It’s not on the agenda


In April 2014, there was an unusual AGM held at a condo in the west end of Toronto. There were 45 owners in attendance and 150 represented by proxy. There were no approval of previous minutes because there were no minutes from previous AGMs. The owners were told that the previous property management company had taken all the corporation's records including the AGM minutes.

Seems strange that a property management company would take the corporation's AGM minutes.

There were three interesting items of business.

Approval of By-law #5
The first was a motion to pass By-law #5 that was to amend By-law #4 by adding further qualifications to serve on the board of directors. This by-law passed with 153 votes in favour and eight against.

Auditor's report
The auditor stated that the audited financial statements was not a fair representation of the corporation's financial position as of August 2013 because the previous property management company took most of the financial records and therefore his report was not fully intact for a portion of 2012 and 2013.

This makes it sound that the previous property management company were villains except that at the May 2015 AGM, it was disclosed by a couple of owners that the "missing financial records" were not missing at all but were in fact stored in five boxes in a room in the condo corporation.

Removal of a director
The chair, who was the corporation's lawyer, asked for and got a motion on the floor to dispense with hearing speeches regarding the removal of the director. The motion was rejected. Then the director was allowed to make a brief speech on why he should remain on the board.

Then a few owners gave their two cents and the Chair gave his opinion—that appears to me—to be biased against the director.

The director was removed by a vote of 146 to 9, very close to the vote that passed By-law #5.

Not on the agenda
Near the end of the meeting, an owner asked why there wasn't an election for directors at this AGM. There were two open positions. The chair replied that holding elections was not on the agenda. A very peculiar omission, don't you think?

There were two open positions on the board for expired terms, one director resigned and one director was just removed and elections for replacements was not on the agenda? I would think that this is a violation of the Condo Act as well as a blatant ploy for the sitting directors to remain in full control.

The Chair stated that the corporation's records were missing so they could not determine when the directors' terms expired so the two remained on the board and a quorum was maintained.

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