DELZAP CONSTRUCTION LIMITED ACT, 1996
CONTENTS
Wednesday 26 June 1996
Delzap Construction Limited Act, 1996, Bill Pr62, Mr Stockwell
Chris Stockwell, MPP
Hercules Faga, president, Delzap Construction Ltd
City of Kingston Act, 1996, Bill Pr59, Mr Gerretsen
Sandra Pupatello, MPP
Norman Jackson, solicitor, city of Kingston
Doug Ritchie, managing director, Business Improvement Area of Kingston
STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND PRIVATE BILLS
Chair / Président: Barrett, Toby (Norfolk PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Smith, Bruce (Middlesex PC)
*Barrett, Toby (Norfolk PC)
*Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South / -Sud ND)
*Boushy, Dave (Sarnia PC)
*Hastings, John (Etobicoke-Rexdale PC)
O'Toole, John R. (Durham East / -Est PC)
*Pettit, Trevor (Hamilton Mountain PC)
*Pouliot, Gilles (Lake Nipigon / Lac-Nipigon ND)
*Pupatello, Sandra (Windsor-Sandwich L)
Rollins, E. J. Douglas (Quinte PC)
*Ruprecht, Tony (Parkdale L)
Sergio, Mario (Yorkview L)
*Shea, Derwyn (High Park-Swansea PC); parliamentary assistant
to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing
*Sheehan, Frank (Lincoln PC)
*Smith, Bruce (Middlesex PC)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:
Froese, Tom (St Catharines-Brock PC) for Mr Rollins
Clerk / Greffière: Lisa Freedman
Staff / Personnel: Susan Klein, legislative counsel
The committee met at 1003 in committee room 1.
DELZAP CONSTRUCTION LIMITED ACT, 1996
Consideration of Bill Pr62, An Act to revive Delzap Construction Limited.
The Chair (Mr Toby Barrett): Good morning. Welcome. Our first order of business will be the consideration of Bill Pr62. The sponsor is MPP Chris Stockwell and I would ask Mr Stockwell for some brief comments on this bill.
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): I'm just pleased as punch to be here, Mr Chair. I want to add nothing more than to introduce the witness, Mr Hercules Faga. He'll give you a very brief background; I'm sure it won't be long.
Mr Hercules Faga: The corporation was cancelled for failure to file the notice of directors and officers in 1988. At that time the notice of the change of the failure to file went to former solicitors for the corporation, who weren't acting. My address was incorrect on the notice. We found out some time last year that the charter had been cancelled. We've now brought this application because the company holds major assets it cannot deal with. Therefore, to continue its activity it requires revival of the corporation.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Faga. Are there any other interested parties in the room? Seeing none, I would ask our parliamentary assistant to the Minister for Municipal Affairs and Housing, Mr Shea, for comments on behalf of the government.
Mr Derwyn Shea (High Park-Swansea): The government has no objection to this bill. There is, as members know, just one correction, and that involves the preamble. Where currently it reads "1987," it should read "1988." That's the only change that ought to take place.
Mr Stockwell: That's an amendment.
The Chair: At this point we now entertain questions from members of the committee.
Mr Tony Ruprecht (Parkdale): I've looked at the revival of Delzap Construction and, to be quite honest, the reason I'm supporting this without any question is because Mr Stockwell, who's supporting this, looked at it very carefully, I'm sure, studied it in detail so there would be no objection from our side of the House.
Mr Stockwell: What bill number is it? Gee, thanks, Tony.
Mr Gilles Pouliot (Lake Nipigon): I too will echo the sentiment of my distinguished colleague Mr Ruprecht. Who is not to believe the sponsor, Mr Stockwell, when he says there is no other place he would rather be this morning, that he was pleased to be here?
It's a long time -- 1987. I see the applicant's address is given as c/o 137 Langstaff Road. Do you reside there, sir?
Mr Faga: No, I reside in Etobicoke.
Mr Stockwell: The city of immaculate lawns.
Mr Pouliot: I don't wish to pry into one's affairs. I see that you are in the construction business, obviously. Not to liquidate -- this is not a facilitator. Do you intend to do some construction?
Mr Faga: No. The company is active and holds property. We were attempting to renegotiate a mortgage last year and we failed to do so because of that. In addition, when we filed our returns, it was the first year they failed to accept the returns because of the fact that the charter had been cancelled, but they had accepted them in the prior years, which we found a little unusual. It created a bit of a problem, as you can imagine.
Mr Pouliot: I want to wish you well. Thank you.
