A Yukon judge has once again reprimanded a Whitehorse gravel business for continuing to operate next to Ear Lake even though its lease for the city-owned property expired more than three years ago and a legal requirement for it to leave.
Yukon Supreme Court Chief Justice Suzanne Duncan, in a written decision this week, declared Annie Lake Trucking in continued contempt of court for not complying with an order it signed in March 2022 agreeing to vacate the land by the end of that June.
Duncan previously found the company in contempt in October 2022 for failing to comply with that same order, imposing a $2,500 fine for each of Annie Lake Trucking’s three partners. The new decision gives the company until June 30 to leave the property and increases the fine to $7,500 per partner should the company fail to meet that deadline.
“The pattern of behaviour of Annie Lake Trucking and its partners… has shown a profound disregard for the administration of justice,” Duncan wrote. “This behaviour cannot be condoned and must be sanctioned.”
Annie Lake Trucking’s last lease for the Ear Lake property, where it excavated gravel and sand and produced concrete using an on-site plant, expired in August 2021.
The city took the company to court later that year after staff inspecting the site found that the company hadn’t ceased operations, resulting in the March 2022 consent order. The city then made contempt-of-court applications later in 2022 and again last year after the company remained on the property, ignored trespass notices and was hostile to city staff visiting the site.
Mike Gau, the city’s director of development services, said in an interview that the situation had been “dragged” out and the city was just “looking for compliance” from the company.
“I mean, we’ve been trying to get them to leave the site since 2021,” Gau said, noting that the city terminated the lease due to the company’s non-compliance with lease terms — for example, allowing people to live at the property — and because the Official Community Plan had designated the area as green space.
“Hopefully they’re able to meet that deadline and we can all move on from this.”
‘I’m willing to go to jail’
Annie Lake Trucking partner and project manager Trevor Hunziker said in a separate interview that he couldn’t “confirm or deny” if the company would be gone by the deadline, accusing the city of “bullying, threatening and intimidating” a small business his parents started 35 years ago.
“They want us to leave — I’m reluctant, but I will leave, but I can’t leave on a moment’s notice… I need at least five years,” Hunziker said, noting that there were structures, machinery, vehicles and piles of excavated material on-site that the company can’t afford to move all at once.
Another Annie Lake Trucking partner, Richard Hunziker, told the court he didn’t understand why the city couldn’t let the company stay until the site was fully excavated, according to Duncan’s decision.
He also argued that the company was “forced unfairly” into signing the March 2022 order and “pleaded financial hardship as at least a partial reason” for Annie Lake Trucking’s failure to comply.
Duncan, however, wrote in the decision that the city had “acted reasonably over the last approximately three years, giving Annie Lake Trucking ample notice, time and opportunity to comply first with the lease termination and then with the consent order.”
She wrote that “imprisonment of the partners would be justified” at this point, “given their flagrant disregard of the orders,” but added the city asked the court not to take that step yet.
Trevor Hunziker said that didn’t faze him and that the company wouldn’t be “beat down.”
“I’m willing to go to jail,” he said. “I probably should make sure I have a clean pair of underwear on if I’m going to jail, and I’m doing this mostly out of principle because my parents would want me to do that…. I’m here for the little guy.”
This post was originally published on here
