Sarnia council has reinstated a historic user group insurance program for renters of city facilities.
On Monday, council voted 5-4 in favour of spending approximately $20,000 to go back to the city's previous process which allows informal groups -- like pick-up hockey teams and individuals -- the ability to opt into insurance if they didn't want to obtain their own through a third party.
Community Services General Manager Stacey Forfar defended a one-year pilot project adopted during 2025 budget deliberations, but admitted a fault was discovered.
"The group that kind of got caught was this adult recreation team, and I will own that 100 per cent," said Forfar. "But, the benefits of the program largely across the city are significant in terms of allowing people to now leverage our online system that we've invested in as a community."
Forfar said formal associations and organizations have historically been required to obtain their own third-party insurance coverage, at their own expense.
She said the rec team was unable to get insurance because it wasn't big enough to classify as a formal group and was too small to classify as a one-off booking.
"What we've done in the interim -- again this was a pilot to flush out anything that wasn't quite working -- is we're just going to work with these groups to say, 'look, we'll absorb you under our insurance this year.' This has been a very low risk group. There's only been a few of these one-off recreational leagues and we are more than happy to work with them to accommodate them," Forfar said.
She warned going backwards would recreate historic work.
"The intent was absolutely never to put up barriers for access to recreation," Forfar said.
As a result of council's decision, Sarnia solicitor Randi Kalar said many booking opportunities will now have to come offline and community members will once again have to call or email staff to facilitate bookings.
City county/councillor Bill Dennis asked staff to be cognizant of the issue when seeking insurance for 2026.
"This could just be a bump in the road and, who knows, maybe this can all be solved when we go out for renegotiation and we get maybe better, more favourable terms," Dennis said.
Councillors Brian White, Adam Kilner, Dave Boushy, and Anne Marie Gillis voted against reinstating the old agreement.