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https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/carbon-monoxide-alarms-now-mandatory-in-ontario-homes
If you don’t have a carbon monoxide alarm installed in your home yet, time’s up. Effective Wednesday, alarms that can detect the deadly gas are mandatory in almost all Ontario homes.
The new regulation requiring the carbon monoxide alarms follows passage on the provincial legislature last November of a private member’s bill proposed by Progressive Conservative MPP Ernie Hardeman.
The new law is named the Hawkins-Gignac Act in honour of OPP Const. Laurie Hawkins and her family, who died in 2008 of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney in their Woodstock, Ont. home. Carbon monoxide, which is colourless, odourless and tasteless, kills more than 50 people a year in Canada, including 11 on average in Ontario.
Hawkins’s uncle, retired firefighter John Gignac, said he had mixed emotions about the regulation because it took a tragedy to spur the government to action.
“But I feel happy in the sense that it’s not only honoured my niece and her family but it’s now going to start saving lives in Ontario, and that’s what it’s all about.”
The new regulation, which updates Ontario’s Fire Code, requires detectors near all sleeping areas in homes with fuel-burning appliances, such as furnaces, stoves or fireplaces. It also applies to all residences with attached garages.
The only residences not affected by the new regulation are those that are all electric and have no attached garages. Only about two per cent of Ontario dwellings fit that description, according to Gignac, who co-chairs the Hawkins-Gignac Foundation for CO Education.
Until now, only homes and other residential buildings constructed after 2001 were required to have carbon monoxide alarms. Yukon is the only other Canadian jurisdiction that has made carbon monoxide alarms mandatory so far.
Fire departments will enforce the new regulation during home inspections for smoke detectors, which are also mandatory.
Penalties for non-compliance are the same as those for failing to have a smoke detector. Inspectors can issue $235 tickets or lay charges that could result in fines of up to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for companies.
Sean Tracey, deputy chief of Ottawa Fire Services, said there will be a phase-in period before tickets are issued.
“The tickets are something we’re reluctant to do,” he said. “Our emphasis for the first phase-in period is going to be on the public awareness and education pieces.”
Tracey said the fire service will probably include inspections for carbon monoxide alarms in its Wake Up program for smoke detectors. During weeklong blitzes in the spring and fall, fire inspectors visit homes and ask occupants to voluntarily admit them to see if they have smoke detectors on every floor, as required by law. About 15,000 homes are year are inspected.
Tracey said the fire service will lay charges against landlords if they find “blatant non-compliance” with Fire Code provisions that put multiple tenants at risk.
For more information about carbon monoxide alarms, go to Ottawa Fire Services Get Alarmed website at
http://ottawa.ca/en/residents/emergency-services/fire-services/get-alarmed-carbon-monoxide-safety.
