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.

I would like to say in the House, and this is probably the first time in almost six years, I am very happy that this government bill has been called to the House. I’m very grateful that the government has moved so quickly on addressing NOSIs. And I particularly would like to thank the government and Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery for taking action on this extremely important issue.

I’d also like to thank, of course, the member from London North Centre and the member from Parkdale–High Park and, of course, the very passionate member on this issue from Humber River–Black Creek. I was pleased to join them as co-sponsors on Bill 169 to address these predatory practices in Ontario.

Some background on this bill—because my parents just tuned in—we have been hearing a lot about notices of security interest, or NOSIs, that are placed on properties, resulting in many senior victims. It’s a relatively common interaction: Typically, an illegitimate company shows up at a homeowner’s door offering to sell or rent HVAC appliances, and there is a debt or a lien placed on the home that must be repaid upon the sale or refinancing. Some of these videos that have been published about this issue are truly, absolutely heartbreaking. Many seniors find themselves victims on this.

A simple unit which costs hundreds of dollars becomes tens of thousands of dollars in many of these cases. Worse yet, homeowners don’t even find out about the NOSIs until they refinance or sell. Homeowners, especially senior homeowners, deserve to be protected.

There has been a considerable uptick in NOSIs registered in Ontario over the past two years, with hundreds of thousands of dollars registered on title. Particularly vulnerable are low-income citizens and those who are socially isolated.

I must tell you that some of the saddest videos that were part of this investigation show seniors who are lonely and they are isolated. In one video that I watched, the lady wanted to get the door-to-door salesmen some coffee, to have him sit down and have some cake, because they were lonely. Essentially what was happening, though, is that these lonely and isolated seniors were literally inviting the wolf into their own home. The connection to organized crime as these NOSI scams evolved is truly frightening. It was certainly a learning experience for me as the finance critic.

I want to just tell you very quickly about one local resident—his name is Ian Craig—in Waterloo region. He has had seven notices of security interest on his property, totalling more than $150,000. All the NOSIs on Craig’s home were put there by scammers without his knowledge. “This is not right, for people who have invested in their homes, that somebody comes along and puts [NOSIs] on it for half of” the house. “The way they can take advantage of people is just disgusting,” he said. “This is why we need protection.” This is why we need Bill 200.

The ties to organized crime became very evident when we reached out to the Waterloo region police, who I definitely want to say thank you very much to for your leadership and your advocacy and for your education on these predatory practices.

Detective Stover of the Waterloo Regional Police Service has been investigating NOSIs since 2010 but the investigation intensified in 2020 when police identified that they were being used criminally. Sometimes this is data that is the personal and financial data of the individual in the home. That data is captured and then sold to various other organizations. It was astounding that this has been going on and accelerating in Ontario for the time being.

“It became a tool used by organized crime to target and revictimize people who had notices of security on title from the years previous,” said Stover. “They really identified an aging population in Ontario that have a lot of equity in their home.”

Last year in Ontario alone 38,000 NOSIs were registered. Imagine that this practice has been allowed to continue for so many years. When this came up under the former Liberal government, it was astounding. They were supposed to outlaw door-to-door sales, but there was no enforcement whatsoever. The lack of oversight—basically just going through the motions—is really a disservice to so many Ontarians, particularly the vulnerable and seniors. It is vital that we protect vulnerable citizens and especially seniors from such scams so that they are not being taken advantage of.

Thank you very much for introducing this important legislation. I hazard to say it, but let’s get it done today—

Interjections.

Speaker, this is a momentous day. Great work has been done by all members of this assembly to get us to this point. We consulted in the fall of 2023 across the spectrum: individual families and elderly citizens who have been victimized by this terrible fraud of misuse of NOSIs. The deception and organized criminal activity associated with it was unacceptable.

We heard the stories, as I said, of families and seniors. We consulted with law enforcement, legal professionals, businesses of all types, advocates for consumer groups and advocates for the elderly. We then put forward the proposal and we tabled the bill.

There are times when matters that require our urgent attention must be dealt with swiftly. This is one such time. I congratulate all members of this House for listening to the residents and citizens of their communities across 124 ridings in the province of Ontario. We are working together today swiftly to move this matter to the point where we can debate and ultimately vote on third reading of Bill 200. It is properly called the Homeowner Protection Act, but it’s also about protecting homebuyers. The Homeowner Protection Act, 2024, is the right thing to do and it is urgently needed.

When members of this House come together and put partisanship aside, we can serve the citizens we all serve together, rightly and fairly and properly, doing our duty as parliamentarians. I believe that we have done that today. With the support of all members of this House, we can move it forward so that immediate relief will be available to the seniors who are affected by this. It is not just a proposal to abolish the registration of notices of security interest in regard to consumer goods and services against people’s homes going forward. It is not just that; it is about retroactively abolishing—making ineffective—the 350,000 some-odd NOSIs that are currently registered on title against homes.

Before we vote, I ask you to consider this: To delay the passage of this legislation would be to enable further fraud, enable further victimization of our elderly and our vulnerable. That would be wrong. That would be a failure of our duty as parliamentarians. I urge you all to continue what you have started. Let us come together, vote together and pass this bill on third reading. Thank you very much.