Oh, no, Queen’s Park—I’m talking, really, about the Ford government. I was just heckled, and I’d like to clarify. You guys are on the ropes. Let’s change the channel together. Let’s do something good. Let’s restore some trust by calling the Till Death Do Us Part act. And I have to—

Just to my friends across the aisle and the new Minister of Long-Term Care, when this bill goes to committee, we will be fully embraced and fully engaged in trying to make it a piece of legislation that actually protects consumers. Do you agree, my friends?

It is interesting to hear—because people are pretty sensitive around here these days. But it’s worth noting that for a number of years experts have been calling for regulation on new home sales and their warranties. I just want to thank members of our caucus. MPP Rakocevic has been stellar on this file. He knows it inside and out. He’s been solid.

This bill puts in new provisions for NOSIs—NOSIs are notices of security interest—but does not include any provisions on putting in rental hot water heaters in contracts for new homes. Why does this matter? It matters because this is a situation where people will sign the biggest purchase of their life—their entire life—and then once they’ve moved in, once they have start receiving those bills, they realize then that they’ve signed up for something that they didn’t necessarily know they were agreeing to. This is a huge concern. It’s a huge concern, and it’s a gap in the legislation, and considering that we are in a cost-of-living crisis in Ontario, these shady dealings—because this is predatory. This needs to be addressed. It needs to be addressed in the legislation, and it needs to be addressed in the regulations, because you can write the best legislation, but if there’s no oversight or if the regs don’t guide the behaviour or change the behaviour, then you have a weak piece of legislation, and that’s what I would suggest we have before us.

Our office in Waterloo has been supporting a growing number of seniors who have been victims of these types of scams. As I mentioned, right now they’re primarily elderly women. The feeling when they come into the office is complete desperation. They are filled with anxiety. They have panic attacks. They’re wondering how this could happen in the province of Ontario.

In the middle of an affordability crisis, it’s all the more reason to bring in a piece of legislation which does protect the finances of seniors, which are often fixed incomes. Why not make sure that they are protected? It’s actually in the best interests of all of us to make sure that these predatory practices are gone from the province, or at least discouraged—or at least send a clear signal that Ontario knows what’s going on and wants to deal with it.

These scams began years ago when illegitimate HVAC companies went door to door selling products to homeowners, typically targeting seniors. Sales of home appliances like air conditioners and furnaces eventually resulted in companies placing notices of security interest, NOSIs, on the properties without the homeowners knowing. Lawyers claim that these scams have resulted in homeowners losing tens of thousands of dollars.

My colleague from London was mentioning the affordability crisis in Ontario, and I too just met with the Food Bank of Waterloo Region. I hope some of my other colleagues also had the time to meet with them. But this is how bad it is in Waterloo, which is why you need to protect the very limited resources that seniors have at their disposal today: Numbers are higher for food bank use than they were in 2008, in the recession. That’s how bad it is. If you remember that time, that was a time of panic, that recession. The peak of the pandemic were also very bad in this regard, but in the riding of Waterloo, 5,201 people used the food bank last year—this was 15% more than 2021—making 58,684 visits, or 7% over 2021 as well.

There is an impact for inaction. This is a core understanding that we certainly have. I know our member from Kiiwetinoong has also tried to draw the connection to the social determinants of health, the impact on the economy, the impact on the health care system, the impact on education. That’s what the Food Bank of Waterloo Region really drove home today, along with Feed Ontario, is that there is a cost to not addressing the risk factors around affordability.

When people have paid their higher rent, their rent that goes up now—obviously in new builds—by 3%, 5%, 10% or 24%, a senior cannot absorb a 24% increase in their rent. It’s just not possible, and so they have a choice: They either pay their rent and stay housed or they go to the food bank. It’s a huge issue for a senior to go to a food bank after their entire lives. You can’t underestimate that.

And yet, the piece of legislation that is before us is very permissive, actually embedding some loopholes whereby people can still practise these predatory practices of ripping off seniors.

Actually, I just met with the Canadian Bankers Association, as well. They have identified that this is now a priority for the Canadian banking sector, to train their tellers to look for fraud—I was going to say “corruption;” it just comes so naturally—and for predatory practices. Their tellers are specifically trained to watch for those vulnerabilities, because they’re happening so often.

