Lawsuit filed against Southern First Nations Network of Care and Marymound

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This article was published 19/02/2021 (2023 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE owners of a West End property at the centre of an dispute with the province have launched a lawsuit against their former tenants, alleging they are owed at least $300,000 in repair bills.

In a lawsuit filed this week, a numbered company controlled by businessmen Peter Ginakes and Ken Cranwell, is suing Southern First Nations Network of Care and Marymound Inc., the former tenants of a property at 800 Adele Ave. They allege sub-tenant Marymound left the property in a state of disrepair after unexpectedly vacating it in January 2019.

“In breach of the lease agreement, the tenant failed and has continued to fail, to repair the property in accordance with its obligation,” alleges the lawsuit, claiming “it will cost at least $345,000 to carry out all the necessary repairs.”

The owners allege they invested $1.5 million in improvements to accommodate the tenants and are now faced with additional expenses if required to find a new tenant.

In 2019, Ginakes and Cranwell sued the province for $6.1 million, alleging it pursued a plan to force the businessmen to terminate a 20-year lease agreement with the First Nations of Southern Manitoba Child and Family Service Authority.

A 2016 audit commissioned by the Southern First Nations of Care, to examine the lease its predecessor had signed, found the former NDP government signed off on the lease despite several red flags, including its length, the fact the contract was sole-sourced and the absence of an opt-out clause.

In May 2019, the province introduced Bill 32, which would have cancelled the lease agreement and prevented the building’s owners from suing the government. The bill died on the order paper before the legislature closed for the summer recess.

The 2019 lawsuit alleges Scott Sinclair, the deputy minister of Crown services at the time, arranged a meeting with Ginakes and Cranwell on Feb. 26, 2019, during which Sinclair said if they did not sign an agreement to terminate the lease, the government would terminate it through legislation.

At that time, the CFS authority was no longer using the building and it had been sublet to Marymound.

The lawsuit alleges the government directed the “sub-tenant” to move out of the building, “causing the sub-tenant to remove the children in its care out of the property in a precipitous manner, leaving the property in a state of significant disrepair and causing distress to the children themselves.”

The lawsuit alleges the province was motivated by “malice, spite, and revenge” against Ginakes after he secured a contract from the former NDP government to supply Tiger Dams during the 2011 flood.