Condo AGM Requirements in Ontario: Notice Periods, Quorum, Proxies, and What Management Handles

Your condo corporation has to hold its annual general meeting within 6 months of the end of its fiscal year. The meeting only stands up if owners were told in time, told what would be decided, and counted properly on the night.

Condo AGM requirements in Ontario read like a long list of rules. In practice, four things decide whether the meeting survives a challenge: timing, notice, quorum, and proxies. Get those four right and the rest is housekeeping. Get one of them wrong and a single unhappy owner can put the whole result in question.

Most of the work behind those four is administrative, and most of it belongs to your manager. Good condo management services run the machinery: the calendar, the prescribed forms, the mailing, the proxy count, and the filings afterwards. The board keeps the legal decisions, and the board carries the consequences.

When Your AGM Has To Happen: The Clock Runs From Your Fiscal Year End

One scheduling habit puts boards behind year after year. They count 12 months forward from the last AGM and pick a date from there. The deadline never ran from the meeting. It runs from the fiscal year end.

The AGM is also not the only owners’ meeting a board will face. Owners can call one themselves, and owner-requisitioned meetings run on their own, tighter clock. Take those dates from the requisition rules rather than from the AGM timeline.

The First AGM and Every AGM After It

A condo corporation holds its first annual general meeting within 3 months of the condo being registered. After that, it holds one within 6 months of the end of each fiscal year.

The obligation comes from the Condominium Act, 1998, which is why a board cannot vote to skip a quiet year.

A corporation with a December 31 year end is out of time on June 30, whatever date last year’s meeting happened to fall on. That is the line worth repeating to any director who wants to argue about it.

If the deadline has already passed, hold the meeting as soon as the audit and the notice periods allow. Do not compress the notice periods to catch up, because a defective notice is a worse problem than a late meeting. Tell owners in writing what the new date is and why, record that in the minutes, and speak to the corporation’s solicitor before the meeting if an election is on the agenda.

Working Backwards From the Meeting Date

The two notices stack, and the stacking sets your real runway. The preliminary notice goes out at least 20 days before the notice of meeting, and the notice of meeting goes out at least 15 days before the meeting day. Treat that 35-day minimum as the floor, not the plan.

1. Fix the meeting day.
2. Count back 15 days. The notice of meeting goes out on or before that date, with the financial statements, the auditor’s report and the candidate material attached.
3. Count back another 20 days. The preliminary notice goes out on or before that date.
4. Count back further for the audit. The statements have to be finished and board-approved before step 2 can happen.

That last step is the bottleneck nobody schedules. The statements and the auditor’s report travel with the notice, so the audit has to be complete and approved roughly 5 to 6 weeks before the meeting. A late auditor, not a late board, is the usual reason an AGM slips. Book the auditor the same week you set the date.

The Two Notices Every AGM Needs

Ontario runs a two-stage notice for a reason. A single notice would let a board fix the ballot before owners knew there was one. Stage one asks for candidates, and stage two delivers the fixed agenda and the documents owners need to judge the year.

Preliminary Notice: At Least 20 Days Before the Notice of Meeting

The preliminary notice has to go out at least 20 days before the notice of meeting. It tells owners a notice is coming, states the purpose of the meeting, and, where directors are being elected, asks owners interested in a director position to tell the board in writing. It is a prescribed Condominium Authority of Ontario (CAO) form, and boards must use it.

So treat it as the legal door to candidacy rather than as paperwork. Boards that send both notices in the same week have collapsed the candidate window down to nothing, and an owner shut out of standing for the board has a real complaint.

Notice of Meeting: At Least 15 Days Before the Meeting Day

The notice of meeting goes out at least 15 days ahead of the meeting day, and it is also a prescribed form. It has to carry the date, the time, and the location or the format, meaning in person or virtual. It has to give instructions for joining. And it has to identify the business to be discussed.

Here is the catch. Identifying the business is not a formality, it is the clause that decides what you may vote on. Draft that part of the notice with the by-law vote or the special item already written out in full, rather than as a placeholder you intend to firm up later.

What Has To Go Out With an AGM Notice

For an AGM, four things travel with the notice of meeting:

• The board-approved financial statements
• The auditor’s report
• The names of the candidates standing for the board
• The candidate disclosure statements

Check the assembled package against that list before anything is sealed or sent, and give that check to one named person rather than to the group. A missing attachment is a defect in the notice. It is not an administrative slip you can apologize for at the meeting and move past, because the owner who wanted the statements was entitled to them 15 days out.

