Red Tape Reduction Act,
2000, Bill 119, Mr Hodgson /Loi de
2000 visant à réduire les formalités
administratives, projet de loi 119, M.
Hodgson
Centre for Equality
Rights in Accommodation,
Ms Jennifer Ramsay
Mr Robert McPherson; Mr
Dave Callaghan; Mr Gordon McLeod
South Etobicoke
Community Legal Services,
Mr Kenneth Hale
Greater Toronto
Tenants' Association,
Mr Paul York
STANDING COMMITTEE ON
GENERAL GOVERNMENT
Chair /
Président
Mr Steve Gilchrist
(Scarborough East / -Est PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Présidente
Mrs Julia Munro (York North / -Nord PC)
Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk PC)
Mrs Marie Bountrogianni (Hamilton Mountain L)
Mr Ted Chudleigh (Halton PC)
Mr Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North / -Nord PC)
Mr Steve Gilchrist (Scarborough East / -Est PC)
Mr Dave Levac (Brant L)
Mr Rosario Marchese (Trinity-Spadina ND)
Mrs Julia Munro (York North / -Nord PC)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr David Caplan (Don Valley East / -Est L)
Mr Joseph Spina (Brampton Centre / -Centre PC)
Clerk / Greffière
Ms Anne Stokes
The committee met at
1532 in committee room 1.
SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT
The Chair (Mr Steve
Gilchrist): I call the committee to order. Welcome,
everyone, to the first day of hearings on Bill 119, An Act to
reduce red tape, to promote good government through better
management of Ministries and agencies and to improve customer
service by amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two
new Acts.
Interjections.
The Chair: I
ask people to come to order. Rosie. Keep it down, please. The
first order of business will be the adoption of the subcommittee
report.
Mr Dave Levac
(Brant): The standing committee on general government
subcommittee on committee business: I respectfully submit this
report of the subcommittee to the general committee.
Your subcommittee met on
Thursday, October 26, 2000, to consider business before the
committee and recommends the following:
(1) That the committee meet
on Monday, October 30, 2000, and Wednesday, November 1, 2000, in
Toronto to hold public hearings into Bill 119, An Act to reduce
red tape, to promote good government through better management of
Ministries and agencies and to improve customer service by
amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two new
Acts.
(2) That clause-by-clause
consideration of the bill be undertaken on Wednesday, November
15, 2000.
(3) That an advertisement be
placed on the Ont.Parl channel and the Legislative Assembly Web
site. The clerk is authorized to place the ads immediately.
(4) That each caucus will
provide the clerk with a list of names of those wishing to make
presentations to the committee and that the Chair and clerk will
schedule witnesses from these lists and the list of names that
have contacted the clerk directly.
(5) That witnesses be given a
deadline of Wednesday, November 1, 2000, at noon to make their
request to appear before the committee.
(6) That witnesses be given a
deadline of Tuesday. November 14, 2000, at 5 pm for written
submissions.
(7) That witnesses be
allotted 10 minutes for each presentation.
(8) That amendments should be
received by the clerk of the committee by Friday, November 10,
2000, at 5 pm.
(9) That the clerk of the
committee, in consultation with the Chair, be authorized prior to
the passage of the report on the subcommittee to commence making
any preliminary arrangements necessary to facilitate the
committee's proceedings.
So moved.
The Chair:
It has been moved by Mr Levac. Any discussion of the subcommittee
report?
Seeing none, all those in
favour of its adoption? It is adopted.
RED TAPE REDUCTION ACT, 2000 / LOI DE 2000 VISANT
À RÉDUIRE LES FORMALITÉS ADMINISTRATIVES
Consideration of Bill 119, An
Act to reduce red tape, to promote good government through better
management of Ministries and agencies and to improve customer
service by amending or repealing certain Acts and by enacting two
new Acts / Projet de loi 119, Loi visant à réduire les
formalités administratives, à promouvoir un bon
gouvernement par une meilleure gestion des ministères et
organismes et à améliorer le service à la
clientèle en modifiant ou abrogeant certaines lois et en
édictant deux nouvelles lois.
CENTRE FOR EQUALITY RIGHTS IN ACCOMMODATION
The Chair:
That takes us to our first presentation. That will be from the
Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, Ms Jennifer Ramsay.
Good afternoon and welcome to the committee. We have 10 minutes
for your presentation.
Ms Jennifer
Ramsay: Hello. My name is Jennifer Ramsay. I'm from the
Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation. I'm the coordinator
for the early intervention project at the centre. It is known as
CERA for short. It is a long name.
It is a provincial human
rights and housing agency founded in 1987. I'm here to talk to
you about the amendments to the Tenant Protection Act,
legislation that affects 1.5 million households in Ontario.
Before I begin my main
remarks I feel compelled to comment on the process of these
hearings. Bill 119 contains amendments to over 70 pieces of
legislation, and yet hearings were called only Friday to set
aside two days in which to
get public input about everything from dog owners' liability to
conservation. It is certainly efficient, but along the way true
public consultation and effective democracy seem to have been
dispensed with.
Efficiency is something this
government takes great pride in, and the operations of the
Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal are a testament to that
commitment. As of September 30, the tribunal has very efficiently
processed 46,104 applications to evict. In that same nine-month
period, almost 30,000 of those eviction applications were granted
by default order. That is, there was no hearing and the tenants
were evicted by tribunal adjudicators, based solely on the
landlord's word. Thirty thousand households in nine months were
ordered removed from their homes with the stroke of a pen with no
opportunity to have their say. These tenants were charged, tried
and convicted in absentia. It is efficient, but it is
barbaric.
One amendment to the Tenant
Protection Act has called for even greater efficiency in the
process of rendering people homeless. Trained adjudicators will
no longer be required to sign off on those default orders.
Instead, clerks or, as they are referred to in the amendments,
"default order officers," would have that task. The default rate
has already risen from 56% in 1998 to 64% as of last month.
According to documents that were partially released to CERA under
the freedom-of-information act, the tribunal's goal is to secure
a 70% default rate.
Last Wednesday, in response
to questions about the amendments, the minister said, "We're for
the tenants who pay their rents on this side of the House. We're
for the tenants who are law-abiding and deserve quiet enjoyment
on this side of the House. What side is that party and that
member on?"
Well, I'll tell you what side
I'm on: the side that values fairness and due process over
efficiency and expediency, the side that believes removing
someone from their home is a profoundly serious act with
devastating consequences, an act that can only be carried out
after careful deliberation by people qualified to make such a
decision. What the minister seems to be saying is that someone
who has not paid their rent on the first of the month is not in
any need of protection because they have crossed the line. How
does the minister feel about a farmer who misses one month's
mortgage payment? Has that farmer too crossed to the other side?
