Illegal truck terminal in Halton Hills fined, prohibited from operating on property
One Value Limited along with two of its directors were recently convicted of one zoning charge (illegal use) and three site alteration charges: two for failing to obtain a site alteration permit and one for failing to comply with a site alteration order.
Further, the court has issued a prohibition order under the Provincial Offences Act, which prohibits an individual or entity from engaging in certain activities related to the offence they were convicted of.
'(This order) is typically issued to prevent further harm, protect the public, or ensure compliance with provincial regulations. In the case of an illegal site alteration, it can also require restoration of the property,' the town said in a June 25 news release.
'Our valued farmland must not be destroyed by illegal truck terminals,' Mayor Ann Lawlor added.
Halton Hills says it has been vigilant in enforcing By-law 2010-0050, noting that truck depots can house hundreds of illegally parked trucks. When in use, these vehicles 'add to traffic congestion, negatively impact farmland and threaten safety given the size and mobility of these 40-foot tractor trailers,' it said.
The Town of Halton Hills, which has a population of about 64,000, noted that it has a zoning by-law in place that prohibits storing or parking commercial motor vehicles on residential and agricultural properties, most of which are along Steeles Avenue.
'We currently have over 50 properties in Halton Hills with illegal land use violations including illegal truck depots,' Susie Spry, manager of enforcement services, said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBC
14 minutes ago
- CBC
Young people face new challenges in the job market as youth unemployment soars
Social Sharing Youth unemployment has reached its highest point in 15 years, and experts helping young Londoners find work say the main issues are their lack of experience paired with steep competition. London's fast growing population might mean more opportunities long-term, but for now it amounts to fewer job openings than job-seekers, especially for entry-level positions, according to Tyler Paget, manager of employment services at Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU). For young people, this means being overlooked by potential employers, he said. "They don't have the work experience quite yet or the confidence and they're just not getting the same shot that they used to," said Paget. The latest Canadian employment figures from July, 2025 show unemployment for people aged 15 to 24 has risen to 14.6 per cent, which is the highest it has reached since 2010—excluding the COVID-19 pandemic. Within this group, high school-aged kids are having the most difficulty finding jobs, with an unemployment rate of 31.4 per cent. More youth than before may also be looking for work now. Paget has seen a steady increase in the number of young people accessing YOU's employment services over the past three years, he said. "The cost of living has just gone up so much that, quite frankly, fewer and fewer young people can afford to just focus on school," he said. "They have to look for employment in order to pay rent and pay for food and those sorts of things." Increasing automated hiring practices are only adding to the difficulty, he explained. Applicants rarely get an opportunity now to meet a hiring manager face-to-face, and more businesses are relying on algorithms or A.I. to filter through resumes. This harms the chances of young job-seekers, Paget said, as it only valus the experience on their resumes and not their actual potential. Matching the right people to the right jobs. Discouraged youth are turning to other services for help, as well. Employment agencies, like Express Employment Professionals, are finding more 18 to 25-year-olds coming to them for help, said James Norris, owner of the agency's London franchise. Oftentimes, young people are applying to so many jobs and hearing nothing back, leading to feelings of frustration, he said. "Sometimes they're coming to us because they don't know where else to go," he explained. "We help individuals with determining what skills and experience they have and speak with the employers that we're working with to get them looking past that resume." The perception that there aren't any jobs out there is false, Norris believes, explaining that it's more the challenge of matching the right people to the right jobs. On the applicant side, it's not being able to fully identify their skills and experience, he said, and for the employer, it's being inundated with too many unqualified applicants for a single position and lacking the staff and resources to properly screen them. A strategic approach is necessary, expert says For young candidates applying to jobs, getting that resume perfected is always important, Paget said, but it's equally important to get out and meet people. Finding a way to get that face-to-face interaction with a hiring manager, even if it's just a 30-second conversation, can mean a better chance of having your resume selected out of the pile of hundreds, he added. . On the community side, a more strategic approach to youth unemployment is necessary, he said. Part of YOU's success, he explained, comes down to their employer partnerships and their youth-specific programming to help them build young job-seekers' skills and confidence. More programs like this for youth would help, he said.
