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Unlicensed electrical contractor fined for unsafe, illegal work in Ontario

February 28, 2019 | By Peter Saunders


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February 28, 2019 – Hamilton’s Provincial Offences Court has convicted Leonard Sankar, owner and operator of MJ Construction, for conducting unsafe electrical work without the necessary licence across Southern Ontario.

Sankar pleaded guilty to 13 charges on Jan. 15, 2019, including multiple counts of working without an electrical contractor’s licence and not taking out an electrical permit, along with one count of unsafe electrical condition, where a live wire was left hanging in a residential basement. If someone had touched the exposed wiring, they could have received a fatal shock.

The court ordered him to pay a $25,000 fine and a $6,250 victim fine surcharge for work his company conducted at seven locations in Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, Paris and Flamborough, Ont.

Subsequent to the laying of the charges and before the guilty plea, MJ Construction hired a licensed electrical contractor to go to all of the locations flagged by Ontario’s Electrical Safety Authority (ESA), so the electrical work could be corrected of any defects.

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“Any business that offers or performs electrical work must be licensed by ESA,” says Normand Breton, registrar and director of contractor licensing for ESA. “The conviction demonstrates how seriously we and the courts take such matters.”

This is not the first conviction for MJ Construction. In 2017, manager Derek Sankar was convicted of doing electrical work without a licence, for failing to apply for inspection and for unsafe electrical conditions. At that time, much of the company’s work was found non-compliant with the Ontario Electrical Safety Code, due to numerous defects.


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