Editor:
Re: Strata eviction delayed by judge, Aug. 28.
The article wrongly implies the court has ordered a stay of a court-ordered sale of my apartment.
In fact, the court has not ordered the sale of my apartment. It has only ordered that the strata corporation conduct a meeting at which all owners will be able to vote for, or against, the continuation of the legal proceedings – an opportunity that was denied owners when the previous strata council commenced the petition on behalf of all owners in February 2013.
The article’s statement that “(the court) dismissed Louis’s claim of a rights infringement, ruling that Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms only applies to government bodies” is also misleading. The court did not rule that my rights were not infringed. More accurately, the court ruled that the charter could not be invoked as a means of defending against rights that I had argued had been infringed – a finding that I will be appealing.
(Editor’s note: In his reasons for judgment, Justice Trevor Armstrong wrote: “Mr. Louis’s claim that his charter rights have been infringed… is dismissed. He later added: “I order that the strata petition be stayed until there has been a three-quarter vote at a meeting in favour of continuing the strata petition against the owners.”)
The sections of the act that I am attempting to have struck down as unconstitutional include several that enable strata corporations’ strata councils to disenfranchise owners and to launch court actions on behalf of all owners without first obtaining their approval.
I will first be filing an application for Justice Armstrong to clarify his Aug. 25 ruling so that it definitively indicates whether he has found that the sections of the strata property act I am attempting to have struck down are unconstitutional.
Roderick V. Louis, White Rock