Globe and Mail
32 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Lester Pearson, his Buick and the pact that changed the Canadian auto sector
Dumaresq de Pencier is the exhibit and project coordinator for the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa, Ont. Late Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's 1963 Buick isn't quite the vehicle you'd expect to be used by a former head of state: It's about the size of an upper-end sedan for its time – with a bit of extra chrome here and there – but no bells and whistles such as bulletproof glass or an intercom. It's only when you see the little Canadian coat of arms emblazoned on the inside doors that you realize the Oshawa-made, custom limousine formerly owned by Canada's 14th Prime Minister might be anything beyond a run-of-the-mill model for its day. It's surprisingly understated when you consider Pearson's legacy, including a Nobel Prize for peacekeeping, the iconic Maple Leaf flag, encouraging official bilingualism, improving women's rights, universal health care and the 1965 Auto Pact that shaped the North American auto sector (now under threat by U.S.-driven tariffs). Yet, Pearson was a famously modest person, a diplomat uncomfortable with the public spotlight, which his vehicle – recently restored and now on display at the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa – reflects. Pearson's stamp on the auto industry Pearson was by no means a car buff but, by being born in 1897, he was the first Canadian prime minister to have grown up in and around the creation of the automobile. When he came to office in the mid-1960s, Canada was in the midst of an industrial crisis. Canada's auto industry had long been protected by import tariffs on American industrial goods instituted in the late 19th century. The local market was a walled garden, producing a small range of locally sold vehicles. Canada-only vehicle marques such as Ford's maple-spangled Frontenac, General Motors's successful Acadian and Chrysler's Windsor (which remained in Canadian production for six years after its American counterpart), were usually low to mid-range cars fitted with high-end trim, perfect for Canadian buyers who wanted a fancy-looking car at an affordable price. Pearson's limousine is a classic example of Canadian car-building of the time: It combines the roomy chassis of a Buick LeSabre, the engine of a Wildcat, the trim of a high-end Electra and internal components from that year's Cadillacs to create a luxurious-looking limousine on a not-so-luxurious platform. But as the American car industry grew throughout the 1960s, the quaint local manufacturing style on this side of the border began to fall by the wayside. As prices dropped, more American cars were being imported to Canada as tariffs didn't have much financial impact. With fewer cars being shipped from Canada to Europe, owing to the growth of companies such as Volkswagen, Canada's trade deficit skyrocketed. Canadian governments under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and then Pearson tried – and failed – to boost industry growth with protective tariffs, triggering genuine fears of a trade war that the U.S. auto manufacturing juggernaut would likely win. In 1964, 90 per cent of the Canadian auto industry was American-owned. Its hundreds of thousands of employees were represented by the United Auto Workers, headquartered in the U.S. Any fixing of the Canadian auto industry would have to be an international collaboration. Pearson's administration eventually came up with the Auto Pact, officially known as the Automotive Products Trade Agreement, signed by Pearson and President Lyndon Johnson in Texas in January, 1965. After a year of wrangling with the Big Three auto manufacturers (Ford, GM and Chrysler) and the unions, the two administrations produced something that was almost, but not quite, free trade. The Pact introduced a system wherein American-designed cars had to include Canadian-made parts and a ratio whereby every American car sold in Canada was matched by a car built here. Canada's market was no longer threatened by the American one – it was part of it – with cars and car parts traded tariff-free. Existing manufacturers had to expand their Canadian branches or risk losing the benefits of the Pact, with a 'buy-in' investment of $260-million (more than $2.5-billion in today's dollars). The Pact was deeply controversial among the American public, but auto builders weren't complaining. The Big Three could dramatically simplify their production, making an interchangeable range of vehicles on either side of the border. The Auto Pact's success and unpopularity The effects were dramatic and rapid. New factories sprouted across southern Ontario and Quebec. Existing plants were vastly expanded. Before the Pact, American-owned plants in Canada were building around 650,000 cars and exporting less than 1,000 of them to the U.S. Ten years later, Canadian plants built 1.5 million cars, exporting one million of them. By the 1970s, about 10 per cent of all cars sold in America were Canadian-made and many more included Canadian parts. On the American side, exports to Canada jumped dramatically as production grew. The Pact remained unpopular yet successful throughout the 1970s and 80s, despite U.S. President Richard Nixon's administration threatening to cancel it on several occasions. In 1986, it became part of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which kept most of its provisions in force while simultaneously rendering them obsolete. Its effect continued. By 1999, Canadian car production peaked at a whopping three million vehicles. Canada's auto sector has faced challenges and turbulent times since: Recessions, bailouts, downsizing and outsourcing have led to an industry that is somewhat leaner and shabbier than the monolith it once was. Still, it has remained an essential part of the Canadian economy, thanks in large part to a modest man in a modest limousine.
