It is an honour to rise as the official opposition’s lead in speaking to government Bill 142, entitled Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act.

Nothing personal here, of course, but as you could imagine, on this side of the House, we deal with government bills with a healthy amount of skepticism, as many bills come wrapped in a hopeful name and elegant packaging but too often hide a dangerous core. As a matter of fact, many opposition critics and researchers have become violently ill when handling new government legislation at times.

Speaker, I have a young family to take care of, and I could not take any chances, so I did the only responsible thing, as critic, before diving into this legislation: I first contacted poison control to take the first look. And so there I was, watching with trepidation, at a safe distance, as the team went about leafing through this highly technical bill in their bright yellow haz-mat suits. And imagine the relief and surprise I felt when, after a long period of examination, the team began unzipping their suits and handling the bill with bare hands. We haven’t found a poison pill, for now.

But in all seriousness, I’d like to acknowledge and congratulate the minister and Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery for their work on this bill, which entirely repeals the Consumer Protection Act, 2002, and replaces it with the legislation we are now debating, and which I believe will improve consumer protection in some important areas—a process that has no doubt taken many months, if not years.

While the government has numbers—meaning an army of staff—and time on their side when it comes to drafting legislation, we in the opposition have neither when it comes to critiquing and analyzing it. So I would like to thank our small but mighty research team, especially Caitlin Hipkiss, for her tremendous work in a short time. As well, I’d like to thank a number of other contributors who have come through in a short period, including Marina Pavlović, associate professor at the faculty of law at the University of Ottawa; Dave Deonarain, real estate lawyer; the consumers council; Canadians for Properly Built Homes; consumer advocate Barbara Captijn; Linda Palmieri, a concerned citizen; and many more I’ve had the chance to contact in this short time.

I’d also again like to thank the minister and his ministry for arranging a short technical briefing that helped address some of the immediate concerns we had upon reading the bill.

Speaker, the need for consumer protection in Ontario has never been greater. As many find themselves affected by the affordability crisis, the value of a dollar means more now than ever. People are frustrated out of their minds with price gouging, misleading advertisements, shrinkflation. To top it off, entire industries are posting massive profits while people are struggling to survive. And, of course, there’s an unending variety of scams particularly targeting our elderly and most vulnerable. It is our responsibility, as legislators, to ensure that Ontarians have the gold standard of consumer protection that they deserve.

That being said, today we are debating a government consumer protection bill that would replace and repeal the existing act that’s there today. Analyzing this act was challenging, as parts of the act have been moved around and deleted entirely, leaving us concerned that consumers would not be protected in some areas. As well, certain protections were removed from legislation, placed into regulation—and this reminded us of what happened with the PAWS Act. As you may remember, there was a problem when provisions were removed and were to be prescribed by regulation—however, when the regulations were delayed, it actually led to no laws in place for a period of time. This caused a series of problems, and we want to ensure consumers don’t find themselves in a similar situation, without protection—because this bill moves many provisions from legislation into regulation and also appears to expand the scope of what provisions can be made into regulation.

Early analysis from law firms has suggested that this list of areas signals that the regulations under the new CPA may be more detailed and expansive than the current version. It is difficult to ascertain what the impact will be, as we do not yet have the text of the regulations, which is always a challenge. As it stands, we know that previous provisions on motor vehicles and the cashing of government cheques have been removed from the legislation in favour of shifting to regulation, as an example.

At the briefing, ministry staff answered some of our questions and said that there would be a seamless transition that would not leave unintended holes in protections. So I will move on and dig deeper into this legislation.

When this legislation was announced on October 23, the government stated that it would “strengthen protections and make life easier for consumers and businesses” through a series of initiatives it included in its backgrounder. I will now reference each initiative and briefly discuss whether I think it is a valid issue to be addressed and if the government’s aims will improve said issues. So let’s see what they are.

First off, tackling unfair business practices: This legislation changes language to allow that it is a prohibited practice to charge for goods or services that grossly exceeds the price at which similar goods or services are available from similar suppliers—or to state it simply, price gouging is not allowed. In the midst of this affordability crisis, the public certainly wants to see action on this. After grocery chain CEOs testified in the House of Commons, Dalhousie University polled Canadians about their opinions on food inflation; 31% of Ontarian respondents blamed price gouging, and a significant number of respondents across the country believed it was in fact the role of government to intervene.