Undisclosed Business: What the Meeting Cannot Vote On

Nothing outside routine procedure can be voted on at the meeting unless it was disclosed in the notice of meeting. The routine-procedure carve-out matters, because it is what lets the room still move discussion, adjourn, and handle the ordinary mechanics of an evening without anyone needing notice for it. Section 47(8) of the Condominium Act carries the rule.

The failure mode is always the same. A motion comes up from the floor, the room wants it, and the chair lets it go to a vote. The chair’s job is to let owners discuss the item and then refuse the vote. Put it on the next notice instead.

Getting the Notice to the Right People

A notice that never arrives is not notice. You have three ways to deliver one: by mail, electronically, or in person, and in person includes handing it to the owner or leaving it in the owner’s mailbox or at the unit. Who you serve, and how you are allowed to serve them, both come off the corporation’s record of owners and mortgagees.

When You Can Serve a Notice by Email

Electronic notice only works if the owner’s email address is actually in the corporation’s record of owners, and your by-laws do not restrict it. Owners put it there with the CAO’s Notice Relating to Record of Owners form, and any owner can ask for paper instead. If an owner’s email is not in the record, that owner gets served on paper.

Giving the corporation an electronic address for service is what puts an owner on the email list. Addresses collected informally at a meeting or through a resident portal do not do the same job.

There is a general rule underneath this one. The Act and the regulations set the floor. Your declaration and by-laws sit on top of it, and they can add to that floor or restrict what the Act permits.

Reconcile the Record of Owners Before the Notice Goes Out

A new owner is expected to tell the corporation their name and unit within 30 days of buying, using the prescribed form. That record is your voter roll, and it is only ever as current as the last person who updated it.

Entitlement comes from the corporation’s record of owners, so a unit that changes hands between the notice and the meeting can change who is entitled to vote. Reconcile the record of owners, and the arrears list with it, before the notice goes out.

In a 200-unit building that reconciliation takes an afternoon. Left to meeting night, it becomes an argument at the registration desk in front of the people you are about to ask for a vote.

Quorum: Who Counts, and What To Do When Nobody Shows Up

Quorum is the number that decides whether the night happens at all. In most GTA buildings it is not reached by people walking through the door. It is reached on paper, through proxies and advance votes.

The 25 Per Cent Rule, and the 15 Per Cent Relief on the Third Attempt

Quorum at an AGM is owners representing at least 25 per cent of the corporation’s units. They can be present in person, by proxy, or virtually, or they can have voted electronically or by phone ahead of time. All of those count the same way.

If quorum fails on the first attempt and again on the second, it drops to 15 per cent for the third attempt and any attempt after that.

Note the sequence, because boards misread it. The relief arrives on attempt three, so attempts one and two have to genuinely have been called and adjourned for lack of quorum. You cannot look at a thin proxy count and jump straight to 15 per cent.

Calling the Second and Third Attempts

Decide how the second and third attempts will be called before you send the first notice, and put the arrangements in writing where owners can see them. Check your declaration and by-laws first, because they may set how a meeting is reconvened, and get advice from the corporation’s solicitor before you rely on a fallback date rather than a fresh notice. Two failed attempts are what unlocks the lower threshold, so each one has to be called and recorded properly for the third to stand.

Then minute each failed attempt. Record the time the meeting was called to order, the head count including proxies, the fact that quorum was not reached, and the time of adjournment. That record is what proves attempts one and two happened when somebody questions the third.

Owners 30 Days or More in Arrears Cannot Vote

An owner who is 30 or more days behind on common expenses is not entitled to vote, and the right comes back once the payments are current. The arrears reconciliation you did before the notice went out is what makes this workable on the night.

The rest is a people problem, so plan it. One person checks arrears at registration against a printed list, nobody debates a balance at the desk, and the owner is told quietly that the corporation’s records show arrears. Brief the chair on the same wording before the doors open.

How GTA Boards Actually Reach Quorum

Proxies and advance electronic or phone votes are how a real building gets to 25 per cent. Owners who vote virtually or by phone before or during the meeting count as present for quorum, even though they never walk into the room.

So run proxy collection as a campaign with a name attached to it, a log, and a deadline. Start chasing at the preliminary notice, not in the final week. Track returns by unit rather than by count. Know your running number 7 days out, so you can adjourn early and book the second attempt rather than paying for a room nobody can use.

