What happens to contaminated sites when their corporate owner
goes bust? Most of them end up escheating to the province, which is
increasingly concerned about costs of managing them.
Now, Ontario's Ministry of Infrastructure is seeking
comments on a proposed new management framework for forfeited
corporate property. One of the changes would allow the
provincial government to impose legacy cleanup costs on anyone who
was a director or officer of the corporation in its last two years.
Comments are due by December 21, 2012.
Ontario law provides that when a corporation, incorporated under
an Ontario statute, is dissolved, any property that it owns at the
time of dissolution forfeits to the government of Ontario. This
could be a for-profit corporation, a non-profit, a co-operative, a
credit union, or a corporation incorporated in other provinces, or
outside of Canada, which has land in Ontario. (There is some
dispute as to which government gets property of a