We New Democrats are committed to fighting price gouging wherever it rears its greedy head, and we are interested to know how this government intends to do it with this legislation. In the way that it is worded, it will not stop industry-wide gouging but will only address individual sellers as compared to their competitors as a whole. This legislation defines price gouging as an unconscionable act and includes other examples such as the misrepresentation of products or services.

At present, unconscionable acts include representations that goods are new or unused if they are not, for example representing a used appliance for sale as if it was new. This can lead to serious consequences in the mechanical safety and operation of the item. It also prohibits exploiting a person’s inability to understand and expands these rights to include language barriers as a reason as to why a person may not be able to understand a contract. It also goes further to lay out that it is an unconscionable act to enter into a contract with a consumer if the person or business doing so knows that there is no reasonable chance that the consumer will be able to pay the total amount owing under the contract.

This bill changes language to allow that it is a prohibited practice to charge a price for goods or services that grossly exceeds the price of other similar goods. So this is an attempt to curb gouging, and that is good. The only problem, you could argue, is, well, what happens when an entire section of the market is charging high prices? So I have questions about what would happen in monopoly situations where similar suppliers or businesses are all offering products with the same inflated price. You might say that this act is not intended to regulate the market—and I guess that’s a different discussion, but I appreciate this safeguard in place here. So while all these aims of the proposed legislation and this initiative seem to all be positive and supportable, it remains to be seen how this will be undertaken and enforced.

The next initiative, addressing predatory practices by some suppliers leasing equipment to homeowners: This issue has garnered quite a bit of media attention. Often they involve door-to-door HVAC rentals and sales that have resulted in many consumers being taken advantage of due to an inability to understand often-misleading contracts and terms. In this initiative, the government tries to address a common problem in what they call purchase-cost-plus leases, where the amount of product drastically exceeds the cost of the purchased good.

A purchase-cost-plus lease is an agreement where a party agrees to reimburse the contract party for expenses plus a specified profit proportional to the full value of the contract—for example, you need to purchase an item that’s $1,000, but you don’t have that up front; instead, you enter into a contract where the full term is $1,300 over two years, and you pay a monthly fee to the person providing the contract with that extra profit.

Cost-plus leases can be a large problem when the amount of profit drastically exceeds the cost of the good. This bill would add provisions that would entitle the lessee to purchase the leased goods and terminate the lease at any point during the lease term, upon payment, not exceeding the cost at which the lessee may purchase the leased good. The cost must decrease to $0 during the lease term.

The legislation states that a purchase-cost-plus lease would be “a lease under which the total amount payable exceeds 90% of the estimated retail value of the leased goods.” The provision does not regulate the market, but it does regulate at what point a consumer can exercise their rights. For example, a furnace at retail could cost $6,000. Frequently, we will see contracts with exorbitant markups. With these new provisions, using $6,000 as an example, the total amount payable could now go up to $11,400, but not above. For contrast, in one case, a senior couple in Welland saw a $43,000 bill for a $6,000 furnace.

So this change seems to be a positive move, as the legislation adds provisions to allow customers to purchase and terminate the lease at any point during the term, requires that costs decrease to $0 during the lease term and caps, and even more.

There are also some provisions here that limit contracts being initiated at a person’s dwelling, and that clearly state that consumers may, without any reason, cancel certain listed consumer contracts within 10 days. I think this section is long overdue, as door-to-door sales have resulted in a huge amount of consumer complaints that continue to shock people when reported in the media. One such type of scam is referred to as notices of security interest, often referred to as NOSIs or liens, which I will cover in greater detail soon. This initiative is welcome, and certainly supportable.

Providing an exit for time-shares: This initiative is self-explanatory and needed, as many consumers and their families locked into infinite time-share contracts exist today. With this new legislation, a consumer can automatically exit a time-share contract after 25 years, or at the time of their passing, with limits to any exit costs. It is also worth noting that the ability to exit a time-share contract on or after the 25-year anniversary, so long as the termination fees and other requirements are met, is in fact retroactive. This is good. It is not often that we see retroactive changes. I believe this will assist many individuals who are struggling to resolve disputes relating to time-shares for deceased family members. We do not have more information, as this will be defined in regulations, but this initiative will improve the current situation for consumers.