So the private sector, the Canadian Bankers Association—I had a great meeting with them. We talked about some common areas that we can move forward on, but certainly consumer protection was an issue where we found common ground. I feel that they may be actually submitting a delegation to this particular piece of legislation, as well.

So I just wanted to give a shout-out to the Food Bank of Waterloo Region, Feed Ontario and the Canadian Bankers Association. It’s so good to see a not-for-profit that understands the affordability issues in Ontario also connect the need for labour laws, for housing, and for the social assistance reform that is needed.

We can do so much better for the most vulnerable in our society. I don’t know who in this House could possibly live on $730 a month; it’s just not doable, on Ontario Works.

I think there’s a level of malaise, if you will, with this government—to bring forward a piece of legislation, understanding where the gaps are in society, understanding that those safeguards do not exist, and claiming to understand how vulnerable seniors are, in particular, and then leaving these loopholes in the legislation.

I reached out to the Waterloo region police, as well, and they say that scams like these persist due to loopholes in provincial legislation, under the Consumer Protection Act, that make it possible for the notices of security interest to be placed without the homeowners knowing. We’re in a housing crisis, everybody agrees; it’s one of the very few things that we can agree on in this House. Why make that very precarious purchase even riskier by not addressing these loopholes? Homeowners, especially senior homeowners, deserve to be protected, and this bill, this government is failing to do that.

It always leads me to wonder, if you had the power to fix this, if you had the privilege to be in a position of power to address a piece of legislation and to get it right, why wouldn’t you? This goes back full circle to the whole trust issue. Who’s driving the agenda for this Ford government? We’ve seen multiple examples now of decisions not being driven or not even being motivated by the people of this province. Therefore, you have the Auditor General calling the greenbelt issue indefensible. You have the Integrity Commissioner calling into question the lack of oversight and accountability and lack of transparency of the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

When you get to this point, when trust is so broken, this is an opportunity for the government to say, “This legislation is going to be strong. It’s not going to be weak. It’s not going to be flaccid. It’s not going to be passive. It is going to be a strong piece of legislation,” to demonstrate that the government actually understands what the people of this province are experiencing, that lived experience of Ontarians.

If you go back—and you have to go a little bit way back—we don’t actually see the actions that will address the situation where consumers are exploited by unethical HVAC companies. It’s not here in the legislation.

Back with the Liberal government, we saw that there was a ban on door-to-door sales, and that was a good thing. It did take them a monumental amount of time to actually bring in this ban, after multiple cases that were brought to their attention here on the floor of the Legislature. It was near the end of 2018, and let’s be honest, people were getting a little desperate to do something good, so the ban on door-to-door sales happened. That was a start, sure. It was another half measure. However, as I mentioned, that legislation had no teeth, so there really wasn’t much by way of enforcement.

This government has heard for numerous years about the exploitive actions of many of these companies. I just want to say that some of these companies are fully aware of where those loopholes are. They have pushed the envelope. They’ve never got caught. There were no consequences—almost like the Landlord and Tenant Board, when we saw that only 11 landlords over the last five years actually faced punitive measures for being negligent, for being predatory landlords in Ontario—only 11 in that time. We have 11 open cases right now in Waterloo, in my office, of landlords who are looking to renovict or demovict or just evict, just testing the system. That’s the power imbalance with regard to consumers and with regard to some of those predatory businesses.

As I said, many in the private sector have recognized that trust is important in building those relationships and ensuring that the most vulnerable are kept safe and secure. And then you have a government that doesn’t necessarily understand that when that trust is broken, you should use every opportunity—every opportunity—to rebuild that trust.

Obviously, this piece of legislation is going to move through the House. It is going to go to committee. When it gets to committee, we, as Ontario’s official opposition—and certainly as the finance critic for the province of Ontario and Treasury Board critic, I’m going to be following the money on this because there is a cost to the economy and to our communities when a piece of legislation is so weak and flaccid.

Once again, Madam Speaker, what a pleasure to stand in my place and address this piece of legislation.

Questions?

Pursuant to standing order 50(c), I am now required to interrupt the proceedings and announce that there has been six and a half hours of debate on the motion for second reading of this bill. This debate will therefore be deemed adjourned unless the government House leader directs the debate to continue.

I recognize the Minister of Northern Development.

To continue, Madam Speaker.

