The Ontario Street Brownfield

The record is below. This is what I will do about it.

Every item here is something one city councillor can actually do: ask in public, move a motion, vote, publish. These commitments are mechanical, because mechanics are what you can hold someone to.

Where it stands

As of October 3, 2026.

On May 22, the City issued two Property Standards Orders against the owner — using authority it has had the entire time. On June 25, the City's Property Standards Committee confirmed the orders and set a compliance deadline of October 23. The owner has appealed to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, asking that the orders be set aside or the deadline moved to June 30, 2027. The parties were in court on September 17. No decision was made, and the matter was put over to October 1.

The orders cover the buildings and the yards around them: structure, openings, debris, holes in the ground. They do not cover contamination in the soil or the groundwater. That is the Province's file.

First, the orders

1. Put the orders on the agenda. At the first regular meeting of the new council, I will give notice of a motion directing staff to report back, in public, by the end of January 2027, with six answers:

• Each item in the two orders: what has been done, and what has not.
• What the City has done about the rest: whether the orders are registered on title, whether penalties have been issued, whether charges have been laid.
• What it would cost, and how long it would take, for the City to carry out the ordered work itself and recover the cost from the owner.
• A plain-language summary of any advice the City received from the external legal support it says it retained on City-led cleanup and demolition, and on how costs could be recouped.
• Whether the buildings are on the City's Vacant Building Registry, which requires an owner to register and to have the building checked every two weeks. If they are not, why not.
• How hazards recorded by City fire crews at the site reach by-law enforcement.

This holds whatever the court decides. If a judge changes the orders or the date, the report covers the orders as they then stand. Council doesn't direct individual enforcement decisions, but it can make sure enforcement doesn't quietly stall.

2. Then decide, in open session. The orders say that if the work is not done on time, the City may carry it out "at the expense of the owner" and recover the cost by legal action or "in like manner as municipal taxes." When the report comes back, council should decide in public whether to do that. If the plan shows how the cost will be recovered from the owner, I will vote for the City to proceed, on the same timeline it would use for any other property in St. Catharines. If the City instead extends a deadline or accepts partial progress, I will ask that the decision be published: what was done, what remains, and the new date.

In the first 90 days

3. Make the City's page the record. The City has a web page for this site. As of October 3, 2026, it posts the two orders. It does not mention the appeal, the committee's decision, the October 23 deadline or the court case. I will ask that it carry the whole enforcement file — orders, deadlines, appeals, inspections, penalties — updated whenever something changes, so nobody needs a freedom-of-information request to find out where things stand. Until it does, this page will.

4. Hold council to its own date on the overhead bridge. A February 2026 engineering report supplied by the owner's representatives found the bridge over Ontario Street structurally sound, and noted that its foundations "were not visible at the time of inspection." On February 23, council asked staff to work with the owner to have the structure removed, with a target date of December 1, 2026. At the first meeting after December 1, I will ask whether it is down. If it is not, I will ask what the City's next step is, and when the foundations will be inspected.

5. Put three questions to the Province, and publish the answers. Contamination in the soil and the groundwater is the Province's file. I will move that council ask the Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, in writing, for three things:

• The outcome of the referral the Minister described in a letter of November 3, 2025: that untreated storm water was being collected and stored on the site, and that the matter had been referred to the Ministry's Enforcement and Investigation Branch for potential investigation.
• The engineering assessment of the site's stormwater capacity that the Ministry asked the owner to provide by September 4, 2026.
• Whether the Ministry will use its order powers under the Environmental Protection Act, which reach current and former owners, on the soil and the groundwater.

The Ministry has advised the City that August 2026 samples from the site's stormwater pond were "at or better than typical urban stormwater quality." That is on the record below. These three questions are about what a pond sample does not answer. They are asks. I will always label them as advocacy, not delivery, and I will post the replies on this page.

Every time it comes to a vote

6. The owner pays. Securing and cleaning up that property is the owner's legal responsibility, and the City is now enforcing exactly that. Public money shouldn't pay bills the City is ordering a private owner to pay. If the City does the ordered work itself, the owner gets the bill.

7. No incentive money until the cleanup is proven. In September 2026, a proposed Community Improvement Plan offering incentives for redevelopment of these lands came to council, and council deferred it. If it returns, I will support incentives only on these terms: nothing for work the City has ordered the owner to do; nothing paid until a Record of Site Condition is filed with the Province; payment only out of the new property taxes the finished project generates, capped at the actual cost of the cleanup; an affordable-rental component in what gets built; and the full cost estimate published before council votes.

8. Cleanup first, then homes. Our biggest derelict-property problem and our biggest new-homes opportunity are the same fifty acres of serviced land. I support homes there, including an affordable-rental component. The City has said that if the land is rezoned before it is cleaned up, the zoning would carry a holding provision that lifts only when the environmental assessment and Record of Site Condition are complete. I will vote to keep that hold, with no exceptions. Council is scheduled to consider adopting the Ontario Street Corridor Secondary Plan on November 2, 2026, before the new council takes office on November 15. The land is still zoned for employment. The four questions on the Housing and Revitalization page still need answers, and I will ask them on the record before any rezoning of this land gets my vote.

9. Explain every vote. Every vote I cast on this site will be posted on this page, with my reasons. You won't agree with every vote; no honest councillor can promise that. But you should never have to guess my reasons.

What a councillor can't do

A councillor doesn't decide the appeal — the Property Standards Committee did, and now a judge will. A councillor can't direct a by-law officer or the Chief Building Official on an individual file, and can't order a private building demolished; the owner chooses how to comply with a valid order. A councillor can't make the Province clean up the ground. And one councillor is one vote of thirteen.

What a councillor can do is insist that the City use every tool it has, on the timeline it would use for anyone else, and tell residents the truth about where the file stands.

St. Catharines has more tools than it uses. I'm running to make it use them.