Tag: strata

Changes to Small Claims on June 1st

The broader context

What is Small Claims Court?

Small Claims Court is a division of BC’s Provincial Court. It is for most disputes about debts or damages involving less than $25,000 (with some exceptions). This limit will be increased to $35,000 in June – see below.

The process is generally simpler and faster than the Supreme Court of BC, and is designed for people to use with or without a lawyer.

Changes coming June 1st

The Civil Resolution Tribunal is Canada’s first online tribunal for resolving strata and small claims disputes.

From June 1, 2017, the Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) will begin resolving small claims disputes up to $5,000. This will be combined with an increase to $35,000 in the BC Provincial Court’s jurisdiction for small claims cases.

This is the first phase of implementing the CRT’s small claims jurisdiction and using the CRT will be mandatory for most claims up to $5,000. See the official announcement from the Ministry of Justice here.

Update from Provincial Court

See this update from BC Provincial Court on the important changes to Small Claims Court. It covers where the Provincial Court will still have a role in claims $5000 or less, after June 1st, what you can do if you are not satisfied with a CRT adjudicator’s decision, and much more.

More about the CRT

From the CRT website:

  • The Civil Resolution Tribunal is Canada’s first online tribunal for resolving strata and small claims disputes.
  • Right now, the CRT is accepting strata property disputes for intake. Soon, it will begin to accept small claims disputes as well. It offers new ways to resolve your legal issues in a timely and cost-effective manner.
  • The CRT encourages a collaborative, problem-solving approach to dispute resolution, rather than the traditional courtroom model. The CRT aims to provide timely access to justice, built around your life and your needs. It does this by providing legal information, self-help tools, and dispute resolution services to help solve your problem, as early as possible.
  • You can use the CRT 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from a computer or mobile device that has an internet connection.
  • Your interaction with the other participant and/or the CRT can be done when it is convenient for you.
  • Telephone and mail services will also be available for those who can’t access the internet.

The tribunal has been resolving strata disputes since July 2016, encouraging collaborative agreements and making binding decisions when people cannot agree. Once filed, a Tribunal order has the same force and effect as an order of the Supreme Court of BC.

We’ll be posting more information about the CRT and changes to small claims, as it becomes available. Stay tuned.

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BCLI seeks your views on complex stratas

New on Clicklaw, The broader context
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BCLI carries out scholarly research, writing and analysis for law reform, collaborating with government and other entities, and providing materials and support for outreach and public information.

by Kevin Zakreski
Staff Lawyer & Corporate Secretary

The British Columbia Law Institute wants to hear from you about its proposals to reform the Strata Property Act.

With the help of a volunteer project committee, BCLI is carrying out a multi-year project on strata-property law. The committee has just released its Consultation Paper on Complex Stratas (PDF).

Strata-property law started out as a way to encourage the development of high-density residential housing. Over time, stratas became increasingly complex. They have become more architecturally varied, incorporating different building styles. For example, a single strata development may have an apartment tower, surrounded by townhouses and other low-rise buildings. More and more, stratas are also combining different uses. It’s become common to see mixed-use stratas with retail and commercial uses on the lower floors and residential uses above.

These complex stratas have many benefits. They create variety in the marketplace. They support amenities that owners enjoy. And they advance urban-planning goals.

But complex stratas also create some problems. The bulk of these problems center on money.

It’s expensive to develop a large, sophisticated strata property. If it had to be done all in one go, only the biggest real-estate developers would be able to do it. And once a complex strata is up and running, the owners of strata lots being used for different purposes often have different ideas about how to spend the strata’s money and how to operate the strata. For example, commercial owners might need things like extra trash pickups and security patrols that don’t benefit residential owners. The residential owners may wonder why they should have to contribute to paying for these services.

The Strata Property Act uses three devices to manage these problems. These three devices are sections, types, and phases. They are at the heart of the consultation paper.

Sections and types allow a strata corporation to manage cost sharing between groups of owners, while phases permit the development of a strata property in segments over an extended time. Sections, types, and phases all entered the law in the 1970s. They haven’t been comprehensively reviewed since that time.

The committee considered some bold ideas to reform the law. It debated abolishing sections and greatly expanding the role of types. It looked at fundamentally changing the government oversight that attaches to phases.

In the end, the committee decided to not to propose bold changes. It proposes keeping the current framework, but with some significant fine tuning.

The consultation paper has 68 tentative recommendations for reform, including:

  • 29 tentative recommendations on sections, which propose clarifying the procedures for creating and cancelling sections, spelling out section powers and duties, and strengthening section governance, budgets, and finances;
  • 14 tentative recommendations on types, which propose clarifying the procedures for creating and cancelling types and fine-tuning the operation of types; and
  • 25 tentative recommendations on phases, which propose enhancing the oversight of the phasing process, simplifying governance in a phased strata corporation, and providing additional protections for the financial interests of owners in a phased strata property.

The committee would like to hear your thoughts on all 68 of its proposals. But if you would rather just focus on the big picture, then you may be interested in the summary consultation. It has just three highlighted proposals for comment.

You can find the full consultation paper, the summary consultation, and instructions on how to participate in the consultation on Strata Property Law Project—Phase Two webpage.

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