I want to recognize the member from Waterloo for her comments today. You were talking about this government rebuilding trust, and in this consumer protection bill, there are some real weaknesses in it. One that came up in the debate is that it’s not retroactive. We’ve got homeowners who have been hit with liens of $40,000 on hot water tanks and furnaces. This legislation does nothing to backtrack, to say that those liens are going to be expunged with this legislation. What should the government do to protect the consumers who have already been ripped off?

Yes, there’s some sunshine over here; it happens on occasion.

But I do want to say to my friend from Cambridge, I did talk about the Till Death Do Us Part legislation. I know that he has met with Jim McLeod. I know that he’s been trying to work with the new Minister of Long-Term Care and trying to navigate a way forward with that piece of legislation. My understanding is you may reinvent your own piece of legislation. You know what? At the end of the day, I don’t care too much. I just want to make sure that Joan and Jim and other seniors have a chance to be reunited.

I share your concerns with the Waterloo Regional Police video. It really is heartbreaking to see the worst in society really target the most vulnerable. That’s not the best of us. That’s not the best of our humanity. I just wish the legislation could be stronger, but perhaps we’ll get another chance to do that.

I just feel like I’ve been hit by a ray of sunshine, that the opposition and the MPP from Waterloo have agreed with this bill.

There’s a lot of good in this bill. I think what made me very passionate about it was seeing the Waterloo Regional Police video transcripts of people being abused, the elderly being abused. The thing that really sickened me was watching the same perpetrators come back to the same people they had first, basically, ripped off, and trying to rip them off again.

There is so much good in this bill, and the fact is, we’re still consulting until December 1. And when this bill becomes law, it’s going to be a wonderful thing for the people of Ontario. I say again, I’m glad that the opposition will help pass this bill.

It is my pleasure to add a few words about Bill 142, An Act to enact the Consumer Protection Act, 2023, to amend the Consumer Reporting Act and to amend or repeal various other Acts, better known as the Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act.

I wanted to start by sharing a story that happened in my riding, as well as in Sudbury. There was this home renovation business called EcoLife Home Improvements; that was at a time, back in 2015, 2016, when there were quite a few programs coming from the government to help people do renovations in order to cut their usage of electricity, mainly by heating. So you were able to get a little bit of money if you changed your windows to better-insulated windows. You were able to get a little bit of money if you put insulation in the roof of your house or in and around your doors; or if you did, basically, an assessment of your house to see where your house was leaking heat; changing doors, changing windows; reframing; adding some insulation into the wall, your basement—anywhere in your home, really.

Many constituents of mine were interested in doing such renovations. They have older homes. In my riding, many people still heat with wood or electricity because those are the only two available. Some of them will have access to propane or oil heaters, but natural gas—I don’t have it at my house, and we don’t have it in most of Nickel Belt. They were trying to decrease their heating costs, their electricity costs, and there were those opportunities that the government was advertising. So EcoLife Home Improvements went and got a series of contracts, mainly from elderly people living in older homes, who could certainly benefit from a retrofit so that they could bring their heating costs and electricity costs down. He went and signed up contracts for everything from changing doors to rebuilding porches to changing windows to spraying insulation—many, many of those contracts, 35 of them, to be exact, in and around my riding, and he did zero of the work.

People started to come to our office, saying, “What can I do? He’s giving me an estimate for a $90,000 job. He’s giving me an estimate for a $50,000 job.” They had to put 50% of the value of the contract up front, and they would only need to pay—90% of it if the job was done, and the rest at the end. They had to come up with tens of thousands of dollars up front to secure, and he was using the fact that—those facts were not accurate: “Oh, you have to sign up now, because if you don’t sign up now, those discounts that the government is giving you to change your windows, to better insulate, to change the doors and all of this won’t be there anymore.” People knew that this was happening. The government had put out information that they were helping people decrease the cost of electricity.

Similar to what my colleague from Waterloo was saying, he seemed to have targeted mainly older women living alone in older homes that were in need of renovations. Some were couples, but a lot of the people who came to see us were women. This went on for a long time.

I had multiple meetings with David Murray, and he made promises up and down that, “Oh, yes”—it was, the windows were not coming; the train had derailed; the workers had gotten sick. There were all sorts of really good reasons why none of those jobs were moving ahead. Then, winter came. In the winter, you don’t really want to change windows, because it’s winter and all of this. Then, the next spring came and nothing got done, to the point where we ended up going to see Sudbury regional police and saying, “Something is going on.”

