 1890, 2021 BCCRT 1181). A late start can even be cured by what comes after it. A Strata failed to respond to an Owner's fall complaints about a neighbour's noise and harassment for several months, a lapse the tribunal found fell short of the Strata's own enforcement duty. But the Strata issued an infraction letter the following spring, the letter stopped the conduct complained of, and no further breaches were reported. The tribunal found the significant-unfairness claim failed despite the earlier lapse, because a decision's ultimate effectiveness can offset an earlier shortfall; falling short of the ordinary enforcement duty is not the same question as whether the overall conduct was significantly unfair (McWilliams v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW1879, 2026 BCCRT 530). WHY ISN'T THE LENGTH OF A DELAY ALONE ENOUGH TO DECIDE THE QUESTION? The law is about line drawing, and the tribunal's own decisions show this particular line is not drawn by duration alone. A Strata that investigated a noise complaint for close to a year and eventually cleared the respondent was not significantly unfair, while a different Strata's months-long refusal to attribute noise to an identified unit, despite clear supporting evidence, was significantly unfair — two outcomes with broadly comparable timelines, decided in opposite directions, because what mattered was whether the Strata was still working toward a genuine conclusion (Plante, 2023 BCCRT 1024; Chan, 2021 BCCRT 456). A Strata that investigated a complaint and imposed no fine was not significantly unfair, while a Strata that let comparable evidence sit without investigation over a broadly similar span was significantly unfair (Leung, 2026 BCCRT 1046; Porto, 2026 BCCRT 1060). A single Civil Resolution Tribunal decision is a data point, not a binding decision, but a collection of them can show a direction for how the law is developing; we have written about that distinction, and why it matters, in another article. Read together, these decisions point toward substance over duration as the operative distinction, but the tribunal has not drawn a bright line, and a Strata should not treat any particular number of months as a safe harbour on its own. WHAT SHOULD COUNCIL DO WHEN IT DECIDES NOT TO ESCALATE TO A FINE? Our recommendation is that Council treat a decision not to fine as a genuine decision, not the absence of one. Investigate the complaint using the Strata's own means, rather than relying only on what the complaining Owner reports, and be prepared to explain what was found. It is important for Council to reach and record an actual conclusion, even an unfavourable one for the complaining Owner, rather than requesting further information indefinitely without ever committing to a finding. Once the Strata has enough evidence to reach a conclusion, reaching it, and communicating it, is what the case law above treats as the dividing line. Our advice is that Council communicate that conclusion back to the Owner who complained, and to the Owner whose conduct was investigated, in both cases. A Strata that investigated, reached a conclusion, and told both Owners what it found and why is in a materially stronger position than one that let the file go quiet after its first response, whatever that conclusion turns out to be. A DECISION NOT TO FINE IS SAFE ONLY WHEN IT IS AN ACTUAL DECISION 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 robust and resilient Strata Community treats every bylaw complaint as something that deserves an actual answer, even when that answer is that no bylaw was broken. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

CAN A STRATA CHARGE AN OWNER FOR A SERVICE THEY DO NOT RECEIVE? A Strata generally cannot charge an Owner for an expense that has nothing to do with them, though the line between "unrelated" and "just uneven" is narrower than it first appears. Strata fees are calculated as each Strata Lot's share of the budgeted operating and Contingency Reserve Fund contributions, using the formula set out in the Strata Property Act (Calculating strata fees, s.99). Compliance with that prescribed formula is, as a general rule, not significantly unfair under s.164, even where one Owner ends up paying for more than they personally use (King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851, 2020 BCCA 342). That general rule is not absolute, and this article covers both where it holds and where it gives way. HOW DOES A STRATA NORMALLY DIVIDE UP ITS EXPENSES? A Strata normally divides its expenses among all Owners according to unit entitlement, and every Owner contributes to the same operating and Contingency Reserve Fund regardless of how much they personally use any particular amenity or system (Strata Property Act, s.99). That formula can only be changed to a different basis