The Trouble Is All Three Contenders Are Cutting The End Off The Roast Beef

I’ve recently conducted some fundamental research on Ontario political party contenders and received the same disappointing results as I did when I tried to notify the Liberal Party through its designated representative Tracy MacCharles, in charge of spearheading the new Consumer Protection Agency set out in the new Condominium Act.

With the Liberals I was barking at deaf ears, and having sent emails to Doug Ford and the Conservative Party, and most recently to Andrea Horvath of the NDP and getting a comparable non-response, my enthusiasm about the elections remains unchanged.

As an entrepreneur I spent a great deal of my life globe trotting and literally having an exciting and frequently outrageous life in which Canadian and/or Ontario politics didn’t even appear on my radar.

Since semi-retiring (retiring actually I just haven’t brought myself to admitting it although I’m loving it!) in Oakville along Lake Ontario, (“it may not be heaven but on a clear day you must be able to see heaven from here”) and having given up on commercial advertising (I don’t have commercial television or radio and am almost ready to give up on the Internet as its become mostly a digital ad rag) on CNN and other cable news networks, I’ve recently turned to studying the Ontario elections.

As my frequent readers here at simplycharles.com already know, I’ve been fighting avidly for consumers here in my corner of Ontario (Condoland) since the 1990’s, to no avail.

You see I’m a problem solver and it has become aware to me that Ontarions don’t care about being exploited when it comes to condos.

I don’t know about much, (I have to confess with no formal education), but when it comes to condos or “Condoland” as I call it, I know the problems.

Developers and Builders have been getting away with murder and I simply know where all the bodies are buried.

If any rational person looking into the growth of our Province since the introduction of residential condos (I started in the business shortly after they were introduced into law) didn’t know better, they would conclude that the entire fiasco about to slap us all in the face in Condoland.

Well, the simply don’t know better because the entire infrastructure of residential condos in Ontario is set up like one “Ponzi scheme”.

Starting with our Federal Government there is such a dependency on income taxes to self sustain, and dropping to our Provincial Government who are solely dependent on employment, and Municipal Governments dependent on Permit Fees, Property Taxes and the like, it becomes easy to see why there has never been any legitimate attempt to protect the grease that keeps the entire mechanism turning . . . . the average person (“Consumer”).

I have to confess that if they set out to orchestrate a Ponzi Scheme they couldn’t have done a better job.

Do this mean that I think that some nefarious character(s) sit up nights thinking of ways to screw taxpayers?   Absolutely not. I actually believe that all levels of government are equipped with highly educated and talented people legitimately working hard at doing a good job.

But like trying to figure out why my sister cuts the end off of the roast beef, and had to admit that it was “because mom did” and when we asked mom why she cut the end off the roast, she answered “because grandma did”, and when we asked grandma, she answered because “we only had a small roasting pan”.

No-one is to blame for Condoland’s impending financial tsumani.  Everyone is doing just what everyone has always done for so long that they don’t see the forest for the trees!

But the fact that no-one is actually to blame does absolutely nothing to prepare us for the devastation that lays before us.

It all boils down to math and the numbers don’t lie.  Ontario is facing a real-life dilemma that no-one wants to face that I’ve been blowing my horn about for decades but my audience is hearing impaired.

I’ve taken this very real issue to each political party fighting to win next months elections and I’ve listened to each leader out there stumping but relying mostly on bribes to the masses to win the election and not one has responded to my correspondence to them, while more and more people buy into the scheme that may very well have devastating impact on them, our financial institutions and government in the coming years.

The math is simple: “hundreds of glistening glass residential towers make up Toronto’s (one example – more new condo towers in Toronto than any North American city ten times its size) newly transfigured skyline and all these buildings built since 2000, are constructed with ‘Window Wall’ – floor to ceiling thermal pane glass).

These glass walls, IF installed correctly carry a lifespan of 15 years (on supplier material) so by 2015 buildings constructed with this technology professionally should be expected to start “failing” (simply two thin pieces of glass with heavy gases between them and sealed to hold in the gases).

The first punch-line is that its 2018 and Condoland apparently remain unaware of this as no-one that I’ve seen has a line item in their budgets or Reserve Funds specifically to restore them as they fail (and eventually they are all going to fail according to the specs).

The second starts with:  “when they do start to fail owners will be holding glass boxes with no thermal protection against Canada’s harsh winters and torrid summers” (glass carries almost zero thermal protection).

Then, when we looking to implement a fix to the situation they realize that the existing window walls must be removed thus people can’t live there during the fix and the questions about who’s paying for this multiplies the complexity.

The house of cards in built on the backs of consumers, most of whom having mortgages so when those cards start to fall (“bankruptcy” as they have to simply walk away), our banks will quickly feel the hit.   A substantial majority of condos in Condoland have other than conventional mortgages thus bringing CMHC (“Canada Mortage and Housing Corporation”.

With enough of these mortgages bouncing like ping pong balls our government will face the ultimate hit.

British Columbia had a notorious condo problem and undertook a massive industry wide study and developed a report that a chimpanzee in a suit would suggest was “necessary reading” for the Province of Ontario and it was done prior to the year 2000’s introduction of these Window Walls.

Now, the meaningful statistic that has to be thrown into the mix.  The fifteen year published life-span of these glass walls is based on “proper installation” and I presented this impending catastrophe to Ms. MacCharles over a year and half ago and watch her office shield her from the reality of this and blow me off!

So, I’ve contact both Doug Ford and Andrea Horvath only to be blown off again.  Again, I don’t think there’s any shortage of excuses (they are in the midst of an election after all) but this is a time bomb and has nothing to do with “if”.  It’s a matter of “WHEN” it goes off!

I’ve published photographs of construction sites where the aluminium frames have no protective insulation from the curing cement (a published “no – no”!) and sent them to Ms. MacCharles to no effect.

Apparently neither party competing with the Liberals saw this as the potentially winning argument for their campaigns as my personally delivered correspondence to each has gone unanswered.

If you own a condo, have friends or family members that own a condo in Ontario, (that was built since 2000), in a floor to ceiling glass tower you had better search “Window Wall” on simplycharles.com and familiarize yourself with this looming threat.

I’m Charles

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RSS
Follow by Email
LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Share
Instagram
LinkedIn
Share