Well, not according to the banks. They usually try to find out
the circumstances before hauling in a bulldozer.
Mr Rosario Marchese
(Trinity-Spadina): Not always.
Ms Ramsay:
Usually. I said "usually," not always.
What I can tell you, after 14
months of communicating with 500 tenants a week, is that the
minister's remarks are patently offensive and bordering on
hateful. Through the early intervention project, an eviction and
homelessness prevention program-and there are excerpts attached;
you should have handouts of that-CERA has heard from thousands of
tenants about their experience of the tribunal. There are a host
of reasons why a tenant might need the protection of the law and,
yes, 80% of eviction applications are for non-payment of rent.
Assuming the landlord is telling the truth about non-payment,
don't you want to know what arrangements the tenant tried to make
to repay? Don't you want to know why the tenant has not paid?
Could it be they were foolishly withholding a portion of their
rent because they'd gone without hot water for six months? Could
it be that they had to fly to a distant city to bury a parent and
had discussed the whole situation in advance with the on-site
superintendent only to find the owner feels differently? Could it
be that after living there for 20 years without incident, the
landlord has suddenly decided to evict them for persistent late
payment where, coincidentally, the tenant's neighbour is paying
$1,200 and she is still paying $850?
1540
It's no secret that the
legislation has provided an incentive to evict, as vacated units
can be rented at maximum rents. Any application can be made. The
question is, what does the tribunal do with that application? Is
justice served when the tribunal issues a default order to evict
for $100 in arrears six days after the landlord files the
application? Is there no difference between someone who prefers
to make their BMW payment rather than pay rent and a widow whose
world and finances are temporarily upside down? Ironically, if
that first tenant misses a payment on his car, the car will not
be taken away until a series of letters, phone calls and attempts
at renegotiated payments have been pursued. The widow, the family
where illness has struck, the student who has missed OSAP
payments or the man whose job was declared redundant is given no
such opportunity under the Tenant Protection Act. The amendments
to the act offer none of the real protections that have been
suggested to the minister and the chair and tribunal staff time
and time again. These amendments further punish and demonize
tenants.
A few days after the
legislation was introduced, the tribunal sent out letters with
the latest efficiency enhancement, the forms merge program to
"address the needs of clients who serve notices or file
applications with the tribunal in large volume." Each year, the
tribunal's efficient machine churns out enough eviction orders to
fill the SkyDome to capacity. The expedient processing of those
evictions will probably result in catching the "tenants from
hell," but will also shatter the lives of tens of thousands of
people who no longer have a place to call home. Where do those
people go and how much does it cost us economically and socially?
Some people, if they're lucky, will slump on the couch of a
sympathetic friend or relative. The alternative is the hostel
system. This year, in Toronto alone, hostel services estimates
that 6,000 of their guests will be children.
In conclusion, I would ask
this committee to remove the amendments to the Tenant Protection
Act from Bill 119. Thoughtful and substantial changes need to be
made to this legislation. The amendments currently on the table
are an insult to all 1.5 million tenant households and an
affront to Canadians'
notions of justice. The entire act requires a thorough legal and
constitutional review before it can be brought back as a
stand-alone bill.
The Chair:
Thank you. That leaves us about two minutes for questions.
Rotation will start with Mr Caplan.
Mr David Caplan (Don
Valley East): Ms Ramsay, thank you very much for your
presentation. I thought it was very thoughtful and quite
excellent.
You mentioned earlier that
there have been suggestions made "to the minister and the chair
and tribunal staff" time and again for changes to the Tenant
Protection Act which would provide in fact real protections.
Maybe you could enlighten us all with some of the suggestions you
have made for strengthening the act to protect tenants.
Ms Ramsay:
Sure. One of the suggestions we made early on was that the
Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal communicate directly with
tenants. What we've found in our project is that almost a third
of the tenants are not receiving copies of the notice of
application. Of course, the other problem is that once they
receive them, they don't understand them, but that's another
issue. That was one of the recommendations that was made based on
our research and our interviews with tenants.
Obviously the forms are
confusing. That doesn't require a legislative amendment, but
we've now heard from the tribunal for two years that changes will
be made to the notice of hearing, and they haven't been made.
There are a number of
situations that we come across quite regularly called
"retaliatory applications" where a tenant has, for example,
applied to the tribunal for abatement because of repair issues or
because of harassment issues. Very often, right on the heels of
that, the landlord will make an application to the tribunal for
eviction. There's a pretty clear correlation between those
things. The tribunal doesn't acknowledge there is such a
correlation. There are a number of changes that need to be made
in the act that would allow these cases to go directly to a
hearing, so the tenant can then come forward and say, "Look, this
is the sequence of events that happened."
I thought it was ironic that
the only change that was made in terms of the amendments was to
allow people who'd been accused of drug use to have a hearing,
and that's OK. People who use drugs should also get to go to a
hearing but what about the rest? I couldn't understand why that
was. It was absolutely clear that people on drugs needed to have
their say. I thought, well, what about people who are called
"persistently late" and people who are saying they haven't paid,
even though it could be an administrative error?
It's clear there are a number
of different kinds-persistent late payment and personal use
applications. It happens all the time. It's a fairly easy thing
to say, "I actually need it for me or my family," and then if
there's no hearing, there's no substantive proof and the tenant's
gone. I think a hearing might clear up some of that. Those are
some of the suggestions.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, Ms Ramsay. We appreciate your taking the
time to come and start off our hearings here today.
ROBERT MCPHERSON, DAVE CALLAGHAN, GORDON MCLEOD
The Chair:
Our next presentation will be from Mr Robert McPherson.
Mr Robert
McPherson: Mr Chairman, may I ask a question before I
start?
The Chair:
Certainly.
Mr
McPherson: The next three people, myself, Mr Callaghan
and Mr McLeod, are speaking on the same thing. It would be more
expedient for us all to speak together and then for questions to
be asked at the end of all three of us. Just so we might answer
some questions before-
The Chair:
Any objections from any of the committee members? That's fine.
Your two colleagues are free to join you.
Mr Levac:
Just a clarification then, Mr Chairman-
The Chair:
We'll divide the speaking time equally.
Mr Levac:
OK. Thank you.
Mr Joseph Spina
(Brampton Centre): I'm just trying to understand the
timing of this, and it's in response really to David's comment.