Well, something is going on. David Murray and EcoLife Home Improvements have been charged with 35 counts of fraud over $5,000, for a total of $800,000. This has been going on since March 2019, and absolutely nothing has happened so far, except for his case being delayed and delayed and delayed in court.

For a lot of people who are on limited income, who are at a time in their lives when they cannot go back and get a second job—when you’re an 85-year-old woman who stayed at home all of your life, you’re not about to go and get a new job. But they have this huge debt to somebody who basically—he hasn’t been found guilty in court, but he certainly has been charged with 35 counts of fraud over $5,000 for renovation contracts that he got a whole lot of money for, but did very little or none at all.

We did everything we could to try to help those constituents. As I said, we met with David Murray. We went to the police. We called consumer services. We called everybody and anybody—the construction industry in Sudbury, anybody who can help—and at the end of the day, it always ended with, “Tell them to go get a lawyer.”

The consumer protection services in place, when you go with contracts in hands—because the people would come to see us and we would show them, “Listen, those contracts are pretty similar to one another.” We can start to see a pattern here. There is no work that has been done. No windows have been ordered. There’s nothing that has been done, yet there was nothing to protect them.

Even after we became aware, after I contacted the Sudbury regional police, he continued to do the exact same thing. It was impossible to stop this. And when I read the Better for Consumers, Better for Businesses Act, frankly, Speaker, I don’t see how the changes that we have in this bill would prevent another David Murray from doing the exact same thing he has done to 35 homeowners in my riding, or another person from doing the exact same thing to another person in another riding in other areas of Ontario.

This is wrong. We all know it’s wrong. The court process is taking forever; I don’t know why. We’re in November 2023 and he still hasn’t gone to court. It has been in front of the court at least a dozen times, being postponed, whatever. It’s rescheduled for December, in a month from now. I hope that something happens then.

But still, these kinds of consumer protections were lacking back then. When I read the bill, I don’t see how we are any better protected. But I hope they exist, that I just didn’t fully understand the reading of the bill, but I would like this to be included. I don’t want anybody else to go through what my constituents have gone through in Nickel Belt with EcoLife Home Improvements.

That being said, something else that, on this side, we have been pushing for is the Ontario consumer watchdog. So that would be an independent organization that would oversee all consumer protection matters in Ontario. I would have loved to have one of those to call because every other phone call that we have made led us to the same thing: “Call a lawyer.”

When you’re an 85-year-old woman living alone in your home that hasn’t seen renovations in 40 years, you don’t have money to go hire a lawyer. You already have a $40,000 debt to someone who hasn’t done any renovations in your home. To tell her, “You’ll have to go see a lawyer,” we’re basically telling them, “Nothing can be done for you.” All this would change with an Ontario consumer watchdog that could see those cases coming, that could act upon them, that could help, so consumers are not left with the only recourse to find a lawyer who is willing to take the case—that’s not easy—and willing to take the case at a price that somebody could afford is even tougher where I live and for the people that I represent.

We don’t have too many lawyers’ offices in Nickel Belt. I can tell you that you can go from Ivanhoe Lake, Foleyet, Mattagami First Nation, Gogama, Biscotasing, Westree, Shining Tree, Benny, Cartier—none of them have any lawyers’ office or lawyers available close by, but some of them have been scammed by EcoLife Home Improvements.

When we talk about “better for consumers,” I want to talk a little bit about the consumers of midwifery services, which are women who are about to give birth. The midwives have been asking to be allowed to prescribe whatever is within their scope of practice for a long time, but right now, the government gives them a list of the medications that they are allowed to prescribe and not allowed to. This makes no sense. New medications are added to the formulary all the time—new medications that could be very beneficial to women who are about to give birth, which is what midwives do. They help women through pregnancy, through delivery and then when their babies are born, things like genetic testing; things like thyroid screening; things like nausea and vomiting; things like heartburn management during pregnancy—lots of women who have babies know what I’m talking about—preterm labour etc. They’re not allowed to prescribe those medications. That makes no sense.