Clarifying rules for gift cards: again, another self-explanatory initiative that seeks to clarify that all purchased prepaid cards cannot expire, regardless of how they are purchased. Despite an already-existing ban on gift card expiration dates in Ontario, CTV News reported earlier this year the case of Carola Della Mattia of Brampton, whose $250 prepaid Visa gift card had an expiry date as well as a service fee that ate away at the balance—as prepaid credit cards may also have activation fees and maintenance or dormancy fees deducted each month that many are unaware of. Like too many consumers who are taken advantage of, Carola only found justice after the company was shamed in the media.

I should also note that points and loyalty cards that are used for collecting store awards are not covered by gift card rules, so we could see there is room for improvement here.

It is also interesting to note that approximately 2% to 4% of gift cards in the US are never claimed, representing billions in profits for retailers, according to a study by the Retail Gift Card Association. I imagine the statistics are similar here.

I also wonder about protecting consumers who have gift cards for stores that have declared bankruptcy. You may wonder, how does the gift card rule apply to this and protect consumers? Well, currently it does not. When a company files for bankruptcy, the ban on gift card expiry is not applied. Enhanced clarity on this to ensure that all gift cards cannot expire is welcome.

The next initiative, protecting consumers’ right to take action in court—

It’s my pleasure to stand here today and talk about Bill 142, the Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act, because, as I said earlier, consumers don’t know what they don’t know.

Right now, this bill is going to repeal the Consumer Protection Act, 2002, and this will be the act in its place. The act maintains that many of the traditions in the existing legislations—they’re going to consolidate them, and they’re going to move many of the items into regulation, and consumer protection legislation that covers both the goods and services.

I agree that many times legislation needs to have a review. When we were debating I think it was Bill 139, the red tape bill, last week, the government talked about looking at bills every—I think they said every 10 years to make sure that the regulations are working. If I recall, that’s the timeline. It is welcomed that they are going to be looking at this bill that’s over 20 years ago to make things better for consumers in this province when they are purchasing goods and services.

One of the things that I wanted to talk about was with regard to when someone purchases a good, for an example. Now, many of you know that last week the organic organization was in the Legislature. They were hopefully meeting with every MPP and explaining what some of their hurdles are in the organic sector. One of the things we know is that food is obviously something we all need to sustain ourselves. One of the messages they came to talk about to MPPs was that the organic industry needs to be regulated.

Right now the enforcement is through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, so any agricultural product that’s labelled organic is regulated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. However, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency does not typically investigate complaints about misuse of the terms unless the product: (a) bears a Canadian organic logo or (b) carries an organic claim and is being sold outside of the province of its origin. You see, there is a problem in this process here. When we’re talking about consumers accessing products and services, the organic sector has rightfully pointed out that they need to be regulated, because what happens is somebody who gets into the organic business, they can just slap a label on their produce and the consumer at the other end will not even be aware of what those standards are that enable that label to be organic. So they’re buying something, quite frankly, that could be not organic and that’s what those representatives were telling us.

We need to have regulations in Ontario about why—when we buy something, that it is actually organic. So why do we need Ontario organic regulations? They told us that it’s to protect organic farmers who have worked so hard to meet the standards. You’re not just protecting the people who are buying the produce, but you’re also protecting the farmers who are supplying that produce. It’s to reduce the consumer confusion and maintain food integrity by protecting consumers from misleading use of the term.

Again, we’re talking about Bill 142, how to protect consumers. This is something that the organic sector has been asking for quite some time, and it would be very important to look at that. I know there was a bill through the Legislature—the member from Danforth brought forward the exact bill about regulating organic food in Ontario. The representatives I’ve talked to said that unfortunately that hasn’t—you know, the government hasn’t taken that on to pass.

By regulating the organic industry, it also strengthens the organic brand in the system while continuing to improve it. It’s giving farmers and, quite frankly, the producers—I met with a woman named Julia. She would obviously receive the produce from the farmers and then she actually manufactures it. She was saying, as a young woman entrepreneur, that in order for us to create more jobs in the organic field that are—first of all, the organic sector is regulated, but also financing and helping with funding with entrepreneurs that are starting to develop and manufacture those organic products.

