Regulations:
Where the real law hides
In many entries in this blog, we have made reference to the “regulations,” meaning the regulations to be enacted under Bill 106 (or, rather, under the Condominium Act, 1998, as amended by Bill 106, a.k.a. the Protecting Condominium Owners Act, 2015). What about these regulations? What are they, and what will they do?
“Regulations,” in the context of Ontario law, are a kind of legislation that is not made, debated and passed publicly in the legislature, but is created by committees of legislators and staff behind closed doors and a regulation comes into force simply on the date it is filed with the province's Registrar of Regulations (unless the regulation itself provides otherwise).
The right to make such regulations is always set out in a regularly enacted statute. The statute will delegate the authority – usually to a Minister or to the “Lieutenant Governor in Council” (essentially, the Cabinet) – to, by regulation, expand upon, clarify, modify, or provide procedures relating to certain sections of the statute.
What this allows is for legislation to be passed that sets out some broad-brush principles for whatever area of law the statute covers, without going into the specific details of how the principles enacted will be realized in practice. The regulations set out those details.
Bill 106 – the Protecting Condominium Owners Act, 2015 – is rife with references to “the regulations”. Numerous details about the changes being brought into play are, in fact, nowhere to be found in the Act itself, but are to be spelled out in regulations that have not yet been drafted. It is for this reason that so much of what we and other commenters say about the changes to the Act is tentative or uncertain.
The following is a short-list of some of the things that the regulations to be made under Bill 106 can or will cover :
| Specification of material to be included with a notice of meeting to unit owners in a condominium corporation; |
...and this list doesn't include everything (nor does it include all the many issues that can already be dealt with by regulation under the Act currently).
Self-serving as it may be to say it, the fact that so many requirements and conditions pertaining to the creation and management of condominiums are to be included in the regulations rather than the Act, speaks to the importance of seeking legal counsel when undertaking any major endeavours and, indeed, even for much of the day-to-day management of the corporation.