A8⎮TORONTO STAR MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2015 ON ON0 V2

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“There’s non-stop crap in thisbuilding,” said resident Terry Glover,“and we still pay high rent.”

But it hasn’t always been this way.Six years ago, tenants described thebuilding as a “mini palace.”

“They had a fountain out front. Youcould eat off the floors,” said residentJanice Parker.

Parker says she was forced out ofher apartment after the most recentfire last month and hasn’t been ableto return. On a recent drizzly after-noon, Parker stood in the parking lot,looking up at her unit’s blackenedwindows, when a group of neigh-bours came over to comfort her.

Among them was Raymond For-tune, who banded together with agroup of other tenants recently toform a tenants’ association — one ofOshawa’s first — and says demandingyour rights is the only way to im-prove your living conditions.

Anna Prokop is general manager atthe building’s landlord, Rose GardenApartments Inc, who told the Starshe speaks on behalf of the owner.She says she has upgraded the fire-alarm system since the fires, as wellas the roof and hallways this year, allwithout raising rent above guideline.

To combat criminality and drugs,she says she has made a deal grantingPeel police 24-hour access to thebuilding. Prokop explained at lengththe difficulties of running a low-in-come building to the Star, saying herability to do repairs was constrainedby the large number of people be-hind on their rent and the fact thatmany won’t give her access to theirunits for repairs and pest control.

“Every penny that comes in is beingput back, plus more,” she told theStar. “If the tenants aren’t happy,they can take me to the Landlord andTenant Board.”

The Wentworth apartment build-ing is known at Oshawa City Hall,where 162 complaints were filed inthe past five years, the majority forsubstandard property conditions,said Jerry Conlin, the city’s directorof municipal law and enforcement.

Tenants’ association members tookthe Star on a tour of the buildingrecently, pointing out the dead cock-roaches in the hallway lights, floorsthat had been torn up but never re-placed and long-neglected repairsthat they say were finally completedafter the association was formed.

Fortune, who has been studyinglandlord and tenant law as well ascity bylaws, says tenants who knowthe landlords’ obligations are morelikely to get repairs done.

He says a neighbour whose peelingfloor was left unrepaired for monthswas astonished Fortune was able toget his own floor fixed, weeks afterhaving a city bylaw officer come in.

“He asked: ‘How did you get itdone?’ I told him: ‘Follow the pro-cess.’ ”

Oshawa Councillor Amy Englandhas taken notice of the group’s workand wants to get similar associationsstarted in other aging apartment

buildings. “We’re starting here andmoving to the building across theroad, empowering renters,” she said.“Eventually, we’d like to start a city-wide association, like Toronto.”

Oshawa has rental stock mostlybuilt in the ’60s and ’70s, Englandsaid, and these aging buildings arerife with maintenance problems.Newer rental buildings are typicallytargeted to specific groups: seniors,aboriginal people and students. Peo-ple who don’t fall into such catego-ries have few rental options.

“Toronto has a big housing prob-lem. Suburbia has the same problem,but no one’s talking about it,” saidEngland, who has helped draft andprint 21,000 “know your rights” fly-ers that will be mailed to every apart-ment building unit in the city.

“We haven’t had very many com-plaints, because I don’t think tenantsare really aware of the rules,” shesaid. “This is only the beginning.”

Tenants’ association one of the first in OshawaTENANTS from A1

Resident James Cheaters doesn’t mince words about 275 Wentworth St. E. The conditions are so bad, the owners should just "bomb the place," he says.MARCO CHOWN OVED PHOTOS/TORONTO STAR

Raymond Fortune, holding a bag of cockroaches he collected in hisapartment, says tenants who know landlords’ obligations get repairs done.

“It’s not our best workhorse, but weappreciate it,” Labrecque said.

Since a 2012 Star investigation re-vealed serious problems at ORNGE— financial and safety related — theagency has been steadily divestingitself of unnecessary vehicles pur-chased under the governance of ex-CEO Chris Mazza, whose tenure isbeing looked at in an ongoing RCMPinvestigation.

GCSurplus is a federal government

organization operating under PublicWorks and Government ServicesCanada. Its online auction website,launched in January 2009, sells ev-erything from high-end jewelry topallets of unused printer toner onbehalf of municipal, provincial andfederal government agencies acrossthe country through a closed biddingsystem.

According to Public Works, GCSur-plus reported gross sales of $53 mil-lion for the 2014-2015 fiscal year, withproceeds for the sales returned to the

departments or agencies that pro-vided them.

Some of the items for sale havebeen seized by federal and provinciallaw enforcement agencies. GCSur-plus says that its sales of seized goodswere in excess of $3.2 million in 2011alone.

In April, media outlets includingthe Star reported when a cache ofhockey collectibles, including an au-tographed Maurice (Rocket) Rich-ard jersey, was offered for sale on thewebsite.