by a unanimous vote taken after the Strata's first annual general meeting (Change to basis for calculation of contribution, s.100). This is the starting point for every cost-allocation dispute: an Owner who simply benefits less than a neighbour from a shared system does not, on that basis alone, have a claim that the Strata is charging them unfairly. DOES THIS MEAN AN OWNER MUST PAY FOR A COMMON EXPENSE THEY NEVER USE? Not if the Strata has Part 11 sections and the expense relates solely to a section the Owner is not part of. Where an expense for the repair and maintenance of common property relates solely to the Strata Lots in one section, the Strata Property Act requires that expense to be shared only among that section's Owners (Expenses of section, s.195). Our understanding is that whether an expense "relates solely" to one section turns on a weighed set of factors: Whether the property or system provides exclusive access or use to one section's Lots. Whether the other section's Owners have any use for or access to it. Whether the utilities or services running through it serve only one section. For example, our understanding is that where common-property catwalks provide the only means of access to a residential section's Lots, are not used or usable by a commercial section, and carry utilities serving only the residential Lots, the catwalks relate solely to the residential section — the commercial section owes none of the special-levy costs of repairing them (Section 2 of the Owners, Strata Plan LMS 257 v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 257, 2025 BCSC 1985). WHAT IF THE EXPENSE ONLY SEEMS UNRELATED TO AN OWNER? An expense can still benefit the whole Strata even where an Owner's Lot is not physically adjacent to it. Our understanding is that a building envelope which structurally protects and shelters a mixed-use building, including Lots not directly located within that building, benefits the whole Strata Corporation indirectly, so all Owners contribute to its repair by unit entitlement, even Owners of stand-alone Lots elsewhere in the development (The Residential Section of the Owners, Strata Plan NW 3365 v. The Commercial Section of the Owners, Strata Plan NW 3365, 2026 BCSC 176). Shelter, structural protection, and indirect benefit to Common Property or Limited Common Property elsewhere in the building can be enough to make an expense the whole Strata's to share, even where the Owner raising the complaint never sets foot near it. CAN A STRATA BE FORCED TO KEEP AN OLD, DIFFERENT COST-SHARING ARRANGEMENT? A Strata's insistence on reverting to strict unit entitlement can itself be significantly unfair in exceptional circumstances, even though unit entitlement is the Act's own default formula (King Day Holdings, 2020 BCCA 342). It is important to recognize that the exceptional-circumstances exception is narrow: it applies where an established, long-relied-upon different allocation practice is unilaterally abandoned without a duly authorized resolution. The Court of Appeal found exactly this where a Strata and one Owner had operated for roughly a decade under a mutually agreed, differential cost-allocation formula, never formalized by unanimous vote, until a new owner acquired a controlling majority and reverted unilaterally to strict unit entitlement, imposing significant new financial burdens on the original Owner (King Day Holdings). An Owner raising this kind of claim is ordinarily expected to first put forward, and have refused, a s.100 resolution or other available internal process before turning to s.164, unless doing so would plainly be an empty exercise (King Day Holdings). A STRATA'S EXPENSE ALLOCATION SHOULD MATCH WHO ACTUALLY BENEFITS Unit entitlement is the Act's own default, and complying with it is generally a safe answer to a cost-allocation complaint. However, "generally" is doing real work in that sentence: where an expense relates solely to a section an Owner has no connection to, or where a Strata abandons a long-standing, mutually accepted different arrangement without going through the process the Act requires, the general rule gives way. A robust and resilient Strata Community keeps its cost allocation matched to who actually benefits, and revisits an old arrangement through a proper vote rather than a change in who controls Council. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property

