Carleton is facing legal action from Wilson Young Events (WYE), a local conference planning firm who says it helped organize the university’s International Urban Security and Resilience Conference, Workshop and Exhibition last year but has not been paid after it stopped working for Carleton.
The conference took place May 16-19 last year at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto.
In an emailed press release provided to the Charlatan on Feb. 27, WYE claimed that Carleton was hindering its ability to make the event a success. It alleged that following WYE’s early departure from the contract, Carleton failed to pay what was owed to the firm, despite an invoice already having been submitted.
WYE’s president Ian Garland told the Charlatan the firm has a lot of experience, but alleged that Carleton employees wouldn’t listen to WYE’s ideas.
According to Garland, the firm stopped work nearly eight months before the conference on August 10, 2016. WYE faced no penalties for not seeing the contract through, as it was set out in the employment contract, he said.
Garland added that the expectations were to attract approximately 10,000 people to the event, which he called unreasonable.
Garland stated that he tried to reduce the bill in an effort to persuade Carleton University to pay, but there were no results.
“All they did was sic lawyers after us,” Garland said.
WYE has since filed papers to commence legal action to have any money owed reimbursed.
“I don’t know if you would call it a lawsuit yet,” Garland said, but explained that the filed papers are meant to go to a required mediation.
Garland stated that his firm would like to settle, “but we just can’t get anywhere.”
WYE is looking to be reimbursed for the amount of money owed on services to date, with some interest penalties, which leaves the amount the firm is seeking to be compensated for at slightly over $100,000, not including legal fees or damages. Garland said that the amount could change, depending on how the case goes.
“It’s all kinda TBD—to be determined,” he stated.
The Charlatan reached out to Carleton’s administration for comment. Beth Gorham, the public affairs manager at the university, said in an email that she could not offer comment beyond Carleton’s statement of defence filed with the court.
“This is a commercial dispute involving a third party and it is currently being litigated,” Gorham confirmed.
Since the event in 2016, and since filing the papers, Garland said he has attempted to contact various people at Carleton, but claims not many calls were returned, and when they were returned nothing was resolved to WYE’s satisfaction.
Garland said he specifically called Carleton’s interim president Alastair Summerlee several times, but none of those phone calls were returned. He stated that a friend of his, a professor at another institution, also called the university to talk to the president as well, but his call was not returned.
Summerlee stated via email that he was not aware of the case and could not provide a comment at this time.