Globe and Mail
32 minutes ago
- Globe and Mail
Canada's trade strategy suffers from delusions of friendship
John Turley-Ewart is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail, a regulatory compliance consultant and a Canadian banking historian. Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently declared on CNN that in Canada, U.S. President Donald Trump is the 'most disliked politician in the world . . . because he has attacked his closest family member.' In January, just before Mark Carney announced his leadership bid for the Liberal Party, he appeared on The Daily Show and told Americans that Canada and the United States could be 'friends with benefits.' Are prominent U.S. leaders making time for media appearances to defend Canada as their 'closest family member'? Believing that trading partners are family, or friends even, betrays our leaders' wide-eyed view of the world that not even historical precedent appears able to shake. It has invited complacency and deepens the damaging economic consequences when trade relationships evolve or break apart. If there is one long-term takeaway for Canadian leaders from Mr. Trump's assault on Canada's access to U.S. markets, it's realizing that countries we trade with are neither family nor friends, but jurisdictions that do business with us – business that is transactional, situational and evolving. We have had Donald Trump-like figures before who upended our economy and who we should have already learned this lesson from. One of the first was Robert Peel, who was the British prime minister between 1841 and 1846. Unlike Mr. Trump, he was a protectionist-turned-free-trader. In 1842, he cut tariffs on British timber imports that gave Canadian timber preferential access to British markets. Consequently, our timber exports fell. In 1846, Mr. Peel dropped Britain's protectionist tariffs on grain, ending Canada's preferential grain market access that had been in place since 1815. Lumber producers praise federal plan to diversify markets amid trade war with U.S. Three years later, Canada's then Governor-General, Lord Elgin, reported that property in Montreal and 'in most of the Canadian towns . . . had fallen by 50 per cent in value' and that 'three-fourths of the commercial men are bankrupt.' By 1854, the search for a market to replace lost share in Britain was secured through a reciprocity deal with the U.S. that removed duties on fish, timber, coal and grain just as railways began to boom in Canada, opening more efficient transportation routes to move Canadian goods south. The good times lasted 12 years. U.S. President Andrew Johnson cancelled the trade deal in 1866, given growing protectionist sentiment in the U.S. and popular belief that the deal was benefitting Canadians more than Americans. The abrogation of the 1854 trade agreement helped cement efforts to create what we now know as Canada through Confederation in 1867, a project that was expected to create one national economy to help compensate for lost trade with the U.S. Today's interprovincial trade barriers measure the success of that intention. There are plenty of other past examples. The U.S. Fordney-McCumber Act in 1922 slapped an average 40-per-cent tariff on imports. This was followed by the American Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, and in 1971, President Richard Nixon's administration imposed a 10-per-cent tariff on many Canadian goods crossing the border. Opinion: Ottawa can't let our canola industry – a true Canadian success story – fade away The present isn't any friendlier than the past. Last week, China took hostage Canada's multibillion-dollar canola export trade, imposing 75.8-per-cent duties on Canadian canola seed. This is a transparent attempt to force the federal government to backtrack on Ottawa's 100-per-cent tariff on Chinese-made electric vehicles. Equally transparent is China's goal of crushing our EV sector through the sale of cheap EVs produced using low-wage work, heavily subsidized, stolen or misappropriated IP, and as Human Rights Watch has documented, forced labour. Canada has negotiated many trade agreements with other countries, yet, those deals are often more sizzle than steak. As trade experts noted earlier this year in Policy Magazine, 'Today, Canada has more comprehensive trade agreements than any other G7 country. But having a trade agreement is one thing; leveraging it is another. Utilization rates of these agreements have remained low. . .' The 2017 Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement is an example. It has yet to win full ratification by all EU member states. The obstacles are material. Differing approaches to environmental, agricultural and digital regulations and standards are persistent barriers. The Europeans seem not to care, given all the Canadian interprovincial trade barriers that also complicate EU trade with Canada. In Britain, objections to Canada's dairy and supply management systems as well as rules of origin closed the doors on free trade. Trade negotiations with Britain collapsed in 2024. The world isn't made up of countries that want to trade with Canada because they are our family or friends. It's comprised of countries who only value how Canada can serve their economic needs and political agendas. It's time we admitted to that reality. Doing so will at the very least reduce the shock when trade deals go sideways.