In many ways, it’s a great thing that this bill has come forward and is protecting consumers, but there is a product right in front of this government. It’s about food. It’s about food security. We need to make sure that we support our farmers when they decide to go into a different range of food and go the organic route. Quite frankly, it’s consumer choice. When people go to the grocery store, they often want organic. They know they—for whatever reasons: They want to make sure that they’re healthier, so they believe buying organic is going to give them a better quality of product. There are going to be less chemicals and pesticides used. They want to support organic farmers.

If the government is changing regulations, if the government is talking about better consumer protections, then having the organic sector regulated would be a good step in complementing what the government wants to accomplish by cutting red tape and also by protecting consumers in the Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act. That’s just my opinion. I think that there’s lots to be done under this government that could improve access to organic food and making sure when people spend that money—because it does usually cost a little more to buy organic—that they are getting what they pay for, because they are saying that part of this bill is informing consumers, making sure they’re not getting gouged. To me, that is an important piece.

The other group that came in last week was the kinesiologists, and there were many colleagues in that area in the reception room meeting with the kinesiologists. One of the asks that they were asking for, again, was to create regulations, and one of them was they wanted to have kinesiologists actually regulated as a health practitioner agency or health care provider service, because when there are car accidents, they’re not a regulated health care provider for those treatments. So, again, many people could be accessing kinesiology under accident benefits, not realizing that they’re not a regulated health care professional under the accident benefits which means that they would have to probably pay out-of-pocket if they’re not regulated. So they wanted to be a part of that team. Many times, the conversations when we talk about consumer protections, the sector of the product people are buying or the service they’re accessing is not regulated.

So I think this is a good bill, as our critic has said. Overall, it includes encouraging improvements to the things that people are trying to access. One is the time-share example. I had a constituent come into my office years ago and, unfortunately, there was very little that we could do but refer him to legal counsel in order to resolve their dispute—or, actually, they wanted out of the time-share.

The other part of this bill—I noticed that they are going backwards on it. They are retroactively doing that, and that’s very important because one of the things I think we’ve talked about is protecting seniors. Many people who are younger get time-shares, absolutely, but, generally, the population that look at time-shares are people who are more mature, and they might have that extra time that they can flex off because they’re not working and access their time-share that they purchased. So having it be retroactive is a very important piece, I think, in this legislation.

I think the 25-year limit is also a fair step—that if you enter in a time-share, people are aware that their commitment is 25 years and then after that, they have a responsibility to do as they wish with that time-share, and they’re not locked in, because oftentimes people get—maybe they’re not well, they get sick and they can’t use a time-share. Then you’ve got to run around and look for somebody to take your time-share, and bottom line, you still have to pay for that time-share. It’s not an easy thing to be strapped with, held down on, if you don’t have the means to get there for health reasons, and then, again, as you age, you’re not interested, maybe, in going there for the rest of your life. A lifetime commitment is a lot to ask for for a time-share, so I’m glad to see that that is in there.

The other one that I wanted to chat about was the NOSIs. I was here when the minister gave his speech, and he talked about the increase in how many NOSIs have been registered, and I believe he used the number 38,000 NOSIs have been registered in a very short time. For those that don’t know what a NOSI is, it’s a notice of security interest. These are relatively new and, quite frankly, very bothersome at this point, when someone can basically—I’ll call it a lien on your property because it is a notice of securing some financial interest on your property.

The interesting part that the minister alluded to was that because they go through the land registry, land registries can’t differentiate if they’re actually a NOSI or if they’re actually a true lien on someone’s home, or a mortgage for that matter. As we have all had many examples of NOSIs on properties, I’m glad to see that they are going to be addressed as a serious problem, because everyone needs a furnace, let’s say, and the fact is that you may be financially in a precarious situation, so you might have to take it out as a lease.

Again, as the bill points out and many examples talked about, people are paying far more than the product is actually worth. To me, that’s unconscionable. The government talks about unconscionable deals and those NOSIs—when people have to pay double or triple or even just are under the gun when they have to sell their home and have to pay a bill when they had no idea that there was a NOSI registered on their property, it’s quite disturbing actually.