How are we timing this?
The Chair:
Instead of three, I'm assuming from Mr McPherson's request that
instead of three 10-minute submissions, they want to combine
their submissions.
Mr Spina:
Oh, OK.
The Chair:
And only because we have a gap afterwards, I'm prepared to do
that. I'm not prepared to have this as a precedent. Normally each
stands on their own, but because there is a gap-
Mr Marchese:
For efficiency purposes.
Mr
McPherson: Yes. That way, before you ask me questions,
he might answer them and so and so forth.
Mr Marchese:
We understand it.
Mr Spina:
OK. So we're looking at about 30 minutes-
The Chair:
We're probably down to about 28 and a half now, but away we
go.
Mr Spina:
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that.
The Chair:
Mr McPherson, please proceed.
Mr
McPherson: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name
is Robert McPherson. I'm here today to talk about the proposal in
Bill 119, the reduction of red tape, to dismantle the Theatres
Act of Ontario, specifically the removal of projection
licensing.
It seems strange to me on two
counts that this is being done: (1) Why were the people with
licences never asked for any input into the removal of them? (2)
I cannot see any way this helps companies cut "red tape" to make
doing business easier.
I'm a member of local 173 of
the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. I
passed my examination for
a licence in August 1981 and joined the union in March 1982. I
have been employed at the same location, the Bloor Cinema, since
September 1981. To pass my exam, I had to apprentice under a
licensed projectionist for 1,000 hours with no pay. The idea of
removing projectionists' licences is not new. It has been an
ongoing battle with the theatre companies; in fact, in 1991 and
1994 the same questions were raised. Our union responded with a
brief to the Honourable Marilyn Churley, and at that time it was
decided to keep licensing for the welfare of the public.
A few things have changed
since 1991, but most things are the same. The projectors,
delivery systems and automations are the same as in 1991. The
things that have changed: the theatres are getting larger, up to
30 screens, and public safety is a greater risk. How, you say?
Well, let me tell you.
A projectionist's booth can
be a very dangerous place. The light source in a projector is a
xenon ball. It is a xenon gas and a quartz bulb under immense
pressure, so much so that clothing that is provided for their
handling is almost bulletproof. To strike or light this bulb, a
50,000-volt jolt is sent through it. Once lit, it runs at about
100 amps. There are transformers, rectifiers, exhaust fans,
projectors, sound racks, spotlights, slide machines, automations
and more. This is just in one theatre and they all require some
kind of electricity. Multiply this by 10, 12, 30 screens and the
danger is much greater.
There are, at any one time,
between one and 30 projectors running. These are machines with
gears, belts and many moving parts. As part of their birthday
parties, some young children were allowed into the projection
booth to see how it worked. At the request of our union, the
companies stopped such practices because of safety concerns. As
you can see, there are many dangers in a projection booth.
Another I would like to talk
about is film or the new polyester Mylar film. This film is
indestructible. This film cannot break and is supposed to be
safety film, which means it does not burn. This was proven wrong
last year when a projectionist in Kitchener walked into his
already running booth and discovered the film burning away in the
projector. With his quick action the fire was put out.
1550
The other claim, that the
film will not break, is very true and it leads to more dangers.
This is a trailer for the Blair Witch Project. This is the new
stuff that is out nowadays. I'll show you, it will not break. It
shouldn't anyway. It stretches before it breaks. This is the old
stuff we used to use. You can just break it. You should be able
to break it with your fingers, but it breaks much more readily
and, as you can see, easily. I'll clean that up.
It has been said that if you
wrap this around car bumpers, you could tow one of the cars.
Please note that this film runs at a foot and a half per second
or 90 feet a minute. There are cases of film jams where entire
projection systems have been pulled over, platters dragged across
the floor and rollers ripped out of the wall. Can you imagine if
your arm or your hand got wrapped up in this and, God forbid,
around your neck?
As you can see, theatres can
be very dangerous for the untrained, the unlicensed and the
public if the Theatres Act is dismantled. The Theatres Act is in
place for public safety, not to defer business. Safety is my
number one concern. Remember, the new Cineplex Odeon at Warden
and Eglinton has a capacity of 10,000 people a day. Is their
safety not first and foremost?
Mr Dave
Callaghan: I'm Dave Callaghan. I have something to
address besides the safety issues. I'll start with a couple of
remarks here.
It can be easy to conclude
that simply because we are living in a high-tech day and age that
the film projectionist must surely also be superfluous by now,
along with a number of other occupations from the past that have
been replaced by new technologies. Perhaps the government
believes this idea is true. It may be simply a case of
housekeeping for them, eliminating from the books regulations
that are considered unnecessary once the occupation they govern
is thought to be obsolete.
Cinema Paradiso isn't a
megaplex, but on the other hand, reality is more than the
megaplex. I believe I can demonstrate that this idea of
obsolescence is incorrect, since it is based on an incomplete
understanding of the present-day exhibition industry. I can begin
with a profile of this industry during the past decade in
Ontario, highlighting the ongoing role served by film
projectionists meeting the needs of this industry.
For the most part, the
participants in the industry fall into one of two diametrically
different camps. I can conclude with a recommendation based on
this difference that I believe can better serve the real needs of
today's industry than Bill 119.
The fundamental way that
things fall out is that there are the major theatre chains, and
they have names like AMC, Famous Players, Loews Cineplex.
Everyone is familiar with those. But there are other players in
this industry as well. There are small businesses that operate
independent theatres, like the Bloor Cinema, the various festival
cinemas, the Fox, the Revue, the Music Hall and so on. Besides
these small businesses, there's another group in the industry
that are, if you like, the film distributors and the head offices
of the various exhibitors. They operate screening rooms where
there are certain issues that I will explain in a moment.
The final element of the
industry are the various film festivals which, as each year goes
by-25 years ago we had the Toronto International Film Festival
and this year it seems every week there's a new one: the British
Film Festival, the Jewish Film Festival, the Italian Film
Festival, HotDocs, Inside Out-it goes on and on.
The projection concerns of
the last three groups I mentioned, the small businesses, the film
festivals and the screening rooms, are quite different from what
is required by the major chains. The consequences of projection
not working properly in these other situations are quite
different from what happens from a business perspective, even where you look at the
consequences for those major chains. For example, a small
business may have one screen. If there's a projection problem and
they can't run the show for some reason, that's a loss of 100% of
their receipts for the day. A major chain has hundreds of screens
and if one screen goes down, that's not even 1% of the day's
receipts.
