Prompt Payment Update – February 2016
Last week PPO members that are also members of the Council of Ontario Construction Associations (COCA) were down at Queen’s Park as part of COCA’s Construction Day – the following is a brief report from COCA:
In his remarks at COCA’s Construction Day Reception in the Legislative Dining Room at Queen’s Park on February 29th, Minister of Labour Kevin Flynn stated he was speaking on behalf of Premier Wynne and said that the government is in favour of Prompt Payment legislation.
Earlier in the day, 40 volunteers from 17 member associations advanced the need for a fair, reasonable, legislated payment regime for construction projects in 48 meetings with MPPs and other senior officials. It was all part of COCA’s annual industry day at Queen’s Park.
Speaking after Minister Flynn at the end of day reception was PC MPP Todd Smith who said that his party also supports prompt payment legislation and has gone so far as to strike a Blue Ribbon Panel on Prompt Payment headed by Monte McNaughton MPP. In speaking on behalf of the NDP Paul Miller MPP expressed his personal exasperation that Ontario does not yet have prompt payment legislation and he implored all members of the legislature present to “Let’s get it done!”
As for PPO, we are still anticipating that the CLA review report will be ready by the end of this month. It will be the first order of business to have access to Mr. Reynold’s report to assess how our concerns have been addressed.
We will be sending correspondence to all MPP’s prior to March 31st, advising them of this report and the need for it to be made public, or at least shared with the stakeholders as soon as possible. We will also be reinforcing the importance of prompt payment legislation as part of this package.
Once PPO has had the opportunity to see the recommendations stemming from the Reynold’s report we will be better positioned to lay out the next steps.
The best case scenario will be that PPO can support the report and apply its efforts to lobby the government to act in an expeditious manner in regards to Prompt Payment Legislation and to that effect we will be planning a day at Queen’s Park under the Prompt Payment Ontario banner. The timing the lobby day will be mid-May.