Proxies: The Form, the Three Levels of Authority, and Why They Get Rejected

Proxies are how a condo reaches quorum, which is exactly why they are the most contested part of the night. Nearly every challenge to an AGM result starts at the registration desk.

Owners Must Use the Prescribed Proxy Form, and Anyone Can Hold It

Owners must use one of the CAO’s proxy forms to appoint a proxy. A homemade letter or a marked-up copy of last year’s form is not an appointment, and accepting one invites an argument you will lose.

An owner who cannot attend can appoint anyone to act for them. The person holding the proxy does not have to be another owner in the building, so a spouse, an adult child, a tenant, or the owner’s lawyer can all hold one.

One more rule catches co-owned units: a proxy represents one vote for all the owners of a unit. Two names on title do not produce two votes.

The Three Levels of Authority an Owner Can Give

An owner filling in the CAO’s proxy form picks one of three levels of authority, and that choice decides far more than boards expect. All three levels count toward quorum, so any valid proxy helps you open the meeting. Only one of the three can elect anybody. A board sitting on 80 proxies where 60 are quorum-only has a meeting that opens and an election it cannot finish.

Level of Authority the Owner Gives	Counts Toward Quorum	What the Proxy Can Vote On	What This Means for Your Meeting
Quorum only	Yes	Nothing. The wording on the form: “Your proxy can only count towards quorum and can’t vote.”	Helps you open the meeting. Will not help you elect anyone.
Routine procedure	Yes	“Routine procedure matters like motions to move discussion or adjourn.”	Keeps the meeting moving. Still cannot cast a ballot in an election or a by-law vote.
Full voting authority	Yes	“Can vote on anything, either with or without your instructions.”	The only level that can vote in a director election or on a by-law change.

A director election and a by-law vote both need full voting authority, because neither one is routine procedure. So when you are chasing proxies, chase the right kind.

Why Proxies Get Rejected at the Door

The owner’s signature on the proxy has to match the name on the corporation’s record of owners, and the proxy carries one vote for all the owners of a unit. Those two rules produce most of the rejections. Hand whoever is running registration this list:

• Unsigned, or undated
• Made out for a different meeting, or for last year’s meeting
• A signature that does not match the record of owners
• Filled in by somebody other than the owner
• Signed by one co-owner when the record of owners shows two

Check them the week before, not at the door. A rejected proxy found on Tuesday can be fixed by Thursday. A rejected proxy found at 7 p.m. on meeting night is simply a lost vote.

Set Your Own Proxy Deadline and Keep the Paperwork

Set your proxy deadline yourself, publish it in the notice, and apply it to everyone the same way. Collect them early enough that management can check signatures against the record of owners before the meeting starts.

A proxy is given for a specific meeting, so tie it to that meeting and reissue if the meeting is replaced rather than adjourned. An owner who changes their mind should tell the corporation in writing before the meeting begins.

Keep the proxies, ballots and the attendance record with the meeting file. They are corporation records, owners can ask for them, and they are the only evidence you will have if a result is challenged.

Virtual and Hybrid AGMs Under the Current Rules

A lot of board material still carries the old position on this, so start from the current one. Since 1 October 2023, an Ontario condo corporation can hold owners’ meetings and take votes virtually or by phone without passing an electronic means by-law. That changed what a by-law is for, and it changed what a board checks before it plans a meeting.

Since 1 October 2023, No By-Law Is Needed To Meet or Vote Online

Since 1 October 2023, corporations can keep holding meetings and votes virtually or by phone without a specific by-law allowing it. They can issue meeting notices electronically. They can hold board meetings virtually or by phone where most directors agree. Owners who vote virtually or by phone before or during a meeting count toward quorum.

Corporations can also now make by-laws to regulate how they run phone and virtual meetings and votes. That is the real shift. The by-law used to be the permission slip. It is now the rulebook.

What Your Existing By-Laws Can Still Restrict

Since 1 October 2023, Ontario condos can hold owners’ meetings and take votes virtually or by phone without passing an electronic means by-law. A by-law is no longer the permission slip. It is now the rulebook, and an existing by-law can still shape how your corporation does this, including limiting electronic notice. Read your by-laws before you plan the meeting, and get legal advice before you rely on an older by-law to restrict participation.

If somebody on your board is relying on a clause in an older by-law to keep owners out of a virtual room, that is a question for the corporation’s solicitor and not for a board vote.

What a Hybrid AGM Has To Get Right

Three things decide whether a hybrid meeting holds up.