You could look at the issue
of projection problems as well in a major cinema chain where they
base their business on many repeat screenings of a film, usually
over a minimum two-week period. If a screen goes down, they can
issue a pass for another day and someone can come back. There's
lots of time to do that.
Imagine the situation in a
screening room. Screening rooms are operated to promote the
industry. This is where the media may go to watch the movie to be
able to write their review. If there's a projection problem and
they can't see the film, they may miss a deadline and then it
comes time, the film opens and everything is concentrated on that
opening weekend, so the film's distributor stands to lose that
review, which is part of the promotional campaign for the film on
the opening weekend that it be there. The box office receipts on
the opening weekend are about as good as the entire run gets, so
every review is a factor in maximizing box office and time is of
the essence. They don't have time to come back necessarily.
Film festivals are somewhat
like screening rooms. They have a limited number of screenings
and these have become marketplaces now. A producer can face
several possible financial losses resulting from a lost
screening. It can be everything from the initial sale and
arranging distribution of the film to marketing and promotion of
the film to the wider public. If it doesn't play at the festival,
what might have been a prizewinner at the festival, which would
be part of that marketing campaign, suddenly what happens is that
no one sees it and it doesn't even qualify.
As well, one of the things
that happens at the film festivals is that the filmmakers
actually attend. It's not like the main chain theatres where
mostly it's just the public and they have somewhat lax standards
in what they might be willing to accept in the presentation. But
the people in the industry demand the top performance of their
pictures done to the true industry standards. My argument would
be that in all these situations, if you look at the resources of
the major companies, they have technical people on standby, they
have a certain amount of automation in the systems and they would
argue, "Why do we need people who are trained as craft
projectionists, with apprenticeship and all the rest, when all we
need is someone to thread the projector?" I almost think that
their argument is not that there isn't a place for this but that
"There isn't one that we can use."
The professional
projectionist's licence should represent and should be proof of a
professional qualification because it did involve, up until
September 28, 1995, an actual apprenticeship. There was a
three-member panel of the Ontario Labour Relations Board that
heard all these same arguments and they issued a written ruling
on that date that said in section 17 of that ruling: "It is
apparent to us that the licensing provision in the Theatres Act
is not a frivolous requirement. The process by which
projectionists are licensed is not a pro forma one but has the
hallmarks of acquiring a trade or craft."
Outside of the major
chains, all the other elements in the industry, because of
various things, like it's a small business. You can't pay
technical people to sit by to help you out; you rely on the
services of a professional craft projectionist. The film
festivals, the screening rooms, it's all the same; these are all
manual operations, absolutely no automation. Sometimes, still to
this day-on October 19 this year I worked at the Loews Cineplex
screening room which has two machines, manual changeovers, and
the projectors are probably about 30 years old. That's common for
these screening rooms. So the idea of being able to function as a
competent craft professional is still here today.
People might say, "Well,
what about the digital cinema that's out there?" I would say this
is so premature, with all the issues the industry has to resolve.
There are two proposed systems that could do digital cinema. The
entire industry hasn't even settled on one yet. So any company
that goes out and says, "We're going to invest in this," at the
cost of these systems, that's one of the issues to work out. I
understand it's roughly $100,000 to buy one of these systems. So
to convert a 10-screen theatre, it's a $1-million outlay. Someone
is going to have to come up with this, and that they haven't
worked out. So digital cinema is a non-starter at this time, and
I believe it is still necessary to have professional people.
I can make some
recommendations here and then I have one final matter to bring
up. Given the entire scope of the industry and the course of this
industry for the foreseeable future, I believe it's premature and
excessive to eliminate projectionists' licences as a proof of
professional competency at this time. It's plain that this
industry functions in two ways that are so different that it
might appear that a single solution cannot satisfy both sides.
Nonetheless, I believe a solution exists that recognizes reality
and still works for everyone involved.
A solution would be to
amend the Theatres Act in the following way: on the one hand
maintain apprenticeship, an examination and licence for the craft
professional within those elements of the industry where
professional competency still has meaning and value. You can also
then amend theatre licensing to recognize what is happening
anyway with regard to the employees of the major chains. Those
employees are not expected to practise projection as a craft, and
for the limited purpose of little more than threading a
projector, it would be permitted as a condition of the theatre
licence that they don't have to have apprenticeships,
examinations and licensing. That would seem to me to solve the
entire situation.
I'll mention one other
issue. It's a condition under the current Theatres Act: "No
person shall exhibit, distribute or offer to distribute or cause
to be exhibited, distributed or offered for distribution in
Ontario any film that has not been approved by the board."
1600
It's also under the section
about projectionists that "the director may suspend the licence
of a projectionist if he or she has contravened this act or the
regulations." What that in essence says is that if something
shows up at the theatre that doesn't have a censor band or
certificate or whatever you want to call it, it should not be
run. If I were to run it and someone came in and inspected the
theatre, I could not be working tomorrow. I could be suspended
for that.
On the night of October 14
there were two screenings: Pay It Forward, a Warner Bros picture,
and Bamboozled, which is a release by Alliance. Both of those
pictures arrived for two-for-one sneak previews and there was a
certificate with each of those movies. Unfortunately, there was a
trailer on each one where there was no certificate whatever. What
are we to make of the idea of eliminating the licence and the
penalty, which is suspension of the licence and the ability of a
person to engage in a livelihood? That seems to me to be an
effective way to monitor compliance with the classification
system. What can I say? No certificate? Who might even bother to
do this? I know I could lose my licence. If there's no penalty,
part of the monitoring of this is being eliminated, and I don't
know if that has really been considered.
Just one final example of
what can come up as far as practising as a craft professional.
This past weekend I worked as part of the Access Japan 2000
cultural event sponsored by the Japanese consulate. What I had to
do just this past weekend was run a film print that must have
been at least 20 years old. It took me longer to revise that
print and prepare it for running than it did to actually watch
it. This was a print that even had a wet splice in it. In the old
days, that was how you did it. It went to tape splicing. Here's a
print that I'm expected to be able to run, and I say that is a
craft professional type of responsibility. It should be part of
my competency to do that, and yesterday I ran 20-year-old film.
The people who are trained by Famous Players or Cineplex Odeon
are not competent to do this. What we're doing is eliminating a
job qualification as well.
Mr Gordon
McLeod: My name is Gordon McLeod. I'm the director of
engineering and technical services for Entertainment Equipment
Corp. We're based in Los Angeles, Washington, Toronto and
Buffalo. We're the fourth-largest service corporation in North
America servicing cinemas. I'm also on the committee of the
SMPTE, which is the Society of Motion Picture and Television
Engineers, and we have finally released to the industry a
training manual for the craft of projection. It is approximately
three and a half inches thick.
