Founded in July 1995, the Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations
was created with the objective of representing various landlord organizations
across Canada on national political and economic issues and to facilitate
the exchange of information amongst the members.
From it's fledgling beginnings, the CFAA has quickly matured and is now actively addressing a number of issues of national importance. Two such issues, the unfair tax treatment of rental property and the recent regulatory changes ordered by the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission were the subject of considerable discussion at this year's meeting.
On the question of tax unfairness, the Federation agreed to commission a research study and develop a national strategy to lobby the Federal government for change. More detailed information on this matter is contained in a separate article on page 6.
On the subject of telecommunications, the complexity of this issue for property managers was illuminated in two excellent presentations.
In short the CRTC has ordered that there shall be competition in both telephone and cable TV service. In making this decree they also indicated that they will not permit exclusivity in a multi-tenant building. Although the CRTC does not have jurisdiction over landlords, the indication is that they could enforce this by directing the cable or telephone company to cease supplying service to a building if it were considered a monopoly service.
While the CRTC has mandated competition for the Winnipeg market, the existing cable providers are still prevented from competing against each other. In other words Videon will continue to be restricted to the west side of the Red River and Shaw to the East. However any new provider entering the local market will be permitted to provide service on both sides of the River.
We also learned that the CRTC's definition of "inside wiring" is very specific. It is defined as that part of the wire that is used - r the exclusive use of the customer, the customer being he who pays the bill. This so called "inside wiring" can be physically located either inside or outside the building. All of the other wiring (the spine or backbone) is considered the property of the telecommunications provider.
The new regulations which came into effect last January I st. require that where a supplier owns the "inside wiring" and a tenant terminates service (either because he is vacating the suite, changing to another provider orjust quitting the service) that the supplier must offer to sell the "inside wiring" to the tenant. If a landlord terminates bulk service then the "inside wiring" must be offered to the landlord. If the tenant or the landlord decline to purchase the wiring, then the supplier has 7 days in which to remove it.
The keynote address at this year's Annual Meeting was provided by Mr. Jerry Molique, President of the National Apartment Association, the largest non profit apartment industry association in the United States.
Mr. Molique advised that an emerging issue in the United States is the growing use of mandatory apartment inspection programs by municipal governments to raise revenue. These programs require an annual inspection of apartment buildings to determine if the rental units are being maintained according to building code standards. Building owners are of course required to pay a fee for this inspection.
Mr. Molique noted that many measures which begin in the U.S.A. follow shortly into Canada. He cautioned that once Canadian legislators become aware of the revenue potential of these types of programs they will surely try to implement them here. His advice was that Canadian property managers would be well advised to resist them.
This year's Annual Meeting was the most well attended to date. >From my observation the Federation appears to be well on it's way to fulfilling it's mandate of both providing information to the member associations as well as representing them on national issues.