If we’re talking about better for consumers, it would be way better for the women that I represent who are able to gain access to a midwife—we do have a fabulous midwifery practice in Sudbury; thank you to all of the midwives who work there, but I can tell you that 40% of the people I represent do not have a family physician or a nurse practitioner. They do not have access to primary care. So they won’t be able to gain access to the midwife while they’re pregnant. Through their pregnancy, they start to get a lot of heartburn because of the change with the baby and change in their weight etc. Well, in order to get a prescription for heartburn, they will have to go wait for hours and hours and hours either at Health Sciences North, the only hospital that serves our area, or at a walk-in clinic.

When you are pregnant, the last thing you want is to spend 18 hours waiting your turn at Health Sciences North to be able to get a prescription. Just sitting in the waiting room when you’re in an advanced case of pregnancy is actually dangerous for you. All of this could be changed. The midwives in Ontario have the knowledge and the skills to do all of this. They just don’t have a government who gives them permission to work within their full scope, which means that, for many of the people that I represent and for the 2.2 million Ontarians who don’t have a family physician—many of them women; many of them pregnant. Better for consumers? It would be way better for them if their midwives were able to prescribe any treatment, therapy or medications that they need that are within their scope of practice, if only the government would give them the right to practise within their scope, but so far this is not happening at all. There are a number of other health care professionals that face the same limitation.

Another part of the bill where I would have liked to see more is in the new home sales and their warranty. I was there when the Auditor General did her review of Tarion, which is supposed to be a consumer protection agency, but has been doing pretty much anything but protecting consumers when they purchase a new home. For most people, the purchase of a home is the biggest purchase we ever make in our lifetime. That’s why Ontario has a consumer protection agency, but when the consumer protection agency fails to do their work and has been taken over by the people who build those homes and the people who control that money, it makes for a pretty sad state of affairs.

When Tarion came to the committee on public accounts to answer to some of the questions that the committee on public accounts had for them, they basically promised that they were going to implement all of the recommendations that the Auditor General had put forward—that they had seen the wrong that they had done and seen the light at the end of the tunnel. They were going to do what needed to be done to protect consumers and make sure that they regained the trust.

I am really sad to say that if the experience in my riding is the same in the rest of Ontario, nothing has changed. Tarion is still very, very rigid. You call one day after the deadline that they put you—“Oh, no, the warranty doesn’t work anymore.” If something needs to be done, and you call them and you leave a message, they don’t call you back.

For a consumer protection agency—they still have not implemented the recommendations that the Auditor General had put forward. They have not implemented the recommendations that the committee on public accounts—those are MPPs in this House who made recommendations that Tarion had to put into place, and it’s as if the MPPs from this Legislature did not exist. They said all of the right things when they came and met with us and then did very little to change their ways.

The big complaint, right now, in my riding is similar to what we have with EcoLife Home Improvements. Remember, David Murray—35 counts of fraud over $5,000, selling people heat pumps and rental hot water heaters as well as rental furnaces. This seems to be covered in the bill.

So I’m happy to see those changes were included in the bill, and I hope they are put in place in a way that will make it easy for people who were sold those NOSIs and sold those payment plans—to put them in place as quickly as we can so we protect consumers in Ontario.

Thank you for the member from Waterloo’s statements. She talked about the most vulnerable, and I truly appreciate the ray of sunshine that we’re all feeling in this room on this bill. As a government, we always want to stand up for our most vulnerable, and consumer protection is no exception. We created this legislation to balance the interests of both consumers and businesses, because we know that when consumers’ rights are protected, we’re in a better province and we have more competition. Better legislation provides for a better environment for business.

You talked about oversight and consultation. One of the things that’s built into this bill is a consultation that ends on December 1. I guess my question to you is, will you take advantage of the possibility of comments to be submitted on December 1?

It’s great to hear my colleague from Waterloo region take part in the debate today. I think there’s one thing we can certainly share in this conversation, and it’s definitely our disgust around the people who take advantage of the most vulnerable.

I don’t necessarily have a question, but I’m going to give you an opportunity to comment a little bit more on notices of security interest, or NOSIs. I, too, have had an opportunity to meet with Waterloo region police on multiple occasions to discuss this. They’re certainly at the forefront when it comes to investigations and enforcement here in the province, and I want to thank them for the fantastic work they’re doing on that.

