The member from London West.

It is a privilege to join the debate today on behalf of the people I represent in London West and to continue from the remarks that I had started the other day.

As I was saying, the people in London, in my community, are struggling like never before with the affordability crisis that has hit this province and this country. And just to give you a sense of how deeply that crisis is affecting Londoners, I want to share some statistics from the London Food Bank that were just released at the end of September. The food bank reported that in the first eight months of 2023, they saw a 43% increase in the number of families they helped each month. That is an increase over the previous year, 2022. It represented a 91% increase over the number of families they had helped in 2021. They also report that more first-timers, that is, people who have never used the food bank before, are getting monthly hampers.

The food bank is strained, Speaker, as Londoners are faced with the challenges of trying to make a paycheque last the week or last the month. That’s why consumer protection legislation and strengthened protections for consumers are so important, particularly for low-income consumers and vulnerable consumers who absolutely need to be able to rely on consumer protections when they purchase goods and services. While we are pleased to see some of the protections in this bill, and we will be supporting this bill, we believe there is much more that the government could and should be doing to provide those protections that consumers need.

I talked about the demands on the food bank, and certainly we have all heard about the price gouging that is taking place in this country. We have seen Loblaws and Sobeys and some of the giant food retailers reporting record profits—record profits—and massive wage increases for CEOs while consumers are hit with food prices for basic necessities that have skyrocketed since the pandemic. And so while this legislation includes new provisions to prevent price gouging, one of the concerns that the NDP has raised is that the price gouging provisions only apply to individual businesses; they wouldn’t apply across a sector. When you have a whole industry with inflated prices, the provisions of this bill won’t have an impact. It won’t help ensure that consumers aren’t hit with unfair price gouging when they go to the grocery store, and that is one of the biggest concerns that I think all of us hear from our constituents, the rising price of groceries.

The other concern is very much around enforcement. We all know that legislation on the books is only as good as the enforcement that is available to make sure that the protections are in place. This legislation improves consumer protection laws—certainly it’s an improvement over the previous act that had been in place since 2002—but it still leaves consumers having to go to court if they want to seek justice against companies that have treated them unfairly. And we know how expensive it is, how intimidating it can be to take a case to court, and so, therefore, there is a real concern that, when court is the only way to seek a resolution, that consumers won’t actually be able to get the redress they deserve.

That’s why, Speaker, one of the missed opportunities for this government was to include in this legislation the creation of an Ontario consumer watchdog. That position has been proposed in private member’s legislation from the official opposition, from my colleague the member for Humber River–Black Creek, and it would create an independent watchdog organization to oversee all consumer protection matters in Ontario. This would give another avenue for consumers who have a complaint about a good or service that they have purchased, and it would be much less barriers than having to pursue redress in the courts, much less costly and disadvantaging to the consumer.

As I said, it’s a missed opportunity that this government had before them to really create strong consumer protections by creating that consumer watchdog position, as had been proposed by the official opposition.

My question for the member who just spoke, the member from London West: She made some representations with regard to enforcement that I disagree with. She suggested that a court order is required and that people would have to go to court.

I draw her attention to section 95(1), which reads: “If the director is satisfied that a person has contravened or is contravening a prescribed provision of this act or the regulations, the director may, by order, impose an administrative penalty against the person in accordance with this section and the regulations made by the minister.”

So, the question is this: Now that I have read that section, does the member agree no court orders are required; you just need to go to the director?

So I just want to ask the member from London West, you will agree with me, right? You wouldn’t tell your constituent to go to court; you would tell your constituent, “Write a letter to the director, and seek enforcement under section 95(1).” That’s what you would tell your constituent, right?

So let’s just be very clear here. What the member from London North Centre was talking about are two very separate items. You’re talking about a notice of security interest, which is, quite frankly, an unscrupulous way of taking advantage of vulnerable people in our society and, absolutely, we’ll agree that there’s a lot of work that needs to be done there. But when we’re talking about legitimate contracts, which is what that 10-day cooling-off period and the ability to exit out of those contracts quicker—these are two very separate things, so let’s just be very clear about that.

I do want to ask the member from St. Catharines a little bit about notices of security interest. We’ve heard about it today and she did mention some folks in her riding that have had these types of things perpetrated against them. I’m certainly of the mindset that we absolutely need to close these loopholes and we absolutely need to do something about this issue. And whether or not she thinks that we should just be going ahead and doing this, or whether we should have a full consultation with other legitimate businesses, might I add—there are legitimate businesses that take part in this as well—to make sure that they have an opportunity to recoup costs if someone doesn’t pay their bills, whether or not she thinks that the consultation is something she thinks we should be doing or whether she thinks we should just go ahead and unilaterally—