Plane bought by Quebec companyAUCTION from A1

Most expensive itemsá 1983 Sikorsky S76-A helicopter:$399,000 á 1978 Sikorsky S76-A helicopter:$286,590 á 1979 Sikorsky S76-A helicopter:$276,000 á Damaged 2005 Cessna T206H:$206,500

Canadianaá Zamboni: $14,507á Signed Wayne Gretzky 1992all-star jersey: $3,328 á Manure spreaders: $4,000

Cheapest itemsá Gloves (not used): $0.01Computer desks and monitor stand:$1.20Nikon HB-23 Bayonet lens hood:$1.33

Luxury itemsá 1970 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow:$11,111.11á Men’s 18-karat Breguet automaticchronograph De La Marine watch,featuring a genuine alligator strap:$14,000á 68 unmounted diamonds: Rangefrom $106 to just under $5,000

Weirdest itemsá Gas-fired toilet: $1,111.12á Early 19th-century Japanesebronze enamel side table: $10,200

> SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE A SAMPLING OF AUCTION ITEMS

The OSSTF has a ratified three-year provincial deal for its teachers,but last spring called strikes in threeboards and this fall launched job ac-tion in a few boards across the prov-ince, including Toronto, on local is-sues.

Now, locally, about 15 boards havedeals in place with OSSTF teacherlocals, “and more that are coming inon a daily basis, and I hope that trendis going to continue. But the processhas become problematic, and thewhole thing needs to be reviewed.”

The OSSTF also represents some15,000 support staff in a number ofboards, who don’t yet have provincialor local deals, who are also on a work-to-rule and are still under a threat ofmanagement docking their pay. Tomake things even more confusing,other support staff — represented byCUPE — have a provincial deal butno local deals.

“We are into the 18th month now,and it will probably be another sixmonths until all deals are done.Something needs to be done aboutthe efficiency of this,” Elliott said.

At Queen’s Park on Friday, DeputyPremier Deb Matthews concededthe process has had its challenges.

“Everybody’s going to want to sitback and reflect on that and we’vecommitted to doing that,” Matthewssaid. “There’s no question this was areally tough round of negotiations; itcontinues to be a tough round ofnegotiations,” said the minister who,as Treasury Board president, is thegovernment’s point person on re-straint measures. “Because not onlyare we totally changing the process. . . we’re in a ‘net zero’ environment,”she said, referring to the govern-ment’s insistence that any gains inthe contracts be offset by cuts else-where.

However, the government hascome under fire for providing $2.5million to three teacher unions tohelp cover their bargaining costs,money the premier has said is “netzero” but unions say is not.

Progressive Conservative MPPMonte McNaughton (Lambton-Kent-Middlesex) said the new sys-tem has led to problems like the con-troversial payments, not to mentionthe tentative settlement with the El-ementary Teachers Federation ofOntario that enables teachers toduck crucial interviews with parents.

“Every parent and every student inthe province knows there is totalchaos in the education system. Thetwo-tier bargaining system is bro-ken,” McNaughton said, urging theLiberals to “go back to the drawingboard.”

Ontario is the only jurisdiction withtiered bargaining that allows strikesprovincially and locally, which ob-servers say may have been a way forthe government to appease theunions into signing on to the newsystem, given their history of stronglocal bargaining.

But with Ontario centralizingmuch of education, including thefunding, many argue it only makessense to have the big items such assalary, class size or prep time decidedprovincially. Bill 122, the SchoolBoards Collective Bargaining Act,was ushered in 2014.

Alessandra Fusco, a spokeswomanfor Education Minister Liz Sandals,said this is round one of bargainingand all parties agreed a new structurewas needed. The fact that deals havebeen reached shows “successful ne-gotiations (under legislation) arepossible even in times of fiscal re-straint. The legislation establishes aclear framework for negotiations bycreating a two-tier process with le-gally defined roles for all parties.

“Upon the conclusion of this fullround of negotiations, our govern-ment has committed to consultingwith all of our education partners toseek further improvements to theframework so that we may strength-en relationships.”

Margot Trevelyan, former labourrelations and governance directorfor the Ministry of Education duringthe time bargaining shifted from lo-cal to central, previously said therehad been up to 500 collective agree-ments reached throughout Ontario.The problem was that “unions wouldnegotiate agreements at a board thatwas relatively wealthy and get a gooddeal their members needed, andthen try to pattern that across theprovince with other boards thatmight not be able to afford it.”

So one advantage of the new systemis “it avoids that ratcheting up.” Italso gives boards a collectivestrength. Before, boards in the northor rural areas wouldn’t have thesame power as the Toronto DistrictSchool Board even though they facedlocal unions with the same backing.With files from Robert Benzie

Process of ratifying deals‘has become problematic’EDUCATION from A1