Then, even if the people can pay that NOSI, it’s a big financial hit because it’s quite—thousands and thousands of dollars. Many people are on fixed incomes. When you sell your home, you’re maybe relying on the sale of your home for some financial security. It may be your retirement. To have to pay a NOSI and come up with $10,000—in some examples we talked about, people were paying NOSIs of $60,000. That’s just ridiculous. So it’s good to see that the NOSIs are in this legislation and that the government acknowledges that they have to be dealt with.

The other part of the consumer affairs—they talked about cancellations. I was a broker in my previous life. We would send out—automatically, you would renew house insurance and car insurance. When I worked in insurance, it was a paper, a paper document that you mailed out. So we would mail out the renewals. Now, I don’t know if they offer them electronically; I certainly get mine still in the mail. But every renewal would have, on the back, a cancellation clause.

The renewals generally would go out 30 days ahead. People would know what the price was, and then people would know when the renewal date was. Then, they could decide if they wanted to cancel, but they did have to sign off the cancellation and mail it back to the broker before the renewal date. Then, they could get what they call a flat cancellation, which means there’d be no fee beyond the renewal date because the previous period expired as of the renewal. If you mailed in your cancellation after the renewal date, they would cancel it on a short-rate cancellation, which meant they would retain a penalty for that cancellation—an administrative fee, so to speak, but most people had no idea that would occur.

Again, this is where the cancellation fees, products—people have to be informed of what they’re getting into. Insurance is one of those products and services that many people buy at the time not understanding a lot of the—in this example, the cancellation clause.

I actually want to talk about also Rogers. You know, the Internet—people have talked about how digital services are changing and how consumers buy services and products. Rogers, you know, they’re Internet; they’re cable. I have an example of a constituent who purchased Rogers cable and Internet. What happened was—it’s a very reasonable monthly fee, but unfortunately that person sometimes would not pay it on time, and they’d maybe get three months behind. They would eventually catch up, but the issue was they didn’t get notified that their service would be cancelled. There was no notification. Finally, when the person went to reconcile with the accounts, they expected to pay the three months plus some late fees. However, they found out—and again, this is what kind of gets disturbing when it comes to business practices. Rogers is a big conglomerate, right? They should have informed this constituent of the fact that when they don’t pay, not only do they get late fees, but they also get what’s called a “suspension fee.” And that suspension fee prevented Rogers from cancelling their service.

Now, in some ways, they’re maybe protecting them from not having any service at all. But when the person was ready to pay their outstanding bill, they noticed that the amount was extremely high. It wasn’t the regular amount plus, you know, $5 or whatever the service fee was for late fees, and they questioned it. That’s the only way they found out that they were getting this suspension fee. And then they were furious, and they wanted to cancel the service. So they talked to the representative at that point—well, first, they were talking to the account representative, who transferred them to the cancellation or the service department, whatever it was, and they explained the situation. They explained they weren’t happy and that they wanted to cancel their Rogers service. They wanted out.

Speaker, have you ever tried to cancel a Rogers service? I see you have a little grin on your face. Trying to cancel any online kind of service, whether it’s Internet or cellphone—they try to upsell you, they give you discounts, whatever, extend your contract with lower rates. It’s so hard to cancel your service.

The government talks about the cancellation of services in here, and subscription is one of the examples they used, but I’d love for this to be something the government takes on and that we can actually reply by email to these companies like Rogers, where there is a record of the person asking for that cancellation—because the constituent was kept on the phone for so long. What happened is they were kept on the phone for so long that they got frustrated, and they hung up. So how is it that a consumer decides that they want to cancel a service, and they don’t have access to doing that efficiently?

I use the example of myself as an insurance broker. When someone would call you and say, “I want to cancel my insurance,” you would give them the instructions on how to do it, and you would say, “Well, did you get your renewal policy? It’s on the back.” They would say, “Well, I got it, but I can’t find it.” Because we’re registered brokers of Ontario, we were obligated to send them a form—an actual cancellation request form. We weren’t let off the hook because they didn’t find the form, or we didn’t try to stall them—yes, we did try to give them some feedback about the service we provided and the coverage they have: “When you go somewhere else, make sure you get the same coverage”—because, again, you could go to another business and they could undersell you. Maybe they didn’t give you the loss of use. Maybe they didn’t give you the income enhancement, and so you’re thinking, “Oh, I’m getting the same insurance coverage and I’m paying less somewhere else, and that’s why I want to cancel today.” And then the other piece was, also, we would tell them about the short-rate cancellation.

