Corporate Records
Meeting minutes
Minutes are the corporation’s written record of what happened at a meeting. Minutes include a summary of the discussions and any decisions made at the meeting.
Condominium boards are required to create, keep and provide copies of meeting minutes to owners on request. This includes minutes for both owners’ an board meetings.
The purpose of minutes is to document what happened and to show how the corporation’s affairs are managed.
Condo corporations must keep adequate minutes.
What are adequate meeting minutes
Minutes should be accurate and should include basic information about the meeting, such as:
- Date, time, and location
- List of attendees
- Record of votes or motions
- Short summaries of the topics discussed and business carried out
The Condominium Authority Tribunal has dealt with several cases involving the adequacy of meeting minutes. The Tribunal’s decisions have affirmed that:
- Minutes come with a reasonable expectation of accuracy.
- Minutes do not have to be perfect to be adequate, and do not need to be word-for-word transcripts of what was said.
- Minutes of a board meeting should include enough detail to allow the owners to understand what is going on in their corporation, how decisions are being made, and what the financial basis is for these decisions.
- Variations in the form, language, or level of information included do not necessarily render them inadequate.
Keeping and providing meeting minutes
Condo corporations are required to keep minutes of all meetings indefinitely.
Owners are entitled to access and copies of all minutes – but they are not entitled to:
- Records relating to employees of the corporation, other than their employment contracts
- Records relating to actual or contemplated litigation or insurance investigations involving the corporation
- Records relating to other specific unit owners or units.
That means that a condo corporation may need to review and redact this information out of the records that they provide.
Meeting minutes from the last 12 months are core records. Minutes from more than 12 months ago are non-core records.
- Fees charged to owners must be commensurate with the work required to compile and cannot be more than 20¢ per page
- Corporations may not charge for electronic records even if they do not keep an electronic copy and must provide a paper copy instead
- Fees must be commensurate with the work required to compile and cannot be more than 20¢ per page
- Corporations may charge a reasonable fee to provide paper copies of records they do not keep electronically when responding to a request for electronic records
Owners are not entitled to access draft minutes, but condo corporations can share them if they would like.
The CAO encourages all condo corporations to approve draft minutes as early as possible, so they can be provided to owners on request. Board meeting minutes, for example, should generally be approved at the next board meeting, and any delays in approving draft minutes should be minimal.
Yes. Condo corporations are not required to record meetings, but if they do, owners will generally be entitled to the recordings. Audio or video recordings of meetings are non-core records.