At the recent trade show
called Show East in Orlando, Florida, we spent over 12½
hours meeting with Eastman Kodak and Dolby Laboratories to try to
draw up standards, because one of the problems that is happening
across the world now is that equipment being installed in
theatres has a requirement on it from the Underwriters
Laboratories or CSA that it be operated by professionally trained
people only. That is stamped on the nameplate at the back, and
their installation permission from these standards organizations
is based on the fact that it will be operated by trained
professionals. If a body chooses to do away with a standard for
the training of these people, then the obligation of the
liabilities on the manufacturer's part is going to be
increased.
Presently, in Europe we're
also preparing guidelines that are going to actually have a
European standard and one licence for all of Europe for
projectionists under the current EC. It was my concern that there
is a liability that goes with this equipment, that it is designed
for professional installations only and is marked as such. A lot
of electrical authorities now are even getting concerned with
these standards being used for these large digital sound systems.
Voltages exist in them now that are fairly well lethal and
require a higher classification of wiring standards than had been
previously employed. Thank you.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, gentlemen. You've used 20 minutes of your
presentation, so that would give us about three and a third
minutes for each caucus. We'll start the rotation with Mr
Marchese.
Mr
Marchese: Were you consulted at all before these changes
were made?
Mr
McPherson: No.
Mr
Marchese: They didn't bother calling you to say, "We're
about to change something because we think it's necessary"?
Mr
McPherson: No.
Mr
Marchese: They operate that way, by the way. The
assumption that has been made with this change is that anybody
can do your job. Is that basically it?
Mr
McPherson: Yes.
Mr
Marchese: Therefore we can save some money, and if there
happens to be no union as a result, that's even better?
Mr
McPherson: Yes. Per se, getting rid of licensing I don't
think will get rid of the union, because we're very qualified to
do our job. As they presented, at their screening rooms in
Cineplex head office, Universal, they call us to run them. They
don't want their people to run them because they know they can't
do the job. They still call us to run them. What licensing does
is make sure that the people are trained to do a job.
Mr
Marchese: I understand.
Mr
McPherson: In Ontario, hairdressers have a licence, auto
mechanics-
Mr
Marchese: I understand that, Rob. I'm on your side. Why
is it that the government wants to do this, do you think? What's
the point?
Mr
McPherson: That's what I'd like to know. I have no
idea.
Mr
Marchese: The big folks who have the large screens, 10,
15, 20, whatever, they call you guys on a regular basis?
Mr
McPherson: Oh, yes. We're there all the time.
Mr
Marchese: And there are people there who can do that job
at the moment, who are managing?
Mr McPherson: There are managers.
Right now, they still train their, I call them, candy bar staff
to come up and thread the projectors and start them. But once
they've started them, and now in some of the complexes they start
by themselves, they're gone. They go downstairs, there's nobody
watching and they leave. When we're there, we are cleaning up
their messes and maintaining the equipment so nothing
happens.
Mr
Marchese: Because there are safety questions that you
raised earlier on.
Dave, you were proposing
some changes that effectively leave the situation as it is, where
you have licensing, and the big chains can keep on hiring these
guys who just have to thread. But your point is that that's not a
problem, because they keep on calling you anyway, so basically
things would be as they are. So why remove the licensing?
Mr
Callaghan: Someone in management in one of these
companies said, "We can't do the festival-type situations." They
know there's more to the job. I look at this and say, if they
want to take on the liability issues of simply training one to
thread the projector, because they're out to try and improve
their bottom line, go ahead. But to say that therefore there's no
recognition of people who have craft status would seem to me to
be going further than we need to go.
Mr
Marchese: You're also suggesting that if they do this,
it doesn't cut red tape at all but rather will create different
problems. If they go ahead with this, it will not be what they
pretend to do in the act, which is to reduce red tape to promote
good government for better management, but rather it will have
the opposite effect.
Mr McLeod:
It will involve other government levels in the safety standards
of the equipment they're installing because it's all based on a
premise that there are professional people operating it.
Mrs Julia Munro
(York North): Thank you again for coming here today to
give us some insight into this. I want to ask two questions. I'm
going to go first to Mr McPherson.
You mentioned at the
beginning that this had been done, that there had been some
initiation of possible change back in the early 1990s. I wondered
if you could explain briefly for us what motivated the
conversation at that time.
Mr
McPherson: The idea at that time-it's very simple-was to
remove licensing, therefore remove the requirement we had at the
time to become projectionists, therefore remove the union.
Presumably, there would be no more union jobs. It was the film
companies that were trying to go to the government to have it
removed so we would lose our licences so anybody could do it, and
therefore the union would be out. That was my understanding of
why it was done.
Mrs Munro:
All right. I want to come back to Mr Callaghan. You mentioned
something about, and Mr Marchese made reference to it, some kind
of amendment, because clearly what you've demonstrated here today
is the fact that your skills are very much in demand. Could we
just clarify or go over the suggestion you had for an
amendment?
Mr
Callaghan: Would you like me to just repeat it?
Mrs Munro:
If you can, or if you could just add any further explanation to
it.
1610
Mr
Callaghan: In a way, what I'm thinking about here is
that we could simply put into the law in writing what's actually
happening now in any case. As I see it, we could maintain the
existing system for those people who intend to practise this as a
craft, have a proper apprenticeship. What happened in 1996 was
that they eliminated any requirement to serve any amount of time.
So there was a licence, but to read the letter of the law, you
could have gotten a licence today and gone back after 1 o'clock
in the morning and gone back after lunch, and if you could
somehow do the test, you were considered to be capable of the
same performance on the job, to the same standard I'm capable of.
Someone could go in and get the licence in that circumstance.
I've been doing this for more than 20 years and, as I say, I was
working on film even yesterday on 20-year-old film.
I suggest that whatever
requirements there are with regard to licensing theatres, like
the exit should be such-and-such and conditions of this kind, and
they have to observe that their classifications are monitored and
so on-you don't sell restricted movie tickets to people who are
13 or whatever-another condition in there could be that this
would be permitted. There would be very limited things these
people could do. They can thread the projector and perhaps
refocus it and so on. In fact, we have language of this kind in
the current collective agreement. So we have it, and we may be
ahead of the government here. That would accommodate the needs of
the major chains, where they don't want to have to train and be,
like myself, capable as a professional; they don't need that in
their business. The other half of the business all needs it.