I’m just not sure if the member knows; there’s about $700,000 registered currently as a notice of security interest within—I think there’s, is it maybe five or six folks who live in Waterloo region right now, and it’s certainly something that we want to shut down. We’re looking forward to the consultation that’s going to happen on this. I’m a firm believer that we’re going to get to a good place. I just wanted to hear her thoughts a little bit more around the NOSIs and how they’re affecting people in the region, because it’s atrocious.

What a good question. It actually gets to the heart of the critique of the bill, quite honestly, that the government is acknowledging that there are vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the Consumer Protection Act. It hasn’t been updated since 2002. They’re acknowledging and have heard from various advocates across the province in the not-for-profit sector and police services—acknowledging that these weaknesses exist and that there are known victims of fraud. And, yet, the legislation protects those previous predatory businesses. That really is an issue for us, I have to say. Why not grandfather for even a certain amount of years? Why not even address the fact that all of those seniors are now paying $40,000 for a $500 hot water heater? If we can agree that that is wrong, then let’s try to fix it. We will try to fix that when it gets to committee.

But, of course, we are going to weigh in. I even think the Canadian Bankers Association may even weigh in. But that is the point. The point is that you’ve left it open, and then it’s going to go to committee, and then we actually have to tinker around the edges of this very important piece of legislation instead of just doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

But what I want to say to the member’s question is that one of the big pieces that was lost is around Tarion. Ever since I’ve been here, for 11 years, Tarion has been a broken mess. You want to talk about a housing crisis, but when you finally get to buy that house, it is a huge deal. To have that entire experience completely corrupted by Tarion is almost like the biggest poison pill that we’re not talking about in Ontario.

I just want to say, NOSIs turn into liens, and this is the crux of the issue. I guess the return question is, if we have these shared concerns, why doesn’t the legislation get to the heart of the matter and address it? And I’m not saying that the government won’t do that.

Certainly, Waterloo region police—and I want to thank them for their excellent work. That unit that actually addresses some of these vulnerabilities that we’re seeing—they’re seeing people’s lives destroyed, essentially, when they’re incredibly insecure.

So, yes, if you feel strongly and I feel strongly, let’s make sure that we address it in this legislation. Hopefully that happens after the consultation process, but also happens at—

Thanks to my friend from Waterloo for her comments. This is a very risk-averse piece of legislation. My friend brought out many of those issues in her speaking. For example, there are minor improvements to tackle unfair business practices but there is nothing to stop industry-wide price gouging. There’s nothing to stop the installation of rental heaters in new homes.

Why would the government come out with this kind of risk-averse legislation? Does it have to do with the scandals they’re going through, or is this an attempt to calm the Legislature down?

I listened, as I re-entered the assembly this afternoon, to the comments of the member and her concern about having to retain a lawyer. I trust the member has considered section 71 of the proposed act, which opens the door to mediation without lawyer input, resolution of disputes of these matters, which is different and new, so the cost of a lawyer wouldn’t be involved—the ability to enter a class action where no retainer fee is required; you can opt in or opt out of the class without any consequence in terms of legal fees—and section 76, complaints and mediation to the director, that mediation is part of what the director’s mandate is; again, quick, early resolution of disputes, initiated by the consumer or investigated by the director, that can result in early mediations that are timely and cost-effective, without lawyers. Has she not considered those sections?

Thank you to the member from Nickel Belt for your comments.

I have a lot of seniors who have problems with furnaces, water heaters and so on—contracts that are quite old, that are costing them lots and lots of money, and they don’t know how to get out of those contracts. Can you explain to me whether the bill addresses that? Does it go backwards? Is it going to help people who have been stuck with this now for 10 years?

I know that the member is a lawyer and I am not.

What I can tell you is that the experience that I went through with the 35 homeowners in my riding who are now in court with EcoLife Home Improvements and Mr. David Murray—I don’t see how negotiations would have helped anything. I sat down and negotiated with this man many times, and he basically told me what I wanted to hear but never followed through.

Questions?

I can tell you that you are not the only one who faces that. In parts of my riding, when an elderly person dies, by the time you pay those contracts for an old furnace, an old water heater, it’s like the value of the home. The inheritance comes down to very low, because they are stuck having to pay for a $5,000 or $6,000 furnace and they end up paying $40,000 for it because they did not pay for it up front.

I did not see anything in the bill that would go retroactive for all of the people that are going through this right now, including succession where the homeowner is deceased and the family is trying to sell the house.

