The Shannondale (née Electrohome, 152 Shanley St) | 8 fl | U/C

[ijmorlan]

Legally, it is not criminal (otherwise somebody would likely be going to jail). But it’s much worse than if I were to find a way to steal $800 from the City. Specifically, it is approximately 1000 times worse. And I could go to jail for that. So morally and ethically I consider it criminal. It’s a good example of a corporate crime that is not properly handled by our legal system.

Since it was with the city's agreement, I think "criminal" doesn't really apply.

And I expect that the city agreed to this because it allowed them to recover at least some of the back taxes. Even if they had succeeded in selling the property, they would not have received much more, and there would have been a significant element of uncertainty.

I mean the overall behaviour — contaminating the ground, then failing to pay property taxes and perform basic required property maintenance (including sidewalk clearing) for many years. As I said, what should have happened is that the City should have been able to expropriate the property years ago, when the taxes might actually have been covered by the value of the property. Any value the owner now gets out of the property, up to the $800,000 the City wrote off, is stolen from the taxpayers of Kitchener.

And again, I don’t mean that it is legally criminal behaviour, but morally and ethically criminal.