I do appreciate these moments when we can share, all working together, with one goal in mind—and that goal is protecting the vulnerable in our community from fraud and bad actors who are there to steal, basically.

I want to thank my neighbour the MPP from Cambridge, who put forward a PMB a while back. I know my friend from Cambridge has moved the needle very much today, and I appreciate his trail-blazing work on this file. I want to thank the Minister of Public and Business Service Delivery, as well, for making sure that we can get this work done as soon as possible so that people can start seeing relief now. I have stories from my riding where people’s lives are put on hold or the harm is happening day to day, moment to moment, and so I’m glad we could expedite this work.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also thank Detective Adam Stover. He’s a member of our Waterloo Regional Police Service. I had the good fortune of talking with him when our police service came to Toronto and came to Queen’s Park to describe what was happening in our community. He took an amazing lead. He has been an expert in the field. I’ve had the privilege of being able to refer constituents in my riding who have been facing this to him to get expert advice and help with their issues, and he has been at the forefront of making sure that this gets resolved as soon as possible. So I want to give a deep bow to our police service, and especially Detective Adam Stover for his great work and advocacy.

Notice of security interests—the fact that we are all learning what this means right now shows how vulnerable our population is. So many folks across our province have no idea what’s happening when they’re being scammed day to day through these complicated contracts—people coming to fix a bathroom or sell them a heater or an air conditioner—and getting charged triple, quadruple and amounts they’re not even aware of. There is a total lack of informed consent, and the way this has opened the floodgates to organized crime is astounding. So I really appreciate that this silent crisis is getting addressed quickly, especially given the circumstances of us facing an aging population.

Just last week, I spoke to a resident in my riding whose mother has had NOSIs put on her property. She’s living with Alzheimer’s. It was her dying wish to age in place, but because she lives with dementia, she is vulnerable to folks coming to her door. Her data was sold. So not only was the NOSI put on her property, but her data was sold, and the PSW told the constituent in my riding that a cab had been sent to her home four times to take her mother to the bank. The only reason she wasn’t swindled out of any money in her bank account was because she didn’t remember to bring her social insurance number. So I don’t think that we’re just saving folks from the harm caused by NOSIs; we’re saving this data from organized crime, being used in other malicious ways. I know that our constituent will breathe a sigh of relief. Her mother is in long-term care now, and she really wants to do the work of selling the house, but she needs this resolved in order to move on with the sale of her mother’s home and so that her mother can keep the money she has worked for her whole life.

I also appreciate the work done to delay—the heritage buildings being recognized. I know our heritage community and the architectural conservancy was very loud in their advocacy for asking about that. I want to acknowledge my constituent Kae Elgie for her work in this matter—and a lot of the other protections for people buying their homes that are afforded to those who have condos. I’m so grateful that we can include some of these items to make sure people have peace of mind when they buy their first home.

I’m grateful today that we can all come together and we can create protections for people, especially our most vulnerable, in terms of home ownership. I hope we can go that extra mile in the coming years to protect seniors from renoviction. I know in my riding and in many of our ridings, seniors are being renovicted at double the rate and they’re losing their rental homes. So I hope we can protect people’s home ownership and we’ll keep working towards protecting tenants from being illegally evicted by bad actors in that space, as well.

I am looking forward to voting in unanimity together for this wonderful bill.