You could think, "We can't
find one solution here, can we?" and I'd say no, we can't. What
they do is hire people who are able to do this, and they can do
duties in the theatre, and then another duty becomes to thread
the projector, and that's basically what they're doing. If the
government were to say something like, "Tomorrow all you PhDs out
there who put in all this time, or all you medical doctors, we'll
just eliminate that licence; there's somebody who wants to open a
medical clinic and, well, brain surgeons are expensive, so let's
not have this degree"-why do we have to do something like that to
eliminate what amounts to a certificate, a diploma or anything
else? The province has jurisdiction on education and training and
such, and that's what my certificate is.
What's being proposed is
that now I have no qualifications at all, when I think I can
demonstrate that it still exists. Let's amend the Theatres Act,
the theatre licensing. That we could do, and it would accomplish
what the big chains want and it would also accomplish what
everyone else needs.
Mr Levac: I'll try to do this
quickly in rapid fire so we can get some quick answers out. In
1991 you said that was proposed. It didn't happen, did it?
Mr
McPherson: No.
Mr Levac:
The second question is, is there anything else in the act, in
Bill 119, that you feel under the Theatres Act changes needs any
work besides the ones you've mentioned as projectionist and the
definitions?
Mr
McPherson: I think it should be left the way it is. We
just got hold of this and went through it, saw the problem that
was going to affect us directly and are speaking to that issue.
The other stuff we have not delved into.
Mr Levac:
You mentioned the liability. Do you think the companies then will
see that as an increased liability? If I heard you correctly,
since they're not going to be licensed people and since they're
not going to have the supposed training you're referring to, then
the companies will just simply raise their liability, because
they're assuming that because there are not licensed people,
something is bound to go wrong?
Mr McLeod:
Their insurance would probably increase, but the liability also
will exist when the various electrical and fire inspectors come
in to certify the installation of equipment, whether the level of
the people operating it will be satisfactory for most of it to
still pass, because their CSA or their UL certificates are based
on being operated by a professionally trained person.
Mr Levac:
A member on our side, the member from Sarnia-Lambton, Ms Di
Cocco, indicated in one of her questions that the xenon bulbs and
the 50,000 watts going through the system were an extremely
important issue, a very strong health and safety issue that
permeates beyond projectionists.
Mr
McPherson: Do you mean one of these?
Mr Levac:
Yes.
Mr McLeod:
They are a regulated item even for destruction when they're used.
They cannot be disposed of in landfill, garbage; they usually
have to be returned to manufacturing.
Mr Levac:
Given that safety issue in terms of it going beyond the
projection room-it goes into the theatre, as you mentioned,
10,000 people; it goes into the malls in which these places are
located etc-what do you think of a person who made the comment,
"Why are we worried about this, because all we have to do is
flick a switch off and on?"
Mr
McPherson: Tell them to come and see me sometime.
The Chair:
Thank you very much, gentlemen. I appreciate the three different
viewpoints you brought and the time you took to craft some
proposed amendments as well.
SOUTH ETOBICOKE COMMUNITY LEGAL SERVICES
The Chair:
Our next presentation will be from the South Etobicoke Community
Legal Services. Mr Hale, good afternoon. Welcome to the
committee.
Mr Kenneth
Hale: Good afternoon, Mr Chairman and members of the
committee. My name is Kenneth Hale. I'm the lawyer-director of
South Etobicoke Community Legal Services, a community legal aid
clinic located in southwest Toronto.
I'm here to speak about the
amendments to the Tenant Protection Act that are proposed in Bill
119. As I understand some other speakers have mentioned, they've
found the process to be ridiculously quick for the kinds of
serious matters the committee is dealing with. I don't really
understand why the people of Ontario don't have more of a chance
to find out what's in legislation and consider it and come up
with some clear thoughts on it before we're rushed down to
committee hearings while the bill gets rushed through. Having
said that, I've tried to do my work over the weekend and look at
what I thought really needed to be said about this bill, and
that's why I'm here.
When I first heard the name
"red-tape bill," I tried to imagine what it was that the
government was talking about with red tape, so I looked it up in
the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. The dictionary says that "red
tape" is "excessive bureaucracy or adherence to formalities,
especially in public business."
Tenants facing evictions
who deal with the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal are quite
familiar with excessive adherence to formalities in the public
business of determining whether tenants have a place to live. In
order to be allowed to go to their hearing and contribute to the
process of deciding whether they're going to lose their home,
tenants have to wade through a document that's called Notice of
Hearing, which is basically incomprehensible to most people. If
they get through it, they discover that they have to file a
written dispute within five calendar days. If they don't get this
dispute in, they're going to lose their home without having an
opportunity to be heard.
I think this would be the
kind of red tape the people of Ontario need relief from, but
nowhere in the Red Tape Reduction Act do I find any mention of
the dispute and this excessive adherence to formalities, which
makes me think that the government thinks that certain kinds of
red tape that apply to certain people are just fine. Because the
government didn't really deal with what we see as the most
serious instance of red tape in this bill, it makes us wonder
what your motives really are.
I suggest, if you're really
serious about reducing red tape, amend the bill and put in an
amendment to the Tenant Protection Act that deletes section 177,
which requires a written dispute, and then when people get a
notice of hearing they'll know they have a hearing and they can
go to their hearing and say their piece and be heard by the adjudicators and
defend themselves if they want to.
Having said that, I looked
at a lot of the other changes to the Tenant Protection Act.
There's quite a bit in there. A lot of them look fairly
offensive, but I must say, like everyone else in this province, I
haven't had a whole lot of time to really think about all the
details of all of them. In fact, some of them may even turn out
to be beneficial for tenants. But we don't really know how the
adjudicators and the courts are going to interpret them, so it's
really hard to say whether they're going to have any effect at
all.
There is at least one
change that I think is a direct attack on some of the most
vulnerable people in the province, and the committee should
recommend to the Legislature that it not proceed with it: the
proposed change in the definition of "landlord."
One hundred years ago the
Ontario Legislature realized that disputes between landlords and
tenants were special kinds of disputes that required speedy, just
resolutions. They passed something called the Landlord and Tenant
Act, which allowed such cases to be dealt with outside of the
normal stream of commercial litigation, which even 100 years ago
was in somewhat of a state of backlog. Twenty-five years ago the
Legislature realized that residential landlords and tenants
needed specialized legislative provisions and they enacted part
IV of the Landlord and Tenant Act, which recognized the vital
interests that residential tenants have in their homes and
started to move away from the strict commercial law principles
that had governed landlord-tenant relations up to that time. In
1997, the Legislature tried to accommodate these same sort of
ideas within a new decision-making structure. They enacted the
Tenant Protection Act, which everyone claimed had these same
protections which had been built up over the last 25 years, and
it was just a new decision-making process and a new
structure.