Under this act—again, overall, it’s an improvement. It’s supportable in second reading. I know the critic is going to want to give feedback during committee of how to make it better, and we talked about the consumer watchdog that’s been proposed in this Legislature. But there are lots of things that when a consumer asks for something—because there are things that we get when we don’t ask. You get something in the mail. You think, “Well, I didn’t ask for that,” and it’s already been sold to you without you knowing.

But when you want to cancel a furnace lease, when you want to cancel your Rogers, when you want to cancel life insurance, gosh, anything—when you want to cancel something, you need to have a direct avenue to put it in writing, because there is always the case where you phone in and they say, “Well, we don’t have that note here on the computer,” and that’s not good customer service. That’s not good consumer services—and that happens. People don’t record it, and then you end up getting another bill and they say, “Well, so sorry, there is no note here,” and then you are, again, chasing the tail of getting it cancelled. I see some of my colleagues nodding because that does happen.

So the Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act is a good start. There is a lot there that we agree with, but I would hope that it makes it easier for consumers, when they don’t want a service, that they have access to that pathway and that businesses aren’t giving them the runaround and there’s documentation on it.

Today I will be speaking on Bill 142, Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act, 2023. This legislation is a welcome update to Ontario’s Consumer Protection Act, especially since it has not been updated in more than 20 years.

First, I would like to congratulate the minister on his new role and on introducing this bill. It is clear that the minister and the ministry did extensive research and consultation with many, many relevant stakeholders.

Often, with this government’s bills, they have some good initiatives sprinkled among some very concerning things. However, Bill 142 seems like it will be a positive undertaking for consumers and businesses alike, and something that everyone in this House can agree upon, for a change.

It is important that we continue to do what we can to protect the rights of consumers and businesses, whether it’s for large investments like a home or a car, or smaller purchases, such as buying and using a gift card. We must set an example and provide businesses with proper guidelines so that no one gets taken advantage of. I welcome the update on the consumer act.

Okay, let’s get into it.

Part I of Bill 142: There is some good stuff happening here. Plain language is important in making sure that there is a fair playing field for businesses and consumers alike. I’m sure we’ve all had to read a long contract when making a purchase, and not all of us are part of King’s Counsel, so the verbiage can be lengthy, complicated and confusing, when it actually does not need to be. Pair that with bad-actor businesses who intentionally use libel to corner consumers into agreements that they don’t understand, and it simply sets people up for potential problems—unnecessary ones, at that. This type of behaviour does not create an equitable playing field for shoppers, especially those for whom English is not a first language. It isolates newcomers and can set them up to be scammed or misled. This is not a very welcoming or friendly approach to attracting and retaining current or future customers. Therefore, businesses need to ensure they actually value and respect the people they serve.

I think part I of this bill is solid and will help to prevent misunderstanding or financial hardships for consumers.

One question I would have is about enforcement: How do we determine what kind of language is clear and comprehensible, and how do we make sure that all businesses are using it? I’m open to hearing the government’s ideas for how they are planning to work together with businesses to establish what is or is not confusing or misleading for consumers. My concern is that there would still be businesses that slip under the radar, without proper information or templates on ensuring consumers can understand their contracts. How do we prevent this? What is confusing to one person may be perfectly clear to another. That’s something to think about.

Part II of Bill 142: Let’s discuss fair marketplace rules in Bill 142. This part “prohibits unfair practices; namely, making false, misleading or deceptive representations, making unconscionable representations and engaging in unconscionable acts”—for example, misrepresenting the product you are selling by claiming it to be a different material or charging a price that grossly exceeds the price of similar goods or services available from similar suppliers, or, simply put, price gouging. We saw this during the beginning of the pandemic—suppliers selling hand sanitizer or face masks for exorbitant prices, upcharging innocent consumers because they could. The fair marketplace rules are a good idea and a step in the right direction.

