Opinion | Your condo board can ban your e-bike — even inside your own unit - Toronto Star

Ontario tribunal upholds condo e-bike ban that reaches inside private units as lithium-ion battery fires surge in Toronto.

A condo buyer who owns an e-bike or e-scooter should not assume that a device that is street legal may be stored or charged in the building.

Bob Aaron is a Toronto real estate lawyer and a contributing columnist for the Star. He is also a member of the Home Construction Regulatory Authority Consumer Advisory Council. He can be reached at bob@aaron.ca

Condo owners who rely on e-bikes may be surprised to learn that a condominium corporation can ban the devices not only in hallways, elevators and garages, but even inside privately owned units.

That is the result of a September decision of the Condominium Authority Tribunal involving Toronto Standard Condominium Corporation No. 2587, an East York building on Vanderhoof Avenue.

Late last year, the corporation adopted a rule banning e-bikes and similar electric transportation devices from the entire property. The ban covers storage and charging in units, lockers and parking spaces, as well as movement through lobbies, corridors, stairs and elevators.

Unit owner Michael Hinton challenged the rule on behalf of tenant Tristan Mendoza, who had used an e-bike as his principal form of transportation for more than a year.

The dispute had an interesting wrinkle. Mendoza’s bike did not use a problematic lithium-ion battery. It had a sealed lead-acid battery and the original manufacturer’s charger. Hinton maintained that the board’s blanket ban failed to distinguish among different battery technologies and their associated risks.

The tribunal nevertheless upheld the rule. Tribunal member Neha Chugh concluded that the corporation was entitled to adopt a uniform safety rule rather than require management to examine individual bikes, batteries and chargers to decide which ones might be safe.

Recognized certification standards for e-bikes exist, but the Canadian market includes devices and replacement batteries of varying provenance, and condo managers have no practical way of verifying the safety history, modifications, charger compatibility or certification of every e-bike brought into a building.

That does not mean every condo board can automatically outlaw every battery-powered device. Ontario’s Condominium Act sets limits.

Section 58 allows a board to make rules respecting the use of units and common elements to promote the safety, security or welfare of owners and the corporation’s property.

The significance of the ruling is that a board does not necessarily have to wait until a fire occurs before responding to a safety concern. Nor, in this case, was the corporation required to prove that this particular e-bike was likely to ignite.

That finding comes against a troubling backdrop.

Toronto Fire Services reported last month that the city had already experienced 100 lithium-ion battery fires in 2026 — a year-to-date increase of 43 per cent. Between 2020 and 2024, such fires here increased by 591 per cent, according to the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Lithium-ion batteries power countless products, including cellphones, laptops, tools, e-bikes and e-scooters. When a battery is damaged, improperly charged, modified or fails, it can enter a process known as thermal runaway, in which heat and chemical reactions rapidly produce an intense fire.

For condominium corporations, the concern is much closer to home.

An e-bike battery being charged overnight in a 30th-floor apartment, beside an exit route or in an underground garage endangers hundreds of residents in the same building.

At the same time, a blanket ban can cause genuine hardship. E-bikes are inexpensive transportation for many residents and an essential tool for some delivery workers. Not all batteries are alike, and the device involved in the Hinton case was itself not powered by a lithium-ion battery.

That tension is what makes the tribunal decision important.

The tribunal did not decide that every e-bike is dangerous. It decided that, in the circumstances before it, the board’s rule was not unreasonable.

A condo buyer who owns an e-bike or e-scooter should not assume that a device that is street legal may be stored or charged in the building. The declaration, bylaws and rules should be reviewed carefully during the status certificate examination.

Condominium rules once focused on familiar subjects such as pets, parking, balconies, barbecues and noise. Battery-powered transportation has now joined that list.

For condo boards, the ruling confirms that reasonable preventive rules can extend inside individual units when genuine building-safety concerns are involved.

For owners, the message is equally clear: in a condominium, what happens behind the unit door is not always a purely private matter.

E-bikes powered by lithium-ion batteries pose a risk to the health and safety of everyone in a condominium building. Given that risk, the case for broader adoption of rules like the one on Vanderhoof Avenue is difficult to dismiss.

Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Bob Aaron is a Toronto real estate lawyer and a contributing columnist for the Star. He is also a member of the Home Construction Regulatory Authority Consumer Advisory Council. He can be reached at bob@aaron.ca