We direct them, but I would never pretend to be a lawyer because I am not. We don’t give people false hope. What we give them are the consumer protection resources that presently exist. We link them up, we help them connect with them and we follow through, but we don’t give legal advice.

Ontario does recognize the training that midwives on First Nations are able to give to one another. There is also a little wee bit of opportunity for funding for those midwives, but a lot more needs to be done in most fly-in communities. Women have to be flown out. They’re all alone in a community, hundreds of kilometres away, to give birth. This is not human. This has to change. The member is right; there is room for better consumer protections right there too.

I intend to make full use of those for whoever comes to our office in need of consumer protection, but I have been here long enough to know that a revision to a bill is not something incremental. You make changes to a bill, and then you don’t touch it again for two decades.

So if we are going to go through to make it a consumer protection bill, let’s put into it as much of it as we can, so that if we don’t have a chance to look at it for the next 20 years, at least, we would have brought it as far as we can for that 2023 allows us to do.

The member for Thunder Bay–Superior North brought up an interesting question, to the member for Nickel Belt, around contracts when, say, a family member passes away and how do you then execute that estate? I think it’s important that when we’re talking about the broader debate today, we also understand there are remedies currently available. It’s not just what’s in the bill that’s before us.

The member from Essex, I thought, brought up a very good point about ways that you are able to help strike that off a record. I would implore all members here in the House to maybe better educate themselves on what is available out there so we are able to help our constituents in the best way possible.

So rather than focus on things that aren’t necessarily in the bill, I would love to see debate get back towards things that are in the bill. I will ask the member opposite whether she does support the provisions that now have a 10-day cooling-off period and an easier out clause for those types of contracts moving forward.

It’s an honour to rise in the House today and talk to Bill 142, which is a consumer protection bill. It revamps the existing Consumer Protection Act, and there are some good things in here, as my colleagues have said, but there needs to be much more because too many Ontarians are getting ripped off by unscrupulous vendors. This is a bill with an opportunity for the government to rebuild trust. This is a government that does need to rebuild trust in this province.

We’ve seen, with the recent scandals—the greenbelt scandals, the municipal boundaries scandals—the government has started to backtrack on some of those. They’ve backtracked on the greenbelt rezoning. They’ve backtracked on the municipal boundaries. The government House leader has said that he’s investigating MZOs. If there’s one other thing I would ask the government to do, please take a close look at Ontario Place and the deal for Ontario Place and backtrack on that too.

There are fences going up right now at Ontario Place. They’re about to cut down 1,500 mature trees at Ontario Place. We ask the government to pause that, to take a look at that deal and make sure that that deal is not the next scandal that this government is going to be dealing with before those trees are cut down. That’s about building trust, and this consumer act can help to rebuild that trust.

I have just received an email from a senior in my riding. She’s an older woman. She lives alone. Her husband has passed away. She’s a widow and she’s been badly ripped off of all of her savings that she had to pay for her mortgage. It was through a phone call and the call said, “Metropolitan Toronto police” and she believed what the person on the line was saying. They had this elaborate story about what had happened and that she needed to take these things and that this was the police guiding her. And she’s lost her savings now.

We absolutely need consumer protections to be strengthened in this province. These predatory companies and these unscrupulous people often target seniors, especially widows, and people with disabilities. They target immigrants and refugees. They find the most vulnerable people and often the people with the least money, and they fleece them of that money.

What we’ve seen: We’ve seen people who are sold hot water tanks and they’re locked into long-term leases for these hot water tanks. If you go to the Home Depot or another store, you’re paying $1,000 or less for a hot water tank. Some of these long-term leases lock you in for thousands and thousands of dollars over the years. Some of these contracts for new furnaces and things, these high-pressure sales tactics that they use on vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities—they lock them in and then they take a lien out on the person’s home. This often happens so that when the person tries to sell their home, they find out that this unscrupulous company has taken a lien out on their home and that they have to pay off the lien. Sometimes it’s $40,000. There’s one case where a person had to pay off $60,000; a senior had to pay off a lien for $60,000 in order to get out of the contracts that were on that lien. It’s absolutely appalling.

