21st century bureaucracy

November 21, 2012 10:56 AM

Legally binding online forms? (British Columbia)

Asking for a friend: strata council for a large condo building requires a form be filled out with the details of the tenant when condo owners rent out their units. The number of rental units is high, as is the rate of turnover of tenants, leading to a very high volume of such forms having to be filled out.

Is there a way to get these forms submitted online? The form has fine-print that must be legally binding (e.g. owner accepts responsibility for damage caused by the tenant, agrees to evict tenant if so directed by strata corp, etc) therefore it requires a signature. So far the paper form is a real headache both for the building manager and for condo owners (many of whom are out of town).

This is in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Thanks.

posted by wutangclan to law & government (4 answers total)

Let me clarify that it is the SUBMISSION of forms that we would like to electronificatify. The form is already available as a PDF to be printed out, signed and scanned/faxed, but even that seems to be too much to ask of people.

If there is a legally binding way for peeps to fill out this form entirely in a web-browser, without ever having to put pen-to-paper, that is what we are looking for.
posted by wutangclan at 11:00 AM on November 21, 2012

I'm not too familiar with Canada, but the UN has a model law - the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce. In general, electronic signatures can be binding as long as they constitute "an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record." It looks like this is the relevant law for Canada: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-8.6/. Further, here are Canada's Secure Electronic Signature Regulations.
posted by eenagy at 11:26 AM on November 21, 2012

DocuSign's digital signature service is legal for real estate transactions in Canada (as well as all 50 US states).
posted by RichardP at 2:29 PM on November 21, 2012

echosign comes to mind ... It's owned by Adobe, so should work well with the existing document
posted by jannw at 1:26 AM on November 22, 2012