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Niagara Falls
Friday, February 7, 2025
Arch-i-text: Disparities in how municipalities enforce the Building Code Act
Another property in NOTL facing the threat of demolition by neglect, this house at 240 East & West Ln. was built circa 1903 — Brian Marshall says it's crumbling and derelict. BRIAN MARSHALL

We ended last week’s column (Jan. 16, “Arch-i-text: Property standards and demolition by neglect“) by taking a look at the potential fines detailed in the Building Code Act that could be levied against property owners who failed to comply with a binding property standards order — maximum fines that ranged from up to $50,000 all the way to $200,000 and an additional fine of up to $10,000 per day for every day the offence continues after the compliance deadline included in the order.

Interestingly, the highest fines ($100,000 for an individual and $200,000 for a corporation) are levied for “subsequent” offences and the act defines that as being: “For the purposes of subsections (3) and (4), an offence is a subsequent offence if there has been a previous conviction under this act.”

Therefore, should an individual or corporation have been previously found guilty and fined as a result of violating the Building Code Act anywhere in Ontario, any new conviction is a “subsequent offence.”

So, by way of a simple illustration, Company XYZ is issued a property standards order to correct a series of issues with a building the corporation owns, the order becomes binding and they fail to comply by the specified deadline.

Further, their failure to comply extends 20 days past the deadline included in the order. 

If it is their first offence, the company can be fined a maximum of $100,000 plus an additional $200,000 for a total of $300,000.

However, if it is a subsequent offence under the act, the company could be liable for fines of up to $200,000 plus an additional $200,000 for a total of $400,000.

Now, it is my observation that, while there are large corporations who may consider these fines as the “cost of doing business,” for most companies these fines are sufficiently punitive to ensure compliance.

Having established that the building code provides sufficient “teeth” to underwrite a property standards bylaw, the question then must devolve upon all facets related to the enforcement of said bylaw.

The act specifies the maximum penalty which can be applied, not the specific amount of the fine, this has been left to the discretion of the municipalities. 

And it seems municipalities are all over the map — starting with silly amounts as low as $250. In researching this question, I discovered that very few actual fines levied have been placed in the public realm — or reported on by news media.

However, I was able to ascertain that fines have been levied well into the tens of thousands of dollars — in some cases, by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Clearly, the province has recognized the serious nature of a conviction under the building code and has provided a sledgehammer to enforce it but, far too often, municipalities have bypassed the sledgehammer in favour of a fly swatter — something routinely ignored by those guilty of violating the law.   

Moreover, in many municipalities — including Niagara-on-the-Lake — bylaw enforcement is reactive rather than proactive.

In other words, bylaw enforcement investigation in the area of property standards is initiated by complaint(s) received from concerned citizen(s). In these municipalities, there does not appear to be any type of standard procedure for non-complaint-driven review of properties by enforcement personnel.

Now, to be fair, proactive enforcement would, initially, be more labour-intensive – at least until property owners understood the higher standards of enforcement.   

That said, it is obvious that teeth don’t matter if you’re never bit or never bit hard.

In contrast, the township of Clearview’s (south of Georgian Bay) proactive enforcement measures resulted in the issuance of 44 property standards orders between May 1, 2023 and Sept. 1, 2023.

Of these orders, three were successfully appealed and, by Sept. 28, 2023 (the date of the staff report by the supervisor of bylaw enforcement, Joseph Paddock), only two orders remain in violation.

The real kicker in this report was that 12 buildings that staff noted as “dilapidated, dangerous, unsecure and vacant” were successfully dealt with — off-hand, I can personally think of far more than 12 buildings in NOTL (including a number of historic dwellings) that would fit this description but, apparently, continue to be unaddressed or unresolved.

Interestingly, some of these buildings were addressed by the property owners and, in some cases, by the municipality. 

Hang in and we’ll look at the powers of the municipality next week. 

Brian Marshall is a NOTL realtor, author and expert consultant on architectural design, restoration and heritage.

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