New proxy forms, same old games

Ontario condos are required to use the Ministry's new standard proxy form. This new form was intended to prevent proxy fraud. However, the new form is so complicated that many condo owners will not be able read or understand it.

A second problem is that the old tricks and games that the property managers and board of directors have not been eliminated. Until CAT expands beyond just dealing with Requests for Records, owners who suspect proxy fraud still have to take on the costs and risks of a court application if they wish to challenge the use of proxies.

The games I am now seeing include:

Coloured paper
"Our manager printed the proxy on coloured paper, so nobody can photocopy it and run around getting signatures."

This seems to be common trick with some condo management companies and it has not gone away with the new government mandated proxy form. Owners don't understand that they can download the approved forms off the Internet. These proxy forms must be (or should be) accepted by the person chairing the owners meeting.

Misleading information


This instruction sheet published by a large property management company, for an AGM held in July 2018, states that a proxy holder cannot vote for any candidates that are nominated at the AGM meeting.


If you read the third option under:
"Please check only one of the three boxes below:", you can see that this option gives the proxy holder all the voting rights that the owner would have if they had attended the meeting in person.

I take this to mean that the proxyholder is to be given ballots as they have all the voting rights as if they were the owner.

No room to add names
Another trick I am seeing is that the distributed proxy form lists the candidates that have announced that they will be candidates but the form does not leave any blank spaces if the owner wishes to vote for a different person who, for whatever reason, did not state their intention of running in time to be added to the  proxy form.

The listing of only two or three names on the form may give owners the impression that the listed names are the only persons that the owners are allowed to vote for.

I saw one set of instructions where property management stated that the owners could cross out the names of any candidate that they did not want to vote for but they did not state that the owner was free to add the name of an alternative candidate.

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