The government needs to take action. This consumer act, as it stands, is a step in the right direction, but there needs to be a lot more. One of the things I’d suggest is that we need better protections for new home buyers, particularly pre-sales. There’s a recent article by Barbara Captijn in the Toronto Sun, and she talks about how badly new home owners, especially those in pre-sales, get ripped off. She talks about the reasons for it, and the reasons for it have to do with government legislation. She says that if you buy an existing home, then there’s a standard contract that the government provides and that everybody follows. It’s simple; it’s plain language. You don’t need a lawyer to analyze it. You can just take a look at it.

But if you buy a condo or a new home in a pre-sale, then the contract is written by a developer. These contracts are often 40, sometimes 60 pages long. It’s almost impossible to decipher what the actual meaning is. In that is an addendum; usually buried at the back of those long contracts is an addendum. It’s 11 pages, and it’s written by Tarion and the Home Construction Regulatory Authority, which are two agencies that are created by the provincial government, ostensibly to protect homebuyers. These addendums are 11 pages long, and they’re supposed to provide a warranty that the consumer—when you buy a new home in a pre-sale, you buy a warranty. You pay for a warranty to Tarion, but Tarion has got a horrific reputation for not actually protecting the consumers who pay for it.

This addendum that’s in the back of the contract, one judge said this is a “convoluted and confusingly long and obscure document” and “a trap for the unwary, particularly the unwary layperson.” This addendum written by agencies of this government needs to be addressed. If there’s one thing that should be changed in this legislation, this consumer protection, and that should be added, it’s that there should be a plain-language contract for pre-sale, pre-construction home buying, whether it’s a condo or a house.

The other thing is that condo owners—the other suggestion for this legislation: If you buy a new condo in a pre-sale, you have a 10-day cooling-off period. If you sign on the dotted line, and you go home and you think, “You know, maybe I don’t have that much money; maybe this isn’t such a good deal,” you’ve got 10 days, and you can just walk away from that deal. But new houses do not have that cooling-off period. This is something else that needs to be changed. This is the kind of consumer protection that people need in the province of Ontario.

This government has said—the Premier and the ministers of the Conservative government here have talked about how they don’t want weasel clauses in these home contracts where you sign with a developer, you lay down your money, there’s a timeline when they’re supposed to actually develop the home and build the home and they don’t follow that, or they cancel. There are actually what are called weasel clauses in these contracts. The rhetoric from the government is, “Hey, we’re going to protect new homebuyers,” but the legislation allows these contracts, written by developers, to use weasel clauses to get out of their commitments to the homebuyers.

I will talk about one good thing that’s in this: gift cards. I went to a major Canadian retailer, and I had this gift card. I’d had it; I found it in the back of a drawer. It said on it that it was $20, and I took it to the store, and they said, “No, we’re not honouring that anymore. It’s expired.” And I’m thinking: Well, that’s a hell of a scam. There’s $20, and sure, I lost the card for probably a year and a half or two years; I don’t know. It was in the back of a drawer. But that $20 doesn’t belong to the retailer. How come the retailer gets to keep my $20 and they don’t have to pay out the $20? To me, that gift card should be like cash. There is a protection in this to make sure that those gift cards do not expire, so I would give the government credit on that.

But there are other weaknesses in this bill, and I’d say one of the biggest ones—and my colleague was talking about this—I mentioned at the beginning seniors and other vulnerable people who have been ripped off, and they had these liens on their homes by these unscrupulous companies that have ripped them off. They used high-pressure tactics. The liens are often $40,000. There’s nothing in this legislation that’s retroactive. So what the government is saying is that, “Well, we’re going to provide some protection. We’ll see how strong the protection is when the legislation gets rolled out and when it’s implemented.” But for those who have already been ripped off, the consumers in Ontario who have already been ripped off, this legislation does nothing. That’s absolutely shameful, because if somebody has fallen victim to an unscrupulous vendor, then they should have some recourse. This government’s legislation right here is an opportunity to give them recourse and to expunge those bad debts.

I look forward to the questions. Thank you for letting me speak.

I heard the “députée de Nickel Belt” speak about these unconscionable transactions where some homeowners were required to pay $40,000 for something that really only costs $5,000. That certainly sounds like an unconscionable transaction to me. Were I still practicing law, I would certainly tell my clients, “Don’t pay that. Get that contract set aside under the Unconscionable Transactions Relief Act.”

I’m wondering if the “députée” from Nickel Belt has advised her constituents, “Don’t pay that contract; get it set aside under the Unconscionable Transactions Relief Act”?