The notice has to state the format and give the joining instructions. An owner who could not work out how to attend is an owner who can say the notice was defective.

A room and a screen are one meeting and one count. Registration, quorum and every vote are counted across both at the same moment, and one named person owns that single running number. Two people keeping two tallies is how a result gets challenged.

And the procedure, including voting, is the same whether the meeting is in person, fully electronic, or a hybrid of the two. The voting process has to be fair, accountable, secure and confidential. In practice, pick a method you can show your work on afterwards, with a record of who was entitled to vote and how the totals were reached.

What Actually Happens at the Meeting

The agenda is shorter than most first-term directors expect. Owners review the corporation’s financial statements, appoint the auditor, elect directors, and vote on by-law changes that were disclosed in the notice. Everything else in the room is routine procedure.

Financial Statements, the Auditor’s Report, and Appointing the Auditor

The corporation presents audited financial statements and the auditor’s report. Both already went out with the notice, so the meeting is where owners ask about them rather than where they first see them. The AGM is also where owners appoint the auditor for the coming year.

Keep two things straight. This is the annual financial audit of the corporation’s books, and it is a different exercise from the first-year performance audit of the building itself, which examines construction rather than finances. Do not let the two get discussed as one item.

And prepare the board to answer questions about the numbers. Owners rarely challenge the audit. They challenge the reserve fund contribution, the legal line, and last year’s variance.

Electing Directors and Handling a Tie

Directors serve terms of up to 3 years, as the community’s governing documents allow. The candidate names and the candidate disclosure statements were already in the notice, so the election on the night is a vote, not an introduction. If you want the eligibility rules, the disclosure requirements and the count itself in detail, read up on how condo board elections work before you draft the notice.

A tie is settled by your governing documents and the chair’s ruling, so decide how you will handle one before the ballots are counted rather than in front of a full room.

After the AGM: The Obligations Boards Forget

The meeting can go perfectly and the corporation can still be out of compliance a month later. Four things are owed after the room empties, and two of them carry their own deadlines.

Minutes Are Kept Indefinitely

Corporations have to create minutes of every meeting, owners’ meetings and board meetings alike, and have to keep minutes of all meetings indefinitely. Minutes from the last 12 months are core records. Older minutes are non-core. The corporation has 30 days to answer a records request for either.

The 7-year retention figure you have probably heard applies to financial records, not to minutes. Do not shred an old minute book on the strength of it.

Minutes should record the date, time and location, who attended, the votes and the motions, and short summaries of what was discussed and done. Minutes that capture the discussion but not the motions, the movers and the counts are the ones that fail when a result is challenged.

File a Notice of Change Within 30 Days

A Notice of Change return has to be filed within 30 days of the change, and that expressly covers board member changes, management provider changes and address changes. An election changes the directors, so the clock starts on meeting night, not when the minutes are approved.

This is the single most forgotten item after an AGM. Put the filing on the same task list as the minutes and give it the same owner, because the people who notice a missed filing are lenders, buyers and status certificate readers, and they notice months later when somebody is trying to close a sale.

Every Director Elected, Appointed or Re-Elected Has 6 Months To Complete Director Training

Directors have to complete the CAO’s mandatory training within 6 months of being elected, appointed or re-elected, unless they completed it within the preceding 7 years. It is free, it runs about 7 hours, and it is delivered as a set of e-modules a director can work through in pieces.

Re-elected directors are the group that gets caught. They assume the requirement was satisfied by the training they did the first time, and it was, but only inside that 7-year window. Send the link to every director the week after the meeting, including the ones who have served for a decade, and note the date each one finishes.

The Annual Return Is Separate, and Filing Late Costs $200

Every corporation files an annual return between January 1 and March 31, and a $200 late fee applies to returns filed after the March 31 deadline. The CAO assessment is billed separately at $12 a year per voting unit, with further charges if it goes unpaid.

Make the distinction explicit at the board table. The annual return is a calendar obligation. It has nothing to do with when your AGM falls, and boards that fold it into the AGM task list end up late on one or the other. Two reminders, two owners, two deadlines.

What Your Management Company Handles, and What Stays With the Board

The split is simple to state and easy to lose track of in a busy year. Management runs the machinery. The board carries the legal decisions. We have spent more than 15 years running AGMs for GTA residential and commercial condominium corporations, and we are CMRAO-licensed. This is what we would expect any competent manager to own.

