Rubbing salt in the wound

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/08/2023 (759 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are some who claim the Fort Garry Hotel is haunted by ghosts who checked in decades ago and never left.

Leave it to those who attend seances to decide for themselves whether spirits inhabit the 110-year-old landmark on Broadway.

What is a certainty are the skeletons lurking in the closets of the former railway hotel — the remains of a decades-long dispute between its former owners, the provincial government and the City of Winnipeg.

It’s a cautionary tale on why all levels of government must be held to account.

It began in 1979 when Jack Perrin, a businessman with Harvard Investments Ltd., paid $100,000 when he purchased the money-losing hotel from CN Rail.

He had no idea what the property-tax bill would be, because CN Rail had been paying grants in lieu of taxes, the standard practice for land holdings owned by Crown corporations.

The first of many injustices against Mr. Perrin and his heirs began when he received a $280,000 property-tax bill — incorrectly assessed by 9,700 per cent and almost three times what he paid for the hotel — shortly after taking control of the Fort Garry.

The 1980 assessment appeal deadline had passed but when Mr. Perrin planned to appeal a year later, the province had passed Bill 100, which froze assessment levels for 1981 and 1982 tax years at the 1980 level.

The city ruled the legislation took away the right to appeal assessments, a unilateral decision that was another blow against Mr. Perrin.

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned the city’s decision when it ruled on a case involving other downtown properties.

It proved to be a Pyrrhic victory for Mr. Perrin. By the time the top court ruled, the city had already seized the hotel’s title in a tax sale in 1987.

Mr. Perrin, a Royal Navy veteran of the Second World War and member of the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame, died in 1992 at age 77.

His family has picked up his legal torch and have tried to repair his damaged reputation ever since.

The hotel’s seizure returned to headlines earlier this month, in the form of a letter from Kelvin Goertzen, Manitoba’s justice minister, who wrote to the Perrin family that the province had launched an independent review, which found Mr. Perrin was dealt with unfairly.

The probe absolved the province of any wrongdoing, instead dumping the blame on the city for incorrectly interpreting legislation regarding assessment appeals.

John Perrin, Mr. Perrin’s son, questioned the independence of the provincial-ordered review that exonerates itself.

The investigator’s name remains a government secret and whoever it was who studied the Fort Garry Hotel case never bothered to contact anyone in the Perrin family for their input.

“(We) believe fairness requires that we should have been given the report and an opportunity to respond to it,” John Perrin says.

A longtime tax lawyer who successfully appealed city assessments in the 1980s and saved his clients millions of dollars, was more blunt, saying Mr. Perrin and his family are victims of vague provincial legislation that required Canada’s top court to decipher.

“He has been royally screwed,” Michael Mercury told the Free Press. “It is a disgrace and terrible what happened.”

The City of Winnipeg hasn’t commented on the letter, with a spokesman saying it needs time to respond.

Perhaps the less the city says the better. Any explanation would be more salt in a wound than anything else.

Its treatment of Mr. Perrin while he owned the Fort Garry Hotel ought to be a case study taught to administrators so future generations of property owners will receive fairer deals from all levels of government.