While a housing crisis rages, CEGEPs are struggling to recruit students who want to become municipal building inspectors. Cities in Quebec must therefore reduce their hiring criteria despite the fact that their inspectors, overwhelmed by permit requests to process, are struggling to catch owners who allow the condition of their homes to deteriorate or carry out unauthorized work there. . Second article in a series of three on a shortage with multiple repercussions.
In the current context of shortage, municipal employers must increasingly reduce their criteria for hiring inspectors and technicians associated with the issuance of permits, at the risk of exposing themselves to prosecution, we learned The duty.
This is the case for the City of Gatineau. “It happens that technicians with little experience must be hired, which requires additional training and increased support,” she agrees in an email to Duty. Several cities must also increase the number of job postings before being able to recruit a handful of candidates with a minimum of experience in the field.
“It’s worrying all the same, and I would tell you that, having opened recruitment competitions last year and the year before, often, there are people who apply without having any experience at all , not even training that has a link [avec le milieu de l’inspection] », Confides the president of the Corporation of municipal building and environment officers of Quebec (COMBEQ), Janie Rondeau. The trained building inspector has been, since 2020, an urban planning and regulatory advisor for the municipality of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu, in Montérégie. “People think that even today, we can hire people and train them on the job, but the reality is not the same. »
This profession continues to become more complex, a situation which requires CEGEPs which offer training in this area to update it regularly to adapt to municipal and provincial regulations which “change a lot”, notes Jean -Simon Boulianne, teacher in the Development and Urban Planning Techniques program at Cégep de Jonquière. “There has been an increase in the number of laws that the municipal inspector must enforce,” he notes.
In this context, “it takes people who have a minimum of experience and background to evolve in this environment, otherwise the risks of error and lawsuits against the municipality are quite great, and that sometimes leads to more problems than not having a person in post,” says Francis Gaudet, director of the municipal service. urban planning in the regional county municipality of D’Autray, in Lanaudière.
“An inspector who gives a permit to a place where it was not possible could result in a lawsuit worth half a million or a million against the municipality at that time,” continues Mr. Gaudet, who affirms that such legal actions “we are seeing more and more of them”.
“We are never safe from that; The error is human. But it is certain that when we are overwhelmed with permit requests, we want to hurry, we want to do well, but the risk of errors is greater,” also notes Tony Turcotte. The latter must alone occupy the position of building and environmental inspector in the municipalities of Saint-Narcisse and Sainte-Geneviève-de-Batiscan, in Mauricie. A heavy task for one person to carry, he agrees.
In 2021, a judge of the Superior Court of Quebec ordered the demolition of a luxurious residence valued at three million dollars at the expense of the City of Gatineau, which had made an error by approving its construction too close to the street facing it.
Mr. Turcotte, for his part, notes the risk that building permits will be granted in error for the construction of properties in flood-prone areas or at risk of landslides. “It doesn’t take much” to make such an error, which can nevertheless put “people’s lives at risk”, in addition to exposing cities to legal action for damages, raises the municipal inspector.
Overloaded inspectors
The complexity of the work of municipal inspectors, combined with the shortage of manpower, also has the effect of overloading these workers, note several of them who have agreed to confide in the Duty.
“We are on the front line a lot,” explains a built environment inspector at the City of Montreal who requested anonymity to avoid suffering reprisals from her employer. She notes that inspectors are finding it increasingly difficult to respond quickly to citizens’ requests. “So when we arrive and communicate with the citizen, they have been waiting for a long time,” she said. Inspectors then experience impatience from residents, which can generate “a lot of stress” for these workers, continues this source.
This lack of manpower also has the effect that employees of the Housing Department of the City of Montreal have less opportunity to carry out “preventive inspections” of properties. “Often, inspectors arrive on the scene, and the damage has already been done: there has been a lot of work without a permit,” emphasizes inspector Giovanni Di Tirro. These employees were then not able to prevent owners from “evicting tenants” to carry out unauthorized work in housing, he continues.
“In the absence of staff, priority is always given to the issuance of permits. So, if the person is just in permits throughout their summer, well, they will not go out into the field to check to see if the person did work without a permit or if they did their construction in accordance with the permit. », also notes Janie Rondeau, from COMBEQ. “You can build something in your home and no one will know. We see this every day,” also notes a municipal inspector, who sees this as a direct consequence of the lack of municipal inspectors in the metropolis. “It’s like not stopping at one stop » without getting caught by the police, she concludes.