What Management Runs

• Calendar the fiscal year end and set the deadline date
• Book the auditor early enough that the statements can be approved and attached
• Draft and issue both prescribed notices, on the correct forms
• Maintain the record of owners and reconcile it against arrears
• Receive proxies and check them against the record
• Arrange the room or the platform
• Run registration and keep one count across the room and the screen
• Draft the minutes
• File the Notice of Change afterwards

Three of those are the ones a board usually discovers were nobody’s job. Who is tracking the running proxy count week by week, and telling the board in time to act on it. Who reconciles arrears against the voter roll before the notice goes out. And who owns the post-meeting filing once everyone has gone home. If you cannot name a person for each line, that is the gap, and it will show up on the night.

What Only the Board Can Do

The board approves the financial statements, fixes the date and the business, decides the agenda, stands for election, answers owners in the room, and owns the outcome. A manager cannot approve the statements and cannot decide what goes to a vote, and a board that lets a manager make those calls has a governance problem no AGM will fix. The rest of the year works the same way, which is worth understanding when you look at what a condo board of directors is responsible for beyond the meeting itself.

The Lines a Licensed Manager Will Not Cross

The CAO strongly recommends against distributing pre-populated proxy forms, and that recommendation exists because a pre-filled form is a vote somebody else started for the owner.

Your manager is licensed, and the rules for licensed managers limit what they can do with proxies. Management can hand out blank forms, receive them, and check them. Management does not fill them in and does not solicit them.

That boundary protects the board. A manager who campaigns for proxies hands every losing candidate a ready-made reason to challenge the result, and the corporation pays for the challenge.

What Goes Wrong When an AGM Is Not Compliant

Boards want to know what a non-compliant AGM costs them. There is no fine waiting in the Act for a late or defective AGM. The cost shows up elsewhere: the meeting gets challenged and has to be run again, decisions taken at it can be attacked, owners can go to court to force compliance, and the corporation pays for the lawyers and the second meeting out of everyone’s common expenses.

The Tribunal Cannot Hear Meeting Disputes Yet

Today the Condominium Authority Tribunal’s jurisdiction does not extend to meeting-related issues such as quorum, voting and meeting notices, so an owner unhappy about a defective AGM goes to court instead. That changes on 1 July 2027, when the Tribunal will be able to hear disputes about whether required meetings were held and whether notices were sent on time and contained what they must, while disputes about the conduct of voting, proxies and ballots stay outside. For the current picture in detail, read up on what the Condominium Authority Tribunal covers now.

When To Call the Corporation’s Solicitor

Six situations are lawyer territory: a contested election result, a defective notice that has already gone out, an existing by-law that restricts electronic participation, a reconvened meeting after failed quorum, a move to remove a director, and a threatened court application.

Three judgment calls are worth settling in advance. Where a notice defect is caught before the meeting, reissuing the notice and moving the date is almost always cheaper than defending the meeting afterwards. The question you put to the solicitor should be narrow and factual, along the lines of “here is the notice we sent, here is the date, here is what our by-law says”, rather than “are we in trouble”. And anything touching an election result gets the call before the meeting, never after the count.

What Changes for Ontario Condo AGM Requirements in 2026 and 2027

Two dated changes are confirmed, and one of them touches an ordinary AGM notice.

From 31 December 2026, owner-occupied units will be renamed non-leased voting units and will be more clearly defined. A reserved board position is a seat set aside for a director elected only by owners who live in their own units. Meeting notices for one of those seats will have to carry more detail about eligibility requirements and about how the vote works. If your corporation has a reserved position, your notice template changes that month. The requisitioned-meeting rules are being overhauled on the same date.

From 1 July 2027, the Tribunal gains jurisdiction over meeting-related disputes, which is the change most likely to alter how owners respond to a meeting they think was run badly.

One operational habit covers all of it. Pull the prescribed notice and proxy forms from the CAO for each meeting rather than reusing last year’s saved file. The forms are being updated, and a superseded form is a defect you introduced yourself.

Get the AGM Off the Board’s Desk

A compliant AGM is a project with a 35-day minimum runway and a dozen moving parts, and almost all of them are administrative. Boards that hand the machinery to a manager spend the meeting answering owners instead of checking signatures at the door.

CPO Management has spent more than 15 years managing GTA residential and commercial condominium corporations, we are CMRAO-licensed, and we work across the full property spectrum from condominiums to co-ops and community centres. Our condominium management services cover the AGM end to end, from the audit calendar to the Notice of Change filing. If your next meeting is already on the calendar, request a proposal and we will walk your board through the runway.

Frequently Asked Questions