I really appreciate the opportunity to speak today about something that I know has been very long-awaited and looked forward to, and something I’m incredibly proud to be able to speak to and play this tiny role in, which is Bill 200, the Homeowner Protection Act. If passed, this bill will essentially hammer the final nails into the coffin of NOSIs and bury them forever.

In my decade of service as a crown prosecutor, I often saw the incredibly ugly impacts of fraud—the way the perpetrators identify and prey on the vulnerable in our society. Fraud can be incredibly hard to prosecute. Often, the perpetrators may be out of province or even out of country, cloaked and covered and easily able to find their victims but challenging to locate. Justice for fraud victims is also elusive at times. Even with a conviction, ensuring that victims are in fact made whole when the reparations are made is incredibly challenging. This, of course, is particularly painful to witness when the victim is a senior, someone who has worked hard throughout their life to provide for themselves in their later years. Recovering from the type of financial loss that is exacted by fraud can take years and even more dedication of resources. Unfortunately, that time and those resources are things that many of our victimized seniors do not have.

You’ve all read this bill and heard hours of debate on its contents, so I would like to take my limited time here to talk a little bit more about the people behind the legislation, the victims, the people who had their lives turned upside down by those who are really only worshipping at an altar of greed, but also about the heroes in this legislation, the people who went up against this Goliath, went up against the harlequin hydra that were these offenders, and with the hopeful passing of this bill, will have finally won their fight.

Let me tell you about John. John is 71, and he lives with his sister in the home that they inherited from their parents. They’ve never had a mortgage, but now John is stuck actually paying rent on his own home that he no longer owns to the very person who forced the sale of John’s home through a series of predatory mortgages. Once the home was sold, the equity was seized. John can’t even access the equity from the sale of his own home, because, according to those who took advantage of him, it will take all of that equity and more to pay off all of the NOSIs that were registered on the title.

Prior to October 2021, another victim I’ll call Jim fully owned his house. He ended up owing $30,000 via a predatory NOSI and was doing his best to make the monthly payments. Another predator approached Jim and told him that they could help him pay off that lien and help him qualify for renovations to increase his home’s value. They did some renovations in his home that were worth at most $15,000 and of incredibly poor quality. On completion, that lien was converted into a mortgage, and Jim now owes $312,000 on his house and is being pressured to foreclose, and he had to hire a lawyer and is fighting.

Then there was Karl. Karl was in his eighties, and he was suffering from short-term memory loss after a brain aneurysm. Predators came knocking at his door, promising that they would be able to help him, almost save him. He thought they were there to help, and he ended up with $150,000 registered against his home. Sadly, Karl passed away, his last years marked by—victimized by fraud.

All across Ontario, vulnerable people were being preyed upon and victimized, misled and mistreated and led down this path to their ultimate financial destruction. As this happened, the alleged perpetrators were flaunting their newly acquired wealth on social media, with fast cars and expensive vacations, sometimes even recording their communications with their victims by way of training modules to share with others.

I want to tell you about one of the heroes in this: Detective Adam Stover of the Waterloo Regional Police Service. In early 2022, Detective Stover identified a complex fraud scheme that was targeting vulnerable and elderly victims in Waterloo region involving placing NOSIs on their homes without their knowledge. Victims were losing their homes. They were losing their life savings. Detective Stover undertook an in-depth criminal investigation into the perpetrators and became a part of uncovering a large-scale predatory criminal enterprise that had spread all across Ontario. As his investigation spread and unfolded, he became the provincial expert regarding NOSIs and was able to give guidance to numerous police services across the province as well as work with the OPP to dismantle the organizations. Other people may have stopped there, but Detective Stover, as he had essentially more than fulfilled his duty as an officer of the law—he’d investigated, he’d put together a case, he had protected the public to the best of his ability. But that ultimately wasn’t enough for him, and in becoming the expert, he realized that legislative change was the only way to put an end to this forever.

So, Detective Stover, you are a big part of the reason that I am standing here today, talking about NOSIs. You had a mission, which was to save thousands of vulnerable Ontarians, and here we are today, on the precipice of the completion of your mission. I know that you spent hours meeting with elected officials, with MPPs, with ministry officials and with lawyers, with journalists and reporters, and I know just how difficult it can be to effect change when everyone you meet seems to agree with you and support you but the magnitude of the machine itself can seem too big to budge and too large to listen. But, Detective Stover, you did it. You got the attention of the machine. We heard your call, and we answered, and I’m incredibly proud to be part of the government that took action, and to call our Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery a friend. You could not have had a better advocate in him or his ministry.

I also want to recognize the hard work that was done by the Ontario real estate bar. All of us lawyers have heard people we can kind of sneer at use the quote from Shakespeare’s Henry VI: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” The same people who like lawyer jokes like to trot that one out as evidence of the horribleness of lawyers, but those of us who are more familiar with the play itself know that the person who said, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” was a violent anarchist who wanted to overthrow society. Really, what that statement means is, by killing all the lawyers, we would end society as we know it, because lawyers, ultimately, are the fundamental defence against the grossest manifestations of power-hungry antics and greed that are, frankly, wrought by the scum of humanity.

Interjections.

Some of my fellow lawyers are applauding.

I know that there were some members of the Ontario real estate bar who really took their law licences, took their degrees and their experience and, frankly, went to battle on behalf of so many people who were victimized and have lost so much as part of the criminal enterprise that so many NOSIs became. As a lawyer, as a legislator, as an MPP, thank you so much for everything that you did. I admit I never really pursued real estate law as a law student; I was more interested in the criminal side of things—but I have to say, incredibly, incredibly well done. You have wonderfully represented your trade and our association. I am proud to be part of the same society as you, and I commend you all so much on the work that you have done.

Ultimately, with this bill, it’s a story of small and vulnerable people who became victimized by the greedy and the power-hungry, and it’s also a story of people who went far beyond the call of their individual duty to protect those people. As I said, I am hoping we will be able to put politics aside and stand up for what is right, stand up for the vulnerable in society and recognize the hard work done by these heroes, and pass Bill 200 and put an end to these predatory practices once and for all.

Again, I’m so proud to have been part of this, and I am so grateful for the work of the people who were so passionate in this.

I will hand it over to the MPP from Cambridge.