WHAT IS THE TEST FOR SIGNIFICANT UNFAIRNESS? A Strata's conduct is significantly unfair when it is oppressive, meaning burdensome, harsh, wrongful, lacking in probity or fair dealing, or done in bad faith, or when it is unfairly prejudicial, meaning unjust or inequitable (Reid v. Strata Plan LMS 2503 (Owners), 2001 BCSC 1578, paras 9-14). Whether an Owner held a reasonable expectation about how the Strata would act is one relevant factor in that analysis, not a separate, mandatory hurdle (King Day Holdings Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS3851, 2020 BCCA 342). An Owner who believes a Strata's decision meets that standard can ask the Supreme Court, or the Civil Resolution Tribunal, to intervene (s.164(1); CRTA s.123(2)). A request to alter a Strata Lot or the common property is a setting the Civil Resolution Tribunal frequently applies this test to. We have written about the general test for significant unfairness, and about an Owner's ability to rely on a Strata's prior approval, in other articles. This article looks specifically at how that test plays out when Council approves, refuses, or reverses a decision on an individual Owner's request to alter property. WHAT MUST COUNCIL CONSIDER BEFORE APPROVING OR REFUSING AN ALTERATION REQUEST? Council must have a rational, consistently applied basis for its decision before it approves or refuses an Owner's request to alter property. The Standard Bylaws in the Strata Property Act govern a Strata's own Bylaws except to the extent the Strata has filed different ones in the land title office, so what follows describes the Standard Bylaws' framework as a baseline; every Strata should check its own filed Bylaws, since a large number of Stratas have filed Bylaws that depart from this default (Strata Property Act, s.120). Under the Standard Bylaws, an Owner must obtain the Strata's written approval before making a structural, exterior, or building-system alteration to a Strata Lot, and the Strata must not unreasonably withhold that approval (Standard Bylaw 5). The Standard Bylaws also require an Owner to obtain the Strata's written approval before altering the common property, including limited common property, but do not attach that same express "not unreasonably withhold" language to an alteration of the common property (Allwest International Equipment Sales Co. Ltd. v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS4591, 2018 BCCA 187, para 20; Standard Bylaw 6). It is important to recognize the distinction between these two approvals and what fills the gap the second one leaves. The same asymmetry can also appear in a Strata's own filed Bylaws, not only the Standard Bylaws: in one dispute, a Strata's own filed Bylaws required written approval for an alteration to limited common property but, unlike the Bylaw governing other common-property alterations, contained no equivalent "not unreasonably withhold" language (Wilder et al v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 3152, 2019 BCCRT 212). Whether the approval comes from the Standard Bylaws or from a Strata's own filed Bylaws, significant unfairness fills that gap: Council's decision is still reviewable if it is arbitrary, inconsistent with the Strata's own past practice, or defeats an Owner's reasonable reliance, even without a bylaw provision saying so directly (Wilson v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 526, 2021 BCCRT 302). It is also important for Council to distinguish this decision from a separate one entirely. Some alterations affect the use or appearance of the common property significantly enough that Council cannot authorize them on its own at all, and the Owners' own authorization by vote is required instead — we have written about when that authorization is required in another article. An alteration request that Council can decide on its own is a narrower decision than one that needs the Owners' authorization, and several of the disputes below turn on which of the two categories the request actually fell into. WHEN DOES A REFUSAL TO APPROVE AN ALTERATION BECOME SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? A refusal becomes significantly unfair when Council has no rational basis for it, or applies a standard it has not applied consistently to comparable requests. An Owner asked to replace a solid front door with a glass-insert door was refused on the mistaken premise that a bylaw amendment was required first; the Strata also had no documented specifications for the kind of door proposed, and had already permitted similar glass inserts for other Owners without objection. The refusal was significantly unfair (Wilson v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 526, 2021 BCCRT 302). An undocumented or shifting standard produces the same result even without an erroneous legal premise behind it. Owners seeking a patio expansion on limited common property were refused three times in succession, even though at least eight similar extensions had already been approved for other Owners and no prior applicant had ever been assessed against sight lines, drainage, or garden-bed criteria. One member of Council's own stated personal preference against the design, not any Bylaw or documented standard, appeared to