1620
But for some reason, the
government is now proposing that a whole bunch of tenants should
be thrown back into the 19th century. They are proposing that
disputes between some residential tenants and their landlords not
be dealt with by the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal or not even
be dealt with by the summary procedures under the Commercial
Tenancies Act. They are proposing that certain kinds of
residential tenants have their rights determined by the courts in
the regular stream of commercial litigation. Any of you who are
familiar with commercial litigation in the Superior Court know
that's the home and the founding place where red tape was
invented. I don't really think it's in anyone's interest to send
more residential tenant disputes to the civil courts. Despite the
fact that the courts have been making strenuous efforts to clear
out the red tape, it's still there. That was one of the main
arguments the government had for bringing in the Ontario Rental
Housing Tribunal: the courts have too much red tape. So why are
they turning their back on that principle for thousands and
thousands of tenants?
Who are these tenants? If
you thought that you were passing the Tenant Protection Act in
order to cause rents to escalate crazily, well, it's been an
unqualified success. Unfortunately, tenants' incomes haven't kept
up, and the government hasn't been as successful at growing the
incomes of people in the bottom fifth of the income scale. You've
cut the welfare rates. You've refused to give people disability
pensions. You've frozen minimum wages. You're attacking
collective bargaining. This means that tenants' incomes are not
rising anywhere near as fast as rents are. What this means is
that many individuals and families can't afford to rent a house
or an apartment; all they can afford to do is rent a part of a
house or an apartment. Whether they rent one bedroom out of a
three-bedroom apartment or whether they rent the upper floor of
somebody's rented house, this is their home, this is what they
can afford.
Unfortunately, they don't
have any direct relationship with the owners of the property. The
only relationship they have is that with their landlord, the
person who rented the space to them, and that person, in turn, is
the tenant of the person who actually owns the premises. There is
nothing in the law that says there is anything wrong with this.
It seemed we had restrictions on allowing people to profiteer
from this situation by dividing things up and renting them for
more than they're renting, but that protection is pretty well
gone too. But there is no real reason in the world to do what the
government is proposing to do, which is exclude landlords of
tenants who rent from other tenants from the definition of
"landlord" in the Tenant Protection Act.
The people who rent these
places are tenants. They pay rent in return for the right to
occupy their rental unit-that makes them a tenant under the
Tenant Protection Act-but with this amendment, they would have no
landlord. Any rights they would have would strictly come from the
contract they have with their landlord, and that contract is only
to be enforceable through the Superior Court, not the Ontario
Rental Housing Tribunal.
If there is no provision in
the contract requiring notice of termination, then they don't
have to get an eviction notice before they get evicted. If the
contract doesn't specify heat being provided, then there is
nothing they can do if their children are freezing. If they
actually do have rights in a contract, the Ontario Rental Housing
Tribunal will refuse to enforce those rights for them.
Of course, when the
tribunal turns them away, they are not going to be going down to
Bay Street and hiring counsel to litigate in Superior Court. They
are going to just go away, put up with the indignity and
humiliation of losing their home, losing their property or
whatever it is-whatever we do when we don't have a place to go
and resolve our disputes. We don't generally expect people in
this society to just be kicked around and abused without offering
them any kind of realistic remedy.
On the other side, we
shouldn't set up situations where people have the opportunity to
take advantage of others without having any fear of legal
consequences. When there are legal consequences to your disputes,
you generally try to
keep your disputes within civilized bounds because you know there
are legal remedies if you don't. But the government is proposing
that a large sector of the tenant population just be sent out
into this legal no man's land where there are no constraints, and
I don't think that's acceptable. I think the committee should
really carefully look at this idea and reject the idea.
The Ontario Rental Housing
Tribunal is a fact of life. It's there. It needs to be open to as
many tenants as possible. We shouldn't have a group of people,
especially people toward the bottom end of even the tenant
population, who can't get any determination of their issues at
the Ontario Rental Housing Tribunal. If this committee is looking
at cutting red tape, I think it should be trying to improve the
way the tribunal operates, not finding ways to keep people out of
it.
I am asking that you reject
subsection 6(1) of the bill and that the tribunal continue to
deal with these kinds of cases on the merits of the individual
case, and not excluding people as a class from its operation.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Hale. Actually, we've gone over time but it was an
important point that you were making, and I wanted you to have
the opportunity to finish your brief. I do appreciate your
raising it with us, and we'll certainly look into it further.
Thank you for taking the time to come before us here this
afternoon.
GREATER TORONTO TENANTS' ASSOCIATION
The Chair:
Our final presentation this afternoon will be from the Greater
Toronto Tenants' Association, Paul York. Good afternoon, Mr York.
Welcome to the committee.
Mr Paul
York: Thank you. This was hastily prepared because I was
called late Friday and I just got the message this morning. This
is being pushed through fairly fast. I don't know why that is,
but I will try to address it.
The Greater Toronto
Tenants' Association is a coalition of tenant associations which
formed last year in response to the more draconian aspects of the
Tenant Protection Act, including the fast-tracking of evictions,
which we feel violates the right of a tenant to a fair hearing
and diminishes security of tenure. We mainly deal with rent
review, actually, not evictions. But in the course of doing rent
review I've come across many eviction cases because, when you
organize a building, you come across tenants who are being
evicted because of high rents, and so we try to address
those.
This bill, the Red Tape
Reduction Act, Bill 118, I believe it is-what is it?
The Chair:
Bill 119.
Mr York:
Bill 119 is a further eroding of our already diminished rights.
The provision of that bill that speaks to tenants, which allows
for the fast-tracking, we think should be rejected.
Statistically, about half
the cases are default-56%, I heard. Perhaps that is part of the
government's rationale for further fast-tracking, to make the
process faster and more expeditious to clear up the tribunal's
heavy caseload of rent increase and eviction applications. It
should be noted that, in my experience anyway, in the experience
of GTTA, the vast majority of applications are made by landlords,
not tenants. This statistic, instead of compelling you to
fast-track the process more, should compel you to look at
positive changes you can make to the TPA.
