Can an Owner Sue Their Condo Corporation Over a Delayed or Denied EV Charger Request?

It's one of the most common questions we hear from frustrated owners: "The board has been sitting on my EV charger request for months — can I sue them?" The honest answer is: maybe, but almost certainly not the way most owners assume, and not through the forum most people would guess first. There are two genuinely different legal routes here, they address two different problems, and mixing them up wastes time an owner usually doesn't have.

First, where an owner can't go: the Condominium Authority Tribunal

Since 2020, Ontario's Condominium Authority Tribunal (CAT) has become the default place most people think of for a condo dispute — it now has exclusive jurisdiction over things like pet, parking, and vehicle-provision disputes, and disputes about the corporation's records. It's fast, relatively low-cost, and mostly online, which is exactly why owners assume it covers this too.

It doesn't. The CAT's governing rules specifically carve out disputes about agreements to modify the common elements — including EV charging installations — from its jurisdiction. If your dispute is "the corporation should have entered into this agreement with me" or "the corporation isn't complying with the agreement we signed," the CAT cannot hear it, full stop.

Where it actually goes: mandatory mediation and arbitration

Section 132 of the Condominium Act requires disputes over EV charging installation agreements between an owner and the corporation to go through mediation first, and arbitration if mediation doesn't resolve it — before either side can go to court on that specific dispute. This is the forum built for exactly the scenario most owners are describing: the board hasn't responded, has gone past the timelines set out in Ontario Regulation 48/01, or is refusing the request without one of the grounds the regulation actually allows.

This matters practically for boards and PMs, not just owners. O. Reg. 48/01 sets real deadlines — an application should be checked for completeness within about a week, a full response is due within 60 days, and a signed agreement should follow within 90 days of approval. A board that lets those deadlines slide isn't just being slow in a way nobody can do anything about; it's building a documented pattern that supports the owner's position at mediation or arbitration. Boards that want to avoid ever getting there should be tracking these dates as carefully as they'd track any other statutory deadline.

The separate question: was the board unfair, not just slow?

Mediation and arbitration answer "did the corporation follow the process correctly." They don't really answer a different question owners sometimes have: "did the board treat me unfairly compared to how it's treated other owners, or go back on something it already approved?" That's a distinct legal claim — the oppression remedy under Section 135 of the Condominium Act — and it does go to the Ontario Superior Court, not mediation or arbitration.

The oppression remedy isn't specific to EV charging. It's a general protection against a condo corporation acting in a way that's oppressive, unfairly prejudicial, or that unfairly disregards an owner's interests — including their reasonable expectations based on how the corporation has dealt with them or with other, similarly situated owners. The courts have been clear that refusing, or reversing, approval for a common-element alteration can amount to oppression when it's done unfairly. In Noguera v. Muskoka Condominium Corporation No. 22, 2018 ONSC 7278, a board had approved owners' request to alter a shared wall between two units — then, after board turnover, a new board tried to reopen that approval and impose a much harsher retroactive agreement than other owners with similar alterations had faced. The court found that conduct oppressive, upheld the original approval, and awarded the owners $10,000 in damages.

To be clear about what that case does and doesn't tell us: it predates Ontario's EV-charging regulation, and it wasn't about a charger — it was a structural wall opening. We haven't found a reported Ontario decision applying the oppression remedy specifically to an EV charging dispute yet, so nobody can promise a court would rule the same way on facts that are only similar rather than identical. What the case does establish is the applicable principle: a board that approves one owner's common-element alteration and then imposes stricter terms on another, or that treats a documented pattern of foot-dragging as acceptable when it wouldn't accept the same from a contractor, is on the same legal ground the Noguera board lost on — regardless of whether the alteration in question is a wall opening or an EV charger.

One important limit worth being upfront about: the courts have also said an owner's "reasonable expectation" has to be objectively reasonable, not just something the owner personally hoped for. An owner who never actually made a proper request, or whose expectations weren't grounded in anything the board said or did, doesn't have the same footing as one who can point to a prior approval, a written timeline commitment, or evidence of how other owners were treated.

What this means, practically, for each side

For a board or PM, the takeaway isn't "we can't be sued, so it doesn't matter." It's that the two real risks are different and both are avoidable:

• Blowing past O. Reg. 48/01's timelines invites a mediation/arbitration claim over the specific EV request — track the completeness-check, response, and agreement deadlines like any other statutory clock.
• Treating one owner's request differently from another's — a harsher restoration clause, a condition nobody else faced, an approval quietly reopened after a board changeover — invites an oppression claim that has nothing to do with whether the EV process itself was followed correctly. Consistency and documentation are the real defence here, not just speed.

For an owner, the practical path is: get the regulation's actual deadlines in writing, document every date the board has missed, and raise mediation under Section 132 before assuming court is the answer. If the real complaint is inconsistent or bad-faith treatment rather than simple delay, that's worth a conversation with a condo lawyer about whether the facts support an oppression claim — but it's a different, more serious claim, not a shortcut around the mediation process for a garden-variety delay.

Frequently asked questions

Can I take my EV charger dispute straight to the CAT?
No. The Tribunal's rules specifically exclude disputes about agreements to modify common elements, including EV charging installations. This is one of the more common misconceptions we hear, likely because the CAT handles so many other condo disputes now.

What's the first real step if our board has gone silent on my request?
Document the regulatory deadlines it has missed under O. Reg. 48/01, then pursue mediation under Section 132 of the Condominium Act — that's the process the Act actually built for this dispute, and it's a required first step before arbitration or any related court proceeding.

Is an oppression claim the same thing as "the board took too long"?
No. Delay alone, addressed through mediation and arbitration, is about whether the process was followed. Oppression is about whether the board acted unfairly or inconsistently — favouring one owner over another, or reversing something already approved. It's a separate claim, heard in Superior Court, and it requires more than frustration with slow service.

Has a court actually ruled on an EV charger oppression case in Ontario?
Not one we've found reported yet. The closest applicable precedent, Noguera v. Muskoka Condominium Corporation No. 22 (2018 ONSC 7278), involved a different kind of common-element alteration, but the legal principle — inconsistent or bad-faith treatment of an approved alteration can be oppressive — would reasonably extend to EV charging. That's a legal opinion worth getting from a lawyer on your specific facts, not something to assume.

Does any of this apply if the corporation is the one installing shared infrastructure, rather than approving an individual Section 98 request?
The mediation/arbitration and oppression frameworks above are built around the individual owner-and-corporation agreement model. A board-initiated infrastructure project is governed more by the corporation's ordinary capital-project obligations to all owners — a related but distinct set of duties, covered in our companion piece on the governance gap in EV charging.

Sources

• Condominium Authority of Ontario — The Tribunal's Jurisdiction
• Condominium Authority of Ontario — Mediation and Arbitration
• Mann Lawyers — Ontario's Condominium Authority Tribunal: Past, Present & Future
• Noguera v. Muskoka Condominium Corporation No. 22, 2018 ONSC 7278 — full decision (PDF via condocases.ca)
• Baker Lawyers — Approval Process for Condo Structural Changes Not Permitted to Reopen
• ACMO — A Guide to Electric Vehicle Charging in Ontario

If your board is navigating an EV charger request — or trying to avoid becoming the next cautionary case — we're glad to walk through the process, the deadlines, and what "done right" actually looks like before anyone needs a lawyer.

Talk to an honest EV charging advisor →