Campaigning candidates kicked out of building
Ward 5 candidate Lillian Kruzsely says the managers of a Riverside Drive apartment tower broke the law on Saturday when she and a colleague were forbidden from knocking on doors and kicked out of the high-security building. “Apartment buildings can have upwards of 100, 200 residents, that’s a lot of votes at the end of the day,” Kruzsely said of her treatment.
She cited a new provision of Ontario’s Municipal Elections Act that states: “No person who is in control of an apartment building, condominium building, nonprofit housing co-operative or gated community may prevent a candidate or his or her representative from campaigning between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. at the doors to the apartments, units or houses, as the case may be.”
“It’s quite clear,” said Chuck Scarpelli, manager of records and elections for the City of Windsor. He explained this legislation is new for this election and allows candidates to campaign inside apartment buildings and other residential complexes. He said that the new wording was included in a package of material sent out to all the candidates for the Oct. 22 election. When trying to enter an apartment building, they should show the City of Windsor document explaining how candidates are allowed inside at the doors of individual units, he suggested. Kruzsely said on Saturday, she and Ward 6 candidate Josh Jacquot were campaigning together on both sides of Pillette Road, the dividing line between Wards 5 and 6. They went into a condo building on the southeast corner of Riverside and Pillette in Ward 6 with no problem, she said. They were buzzed in by a resident and after talking with that resident they proceeded to knock on other doors.
About 40 per cent of the residents were in and none were upset about someone knocking on their door to talk about the election, she said. If someone wasn’t interested in talking, they simply asked that they vote on Oct. 22 and moved to the next unit.
Then they went across Pillette to Ward 5’s Harbour Tower, a ninestorey apartment building with buzzer-controlled access. “We were greeted by a lot of hostility,” Kruzsely said Monday. They buzzed a tenant to let them in and were advised to buzz the building manager. They didn’t see a manager listed on the display, but there was a telephone number that they called. Kruzsely said when the man answered he said he was in Wheatley and there was nothing he could do. “He said this is a high-security building and we don’t allow this anyway,” she said.
She said they explained the legislation allows them to campaign inside, but the man responded that because he couldn’t confirm that they were actual candidates he wasn’t going to let them in. She said she suggested he look her up as a registered candidate on the City of Windsor municipal election page, but couldn’t convince him. After they hung up, they were outside and struck up a conversation with a tenant on his balcony, she said. He let them in so they could meet and talk about their campaigns. After their conversation, he closed his door just about the same time the elevator door opened and a woman stepped out, said Kruzsely.
“She was very, very upset, screaming right off the bat. She asked us how we got in the building.” Kruzsely said they explained they had a right to be there and cited the 9 a.m.-9 p.m. legislation. But the woman, who identified herself as the manager, said the building had a long waiting list because of its high-security features, that the time allowed for campaigning was 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and that knocking at the door at that time would kill half the residents, according to Kruzsely. She said this occurred at about 6 p.m.
“It was weird, we were just doing our campaigning and it was extreme hostility,” she said. “She denied all those residents the right to know who is running in their area.” The Star called the same phone number that Kruzsely called on Sunday. The man who answered said he was the assistant manager. He said the manager was away on vacation, said “it has nothing to do with me,” and hung up. Calls to the Chatham-based management company that operates the apartment, Casilco Property Management, were not returned on Monday.
Jacquot said the response they got at Harbour Tower was ridiculous. “As a new candidate, what are we supposed to do? We have to go door-to-door to speak to people and get our message out,” he said. The city’s Scarpelli confirmed that Kruzsely had filed a complaint about the incident on Monday. It’s the first such complaint this election campaign, but there were similar complaints made in previous elections, when separate legislation (the Residential Tenancies Act, the Condominium Act and the Co-operative Corporations Act) gave candidates and their authorized representatives the right to access these buildings.
The new legislation is part of the Municipal Elections Act. “But there’s nothing that gives the (city) clerk the authority to do anything except tell (the apartment manager) what the legislation is,” Scarpelli said.