The provisions contained in
Bill 36, David Caplan's bill, did away with the requirements to
dispute an application in writing, required tenants to be served
by a third party, and set an expiry date of six months on a
notice of warning to terminate. Members of this committee,
including Mr Gilchrist, I recall, actually spoke in favour of
some of these procedural amendments while criticizing other parts
of Bill 36. Yet Bill 119 doesn't provide the remedy that Bill 36
would have. It goes in the opposite direction. It seems to rob
the tenant of the right of a fair hearing.
Security of tenure, the
right to live in one's home without fear of arbitrary eviction,
is a fundamental right which the government certainly ought to do
everything within its power to protect. But we find this system
is making many mistakes and is violating security of tenure in
terms of demolition to make way for condominiums, in terms of
fast-tracking evictions.
The appointment of default
order officers is a frightening thought. We've already lost
courts and judges to the TPA, replaced with political appointees,
some of whom are fair within the confines of law, others who are
not. The clerks at the three tribunal offices that we go to a lot
frequently make mistakes in scheduling and processing claims. I
can see them making the same sort of mistakes with these
evictions, except instead of a wrong hearing date, which we can
live with, the result will be children and seniors on the street.
Even one mistake of this kind is too many.
1630
I was speaking with a Tory
MPP recently who told me Bill 119 is intended to only speed up
the process for getting rid of criminals and drug dealers, a
sensible sounding argument if that were the only rationale behind
it, but what I've seen is that Bill 119 has a broader scope,
allowing for faster evictions of any tenant that is not present,
tenants who very often were never served, never aware that an
eviction is occurring until they receive the writ of possession.
In fact, I knew a fellow who was the head of a tenants'
association that was facing demolition and that's what happened
to him. He was never served and now he's gone.
I asked the Tory MPP if
this bill could be used by unscrupulous landlords to evict good
tenants. He was mystified by my question. Why would a landlord do
that? I told him to get higher rents on the vacant unit and to
evict tenant leaders or those who were simply asking for their
rights. I recalled an arrears judgment that I went to the
set-aside for. The man was a senior from Russia. He did not speak
English at all. He did not dispute the application in English within five days,
obviously. There was a default judgment against him. He turned to
his tenants' association which, fortunately, spoke Russian-one of
our member buildings. We helped him get a set-aside hearing. He
produced and we produced at the trial the cancelled cheques. The
landlord withdrew his application. But this man was lucky because
the tenants' association was there to help him. I can imagine
many others falling between the cracks. They've called me. I've
heard these stories of people for whom it's too late. I'm afraid
that Bill 119, the way it is now, would result in more unfair
evictions and more violations.
A major problem with the
Tenant Protection Act, which we see every day in rent review, is
the conflicting mandate it seems to have. Section 171 talks about
having a fair hearing, but it also decides it's a need for an
expeditious hearing. Adjudicators have denied many requests for
adjournments because they felt compelled to weigh in more heavily
on the side of the expeditious argument. I feel that a new
adjudicator, somebody who is not seasoned, would feel compelled
to go with the expeditious argument more frequently, and
certainly that is the case already. I'm afraid that with the
default order officers, as they're called, or the SWAT team, as
you've called them, that it's simply a rubber-stamp exercise for
them. They won't weigh the pros and cons. They won't give it a
fair-they won't think of what's correct or just. It's a
rubber-stamping exercise for them.
Once the eviction order is
in, it's very hard to get a set-aside. We help tenants run around
and get set-asides all the time and this is only because the
tenants' association exists. What about those people for whom no
tenants' association exists, who don't know that a legal clinic
exists to call them to get that kind of help?
So we're asking: don't make
this situation worse than it is. We feel that it will backfire. A
million tenants of Toronto are already being awakened by the
effects of the TPA. Perhaps in drafting this you're assuming that
the tenant population will be in a state of slumber for another
few years, that you can accommodate the landlords a little more.
I think that's quite a gamble. This is playing with peoples'
lives. I don't think the tenants are going to be in a state of
sleep much longer.
We think the Tenant
Protection Act is a failure. It didn't meet any of the tests of,
when Al Leach drafted it, what he said it would succeed at,
except making the system faster. It did succeed at that. But it
didn't build new housing. We don't think that this mistake should
be compounded. We'd like to see some positive changes to the TPA,
and this is not one of them. So we agree with Mr Marchese.
Instead of finding faster ways to evict families, the government
should freeze rents for two years and also reject the provisions
in Bill 119 that are offensive. Thank you for the
opportunity.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr York. That leaves us about two minutes of
questioning. This time in the rotation, it's the government.
Mr Spina:
Thank you, Mr York, for coming forward and speaking. Mr York, I
think you indicated-it is Mr York, is it not?
Mr York:
Yes.
Mr Spina:
You indicated that one of the concerns was that if an eviction
order went through that there would be, basically, an unqualified
individual that would be putting it through, sort of thing?
Mr York: I
don't trust the clerks at all. I'm telling you-
Mr Spina:
Pardon me?
Mr York: I
do not trust the clerks down there. They make mistakes a lot.
It's because there is a heavy caseload and it's very easy to make
mistakes.
Mr Spina:
You indicated also that, in the past, it was the tribunals that
were essentially authorizing the final eviction notice, and you
said that in some cases, because they are political appointees,
they work, and in other cases they don't work. Could you
elaborate on that a bit?
Mr York:
Without generalizing too much, my experience has been that some
of the younger ones, or the ones that have a landlord
background-there is one fellow who used to work for a landlord
law firm-tend to give unfair judgments, whereas the older ones
that have been there before the TPA are fairer within the
confines of the law, some of them.
Mr Spina:
So would it be fair to say that if you remove the bias from a
tribunal, because it is a political appointment, your concern is
that the clerks or the staff could make errors because of the
volume of work? Essentially, though, those people in that staff
are far more experienced and would be more objective, would they
not, in issuing the order or rejecting it? I think also that if
there was an error that surfaced, that was discovered, there is
plenty of opportunity, is there not, for the tenant to make an
appeal?
Mr York:
No. I don't believe that there is a lot of opportunity for the
tenant to make appeals because the system is so fast right now
and this amendment is going to make it faster. The tenant has to
know how to do a set-aside, and this is a complicated procedure.
If, for whatever reason, they didn't have time or ability to do
the written dispute, how are they going to do the set-aside
without help or instruction? There's not too much help out there.
Most of the tenants are on their own.
The Chair:
Thank you, Mr Spina, and thank you very much, Mr York. I
appreciate your taking the time to come before us here again this
afternoon.
With that, the committee
stands adjourned until 3:30 on Wednesday.