drive the refusal, and the tribunal found it significantly unfair (Wilder et al v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 3152, 2019 BCCRT 212). The same pattern recurs with signage. A commercial Owner's request for window signage was refused after the Strata had already approved similar or more prominent signage for other commercial lots, and the Strata could not articulate a consistent rule distinguishing the approved signage from the refused signage. The refusal was significantly unfair (Mogharreban v. The Owners, Strata Plan V.R.1378, 2026 BCCRT 981). What these three decisions share is not bad faith on Council's part, but an absence of any rational basis that survives comparison to the Strata's own past decisions. A Strata does not need a written policy for every kind of alteration, but once it has approved a comparable request before, refusing a materially similar one afterward requires an actual, articulable reason for the difference. WHEN DOES REVERSING A PRIOR APPROVAL BECOME SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR? Reversing an approval an Owner has already relied on is a common way a Strata's conduct becomes significantly unfair, and this pattern recurs frequently in alteration disputes specifically. A new Council reversed a prior Council's written approval of river rock and potted plants on the common property, ordering their removal more than a year after the Owner installed them at his own expense, without identifying any new fact or legal basis for the reversal. The tribunal found this significantly unfair; a prior Council's approval remains valid unless it is reversed on a legally sound basis, not simply because a new Council prefers a different outcome (McFadyen v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 2154, 2022 BCCRT 1191). The same reasoning applies when the Strata removes what it previously approved, rather than formally reversing the approval on paper. A Strata removed a dividing fence and patio extension it had earlier approved, without consulting the Owner, while continuing to maintain similar structures at other units. And a Strata sought to remove a balcony enclosure a Council had approved in 2002, relying on an AGM ¾ vote that the tribunal gave little weight, because the Owners who voted had been told incorrectly that keeping the enclosure required unanimous consent. Both reversals were significantly unfair (Kazakoff v. The Owners, Strata Plan KAS 880, 2018 BCCRT 12; Bremner v. The Owners, Strata Plan K815, 2026 BCCRT 310). An approval does not need to come from Council itself to found reasonable reliance. An Owner was told by the Strata Manager, through a realtor, that cream and white window blinds would comply with the Bylaws; the Strata later demanded their replacement without proving the Bylaw had actually been breached. Because the Strata is bound by its own agent's representations, enforcing the Bylaw against an Owner who reasonably relied on that representation was significantly unfair (Bevacqua v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS2723, 2024 BCCRT 928). Reversing an approval is not automatically significantly unfair, though, and the remedy should track whose reliance is actually at stake. A Strata that had approved split air conditioning units for disabled residents, subject to a removal clause, unilaterally deleted that clause. The tribunal found the accommodation basis for a permanent exemption disappears once the disabled resident leaves, so removal could still be required, but it declined to force immediate removal against a subsequent purchaser who had bought the Strata Lot in the reasonable belief the unit was permanent, deferring that Owner's removal obligation until resale (Ottens et al v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 2785 et al, 2019 BCCRT 997). WHY DO SOME ALTERATION REFUSALS SURVIVE A SIGNIFICANT-UNFAIRNESS CHALLENGE? A refusal survives a significant-unfairness challenge when an Owner's expectation of approval was not objectively reasonable to begin with, not simply genuine. An Owner whose request for a heat pump was refused pointed to another Owner who had received approval for medical reasons, but that other Owner had provided stronger medical evidence, including proof that a portable air conditioning unit was inadequate. The applicant provided only a general doctor's note, and the Strata's own concern about electrical-load capacity was a legitimate, non-pretextual reason. The refusal was not significantly unfair, even though the two requests looked similar on the surface (Binge v. The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 988, 2023 BCCRT 441). A Strata's own consultation process also carries weight. A Strata that hosted a professional workshop, distributed a discussion paper, and put a heat pump bylaw to two separate