COVER: Five years of condo management regulation: CEO and Registrar Ali Arlani reflects of CMRAO's start-up and future plans.

Ask any Canadian to name the most pressing issues affecting their lives today, and you’ll likely hear about the cost of living and housing. Following the tremendous shift in the Canadian and global economies since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, inflation has had a pronounced impact on many people.

Housing alone has presented unique challenges around the country. While the purchase of homes in some cities has recently cooled, rental costs in many other cities have soared.

When it comes to consumer protection and housing, Ontario is uniquely positioned in Canada. In addition to robust legislation that protects renters, half a dozen regulatory authorities oversee and regulate housing in the public interest.

One regulatory body, the Condominium Management Regulatory Authority of Ontario (CMRAO), was established by the former Liberal provincial government in 2017 to license and regulate condominium managers and management provider businesses. Led by Ali Arlani, Registrar and CEO, the CMRAO is celebrating its fifth year of operations and its positive impact on the province’s condominium management sector.

Amassing the resume

Born in Iran, Arlani’s story reflects the path of many Canadian immigrants. He pursued higher education and earned degrees in economics and civil engineering. He then received a Ph.D. in Building Engineering from Concordia University in Montreal.

Arlani moved to Ontario for employment with the provincial government. At the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing, where he spent 18 years writing building codes, he was a senior technical policy advisor and later a director of the Housing Development and Buildings Branch.

“In 2004, I was asked to head an adjudicative agency called Ontario Municipal Board as its CEO,” Arlani said.

“I spent about eight years doing a lot of reform and consolidation for adjudicative agencies, which was followed by my appointment to the Assistant Deputy Attorney General position in 2012.”

Arlani’s extensive developmental and governmental experience, including appointments as CEO of the Environment and Land Tribunals Ontario and Executive Lead for the Social Justice Tribunals Ontario, led him to the top job at the CMRAO.

Building awareness as a regulator

The CMRAO was established in tandem with the Condominium Authority of Ontario, the authority created in part, to provide mandatory training to condominium directors and to provide a dispute resolution mechanism through the Condominium Authority Tribunal. With 12,000 condo corporations in Ontario, there was a dire need to streamline operations to ensure condominium management providers meet education and experience standards, and comply with a code of ethics. But, creating a new regulatory authority was challenging.

The CMRAO’s specific mandate is to set standards and enforce the required licensing of condominium managers and management service providers.

“Essentially, you didn’t have a regulated profession called ‘condominium management,’” Arlani said. “Now, since you are trying to build from zero, we had to, within the first couple of years, create an environment that both enhances the credibility within the industry and identifies the key stakeholder groups.”

The journey was a resounding success, as Arlani helped to set the foundation for the regulatory body by establishing standard licensing procedures and competency profiles, supporting the development of a new post-secondary condominium management training program facilitated by Humber College in 2021, and setting regulatory exams for growing professionals in the industry.

Forward-thinking digital leadership

Unique to the CMRAO’s operations is its prioritization of digital-first operations. Arlani notes how crucial this has become, especially in light of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns that prevented the public from receiving in-person service.

By establishing a digital service delivery model as CMRAO’S flagship feature, Arlani says that it established the organization to support condominium managers more efficiently. With innovative, risk-based approaches to licensing and compliance, Arlani adds that speaking to colleagues in the regulatory sector nationwide has allowed the CMRAO to prosper. He says he is proud of the authority’s website capabilities, which he feels embodies the critical tenets that make a regulator modern and relevant.

Reflecting on the CMRAO’s fifth anniversary, Arlani acknowledges the work to date has set the foundation for continued growth and innovation. “From my point of view, we’ve now gotten to a level of maturity where we can make best use of the tools provided to us, which allows our focus to be as flexible as possible to continually make improvements to the system,” he said.

Sandy Vizely

It takes a village to raise a new regulator, and the senior management team has supported Arlani’s direction in invaluable ways. Deputy Registrar Sandy Vizely says that the Registrar and CEO is clear and steadfast with his mission but embraces and feeds off ideas from staff.

“He really empowers management and staff to do their jobs, and, in an organization as small as ours, I think that is critical,” Vizely said.

Where high turnover in licensing and regulation, especially among new organizations, is commonplace, the CMRAO seems to have bucked that trend. “The team we currently have is largely the same as when I came in 2018, and that working relationship is something I truly respect,” Arlani said. “Sandy in particular, was in charge of building the lead infrastructure and systems, and having someone like him on my team was instrumental in my success as Registrar and CEO.”

Arlani says he wants to continue emphasizing his working relationship with the government.

“We have managed that relationship very well over the past five years,” he said. “That has helped us tremendously, in the context of needing approvals or when you provide notices to them. No one gets caught off-guard, and a productive working relationship like this is what keeps us ahead of the curve.”

The next five years

Reaching the first anniversary of any organization’s foundation in ordinary times is no small feat. Reaching a fifth-year anniversary amid a global pandemic, all the while establishing an identity and modern regulatory frameworks, can be seen as truly monumental.

Arlani takes all of it in stride and foresees the continued professionalization of the sector on the horizon. An ideal goal, however, would be to showcase condominium management as the preferred field for all, including those graduating from academic institutions or new immigrants to Canada, irrespective of their background.

“It’s important that there is growth in this profession,” Arlani said. “I see in the next five years that we can increase our number of licensees so that condominium communities can inevitably thrive.”

Arlani and Vizeli with Tsehaie Makonnen, CMRAO Communications