Secret Voting in Canadian Strata Happens Behind Screens

Imbeau v Strata Plan NW971 [2011] BCSC 801

GoStrata’s CaseWatch is a short, sharp and easy-to-understand review of important and interesting Court and Tribunal decisions affecting Australian strata title stakeholders.

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Quick Read

This 2011 decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Canada is about a dispute over a secret ballot at a Port Moody strata building meeting. At a meeting considering a $3 Million special levy strata owners asked for a secret ballot which was conducted by voting cards collected by the chairperson and the strata building’s lawyer.  Some strata owners objected to that approach saying there should have been private voting booths and challenged the validity of the decision.  So, the issue was how a secret ballot in a strata building should be conducted. After considering the purpose of secret voting and the decision in Leroux v Molgat about a secret ballot at a union meeting, the Supreme Court decided that the purpose of secret voting was to ensure that how a person votes is unknown or unknowable by others and that didn’t occur here since others could see how strata owners completed their voting cards when doing so and when collected. This decision isn’t binding in Australia. But it’s a rare instance where a Court [anywhere] has considered secret voting requirements for strata buildings, suggests that voting cards in an open meeting aren’t enough, and that private voting booths would be, although they aren’t the only way to do it.

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Implications

The key implications of this strata case are as follows.

• When a secret ballot is required, the chairperson determines the voting process to ensure a valid decision whilst preserving the secrecy of each strata owner’s vote.

• What needs to be kept secret from others at or outside the meeting is how each strata owner votes.

• In this case, a few things meant that the voting was not secret: that other strata owners saw voting cards being completed near them and that voting cards were seen when collected.