The Chair: Any further questions from members of the committee? Are members ready to vote?
Shall sections 1 through 3 carry? Carried.
Mr Bruce Smith (Middlesex): I would like to move an amendment to the preamble, please, in response to the parliamentary assistant's comments.
I move that the preamble of the bill be amended by striking out "1987" in the seventh line and substituting "1988."
The Chair: Shall this amendment to the preamble carry? Carried.
Shall the preamble, as amended, carry? Carried.
Shall the title carry? Carried.
Shall the bill carry? Carried.
Shall I report this bill, as amended, to the House? Agreed.
I declare this order of business closed.
Thank you, Mr Faga and Mr Stockwell.
Mr Stockwell: Thank you, Mr Chair, and all my friends and you too, Tony.
The Chair: For everyone's information, the applicants for the next order of business have not arrived yet. We will adjourn for five minutes.
The committee recessed from 1009 to 1025.
CITY OF KINGSTON ACT, 1996
Consideration of Bill Pr59, An Act respecting the City of Kingston.
The Chair: Our second order of business is Bill Pr59. Our sponsor is MPP Pupatello, substituting for MPP Gerretsen. Our applicants are now at the witness table, and I would ask Mrs Pupatello for comments.
Mrs Sandra Pupatello (Windsor-Sandwich): First, I'd like to tell the committee that John Gerretsen would be here today. Unfortunately, his father passed away over the weekend and he is still in Kingston. We're expecting him to be back soon. I thought the committee members would like to know that.
Second, we'd like to thank the gentlemen for coming up this morning, fast off the train to the committee. I'd like to introduce Norman Jackson, the city solicitor, and Doug Ritchie, the managing director of the Business Improvement Area of Kingston. They'll describe the bill.
Mr Norman Jackson: Thank you for waiting for us and showing us the courtesy. Sorry that Mr Gerretsen isn't here. The funeral for his father was yesterday.
Ladies and gentlemen, this bill emanates from a request that the city be able to deal with litter, particularly in its downtown area. A number of years ago, our business improvement area asked that we develop a mechanism to deal with improvements to the downtown dealing with, first, snow and ice, and second, litter in the summer. We were able to deal with snow and ice under the existing provisions of the Municipal Act. We have passed a bylaw which requires merchants to help maintain the sidewalks in front of their premises for snow and ice, and that has worked fairly well.
We've worked hand in glove with the business improvement area, of which Mr Ritchie is the managing director. It was their idea, in part, that we apply the bylaw just to the downtown area. Most of their members are very responsible and would like to see an active part by the membership in maintaining the area, and they have asked that there be some teeth so that if some members are delinquent the majority wouldn't feel that from the public. We have a system dealing with snow removal and maintenance that the merchants take part in. We work through newsletters with our business improvement area committees and Mr Ritchie. If worse comes to worst, we may have to send somebody a bill if they're delinquent.
We propose the same thing with litter. We're looking at getting legislation which would apply in the summer as it does in the winter. If there's litter in front of a merchant's premises, we'll be asking them to take an active role in picking it up, particularly when it's off-hours, when the city crews are not on. The business improvement area in Kingston is very active. It draws very well, everything from boaters to different types of tourism. It's one of our biggest industries. We get complaints from time to time from visitors that we need to keep the area clean. We want to do that.
The business improvement area wants to assist, so we have developed legislation which would allow the municipality to ask the merchants to do it, and they are prepared to do it on the whole. Mr Ritchie is here to speak as well to that. If somebody doesn't do it, they would receive a notice and then, if necessary, the city might have to do it and send them a bill, as we do for snow removal. It's fairly simple. It's similar to legislation that the city of Ottawa now has. We don't want to make a bigger issue of it. We haven't had to charge a lot of merchants for the snow provisions, which are already in the Municipal Act, but we really want provisions so that some people will know that there is a legislative basis for what we want to do, pure and simple.
Mr Doug Ritchie: We have, as Mr Jackson said, a very active BIA. We already have in place a BIA worker regarding street maintenance, a staff person who sweeps the street. We have a communications program that encourages individual businesses to do their share. We have surveyed the membership and they have indicated that they want more responsibility placed on themselves in terms of street litter. We have a program in place already that we call the Golden Broom awards, and we have recipients annually etc. I guess this would be finally adding a little bit of a stick to go along with the various carrots we're using, so that when there was that very small number of delinquent people who don't carry their fair weight, we'd have an additional tool to encourage them to do so.
The Chair: Seeing no other interested parties in the room, I would ask our parliamentary assistant, MPP Derwyn Shea, for comments on behalf of the government.
