Alec Caldwell
Building permit, or not?
Canadian Contractor‘Not’ was a poor choice for this Scarborough contractor
Back on October 12, 2012 my article cried out:
“Remember: a building permit is your formal permission to begin construction or demolition. It means the city has approved plans. It also means plans comply with the Ontario Building Code, local zoning by-laws and other applicable laws and regulations.
Further, it’s unlawful to start construction or demolition jobs before you obtain one and can result in costly construction delays, legal action or removal of the work you’ve already completed.”
Skipping the Building Permit can only cause headaches (or worse) at some point.
A Scarborough Ontario contractor learned this spring that choosing the “Not” option (ie. commencing a home renovation without the required building permit) was a huge mistake. The local Ajax municipality building inspector caught up with him and a ‘Stop Order’ was issued.
Here is an excerpt from the order to comply notice posted outside this residence.
“Construction of interior renovation without obtaining building permit…..It is illegal to obstruct the visibility of a posted order. It is also illegal to remove a posted order unless authorized by an inspector or registered code agency (Building code Act, 1992 s. 20”
The notice clearly shows the construction company’s name, their address and the business owner’s name, plus the home owner’s name.
That certainly is not good advertising for any home renovation company, especially if trying to build a brand name locally. Not only that but the local competition can take a marketing advantage of this situation by simply showing a photo of the notice to prospective clients!
Even worse, the house in question has been left empty since March 24, 2015. Therefore I am assuming 2 things (maybe rightly or wrongly):
First, the homeowner cannot move in because the house has become non habitable. Second, legal action has been launched against this renovation company.
The outcome was as obvious as the lesson learned:
Don’t gamble. Always get a building permit.
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I would like to know the source of the paragraph that begins with “Further, it’s unlawful to start construction or demolition jobs before you obtain one and can result in costly construction delays, legal action or removal of the work you’ve already completed.”
I am suing a contractor for this very reason. He told me I did not need a permit. After red flags were raised it was too late for me. I learned I needed both a permit and a minor variance. The end result was the illegal deck he had built had to be removed and due to by-law changes I was not permitted to rebuild the old one (if I had known I never would have allowed him to commence the work and I think he knew that) I ended up having to pay for its removal and sustained damages to my lawn and ended up spending more than I paid for the deck in relandscaping. The contractor has now been charged with 45 counts of fraud, theft, and trafiicking in stolen goods and 29 or more charges laid by the OCPA. Last I heard they had 116 complaints, but could not persue some of them because he had committed fraud against the Green-On program and the complainants not being able to be compensated for their loss by the contractor, cashed the grant money and now have to pay it back. The single person to escape relatively unscathed was a woman he convinced in late November if she paid him $8,000 he could get her in on the defunct Green-On program. She had ordered windows and came home from a trip to find the siding of her house torn off. I told her to call the police to report the fraud and file a vandalism charge in hopes her insurance company could at the very least replace her siding. Once the police release the charges, she will be number 46 and number 47 also had their charges filed by police after the second announcement of fraud. If you search Ecolife you will see who I’m talking about.