The lawyer representing a popular downtown Winsor Chinese restaurant is asking the province to get tough on landlords who are evicting their tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over the weekend, the owners of Jade Cuisine at 157 Wyandotte St. West found out their landlord had locked them out and up until March, the restaurant owners were paid up, but have since been struggling with take-out and delivery only.
"It is harsh, it is uncalled for and shows a total lack of willingness to realize the difficulties that small businesses are going through and a total failure of co-operation and totally against the spirit of fighting this pandemic together," says Antoine D’Ailly.
He goes on to say says the landlord has refused to offer a discount on rent, and instead locked the doors.
"The landlord in particular we are dealing with here, hired lawyers from Toronto. They were unwilling to give any discount as to rent and locked the tenant out of his business Sunday morning."
The eviction comes after Ontario Premier Doug Ford asked landlords last week to be reasonable with small businesses, so D’Ailly hopes the province will do something about this to save small businesses.
"We wish the province would implement measures to protect small businesses sooner and the inaction on the part of the Ford government is causing real harm, people are losing their livelihood over this."
The province announced on Monday that it was banning landlords from evicting small businesses, but D'Ally says it does not apply in this case because the owners of Jade Restaurant are not eligible for government assistance.
He has written a letter to Windsor-West MPP Lisa Gretzky pointing out the gaps in the ban in hope the gaps will be addressed during the legislation phase.
AM800 News contacted Alvin Chan, the lawyer in Toronto, who represents the landlord.
Chan says he is "not authorized to say anything unless given consent by his client."