Mr Shea: Municipal affairs is quite neutral on this. The fact is that as Mr Jackson has pointed out, other jurisdictions have this, particularly through the boulevard provisions, Ottawa being one, Nepean being another. We've dealt with this in several other instances before this committee, even in the past year. While this matter will be addressed as part of municipal reform, we think -- at least certainly we hope -- it would be appropriate for this to be before the committee as it is now.
The Chair: We now call for questions from the committee.
Mr John Hastings (Etobicoke-Rexdale): Mr Ritchie, how many members are in the business improvement organization?
Mr Ritchie: Over 700; maybe about 740 right now.
Mr Hastings: How many of the businesses in your BIA object or are lackadaisical or resistant to this? Obviously your request for this indicates that there must be some component of the membership, as in most BIAs, who are unhappy campers about paying the additional taxes they do for where their business is located -- or am I completely off base on this? -- given a couple of BIAs I've been involved in before, where the issues were a little different but there were a few unhappy campers and they were saying there wasn't a lot of communication about a number of issues. Is this different?
Mr Ritchie: I think we have a pretty successful BIA with a strong sense of ownership by a strong majority of the members. We've received no objections to our BIA operating levy. I don't think we've received any in the last 13 years that I've been working there. Certainly this particular bill was well advertised in the city. I received no objections to it.
We have 19 on a large board of management of the BIA. Four of them are city councillors, but 15 are representatives of the business community who are elected at our annual general meeting. They are chosen by the business community itself, and then of course, as per the Municipal Act, after they're elected they're then appointed by city council. I think a fairly representative group has reviewed this bill and is in favour of it.
Mr Hastings: How many verbal objections have you had from your membership regarding the new provisions?
Mr Ritchie: I've had no objections at all regarding this.
Mr Hastings: In writing or verbally.
Mr Ritchie: Correct.
Mr Jackson: I might say that the city had one objection. It was from a residential property owner who was concerned whether we would apply it to a residential area, but we're not asking for that power.
Mr Pouliot: Our party is totally supportive of the proposal. I certainly understand the dilemma here -- the precursor, the sign of things to come. We know where transfer payments are heading. It's the kind of decision that you have to make. We want to wish you well and a good journey back to historical Kingston. I sympathize with you. I had 10 years previous to this in a very small town, municipal and regional, at a time when things were better, when the responsibilities were under a different light; for instance, we were getting our share of transfer payments. But since last year we've seen a volte-face, so I sympathize with you and I encourage you in your endeavour.
Mr Tom Froese (St Catharines-Brock): I don't sit on this committee regularly. I don't understand why you're even here. You've got, obviously from what you've said and what I've read, a bylaw that's either been passed by the city or about to be passed. You've got agreement on it. Why is this coming forward to this committee if you've got agreement within the community to do it and you've got a bylaw passed? I don't understand what the problem is or why we're even discussing this. It can all be dealt with in the city of Kingston.
Mrs Pupatello: Perhaps our parliamentary assistant would address that issue.
Mr Shea: We were just musing on that because, as I'm sure the member knows, an agreement with a com munity may be a mutual understanding but it still has no articular basis in law. That's precisely what's being asked for here, that legal empowerment be given as has been given to other municipalities.
Mr Trevor Pettit (Hamilton Mountain): I gather that if you need this, there must be some problem now. Is there trouble now with keeping the streets clean in the improvement areas?
Mr Jackson: Kingston is very busy, sir, in the summer with tourism. As I was alluding to, on Sunday evenings after a busy weekend, and sometimes at other times, there's litter on the streets when the city crews are not on.
Mr Pettit: But obviously some of these businesses are not complying at present or you wouldn't need this.
Mr Jackson: At present, there is no requirement that they comply. There's a request that they do their part as good citizens and keep the street in front of their premises clean, but they don't have to do that.
Mr Pettit: They obviously, in the view of the city, to a certain extent are not doing this and, by extension, therefore you need something to force them to comply? Otherwise you wouldn't need it, if they were doing it. Is that it?
Mr Jackson: Yes, true.
The Chair: Any further questions from the committee? Are the members of the committee ready to vote?
Shall sections 1 through 5 carry? Carried.
Shall the preamble carry? Carried.
Shall the title carry? Carried.
Shall the bill carry? Carried.
Shall I report this bill to the House? Agreed.
I wish to thank Mr Jackson, Mr Ritchie and Mrs Pupatello.
This committee now stands adjourned to the call of the Chair.
The committee adjourned at 1039.