Corner Brook -
It may be on the books as the law, but Pat Hickey wants the court to make a decision on the appropriateness of him having to provide the City of Corner Brook with personal information about employees who work for his business.
Hickey owns and operates PPAB Security Services and Consulting.
The company has been charged with two counts of violating Section 153 (1) of the City of Corner Brook Act. The legislation states that the City can demand employers in Corner Brook provide the names of employees, the dates on which their employment began and whether or not those employees own real property in Corner Brook.
The purpose is so the City can determine which of its residents should be subject to the annual poll tax, which is essentially applied to residents who do not own property in Corner Brook.
In provincial court in Corner Brook Tuesday, there were three companies on the docket facing charges under the legislation. Charges against two of the companies were withdrawn after the court was informed those businesses had complied and had provided the requested information about their employees.
The charges against Hickey, however, remain before the court and he entered not guilty pleas to both counts. He told The Western Star he does not agree with the law because, to him, it violates the confidentiality he has with his staff.
"If someone called up looking for a phone number for one of our staff, I would say 'sorry, we don't give that out,'" said Hickey. "Now, if I was contacted by the police for an investigation, I would give them the information they require, but I feel I am violating my employees' rights to privacy if the City can call me up and say they want to know where (employees) live and so on for the sole reason of charging them poll tax."
The letters sent to each business include a form which asks employers to list out all employees who are over the age of 18, who reside in the city and who are owners of real property.
Hickey doesn't think it's any of his business whether his employees own property or not.
That's what censuses are for, he said, and is not a task which should be passed on to employers.
In his particular line of business, Hickey has some employees who are private investigators and both he and the employees would prefer to keep the fact they do such work out of the public domain as much as possible.
"I don't feel like divulging that information to the City," said Hickey. "It just seems to me the City is dumping their work on the businesses of the city. I'm just a small operation and the couple of hours it would take me to do this could be spent doing something else."
Hickey intends to fight the charges on principle. If the court rules he does have to provide the City with the information it is requesting, then he will do so, but he's not just going to assume the City is entitled to it.
"I'd like to hear that from the courts," he said.
Dale Park, the City of Corner Brook's director of corporate services, said the three companies whose cases were called in court Tuesday were the first charges the City has ever laid under this piece of legislation.
"The City has always sent out letters to businesses every year, but in prior years we have had as many as 70 or 80 non-compliant businesses," said Park. "This year, we have decided to be more forceful in enforcing compliance with the act, and we are down to this one non-compliant business."
Park said census information does not contain the detailed information the City needs to determine who should be billed poll tax.
He acknowledged some employers may not know whether an employee owns property or not, but the City would be able to cross-reference a complete employee list with the City's list of registered property owners to get a better idea of who should be taxed.
