ELEVATOR REPAIRS PRIORITIZED Shelved legislation now set to come into force in July 2022 BY REBECCA MELNYK
O
ntario is kicking the dust off elevator repair legislation that was passed in May 2018 during the previous Liberal government’s tenure, but never proclaimed into law. In a move meant to achieve better elevator availability and stricter maintenance requirements, recently approved regulatory changes allow the Technical Standards and Safety Authority (TSSA) to impose financial penalties for noncompliance with legal requirements. Elevator outage data must also be reported to the TSSA for online publication. In a statement, the Ministry of Government and Consumer Affairs decreed owners of elevators in a long-term care home or residential building will need to report all prolonged outages (i.e., of 48 hours or longer) to the TSSA, along with the cause of the outage and certain characteristics of the building/elevator via an online form. Prospective homebuyers would be able to search an address and gather this data. Both changes are expected to come into force July 1, 2022. They arise from: last summer’s government consultations on the previously shelved legislation; the Auditor General of Ontario’s recommendations in the 2018 Value-for-Money audit of TSSA; and a report by former Superior Court Justice Douglas Cunningham, which assessed elevator availability in Ontario. In particular, Cunningham’s
work was prompted in response to prolonged breakdowns in multistorey residential buildings and long-term care homes. FINE-TUNING THE LEGISLATION Although it’s a viewed as a gain for consumers, industry experts suggest the legislation falls short of addressing some intricacies elevator contractors face on the job. For instance, they maintain elevator contractors can be at an inherent disadvantage trying to comply with the new requirements in problematic older buildings. “If it’s older equipment that hasn’t been modernized and the contractor has been advising the owner to upgrade the equipment for the past five years, does this still become the elevator contractor’s responsibility to maintain the equipment in excellent running condition?” muses Rob Isabelle, Chief Operating Officer with the elevator specialty firm, KJA Consultants, and a member of the TSSA’s elevating devices advisory council. Additionally, contractors sometimes delay repairs if a client is in arrears on its invoices. Currently, it’s unclear if contractors will have to repair an elevator in those circumstances. “There will be some cases where the elevator contractor should be working harder to fix the elevator; there’s other cases where the www.REMInetwork.com
9