votes, both of which the Owners rejected by a wide margin, had not acted significantly unfairly by refusing the installation afterward. Courts and the tribunal defer to a Strata's democratic governance except when intervention is absolutely necessary, and an Owner's disappointment with a properly conducted vote does not meet that standard (Leishman v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR 2648, 2022 BCCRT 1136). An Owner who proceeds without approval, or who seeks retroactive approval for a change that actually required the Owners' own authorization by vote, faces the same result. Owners who installed a patio cover after an earlier request was refused, an Owner who sought retroactive approval for a patio cover installed without ever applying, and Owners who asked a Strata to retroactively approve a crawlspace renovation that needed a unanimous vote to amend the strata plan, all had no reasonable expectation of approval to begin with. None of these refusals was significantly unfair (The Owners, Strata Plan LMS 515 v. Kendrick et al, 2019 BCCRT 394; Borghardt v. Strata Plan BCS 1135, 2021 BCCRT 777; [*Taylor v. The Owners, Strata Plan VR 2306, 2021 BCCRT 850). Differential treatment between similar requests also survives a challenge once the Strata can point to an actual, rational distinction, rather than the absence of one described above. Bylaws permitting storage in some parking stalls but not others were upheld because limited common property and enclosed stalls provide security that unenclosed common-property stalls do not, a real distinction rather than an arbitrary one. And a Strata's refusal to replace one Owner's windows, after replacing others', was not significantly unfair because the other replacements involved broken seals and water damage that this Owner's windows did not have. In both cases, the Strata's own evidence closed the exact gap that was open in Wilder and Mogharreban (Nadjafov v. The Owners, Strata Plan BCS 1362, 2021 BCCRT 814; Sha v. The Owners, Strata Plan NW 644, 2022 BCCRT 196). WHAT SHOULD COUNCIL DO WHEN DECIDING AN ALTERATION REQUEST? It is important for Council to treat its own approval history as the first thing it checks before refusing a new alteration request. A Strata that has approved a comparable request before needs an actual, articulable reason to refuse a materially similar one, and that reason should be recorded at the time of the decision rather than reconstructed after a dispute begins. Our recommendation is that Council keep a written record of the criteria it actually applies to alteration requests, and apply the same criteria to every request of the same kind. Where Council intends to distinguish a new request from one it approved previously, it should be able to state the factual difference driving that distinction, the way the Strata could in the parking-stall and window disputes above. It is equally important for Council to treat a written approval it has already given as something an Owner is entitled to build on, not something Council can walk back for free once the Owner has relied on it. A Strata that wants to revisit an old approval should identify an actual, current, and legally sound basis for doing so before it acts, rather than after an Owner has already challenged the reversal. A DECISION ON AN ALTERATION REQUEST NEEDS A CONSISTENT, DOCUMENTED REASON An Owner's request to alter a Strata Lot or the common property puts Council's discretion squarely in front of the significant-unfairness standard, whether or not a Bylaw expressly limits that discretion. The pattern in both the courts and the Civil Resolution Tribunal is consistent: a refusal or a reversal that cannot be tied to an articulable, consistently applied reason is at real risk of being found significantly unfair, while a decision Council can explain by reference to its own criteria and its own past practice generally is not. A robust and resilient Strata Community treats every alteration decision as one it may eventually have to explain, not only to the Owner who receives it, but to every other Owner whose own past or future request will be compared against it. MORLEY HANSON'S COMMENTARY ON SIGNIFICANTLY UNFAIR This article is part of a larger series of articles exploring the concept of significant unfairness. The other articles in the series include: The Evolution of the Test for Significant Unfairness. What Makes a Strata's Conduct Significantly Unfair. Significant Unfairness from Delaying Bylaw Enforcement. Significant Unfairness from Improperly Enforcing Bylaws. Significant Unfairness from Not Fining for a Breach of a Bylaw. Signficant Unfairness in Allocating Expenses. Significant Unfairness in Collecting Money. Significant Unfairness from Delaying the Repair of Property. Significant Unfairness and Alteration of Property