The municipality of Clarington is clamping down on a studious
celebration of Canadian liberties, charging its rural hosts with a
zoning offence carrying a hefty fine.
“The irony isn’t lost
on me,” said Peter Jaworski whose parents, Marta and Lech, have been
charged under a bylaw for letting him hold — for the tenth time — the
annual Liberty Summer Seminar on their 16 hectare spread east of Oshawa.
“It’s
an outrage that we’re hosting an event celebrating the freedoms we have
in Canada, that we didn’t have in (communist) Poland from which my
family fled, and the municipality decides to stomp down on my parents,”
Jaworski said.
“I feel horrible — they’re facing a possible
$50,000 fine ($25,000 each),” at a time when the couple opened a
bed-and-breakfast to bolster a struggling business selling books and
other items to employees of various companies.
Some 72 Canadians and Americans paid $125 each, or $75 for students, to attend the July 24-25 conference run by the Institute for Liberal Studies,
a registered charity. With a tent and stage, they ate, drank and heard
speakers including Michel Kelly-Gagnon, chief executive of the Montreal
Economic Institute. On the Saturday night they partied with live music.
Peter
Jaworski said the local health department called him a few days before
the event and he thought he had addressed its concerns over food being
served — he decided to cater — and the three portable toilets on site.
But
the couple received a summons to provincial court on Sept. 28 on a
charge of using land in an agricultural zone “for a commercial
conference centre” contrary to a Clarington bylaw.
Marta
Jaworski, 57, said she and her husband, also 57, are “devastated” by
the charge, which she called a “taste” of the oppression they felt in
Poland before fleeing in 1984 to Germany and later Canada.
“It is a feeling to be hunted. They come in uniforms . . . ,” she said, starting to cry.
Scott
Reid, Conservative MP for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington,
attended the seminar and said he can’t understand why the municipality
is cracking down now, after nine previous events. “I don’t see how the
public interest has been harmed. This is a real injustice,” he said.
Peter
Jaworski said a bylaw officer told him the investigation was sparked by
a complaint. He thinks it was likely someone else hit by an apparent
zoning crackdown who thinks everyone should suffer.
Bylaw enforcement officials for Clarington could not be reached for comment Tuesday night, nor could Mayor Jim Abernethy.
Councillor
Gord Robinson, who represents the Jaworskis, declined comment by email,
saying: “The Jaworski family have not been in contact with me about any
issue and until they do I will not interfere.”