Again, I do have questions on how the government will enforce this. What percentage classifies a price increase as “grossly exceeding”? Does this extend to all types of businesses? For example, I do notice that Shoppers Drug Mart sells certain food products for what I would say grossly exceed the price of similar goods at, let’s say, No Frills. Both are owned by Loblaws, but they have drastically different prices. How is the government using this bill and its regulations to combat these food price inequalities and create more grocery competition in Ontario, to make food more affordable?

I’m also wondering if this price gouging law will extend to ticket sales on sites such as Ticketmaster. My Swiftie staff will tell you the price of resale tickets is absurd. We should protect the wallets of fans who wish to see their favourite artists in concert.

In Australia, New South Wales has new ticket reselling laws that make it against the law to resell tickets above the original value plus 10%. This is something we should consider here.

Bill 142 will also prohibit businesses from creating unnecessary barriers when consumers are trying to cancel a subscription or a membership-based contract. This is another welcome addition to the consumer act. I’m sure we’ve all experienced this and know why it’s needed. The obvious example is with gym memberships and the unfair tricks some gyms use to persuade their members into continuing their contracts. Requiring automatic renewal notifications will help consumers to make sure their hard-earned money is going to the right place. Most businesses want to run fairly; that includes keeping your consumers informed. Once again, I do question how the bill will establish what exactly counts as unnecessary barriers to cancelling a subscription or contract. But, in essence, this is a great thing for consumers.

The new rules for gift cards are positive as well, closing expiry date loopholes and room for extra, unnecessary fees.

There’s always room for improvement and new perspectives when law-making. I would like to see an amendment to this bill that deals with the infuriating and ridiculous planned obsolescence aspect of our goods nowadays. When you think back to items that were manufactured generations before us, companies took pride in their work and workmanship and built things to last.

My grandma taught me how to bake, and I would spend many weekends and summer holidays at her home in Orillia whipping up all kinds of tasty treats. The mixer we used was second-hand when my grandma purchased it, and she never stopped bragging about that super Sunbeam machine roaring to life every time we used it in the kitchen for well over 25 years.

Enbridge Gas once ran a contest for the longest-running furnace in Ontario. My father happily revealed to them that the furnace in our childhood home in Collingwood was still alive and kicking well after 50 years. He won second place, as someone else actually had an older one.

Nowadays, it’s like a disposable society. This short-sighted attitude is wrong on so many levels. Our landfills are growing to capacity, and there are fewer and fewer jurisdictions that would actually welcome new garbage dumps being created, and rightly so, as we all should be practising the four Rs—refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle—and doing our darnedest at waste diversion.

Bill C-244 passed earlier this year in the House of Commons, giving consumers the right to repair their goods, including phones and cars, combatting planned obsolescence. Other places in the world are getting on board with this type of legislation as well. I would like to see Bill 142 include a right-to-repair section that echoes this policy. Ontario should never be lagging behind in smart, savvy, sustainable practices.

Another thing the government could consider when amending the consumer rights act is the influx of artificial intelligence in our businesses and marketplaces. We already see companies moving to provide and leverage essential inputs of AI systems such as data and hardware, opening a window of opportunity for companies to potentially seize outsized power in this technological domain. There are definitely good aspects about AI, but there are risks we need to be aware of too. Consumers should be made aware when an algorithm is using their personal information to provide offers for goods and services, or uses this data to make a decision, or reports this data to third parties. Consumers should always be allowed to request human intervention if they are unsatisfied with the outcome of an AI-based complaint handling system.

I am by no means an expert in AI and technology; just ask my kids. But I think it is crucial for us to consider this, as legislators, going forward, as the future of this type of technology is so unknown and can present uncertainty and risks for consumers and businesses. The EU has been a world leader in AI legislation and consumer protections, and we should look to them for ideas and inspiration. AI doesn’t have empathy; it just has algorithms designed to make the most money at any cost. Let’s prepare and protect Ontarians from the risk of scamming that comes with AI.

In conclusion, I will be supporting Bill 142. It’s a good step in the right direction in balancing the needs and the rights of consumers and business in Ontario.

I hope the government will listen to the questions and concerns I’ve raised and that we all can work together to create a better Ontario.