Ontario Labour Relations Board
0249-00-ES Mimmo Electric Company Ltd., Applicant v. Ercole DeMarzi and Ministry of Labour, Responding Parties.
BEFORE: Gail Misra, Vice-Chair.
Employment Practices Branch File No. 41 008137
DECISION OF THE BOARD; May 16, 2000
This is an employer request for review of Order to Pay No. 55806, issued by an Employment Standards Officer on March 3, 2000. The application is made pursuant to section 68 of the Employment Standards Act (the “Act”).
Pursuant to section 68(3) of the Act, an application for review must be filed within 45 days of the date of the issuance of the Order. In this case the 45th day was on April 17, 2000. The application was filed on April 20, 2000, and is therefore untimely.
Section 68(4) of the Act gives the Board the discretion to extend the time for applying for a review if it considers it appropriate to do so. Hence, by a letter dated May 5, 2000, the Board advised the applicant of the lateness of the application and stated:
If you believe that your application has been filed in a timely manner, or if you wish to seek an extension of time for applying for a review, you must advise the Board in writing within ten (10) days of the date of this letter, setting out, in detail, your reasons why the appeal should be considered timely and/or why an extension of time for filing ought to be granted.
(Emphasis added)
- The Board has received a letter dated May 11, 2000 from an agent acting on behalf of the applicant. Despite the Board’s letter indicating that the applicant had to provide detailed reasons for why an extension of time for filing should be granted, no explanation has been provided for why the application was filed in an untimely manner. The letter requests an extension and speaks to why the applicant believes it has grounds for seeking review of the Order, but provides no reason for why the application was filed late. The agent indicates she was away in the last week of April and the first week of May 2000, but that is not the timeframe in question. The Board needed to know why the applicant had not filed its application by April 17, 2000.
DISPOSITION
- While the Legislature has given the Board the discretion to extend time limits, the Board may only do so where it considers it appropriate. It can only make that assessment when it has been provided with the reasons for the late filing. The relative merits of the case are not a consideration at this juncture. In this case there has been no explanation provided despite the Board’s request. In these circumstances the Board has nothing before it to consider in order to exercise its discretion and therefore cannot extend the time limit for the filing of the application. The application is dismissed.
“Gail Misra”
for the Board